A/N: Thank all of you guys so so much for sticking with this story!

Chapter 25: Scars and Souvenirs

During stressful surgeries, Izzie always tried to keep her composure. Doing this had been difficult in the beginning. Everyone knew she had inappropriate responses to stressors. She laughed at funerals. She made Alex have sex with her during a bomb scare. She overreacted sometimes. She knew that about herself, and so the challenge of difficult surgeries had been teaching herself to reign in her fear. To merge all those fight-or-flight, cortosol and adrenaline inducing feelings from surging through her. She needed to stay calm, cool, and collected. And she had learned how to do just that.

But seeing Meredith sprawled out on an operating table, her belly big and pregnant, with Derek's worried eyes watching from the gallery above, made her want to lose her composure.

Almost.

She was instantly reminded of the ferry boat accident they had all worked on together - the one where Meredith had almost drowned. And Izzie had told them all that she believed in the good in life. She had to believe in it. And she still did. She had meant what she said to Alex and Arizona. They could do this. They could save Meredith and her baby.

Izzie sighed, not realizing it, as the nurse placed gloves on her. She also remembered when she had wanted to compete with Cristina for Cardio. Izzie had been younger then, and she had been even more full of hope at that time. That was before life had taught her lessons to harden her and make her more realistic. She had wanted to be Cristina. Unfeeling and a kickass surgeon. And for Izzie, the whole stint on Cardio had been a symbolic thing. Izzie had been in love with the idea that she could operate on and fix the heart. As far as organs went, it had been her favorite. The heart always represented feelings and emotions. It's what she thought of when she imagined the core of a person. The soul. Even though she believed the soul was an essence, not an embodiment of one's major organs, she liked to think the heart could be its representative. A person with a good heart was usually a good person, and she believed in the good. And then Denny had come along, and he had cemented her thoughts on wanting to work in Cardio.

But she realized she had been wrong. Cardio wasn't her thing. OBGYN was her thing. Being an excellent neonatal surgeon - that was something she had never doubted that she could do. Babies came into the world without prejudice, without anything to mar them. Babies were tiny and resilient and came into the world fighting. They wouldn't even remember any surgeries they had to endure. Izzie could give them a fighting chance. She loved that. She loved the hope she saw in the parents, and if they had lost their hope, she tried with every fiber of her being to give hope back to them. As a neonatal surgeon, while the losses were devastating, the successes were monumental and outweighed the losses. This kept Izzie passionate about her job and her patients.

Arizona and Alex then came in quickly, and Izzie glanced back up to the gallery at Derek. She wanted to give him hope, and words wouldn't do it. She had to save his wife and his child. And she would.

"You need me to tell Shepherd to go somewhere else?" Alex asked softly when he saw Izzie glance up at the gallery.

She shook her head. "No. You know he needs to see this," Izzie said, turning to him, "and Alex, she's gonna be fine."

She could see the worry in Alex's eyes, and it touched her. Alex had called Meredith his family earlier, and Izzie had felt a swelling of happiness. She also felt a little pang of sadness and guilt because she had missed out on so many years of 'family time.' Now she would have to work her way back in. But she believed, hoped, she was making a good start on mending things with all her old friends.

"What happened, Dr. Stevens?" Arizona asked, moving to the opposite side of the table.

"Derek said she was in daycare with Zola, bent over to pick her up, and she just collapsed," Izzie said, checking her stats monitor, "she's stable, but the baby has bradycardia."

This meant the baby's heart rate was too low, and that meant trouble.

"Bradycardia? She didn't rupture her uterine wall, did she?" Arizona asked.

"No. I did a pelvic exam, and there's been an umbilical cord prolapse. We have to deliver this baby now," Izzie said, looking to the scrub nurse, "10 blade," she said, holding out her hand for the scalpel.

At Izzie's words of 'umbilical cord prolapse,' Alex had scrambled to the fetal monitor, and Arizona had shifted the overhead light so they could see just what they were dealing with when they opened up Meredith's womb. An umbilical cord prolapse meant that the baby had become tangled in its own umbilical cord, and if not solved in a timely manner, the infant would quickly deprive itself of oxygen. Izzie had seen it before in births where the baby was breeched. Many stillborn births were a result of an umbilical cord prolapse. But none of that was happening here. Not today in Izzie Stevens's O.R.

