Hey! Sorry for the delay! I know a lot of you are longing to read about Lea and Shaun finally getting together and stuff, but be patient, we're almost there! Haha!

*A quote from the movie Set it Up (which is also based on a quote from William Faulkner) was used in this chapter.

I hope you like this new chapter and as always, thank you for reading!

NATURAL DISASTERS

She slowly recovered consciousness and groaned as her head was pounding, her ears were ringing and her eyes slowly opened but couldn't see anything because everything was pitch dark accompanied by a smell of beer and dirt.

As her body became more aware, she naturally got scared and started panicking, her body began shaking and she started breathing heavy and fast, which made her cough because the dust she was inhaling.

—Calm down…— Her inner voice told her, but she ignored it.

"W-what the hell happened?… Help! Can anybody hear me?!" She shouted and moved her body trying to sit up but failed because there wasn't enough space around her, so she just held herself up on her elbows and no one responded to her cry for help.

"I can't see anything…" She reached out with her hand trying to get a feel of things then grimaced and moaned as she felt a wave of pain coming from her left hand. She tried to feel her hand with her right one, then moaned in pain again.

"My-my phone, where is my phone?" She felt around her clothes then pulled her phone out from one of the pockets of her blazer; the screen lit on and she checked for service but there was none, then she turned the lamp on and pointed it at her left hand.

There was blood on her hand and a quiet large piece of glass incrusted in her palm, it didn't make it all the way through but it was pretty deep in there. Her hands started shaking and she began breathing heavily again as she panicked even more.

She never liked the look or smell of blood, it only disgusted her a bit and she would gag at times but apart from that, she had never been one to faint at the sight of it, but this time was different. Her eyes rolled back and shut as she lost consciousness again, laying flat on the ground one more time.

Lea had arrived to the fundraising event at the brewery, she didn't have a lot of money like probably most people there but she still wrote a check to make a donation. She had a look around and smiled at a few people she recognized from the hospital then walked to the bar and checked out the menu before ordering two glasses of beer and was quickly distracted by a man's voice calling her name.

"Lea?" Said Dr. Melendez, one of the attendings in the surgery department who often worked with Shaun. She had seen him a couple times at the hospital and exchanged a word or two with him, but that had been it; he probably kew more about her, from whatever Shaun tells everyone, than her about him.

"Hey! Dr. Melendez, right?" She smiled at him.

"Yeah, I work with Shaun"

"Yeah, yeah, I've seen you around" She nodded then quickly turned to grab her glasses of beer as the bartender handed them to her and she thanked him.

"You're here with a friend?" The doctor asked.

"Urh…" She looked down at her glasses and blushed. "Nah, they're just kinda small servings and…" She sighed "It's been a rough couple weeks" She pressed her lips together and nodded.

"I get it" Said Dr. Melendez with a slight nod, then Glassman approached them.

—Ugh…— She thought and subtly rolled her eyes.

"I saw the invite at the hospital and I decided to come, you know, for some Saturday night distraction…" She said talking to Dr. Melendez, then turned to look at Dr. Glassman "I assumed you wouldn't be here… didn't think this kind of scene was your thing"

"Well, you were wrong" Said the old doctor but then two women approached them to greet the doctors. Apparently they were the brewery owners and Dr. Melendez and Dr. Glassman had been the ones who saved one of the woman's life, the other was her wife.

For a moment Lea felt awkward and totally out of place, thinking —These two saved her life and then there's me… What am I doing here?—

She thought that most people at the event probably were doctors, nurses, business people, maybe a few beer connoisseurs and critics, people from the press, and compared to them, who was she? She felt like she didn't fit in.

Took a sip from one of her beers and Melendez politely introduced her to the brewery owners. "Marta, Noreen, this is Lea"

—Lea… That's it, I'm just Lea— She told herself in her mind with low self-esteem and her inner self rolled her eyes.

"Your flavor profiles are epic" She said and the two women smiled proudly.

"How about a tour?" One of them asked.

"Heck yeah" Lea replied and the women grinned then led the way to show them around but one of them deviated to greet other people. Lea chugged down the beer in one of her glasses then left it on the bar and followed everyone else, still holding her other glass.

