Dignity Chapter 7: Jet Black Heart, a grey's anatomy fanfic

[Thank you, thank you, thank you for the lovely reviews, the kind words, and the messages of support. I so appreciate your patience as the characters work through this. I promise I'm writing as quickly as I can! Your comments are incredible motivation.

Dialogue taken from Shonda's canon is marked with an asterisk. Suggested listening for this chapter is "Jet Black Heart" by 5 Seconds of Summer." If you need to re-read, suggested listening includes "All For Believing" by Missy Higgins and "Wide Awake" by Katy Perry.]

JET BLACK HEART

Silence hung heavily, occasionally disturbed by the scrape of a scalpel against a cleaning tray or the rustle of the patient's paper gown.

Izzie Stevens couldn't hear anything but the rush of blood past her ears and the steady, frantic beat of her pounding heart.

"What are you thinking, Stevens?"

Mark Sloan's voice, low and raspy, cut through her confusion with a serrated edge.

"This guy," Izzie began shakily, swallowing against a bone-dry throat. "This guy could be the guy that attacked Meredith."

"We don't know that," Sloan countered.

"No," Izzie agreed, her voice a tenuous thread, "but…what if he is?"

"Then we're still doctors," Sloan replied tersely, "and our job is to save his life and to preserve as much penile function as we can."

She closed her eyes and fought like hell to hold onto the tiny voice that still chanted loyalty in the farthest corner of her mind. "I…"

"Stevens," Sloan barked. "Focus! You're a surgeon right now. I need your hands, and you need to learn."

She dropped the bloodied pen onto the nurse's outstretched tray and forced herself to move in slow, measured steps back to the operating table. Her wet brown eyes met Mark's bloodshot blue gaze over a bleeding, purpled phallus.

"Do you honestly believe that we're doing the right thing right now?" she all but whispered.

In his mind's eye, Mark Sloan saw matted honey-blonde hair against a blood-streaked skull. His intake of breath was every bit as sharp as the scalpel with which he'd been attempting to make repairs. "We don't know that this is the guy, Stevens. Not until she wakes up. Until then, my job—and your job—is to save this patient."

Against her will, a hot, salty tear streaked down Izzie's cheek and soaked a tiny spot on her surgical mask. "But…what if he is the guy?"

"Then we're going to surrender all of his blood work and that damned pen to the police," Mark growled, "and I will do my very best to keep from marring his face in a way that even I couldn't fix." He exhaled slowly and rolled his neck to ease the tension. Beneath the surface, he could still feel the panic that had rendered him a stuttering mess as he tried to relay the important details to a patient 911 agent.

"I…I know her."

"Suction," he commanded loudly. "And somebody get me an update on Meredith Grey!"

She had actually done it. Lexie Grey had actually helped cut a brain in half.

Well, she'd hadn't helped cut the brain totally in half. Technically, she'd helped Drs. Karev and Shepherd with the first stage of a corpus callosotomy, wherein they'd separated the first two-thirds of the nerve fibers, leaving the back third intact in hopes that the seizures didn't require a full separation of the brain's hemispheres. Still, she'd held the scalpel. She'd watched as the bone and dura were removed, then replaced. She'd even stitched the scalp closed. She could still feel the smooth, shaved skin beneath her fingers and the ridge of surgical thread she'd helped to create.

As much as she wanted to return to OR 1 to hold the magnification tool while Dr. Shepherd sliced the remanding third of the nerve bundle in half, she really, really hoped Lisa Vaughn's atonic seizures were over. No one deserved to have their world so frequently shaken.

Amidst the violent pounding of water against the scrub room sink and her silent lamentation of her patient's former state, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She glanced up just in time to see Alex Karev wink at her before he made his exit.

She'd met him thrust for thrust in the darkness of his bedroom, clutching his sheets like a lifeline and loving the strength with which his fingers tangled in her hair, but she still couldn't figure him out. Under the fluorescent lights of the OR, he'd stood up for Meredith in a big way. The whole thing left her feeling uncharacteristically brave.

