Title: Sorry About All The Death 4

Author: Maggiemerc

Rating: T

Summary: In the woods Meredith watches Arizona. In the city Callie answers the door. Post-8x24 "Flight."

Part 4

Meredith was woken up by the gentle touch of her husband's hand. He was stroking her cheek and softly saying her name. With her eyes closed and his hand on her cheek she smiled. Then she remembered the awful dream. Where the plane crashed and Lexie died and everything, everything was wrong.

She opened her eyes and beyond Derek she saw the interior of the plane and for just another blissful moment it really was all a dream and they'd just landed in Boise and she was going to scrub in on an incredible surgery.

But then she smelled the evergreens and smoke. And heard the chirping birds—ignorant to the wreckage they oversaw. She felt an unfamiliar presence leaning on her side and when she tilted her head to look at it she realized it was Dr. Robbins, her bloody face lightly resting on Meredith's shoulder.

Derek said her name again. He looked awful wutg beard was half formed and he was pale with only the dark bruises under his eyes and the smear of blood on his forehead giving him any color.

"Meredith, Jerry's dead."

Jerry? The pilot. "How?"

He was so grim, "I don't know. I woke up and he was gone."

She shifted and tried to look past Robbins, "Mark?"

"He's all right for now but Robbins isn't."

Robbins. She looked at the woman and only then noticed just how pale she'd gone in the night. Her skin was almost an ashen gray and her lips were blue. "She's cyanotic."

"Cristina's looking for another oxygen tank. I tried but," he shook his head.

But he looked awful. It was hypovolemic shock. Only the night had worsened it. She moved over. "Sit down next to Robbins. Try to stay warm. I'll go help Cristina."

He nodded weakly. "Meredith," he said when she started to limp away. She paused. Looked. Waited for him to say something.

But he couldn't. And neither could she. "I'll be right back."

She found Cristina standing on tip toes using a stick to try to hit something over head. "Cristina?"

"I found the other oxygen tank."

Meredith followed Cristina's eyes. The other oxygen tank, which she'd hoped they wouldn't need, was resting between two branches overhead. She wanted to laugh.

"Don't," Cristina said, reading her mind. "It isn't funny. It's sad. This is sad. We're stuck in a forest dying off one by one because seven years ago we were too stupid to choose another residency program."

"Cristina…"

She swung the stick hard against the tree with a grunt and it snapped in two. "No! No. I'm done. That guy died in his sleep Mer. He was fine and he's dead now. Lexie is dead. Mark has half a hairspray bottle in his chest, Robbins looks like one of those blue people from Appalachia and Derek is in hypovolemic chock. They're dying and the one thing we need besides rescue and a fully stalked hospital is stuck in a frickin' tree!"

She chunked the rest of her stick clear into the forest and screamed. It was this terrifying guttural explosion of fury and Meredith found herself, quite against her will, stepping back.

"You know, I didn't want to leave? Mayo, I mean, it's good but Seattle is good too. Only Seattle is insane. Owen cheated on me and tells me he loves me and you're trying to—to hold onto a past you should hate. You wanted me to stay in a place that killed our friends. Nearly killed both of our careers? For what? For friendship?"

"Cristina—" she was a broken record. She knew it, but she was in shock. Not even shock from being in a plane crash just shock at the absolute unravelling of her best friend.

"I wanted to get in, finish my residency and get our Mer. I didn't want friends. I didn't want a husband. I sure as hell didn't want you," she snarled. She then looked up into the trees. "And the oxygen tank is still in the frickin' tree!"

####

She woke up happy. Genuinely happy. The kind of glee that she hadn't felt since Nick had shown up. She opened her eyes and took stock of her condition and still couldn't stop smiling. Laughter, not unlike that which had accompanied her earlier shock, bubbled up again. It wasn't quite as hysteric though.

"Robbins?"

Somehow Meredith had been switched out for Derek. Which only made her laugh more.

"She's cracking," Mark croaked.

He'd woken up too. Good! They were all awake and alive and damn it—"The sun feels great doesn't it?"

Neither Mark or Derek responded.

She sucked in a deep and gratifying breath and didn't even care when it was followed by a cough so powerful she thought some lung came up with it. Who cared? They were alive.

"I wish Callie were here. She kind of likes camping. I mean, she'd hate a lot of this, but cuddling up under a blanket in the early morning sun? She'd love that."

"Definitely cracking."