"She's in host mode. We could be here forever so I'll show you around" Said Noreen, then led Lea and the doctors to where the brew tanks were.

"The hops in the Kolsch, is that the Citra?"

"Yeah, in combination with the Noble German…" Noreen smiled, impressed by Lea's knowledge.

If there was something grandpa Rod taught his grandkids, apart from mechanics, was about beer. While Lea's nonna was more of a wine person and knew about what wines go well with each meal, grandpa Rod knew about beer and would let his grandkids try a bit every now and then, just so they knew to differentiate from a good beer and a bad one when they were older. If he hadn't been a mechanic, lover of classic cars who owned a car shop, he probably would've had a brewery like the one Lea was getting a tour of. The thought of that made her smile.

"Lady knows her stuff" Noreen said to Glassman and he forced a smile, one that quickly went away when everything started shaking.

The doctors and Noreen looked at each other, sill in the hallway while Lea was already in the tanks area, and everything started shaking with more force.

"It's an earthquake" Dr. Melendez said as the wood floors and walls were cracking and the lamps swung sharply from side to side.

Lea looked around, trying to find something to hold on to as she was barely able to hold herself on her feet while everything shook harder and harder with every second that passed.

"Get out of there!" Shouted Melendez at her, but then it was too late.

One of the huge brew tanks fell piercing the floor. Lea screamed and fell through the hole, then another tank fell, too, not only covering the hole the first tank made but blocking the entrance to the brew hall as well. A few light bulbs exploded, the ceiling of the place caved in, beams fell, and everything went dark.

Minutes later, Lea regained consciousness. Everything around her was still dark and she breathed heavily again.

—You need to calm down!— Said her inner voice again, and this time Lea listened to it.

"Okay… okay…" She mumbled and took a deep breath but started coughing due to all the dust still around.

"Okay… calm down… I'm alive… I'm alive, right?… My - my hand… my phone, where's my phone?" She moved her right hand, feeling around for her phone again, then she found it and turned on the lamp to light her other hand. She swallowed hard at the sight of it.

"Fuck…" She closed her eyes and took another deep breath, trying to remain calm. "How did this hap… the glass of beer I was holding, I must have fallen on it… Dammit"

She took another look at her hand, pulling a face as she hesitated to touch the piece of glass. "What do I do?"

—Think Lea…—

"I'm not a doctor, I don't know what to do…" She said to herself, trying not to panic again.

—Think…—

"What would Shaun do? …What would any doctor do?"

She closed her eyes again for a moment and tried to recall all the movies and tv shows she had ever watched where people were injured and what they did.

"Pressure… they always apply pressure to try to stop the bleeding, right?" She said opening her eyes.

"But the bleeding seems to have stopped… And I can't apply pressure, there's a piece of glass in there! I can't apply pressure like that… can I? …If I do, wouldn't it go in deeper and hurt more? Dammit!" She started breathing heavily again.

—Don't panic—

Taking a deep breath and looking at her hand again, she pressed her lips together and, frowning at the sight, tried to move her fingers. They moved but it hurt, making her wince and moan in pain.

"God… I could… I could maybe wrap a piece of cloth over it but I would have to remove the glass first, right? In - in the movies, they always remove the bullet before sealing the wound, right?… Or was pressure applied before pulling out the bullet?" She sighed frustratedly. "I can't close the wound… what if I pull the glass off and I bleed out to death? Can someone die from this? God dammit!"

Worried and anxious, she looked around moving the lamp, trying to find a spot where she could rest her phone and keep the light pointed at her hand. Once she found a spot, she leaned her phone there and took a closer look at her hand, managing to roll on her side some.

"What am I going to wrap around it? I think I have to take the glass out. I can't try to get out of here and crawl or walk around with a glass in my hand…" She continued talking to herself then eyed the long skirt she as wearing.

—There… There's enough fabric there—

She reached down for the end of her skirt with her good hand and pulled it up to her mouth, yanking hard from it with her hand and teeth to rip off a piece as large as she could, then looked at the piece of fabric.

