I'm sorry I haven't updated in forever...but thanks to all the people who reviewed the last chapter!
7:00 P.M
DEREK
Time slows down. In the OR, when he's focused, it simply slows down for him. He sees everything so much more clearly, in vivid detail, that when he's finished he is surprised to see just how many hours have passed.
Now, it does the same. He sees everything. Gayle closing his eyes. Addison turning to him, her lips moving silently. Karev lunging, Callie dropping to the floor.
He closed his eyes then. There's no heavy, sealing silence this time, not like after his father was shot. It was so deep, so complete, he didn't hear Amy screaming, the dull thud of the body, the scuffle of the men leaving, the sweet tinkle of the bell on the door as it swung closed.
Now, he hears nothing.
He opens his eyes.
The gun slipping from Gayle's hand, skittering across the floor. So close.
It feels sleek, powerful in his hands. They're steady - years of surgical training. His palms are sweaty, but he knows he will not miss.
Not that he's shot a gun before, but the principle is pretty simple. You pull the trigger, and boom. Dead.
It's easy.
He's seen so many gunshot victims. The first was his father. What stuck with him after was how it only took a heartbeat to fire the gun that killed his father, and how it took the doctors in the hospital hours to decide they couldn't save him.
How easy it is to take a life, but how hard it is to save one.
Saving lives is what he does. It what he's wanted to do since he was a shaking kid hiding behind a counter holding his struggling sister, it's what he's been training to do for most of his adult life.
He could no more walk away from someone bleeding in the street than he could abandon a patient on his operating table.
Because he saves lives.
The question is, would he kill? Would he kill the man who just threatened his wife, himself, and two others?
If he had the ability to kill that man right now - would he do it?
He thinks that he would.
CALLIE
Shepherd looks terrifying. His face is white, set, his eyes absolutely expressionless. It's how he looks in the OR when he's taking a decision that could mean the difference between life and death, between a patient waking up or turning into a potato.
Right now, the decision he makes would mean the difference between the four of them getting the hell out of here alive or ending up dead, so she really hopes the guy can get his shit together.
KAREV
He's never shot anyone. He's hit lots of people, though - he knows too well the satisfying crunch of bone and cartilage, the slip of skin, the metal tang and warmth of blood.
He might have trained to be a surgeon, but he started out a scrappy, rough kid who beat the tar out of his dad, who went to juvie for landing a kid several years older and many pounds heavier than himself in a hospital, who supported himself and his siblings through high school, who went to college on a wrestling scholarship.
Gayle looks calm, trapped there on the floor, his throat between Alex's hands. It would be so easy. He knows now the exact amount of force needed to crush a trachea, to drown Gayle in his own blood.
"Let him up."
"Are you cracked?" he spits at Shepherd. He's clutching the gun, staring at them. "Do it."
"Let go, Karev."
"Let go." Gayle laughs. "Let's see the great brain surgeon shoot me." He turns his head to look at Derek, still grinning, blood staining his teeth. "It's easy, Dr. Shepherd. You've killed before, haven't you? You know how to."
DEREK
He can see Callie bending over Addison, the faint rise and fall of her chest. Alive.
Karev is still holding Gayle down, his gaze locked on Derek's.
"Shepherd, just do it." he snarls, exasperated. What was it that Addison said about him?
He wasn't listening. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in the trailer, drink in hand, tugging at her skirt with the other. She was talking; not so much talking to him, she was really talking at him. The comfortable, familiar patter of almost every weekday evening of their lives.
She'd tell him about her day, and then he'd tell her about his - they'd speculate over a case, maybe laugh at an unwitting intern. They'd hash out their plans for the next day, trying to see if they intersected anywhere. The conversation would wander then, the topic veering anywhere from their family to ... well.
He hasn't been listening for a long time.
7:05 P.M
BAILEY
A minute is how long it takes to bleed out. Maybe five it wasn't a major artery.
Gunshots don't just make holes. Bullets swerve, twist, shatter inside the body. They wreak havoc in their paths.
She's seen too many come through the ER doors; on lucky days they can be saved. She's never saved a patient she couldn't find, though.
"Chief -" she whispers.
"No."
"But-"
"You're not going with the cops, Bailey." Richard says firmly. "Let them do their jobs."
"She's pregnant." she says. She doesn't want to be the only one carrying that secret, the knowledge that not four, but five lives are at risk here.
ADDISON
Her hand drifts almost unconsciously to her abdomen, protective. She's seen so many mothers do it; the first-timers, their faces open with wonder. The seasoned pros, hands resting casually on swollen bellies.
As if they can stop it - as if they can protect their child from the world.
But she does it anyway, and the floor isn't as hard as it seems. Callie is there, strong hands, not shaking from fear.
"You're okay." Callie promises. She looks like she'd like to be believed.
Derek is holding the gun, trained on Gayle and Karev. She sees it now, why he won't shoot.
They're too close.
Derek isn't sure of himself. He could pull the trigger and hit Gayle.
Or he could hit Alex.
8:00 P.M
KAREV
Gayle doesn't fight him. He just lies there, that damn smirk playing across his face.
It gets boring when they don't fight back. He only stopping punching his father when the old dirtbag went still, when his furious struggles had died down to twitches.
His grip slackens. He pulls his left hand away - his left, because he doesn't want to bruise the knuckles of his right. Just in case Montgomery lets him in on an actual surgery someday.
He never swings that left hand, though. There's a sharp, searing pain in his thigh.
Blood.
He lets go with his right hand, stanching the flow.
There's so much.
Please please please please review and I'll try to update again by this weekend!