"Her B.P. is starting to climb," Arizona said as Izzie opened Meredith up.

The monitors signaled that Arizona was right, so Izzie said nothing, just trying to work as quickly and efficiently as possible.

"And the baby, Dr. Karev?" Izzie asked.

"Heart rate still low. Hurry, Iz."

"I'm Dr. Stevens in the O.R.," Izzie bantered to him without looking up.

She was now in the womb, and she saw that the baby's umbilical cord was tightly coiled around its neck and one of its feet. She cut away at it, thinking that she was glad that Meredith had fainted, or else they never would have known about this problem.

"Okay, we're introducing a MerDer baby into the world! Exciting!" Izzie said genuinely. She just hoped the baby would start breathing when she handed it over to Alex.

Alex stepped forward, ready to take the baby when Izzie handed it over.

"Whoo! A baby boy!" Izzie said excitedly, removing parts of the cord and placing them in a tray, and then lifted up the Derek's and Meredith's baby boy.

Alex reached out for him, and the infant let out a garbled wail. Izzie and Alex glanced at each other over their surgical masks, and both of then were grinning like idiots behind the masks. If Alex could have kissed her in that moment, he would have.

"Healthy lungs on that one. Way to go, Dr. Stevens," Arizona said, and she was smiling behind her mask, too.

The atmosphere up in the gallery was definitely more lighthearted.

"Sooo glad that was caught quickly. Mer is still stable. Do you think we should try to figure out why it happened or do you think the cord was too long?" Izzie asked.

She had seen cases where the cord had been too long, and she had also seen cases where there had been too much amniotic fluid. Sometimes it was just one of those things that happened.

She noticed Arizona wasn't paying attention because she was looking up into the gallery, so Izzie decided just to close Meredith up. She would be fine. Just a standard caesarean section now.

Izzie hadn't noticed what kind of look was registering on Arizona's face while she looked up into the gallery. Arizona had been watching Callie, hoping to meet her eyes for the shared happiness of a newborn's sake, when Lauren - her fling - had walked in the gallery, too.

Arizona's hand trembled slightly, and the scalpel she had been holding toppled from her hand. She struggled to catch it, but it still fell perilously into Meredith's open abdomen. No blood spurted, but the distressed cry of the monitor signaled something was wrong.

Arizona looked panicked and began scrambling for the scalpel. "I'm sorry! I never-"

"Get out!" Izzie said sternly, getting the scalpel out of Meredith's abdomen.

"I'll-"

"GET OUT!" Izzie yelled at Arizona while looking for the bleeder.

"What happened?" Alex asked from where he was with Meredith's baby boy.

"I don't know. She's got a bleed," Izzie answered, "You! Suction. What's your name?" Izzie had glanced up long enough to see an intern.

"Ross."

"Well, hi, Dr. Ross. Hold that suction steady right there," she said, pointing, "and after I locate the bleeder, you can close. Good?" she finished calmly.

Shane Ross nodded enthusiastically, and Izzie was instantly reminded of a puppy. She and the puppy dog intern - just one bleeder away from the home stretch.

"Got it! Nicked the uterine artery," Izzie said, and she began to repair it.

Alex had just sent baby Shepherd with the NICU nurses, and he could see Arizona standing in the scrub room, tears running down her face. Like Arizona, he had also seen Lauren come into the gallery, but he knew that didn't give Arizona an excuse to be an idiot. He was pissed with her.

With Izzie on the other hand, he felt on top of the world. She had been so composed. He still wanted to kiss her.

"Dr. Stevens, are you done with me here?" he asked.

"Sure thing. Just gonna wait with Dr. Ross here while he closes," she said, winking at Alex.

"Thanks, everybody! We just brought new life into the world, how cool!"

Izzie always said a variation of that after all her successes, and she meant it every time.