"That should do…" She nodded and looked at her hand again.

—It's gonna hurt like a hell…—

She swallowed hard "I just hope I don't die or end up losing my hand… Here goes nothing…" Taking a deep breath, she pulled the lapel of her blazer to her mouth then held the piece of glass between her thumb and pointing finger.

—Fast or slow? …Fuck it, just do it.—

Holding her breath for a moment, she pulled the glass out of her palm and bit hard on the lapel of her blazer which muffled the painful moan she let out. A few tears came out of her eyes and she panted feeling lightheaded.

As the wound bled again, she quickly wrapped the piece of skirt around her hand and applied pressure with her other one, wincing, moaning, still biting hard on her blazer.

—Don't faint, don't faint, please don't faint again— She thought as she felt more and more lightheaded, but she took deep breaths in a trial to remain conscious and calm.

Minutes later, she carefully checked her hand and the bleeding appeared to have stopped again, but she felt awful.

Coughing some, she rolled onto her back and pulled herself up on her elbows again, grabbed her phone with the lamp still on and looked for a way out, then she wiggled her body to a spot where not only she could sit up completely but she was also able to stand up.

"Woah…" She said and quickly held onto something because she got dizzy as soon as she stood up. Blinked a few times, then once she felt better, she looked around again, lighting everything with the lamp on her phone.

"Hello? Can anybody hear me?! Help!" Once again, no one responded and she sighed disappointedly.

"There better be no aftershocks… I don't wanna die in here, not yet, not like this…"

Looking around some more, she began to wonder where exactly she was, all she could remember was that she fell when she was standing in the brew hall.

"I've only moved a little so I'm probably still under the brew tanks, but how big is this place anyway?"

She moved some more pushing some debris away with her good hand and her feet while keeping her injured hand against her chest, then she opened a way to an area that didn't look so damaged, so she walked through and coughed some more due to the dust she lifted when she moved things. She looked around with the help of her phone and there were only a few broken pieces of wood, some bricks and a few beer kegs, but there was something else… She began hearing voices muffled by the wood above her, and some rays of light filtered through the cracks.

"HELP! I'M IN HERE! HELP!" She immediately shouted as loud as possible, just wanting to be found and taken out of there, because she was afraid that if an aftershock happened any time soon it could make things worse, so she kept shouting for help.

"Hello?" Said a firefighter. "I can hear you!"

"Oh my God" She let out a sigh of relief "I'm down here, please help me!"

"I will! Just hang in there a bit longer, we have to move a few things first and then we'll try to pull you out, okay? We're moving as fast as we can"

"Okay…" Lea muttered and nodded then started pacing around the small spot where she was, trying to ignore the throbbing pain from her injured hand.

"Hey, we got somebody down here!" The firefighter shouted as he remove some debris, uncovering a hole on the wood floor, then another firefighter joined him to help, followed by St. Bonaventure's chief of surgery, Dr. Lim, as she had assembled a Heavy Urban Rescue Team to help at the brewery.

The firefighters continued to remove debris, then, Dr. Lim moved closer and got down on her knees to look through the hole with the help of her lamp and Lea looked up, squinting her eyes some at the brightness of the light.

"Lea… Are you okay?" Dr. Lim asked.

"My-my hand…" She replied still holding her injured hand against her chest.

"We'll get you out as soon as possible, hang in there" Lim reassured her then looked up at the firefighters.

"We're gonna to have to make the hole bigger and then we'll reach in to get her out" One of them said and Lim nodded, moving back to let them do their job.

Using an axe, they expanded the hole on the wood floor and minutes later pulled Lea out of there. Outside, the first responders had put up a couple tents to help with triage and as place to gather so they could plan things up. Dr Lim took Lea out there to examine her; she began by checking and taking notes of Lea's vitals, then moved onto other things.

"Did you hit your head or anywhere else?" Asked the doctor reaching feel around Lea's head.

"I… don't know" Lea replied while staring out at the other EMTs, doctors and firefighters helping other people and pulling out debris from inside the brewery, then she winced and hissed.