"You asked for an update."

She was almost surprised that she'd allowed the words to slip out. Dr. Shepherd, on the other hand, didn't seem so surprised. In fact, he looked kind of defeated. His face was sallow, with dark shadows and pronounced lines. Not so McDreamy now, are you?

His intake of breath disturbed the familiar rhythm and the gentle shh of the brush against her hands. When he spoke, he sounded even more tired than he looked. "I did."

Lexie studied the aftermath of the corpus callosotomy through the scrub room window. The excess skin of her cuticles. The jagged edges of the nails she'd bitten while waiting for news about Meredith. Anything but that horrible, heartbroken look on Dr. Shepherd's face.

"Dr. Sloan said her sutures look fine," she blurted finally, "and…and Dr. Hahn said she's stable."

In the window, the ghostly reflection of Dr. Shepherd seemed to deflate before her very wide eyes. "Good. That's…that's really good."

"Yeah," Lexie agreed. "But that's not all." She paused and inhaled deeply, hoping to tap into the kind of courage that had inspired Alex to knock Dr. Shepherd down a few pegs in front of a crowded OR and a full gallery. "She…look, she wasn't drinking."

"What?"

"Meredith," Lexie stammered. "She wasn't drinking. When she got attacked, I mean." She opened her eyes and forced herself to meet Dr. Shepherd's ominous indigo gaze. "I heard you, okay? I heard you in the hallway with Cristina, yelling about how her BAC was probably sky-high, and…it wasn't. It was zero." She somehow managed to swallow around the giant, prickly ball of terror that had lodged itself in her esophagus. "She wasn't drinking."

Derek's jaw fell open, his lips forming a silent "oh" of surprise. "How do you…?"

"I stole her blood work," Lexie interrupted nervously. "Well, not her blood work so much as her chart—which I didn't really steal, just kind of looked at for a few minutes without permission, but…" She trailed off and shook her head in frustration. The point, Lexie. Stick to the point. "The point is that she wasn't drinking. So…either she's really changed, or you don't know her as well as you think you do."

She thought she saw the silver sheen of tears in his bloodshot blue eyes, but it could've been the fluorescent lights playing tricks on her. When he spoke again, his voice was a ragged rasp. "Dr Grey…"

"So…yeah." Lexie exhaled on a hiss and began wringing her hands against the worn cotton of her pale blue scrubs. "Thanks for letting me scrub in." And then she bolted, leaving Derek Shepherd in stunned silence.

Dr. Bailey told Nurse Tyler. Nurse Tyler told Nurse Olivia. Nurse Olivia nearly tripped over her own two feet in her rush to tell Chief Webber. She also might've told Nurse Jackie on the way, who answered the phone when Felicity, Dr. Sloan's circulating nurse, phoned the nurse's station for an update.

"Dr. Sloan?"

"Felicity?" Dr. Sloan returned tightly. In front of him, the reddish-purple lips of the penile wound were closing slowly, pursed together by a spiderweb of black surgical thread. In his mind's eye, 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.

"Dr. Bailey just put in an order for Vicodin. Nurse Jackie says it's for Dr. Grey."

For the first time since he'd begun his residency at Mount Sinai in New York City, Dr. Sloan's hands shook. "Bailey orders painkillers for patients all the time," he ground out. "How do you know it's for Dr. Grey?" He could hear the fearful panting of Izzie Stevens, wound so tightly she could barely move.

Nurse Felicity's heart pounded against her ribcage as she inhaled sharply, considering the ramifications of explaining the bizarre game of telephone to Dr. Sloan. She didn't think that anyone had violated HIPAA in spreading the news, but she wasn't entirely sure. And normally, she wouldn't be worried about Sex-on-a-Stick Sloan saying anything to her about hospital rules and regulations, but the Dr. Sloan that had entered the OR today was different—emotional, focused, and entirely unpredictable. "I just…"

"Let me check."