Derek got up and leaned over Arizona.

"McDreamy your eyes are super pretty."

He frowned, "Damn it. Hypoxia."

Uh oh. She knew what that meant. "Guess we shouldn't have given Mark all the oxygen huh?"

He reached out to take her pulse and she leaned back.

"You know it sucks being a doctor sometimes. Because clearly I'm happy even though a friend is dead and my bone is sticking out of my thigh and my wife isn't here. With my other symptoms that probably means my oxygen content is super low and I'm dying. Which sucks? But I actually feel awesome. Super, super, super awesome."

Derek stood up and called out for his wife. He started to leave, but stopped. He knelt next to Arizona. "Robbins, you're going to make it okay?"

She coughed. "I hope so. But it isn't really that bad right? I get to see Lexie and Timothy and Nick will be there in a few months. Ooo and George. I'll finally get to have a conversation with Callie's ex-husband." Wait. But what if— "Unless there isn't an afterlife and dead is dead. In which case this super happy feeling I have is really misplaced."

Derek looked so sad all of a sudden. A frown marring what she felt, objectively speaking, was a pretty gorgeous face.

"It's okay Derek."

He tried to hush her.

"No. Everyone always gets a deathbed confession. I should too."

"No, listen." He pointed overhead.

She did listen.

She could hear it.

Another reason to be happy.

Help had finally arrived.

"And you guys thought I was euphoric because I'm not getting enough oxygen to my brain."

####

They got the call not long after sunrise. The crash site had been found by another plane. Helicopters were in route and the survivors, if there were any, would be transported to the closest trauma center. Which was, in this case, Seattle Grace Mercy West.

Callie and Owen had scrambled. He started calling everyone in while she grabbed Sofia's stuff and they ran across the street, separating at the entrance so he could prepare the ER and she could drop off Sofia and change out of her robe and into scrubs.

She'd actually, for half a stupid second, thought about now running across the street to the hospital in nothing but a bathrobe and negligee wasn't professional or appropriate, but the urgency she felt, the need to be there as soon as her wife was off the copter, removed any sense of decency she still possessed.

She tugged on a trauma gown and gloves she'd pulled from the ER and ran up to the helipad where Bailey, Webber and the three stooges residents were waiting on the copter along with Owen. She made a beeline for him.

"What'd you here?"

"Two dead. One female and one male. The rest are injured."

She felt like hyperventilating. Like collapsing to the ground and never getting back up. One female dead. It could be Lexie or Cristina or Meredith. And it could be Arizona. And the man. The pilot? Mark? Two people were dead and her whole world might be undone.

"Dude, are you okay?"

Alex was looking at her quizzically and behind her Kepner and Avery shared similar looks of bemusement and concern.

"Callie," Bailey asked.

And she realized something awful. None of them were suitably terrified. They were just treating normal traumas. It was a normal day. She looked sharply to Owen, "You didn't tell them?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

"Told us what?" Bailey again. She was frowning. Trying to work out the puzzle Callie and Owen presented her with.

Owen looked down and away. "Their plane went down. The survivors are currently being helivaced here."

"Their plane?"

Everyone started speaking. Shock. Horror. Anger. It was a conflation of emotion erupting on the helipad.

"Everyone quiet," Webber said. He was evoking his "Chief" voice. One he'd retired a year before. But it worked. They all went quiet. "Now," he said, directing his question to Owen, "what do we know?"

"Two dead. One male. One female."

Someone they loved was dead.

Bailey went still. Kepner looked like she was going to cry. Avery and Alex both just looked confused.

And then the helicopter was landing and Cristina was leaping out looking like death herself, come to herald the bad news. Her shoulder was in a sling and she was shouting things out. Telling them about the injuries. Saying it before the paramedic could speak. Meredith limped out after her and Derek stepped out. Stumbled. Fell. They'd squeezed two gurneys in. One held Mark. The other, the other held her wife and she was blue and still and for a brief moment she thought they'd brought her home a corpse to bury.

"Lexie's dead," Cristina said. Announcing it for all of them to hear. Stunning them for a moment. Meredith started crying again. Derek tried to stand but couldn't. Mark looked sightlessly up at the roof of the copter and Arizona coughed, blood spattering her mask.

Her speech to the residents they day before sprung up immediately in her mind and she hated herself for saying it. For being happy. For thinking there was a future for anything.

Everything had changed.