Nurse Felicity's nervous breath left in a whoosh as Izzie Stevens's determined alto echoed along the stark walls of the OR.

"Stevens…"

"No," Izzie interrupted, "hear me out. We could have a criminal on this table. You're almost done, right? If you finish, and we wheel him into recovery, and he ultimately gets to walk free before we find out whether or not we should turn him over to the police for questioning…" She sucked in a breath and forced herself to try and find her chill. Seriously, Izzie. Some semblance of chill. When she began again, her voice was decidedly less shrill. "You're right, okay? We're doctors. By sewing him up, we're doing the right thing. But if he's the reason that Meredith…" She trailed off, unable to find adequate words to describe her friend's pain. She looked around the OR with wet eyes and leaned forward, suddenly mindful of the smattering of medical professionals who were watching through the gallery. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "You saw her, okay? I didn't. I didn't see her, but I know it was bad. If he did that to her, and we let him walk away scott-free? That would NOT be the right thing."

For a few painful moments, all Izzie could hear was the labored rasp of her own breath and the rush of blood in her ears. Finally, Dr. Sloan gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

"Go."

She tore off her gloves and slammed her bare hand against the latch that forced the scrub room door open. Within seconds, she was sprinting down the hall, her surgical gown billowing in her wake. She was a cheetah all over again. Sleek, swift, determined…

"Doctor Stevens. I know you're not barreling down this ICU hallway like a crazy person. My interns know better than to run in a hospital."

Izzie heaved an obstinate sigh as she slowed to a guilty trudge. "Tuck is screwed," she grumbled. "He knows that, right? He's never going to be able to get away with anything."

"Tuck is a baby," Miranda Bailey retorted. "The only thing he tries to get away with is waking his mama up at three o'clock in the damn morning…and he usually succeeds." She pursed her lips in annoyance and gave Izzie a disapproving once-over. "Now, why are you running down my hallway like your hair's on fire?"

Izzie swallowed around a lump that felt roughly the size of Antarctica. "I need to see Meredith."

Dr. Bailey put pudgy hands on pudgy hips and shot her tall blonde resident a lethal glare. "Aren't you on Dr. Sloan's service? The way I see it, the only thing you need is to…"

"Bailey!"

The sound of Meredith's voice—raspy, broken, but very much alive—put Izzie immediately at ease. She reached for the door frame and leaned in, meeting Meredith's dazed stare with crippling relief.

"You're awake."

Meredith snorted, then winced as the effort thereof set her chest ablaze. "I'm awake," she agreed. "The painkiller delivery system in this hospital is stupidly slow." She shot a pointed look at the chief resident in the doorway. "Of course, if someone had agreed to give me morphine instead of Vicodin, I wouldn't feel like an army of ants is attacking this stupid broken arm."

"We've all seen you on morphine," Cristina retorted from her perch on the windowsill. "Trust me, no one was going to give you morphine."

"Amen to that," Dr. Bailey scoffed. Another painful hiss from Meredith softened her glare ever so slightly. "I'll go check on your prescription."

"About time," Meredith grumbled as Dr. Bailey disappeared down the hallway.

"I want to hug you," Izzie confessed, "but I'm still technically supposed to be in surgery, and I don't think I've ever really seen you do hugs."

"Hugs are for the weak," Meredith grunted.

"And for people who lie on the bathroom floor."

"Cristina!"

The raven-haired resident twisted her dark features in disgust. "What? I would've said they're for people who sleep with Bambi, but…well..."

Meredith rolled her eyes and shot Izzie an apologetic look. "Look, I don't need a hug. I'm…"

"Fine," the other two chorused in exasperation.

"I know you're fine," Izzie sighed. "I know we have some weird code…thing where you and I don't talk about the dark and twisty stuff, because you get defensive and I get judge-y, but…"

Meredith's expression softened. "Spit it out, Iz."

Izzie's chest seemed to collapse with the force of her reluctant exhale. "You were attacked."

"No," Meredith argued at the same time that Cristina's tone dropped like a leaden weight in the center of the room.

"Yes."

"By a guy?" Izzie persisted.

"No," Meredith protested, but Cristina's determination was louder.

"Yes."

Izzie nodded thoughtfully, bit her lip, and studied the erratic smattering of spots along the tiled floor. When she finally looked up, she caught Meredith in a rare moment of defeat, and her eyes immediately filled with tears.

"Did you stab him?" Izzie all but whispered, "with a pen?"

Meredith's eyes widened, and the knuckles of her free hand turned as white as the linens she was clutching. "How did you know that?"

Cristina leapt incredulously to her feet. "No way! Pen-in-a-penis guy is your doing?!"

Meredith's entire body thrummed with fear. She could still feel the smooth plastic against her sweaty palm and the grime of the concrete beneath her as she'd struggled for leverage enough to strike.

"Bitch. You think you can turn me down?"

"Iz," Meredith gasped, "how did you know that?"

Izzie scrubbed her face with a shameful palm that came away wet. "He's my patient. He's on Sloan's operating table right now. I…God, Mere, I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

"He's here?" Cristina demanded. "In this hospital? Right now?"

Faced with the trembling form of one of her best, strongest friends, Izzie could only nod.

"What are you waiting for?" Cristina exploded. "Handcuff him to the fucking gurney already!"

"It's not that simple," Meredith interjected, her voice surprisingly steady. "They can't do anything without a report."

"That's bullshit!"

"No," Izzie's voice shook with a tearful vibrato. "She's right. She has to report him."

"Great," Cristina grumbled, unearthing her cell phone from the pocket of her scrubs. "I'll call 911, and we'll put this asshole away."

"It's not that easy," Meredith argued. "There's a process. Hearings, identification…"

"Then let's start the fucking process!"

"Cristina." While soft and tenuous, Izzie's voice held a clear warning that Cristina immediately heeded. The fiery resident's gaze ping-ponged from Izzie to Meredith.

"Oh, come on," she muttered. "Seriously? Meredith, you have to file charges. You stabbed the asshole with a pen, for crying out loud."

"I just wanted it to be over," Meredith told the ceiling in a small voice. "I wanted him gone."

"Exactly," Cristina deadpanned. "You know how we keep the asshole gone? We put him in jail."

"Can you stop saying 'asshole'?"

Cristina heaved a sigh and rounded the bed, wrapping her hands around Meredith's blanketed feet. "Meredith, what you did was brave. Crazy, hand-on-a-bomb-in-a-body-cavity, stupid brave. You owe it to yourself and every other girl in a bar to finish the job."

Meredith closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. With one glance at Izzie's heartbroken, tear-streaked visage and another at Cristina's determined glare, she held up her good arm, dragging the IV with her. "Give me the phone."

She dialed slowly, with Cristina at the foot of her bed and Izzie guarding the door.

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

Meredith inhaled sharply and prayed to a God she didn't entirely believe in. "I'm calling to report a sexual assault."

"We could tell him that she can't feel the left side of her body," Alex grumbled as he notated blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen saturation levels in the blood.

"We could," Lexie agreed as she checked the incision site, "but that would probably be mean."

"Allergic reaction to the anesthesia?"

Lexie dipped her chin pointedly. "Also mean."

"Debilitating post-surgery stutter?"

"Alex!"

Alex sneered. "Whatever. He'd deserve it."

Lexie chortled. "You basically called him a tool in front of an entire gallery full of hospital staff—and his girlfriend. Don't you think that's enough?"

"In a word? No."

Lexie's reply was swallowed by the rapid beep as the monitor registered an increased heart rate. She glanced down in surprise as Lisa Vaughn's big brown eyes opened, then shut. A sudden bout of coughing rattled the plastic bed as the patient fought for sentience.

To Lexie's surprise, Alex immediately abandoned the chart on the bedside table and laid a gentle hand on Lisa Vaughn's shoulder. "Easy," he murmured. "You're okay, Ms. Vaughn. Your throat's probably sore after surgery, so Dr. Grey here is going to get you some ice chips while I tell you how it went in the OR." Lexie blinked, and suddenly, she was staring into the penetrating hazel gaze of her sometimes lover. "Right, Dr. Grey?"

Did he seriously just dismiss me?

For a nanosecond, she thought about protesting, loudly and vehemently. Then, she took another look at the bald woman who was hacking up a lung beneath Alex's steady, sure fingers and changed her mind. When she returned, Lisa Vaughn accepted the cup with a weak hand and a trembling smile.

"So…" she murmured around an ice chip, her voice a testament to the difficulty of the surgery she'd endured, "does this mean I get to be normal now?"

"We're going to monitor you for the next forty-eight hours to make sure there are no immediate side effects of surgery," Alex explained patiently, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "Like I said, some seizure patients experience a huge relief with just the first stage of a corpus callosotomy, but some patients…"

"Have to have their brain completely rewired?" she offered hoarsely.

"Have to have their hemispheres completely separated," Alex corrected gently.

"I thought that's what you did?"

"Not exactly," Alex volleyed. "We separated two-thirds of the nerve fibers in the corpus collosum. It's...more like putting a hemisphere of your brain in time-out. First, we give it five minutes in the corner. If it continues to be a pain in the ass, we send it to its room."

"But if this works," Lisa continued, feebly tilting the cup to her mouth to procure another ice chip, "if the five minutes in the corner work, then…then I'll be normal."

The hope in her gasp of a voice brought tears to Lexie's eyes. She knew that feeling. God, she knew that feeling.

"If the first phase works," Alex countered, "you'll stop having seizures. You might even get your license back. But…"

"But haunted houses? Concerts with strobe lights? High-stress situations?"

Alex heaved a sigh. "You'll have to be careful. For awhile. You know, until you get a good idea of what your brain can handle."

Lisa Vaughn sank into the propped up pillows like a deflated balloon, and Lexie's heart broke.

"Look," Alex muttered, snapping the chart shut, "You have a steady heart rate. Your blood pressure looks good. You aren't showing signs of a stutter, or paralysis, or any other side effects associated with a corpus collosotomy. In fact, you might not even have atonic seizures anymore. And you're right. That's not normal. Enduring months and months of cluster seizures without even a hint of brain damage? That's not normal either. That's lucky."

He allowed himself one fraction of a second to think about the ICU's newest dark-and-twisty patient. "Look, we've all got scars. Some of us have really ugly scars, but…a scar means you lived. It's a sign that you're still fighting, 'cause you're still alive to fight. Don't be ashamed of that." He dropped the chart on the bedside table. "Besides, normal's overrated."

He offered her a lopsided, close-mouthed smile that she reluctantly returned.

Lexie waited until the door had shut behind them to resume conversation. "You were…really, really good with her."

Alex snorted, exhaling all traces of his soothing bedside manner. "I told her the truth," he snapped. "Same thing I did with Shepherd."

"No," Lexie argued. "What you did with Dr. Shepherd was mean. Kind of fantastic, and super entertaining, and…also kind of stupid, actually, because he might start to make your life a living hell, but…it was mean."

Alex whirled around to face her with a determination that took her breath away. "No, what he did to Meredith was mean. Giving Meredith hope that there's something out there other than the crap hand that she's been dealt her whole life, then fucking a scrub nurse? That was mean. Talking about a future, then taking it away? That was mean. Parading around the hospital with his stupid scrub nurse like Meredith never existed? That's mean. And sure, maybe it's not my place to call him out, but he fucking deserved it. Because Meredith might've been fine, but she's certainly not fine now. And if he's so desperate for information that he's going out of his way to bribe us, even after all that shit he said about her when he first found out, he's not so fine either."

I told him, Lexie wanted to say. I told him that he was wrong about her. I told him that her BAC was zero and that he's an idiot. I TOLD him.

Instead, the persistent beeping of their pagers shattered the precarious silence between them.

"It's Yang," Alex grunted. "She's paging us to ICU."

Derek Shepherd was taking the long way to the cafeteria. He was supposed to meet Rose for a celebratory salad following the successful completion of the first part of the corpus callosotomy, but he wasn't as hungry as he'd initially anticipated.

"I heard you, okay? I heard you in the hallway with Cristina, yelling about how her BAC was probably sky-high, and…it wasn't. It was zero. She wasn't drinking."

Derek had always prided himself on being someone reasonable. He tried to live a life of integrity. He tried to do the right thing. He tried not to let his own wayward emotions force him from the path of righteousness. When he'd caught Addison with Mark in New York, he'd had a brief moment of insanity, a brief moment where the thunder had rumbled more loudly in his chest than it had outside, a brief moment where he'd thrown her out onto the front steps with her clothes in a fit of rage, but he'd quickly come to his senses. He always came to his senses.

"The point is that she wasn't drinking. So…either she's really changed, or you don't know her as well as you think you do."

He closed his eyes against the assaulting echo of Lexie's rambling confrontation and recalled another painful moment in which he'd come to his senses.

"I'm in love with you. I've been in love with you forever."*

He wanted to believe that he'd moved on from Meredith Grey. He'd been sure that her rejection of his blueprints had been the final nail in their epic coffin of sex and mockery. Besides, Rose was a good woman. Solid. Stable.

"How did I know I'd find you here?"

Derek glanced to his left and caught sight of the placard that read "Intensive Care Unit" in navy lettering just before a pale brunette with a sympathetic smile obscured his view of the double doors. Her lips met his in a chaste greeting with a hint of cherry.

"When I had a choice to make, I chose wrong."*

She wrapped her arms around his neck as the corners of her mouth stretched in a broad grin. "Hi."

He forced the corners of his own mouth upward. "Hi."

She swatted him gently. "Don't look so sad! Didn't you hear? Dr. Grey's awake."

He hadn't heard. The fact that the news had come from Rose hurt more than he'd expected.

"Isn't it a violation of hospital policy to be discussing a patient's condition without the patient's permission?"

He knew from the deepening arch of her eyebrows that he'd misspoken.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Rose retorted. "You're right. Why don't I just leave the dissemination of information to Dr. Karev? After all, he seemed so willing to talk to you earlier."

Derek winced. "I'm sorry. I just…"

"Didn't get a lot of sleep," Rose finished expectantly, "because you spent the night on the floor outside your ex-girlfriend's hospital room."

"I didn't do it intentionally," Derek hissed, trying to avoid an audience. "I was having a conversation with Bailey, and I drifted off."

"Right," Rose scoffed. "Was it anything like the conversation you had with Dr. Karev in the OR this afternoon?"

Derek wisely decided against telling her that the exchange with Karev had gone significantly better than MIranda Bailey's late-night castigation.

Rose heaved a petulant sigh and planted delicate hands on rounded hips. "Look, I'm trying really hard to be understanding about this whole thing. I know you and Dr. Grey had a…connection, and what happened to her is really terrible, but…it's starting to look like you're not over her."

Sometimes, he failed.

"And why is that, Rose?" he exploded, trying like hell to keep his voice low. "Because I care about what happened to her? Because I want to know why she was brutally attacked in the alley behind a bar while she was stone-cold sober?" He could feel the ugly feelings churning beneath his skin—doubt, fear, anger, and self-loathing. The little voice that chanted not Meredith in the depths of his subconscious was a growing pool of gasoline just itching for a flame. "I'm sorry that my compassion offends you."

The apology had a serrated edge that didn't escape her.

"I didn't attack her, okay? What happened to her is not my fault," Rose argued sharply. "Don't take your anger out on me."

Once, when a patient with an impossibly calcified brain tumor had died on the table, he'd come to Meredith for consolation. He'd expected her to hold him, to whisper words of hope and faith and heaven while she ran callused surgeon's hands through his hair. Instead, she'd poured him a generous helping of his favorite scotch, made herself a shot of tequila, and clinked glasses. "You did everything you could, okay? Sometimes, chaos wins and the world just sucks. That's not your fault."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Tell you what," she'd challenged, slamming the glass on the table like a frat brother, "Walk me through the surgery. If I think you made the wrong call somewhere, I'll tell you."

"You're an intern. What makes you think you know enough to find my fault?"

She'd lifted her chin, eyes glittering dangerously, and leveled him with an incendiary glare. "Try me."

"Derek. I'm serious, okay? There are some things I will not tolerate. Do not take your anger out on me."

He wanted her eyes to be green. He wanted her hair to be honey-blonde. He wanted her to be a little less reasonable and a little more pessimistic, to meet his fiery fury with ice instead of tepid water.

She laid a hand on his arm, and the pool of gasoline erupted into violent yellow flames.

"Don't be a selfish bitch."

And yet, as he watched Rose turn on her heel and stalk off in the opposite direction, he found he wasn't the least bit sorry.

She'd waited until the police arrived—which, surprisingly, hadn't been long. In fact, a rather attractive officer had darkened the doorway almost five minutes before Alex and Lexie responded to Cristina's page. As soon as he'd unearthed a notebook to begin taking Meredith's statement, Izzie had reached down, given Meredith's hand a supportive squeeze (and endured the glare that resulted), and begun the tedious trip back to OR 2. Her cheetah-like sprint had slowed to a moderate jog as Bailey's warning rang in her ears. Every time she thought she saw the petite chief resident, she slowed to a surly walk.

Eventually, she grabbed a surgical mask and wrenched the OR door open.

"It's him," she yelled breathlessly over the rustle of surgical gowns and the persistent clink of metal instruments.

She saw the muscles in Dr. Sloan's shoulder tense, but he didn't turn around. "Scrub in, Stevens. We're almost through here."

Izzie's eyes narrowed angrily. "What? Dr. Sloan, that's him. On your table. That's the guy that attacked Meredith."

His voice was a growl. "It's your table, too, Stevens. I'd like you to help close."

"Are you kidding me? You want me to…"

"Dr. Stevens!" Dr. Sloan thundered.

The rustling stopped. The clinking stopped. Everything in the OR fell terrifyingly silent.

"I am your teacher," Mark ground out between clenched teeth. "When I tell you to scrub in, you scrub in. NOW."

With a loud huff, Izzie chucked her surgical mask in the nearby trash can and stormed into the scrub room. She couldn't help but think, as she scraped dirt, grime, and a layer of dermis from her fingers, that Mark Sloan had picked a hell of a time to start teaching. Within minutes, she stepped up to the operating table and inhaled sharply at the sight of the patient's wrinkled phallus.

"Are you ready, Dr. Stevens?"

"Yes sir," she snapped.

Dr. Sloan finally lifted his gaze, and the penetrating blue beneath his scrub cap stole her breath.

"I pulled Meredith Grey from behind a dumpster," he all but whispered. "All of her visible skin was bruised, she was covered in lacerations, and her hair was so bloodied that I didn't even recognize her at first. I fucking…lost my shit in the middle of a 911 call. I am furious, okay? NO ONE wants to get this guy more than I do. But if he can prove that we were negligent, or biased, or somehow less capable surgeons as a result of our connection to Grey, he might not have to suffer each and every one of the consequences he obviously deserves. And believe me, I want him to be fully sentient for all of it." His chest heaved beneath his trauma gown, and something gnarled inside of Izzie started to relax. "Now, are we sure this is the guy?"

She nodded slowly and swallowed the tears that threatened to surface. "Yes. I spoke directly with Dr. Grey, and she confirmed that she stabbed her assailant with a pen bearing the Seattle Grace logo. Obviously, we won't know for sure until she's able to ID him directly, but…the details are too well-matched for a coincidence. The police are with her now."

Dr. Sloan's eyes closed for a moment as he exhaled, and Izzie saw a tiny drop of water creep out of the pinched skin and into the top of his surgical mask. Oh my God. Mark Sloan has a soul.

"Good," he breathed. "That's good. Now, close this bastard so that he's ready for his statement when the police are done with Grey. Let's see how your stitches measure up."

Izzie crept nervously to the opposite side of the table and took Dr. Sloan's outstretched instruments. "I'm scared," she confessed in a whisper. "What if I leave a scar?"

He snorted. "Honestly? I hope you do."

Derek stumbled out of the gallery like a man possessed, eyes wide and mouth agape. The hallway swam before him, a sea of white tile with random spots and the distinctive smell of antiseptic. Usually, it was the familiar scent of his home away from home. Today, it felt like an assault.

"I pulled Meredith Grey from behind a dumpster."

He could still see Mark in the elevator, sweat-drenched and exhausted, with haunted eyes rimmed in red and dark purple.

"All of her visible skin was bruised, she was covered in lacerations, and her hair was so bloodied that I didn't even recognize her at first."

He'd been drinking coffee with Rose, cracking jokes and thanking God that complicated had finally taken a back seat to conventional. He'd been glib and jovial, and she'd been lying on the concrete outside a bar.

"I fucking…lost my shit in the middle of a 911 call."

Mark had rescued Meredith, and Derek had had the gall to ask Mark if he'd slept with her.

"It's good that you left her for that sickly sweet scrub nurse. Meredith Grey deserves better than you."

His hand found purchase on the wall, and he scrubbed his face with his free palm, bewildered when it came away wet.

"I spoke directly with Dr. Grey, and she confirmed that she stabbed her assailant with a pen bearing the Seattle Grace logo. Obviously, we won't know for sure until she's able to ID him directly, but…the details are too well-matched for a coincidence. The police are with her now."

The world was a tremulous, watery white. The hustle and bustle of the hospital sounded far away, like the distant buzzing of insects.

He couldn't breathe.

"The point is that she wasn't drinking. So…either she's really changed, or you don't know her as well as you think you do."

He couldn't breathe.

"You didn't call my bluff, Derek. I called yours."
Sobs seized his chest, but something ugly, sharp, and ruthless prevented their escape. His stomach muscles contracted violently as he fought for air.

"Ah, but you being easy has never been an issue, has it?"

Bile creeped up the back of his throat, filling his mouth with fire and his eyes with salt.

"I might not always know what I want, but I know what you want, Derek, and it isn't me."

He groped blindly along the wall for a door. A latch. Anything that would allow him to escape the feeling that the walls were crushing his sternum, that oxygen had abandoned his bloodstream and asphyxiation was imminent.

"You say you love me. You say you want me. But then you tell me that you don't want to breathe for me. You tell me to put you out of your misery. You essentially tell me that I'm someone you're willing to settle for until something better comes along. And I get it. I do. Rose is someone better. I just…If you can be this happy with her so quickly after unveiling your plans for our forever, then maybe…maybe you never really loved me."

"Maybe I didn't."

He saw a tiny tear slide down a cheek he knew almost better than his own. He saw a flash of honey-blonde hair and the gentle swing of the door to Joe's. He saw pale blue scrubs and pale blue lips and felt the impossibly cold water of Elliot Bay pricking his skin.

"That thing you're feeling? That God-awful, gut-sucking thing that makes you hate yourself only a little bit more than you hate her? It's called guilt."

Finally, his wandering hand found a door handle. With a few blind, stumbling steps, he fell into a storage closet and emptied the contents of his stomach into a biohazard bin.