"There's a bump on the back of your head but it's not bleeding. Did you lose consciousness?" Lea nodded in response. "Do you know for how long?" Lim asked as she reached to touch other areas of Lea's body, just to make sure there wasn't any trauma on other parts of her body.

"I'm not sure… I - it happened twice… but the second time was because of my hand"

"Any other symptoms? Dizziness, headache, ringing ears, nausea…"

"All of those… except for the nausea… At first my head was aching and my ears were ringing, but then I guess the pain from my hand was greater than that so I forgot and I didn't think about touching my head… I got dizzy when I got up from where I was… I don't feel like that right now" She replied to the doctor but kept looking at all the other people, in shock, then Lim performed a neurological and cognitive examination.

"What are the three words I asked you to remember?" Lim asked after finishing the exam.

"Uhm… Yellow, car… and…" It took her a minute to remember the last one. "…ball" She nodded slightly as Lim took some notes.

"Let's check your hand. What happened?" They sat by a table, one across the other and Lea placed her arm on the table.

"There was a pice of glass incrusted in my palm"

"Was?" Lim raised a brow and gently removed the improvised bandage on Lea's hand as she winced and hissed again, then the doctor asked one of the EMT's to get her a few things from one of the ambulances.

"I pulled it out…" Lea replied. "…I - I thought I had to wrap something around my hand before trying to get out of there… but I also thought I had to pull the glass out first… like in some movies…?"

Pressing her lips together to hide a smile, Lim nodded slightly while taking a close look at the wound. "You shouldn't have done that"

Lea's cheeks flushed in embarrassment and her eyes widened with worry. "Am I gonna lose my hand?"

"That's what we're about to find out…" Replied the doctor with a tad of humor in her voice as the EMT returned with what she had asked for. "Take this" Lim handed Lea a pill for the pain and a bottle of water that she previously opened for her. Lea did as told.

Lim proceeded to clean Lea's wound as best as she could with what was available. Lea winced some more, holding her breath at times and letting out small moans of pian from time to time as the doctor irrigated the wound with saline. Lim then tested the over all function of Lea's hand, glancing at her from time to time.

"W-why do you look at me like you wanna tell me something important, is my hand that bad?"

"No, I'm sorry ..." Lim shook her head a little. "It's just ... when we got here, Glassman told Shaun about you and he went in there right away, you know, looking for you ... Now he's there with a woman that he found, helping her"

Processing what the chief of surgery had just told her, Lea stared at her hand for a moment.

—He's here…—

Her heart began beating a bit faster as some fear and worry took over her body.

"W-when will they come out?" She asked and Lim noticed her heart rate spiking up on the oximeter Lea had on the index finger of her good hand.

"You need to relax, he's fine… We don't know for sure when the rescue team will be able to take them out because it's too narrow down there, there's a lot of debris and the woman's leg and shoulder were impaled. I'm waiting to hear some more from him… The firefighters are moving as fast as they can and doing their best to help them and everyone else"

"Why did he - God…" Lea muttered mainly to herself and sighed closing her eyes as well as shaking her head slightly.

"Your hand is fine, as far as I can tell. You're lucky the piece of glass apparently didn't damage any nerves or tendons when it went in or when you pulled it out. That's why you should never pull a foreign object out of the wound, you need to let a professional do it because you could potentially do more bad than good… You should go to the hospital and get it properly clean, see a hand specialist and get stitches. You also have a probably only mild concussion and we should keep an eye on that for the next 24 hours." Said Lim as she wrapped Lea's hand with a clean bandage but she was barely paying attention as she was thinking about the worst possible scenario with Shaun being down there.

"Lea?... Look at me" The surgeon ordered and Lea obeyed. "He's gonna be fine… but I need you to listen to me right now, okay?" Lea nodded slightly. "If the headache or dizziness comes back or you feel nausea, start seeing blurry, you lose sensation or color on your fingers or something before an ambulance takes you to the hospital, you find me or an EMT and tell us, okay? It's important… Dr. Brown and Dr. Park are also here." Lea nodded again.

"Tell me you listened to what I said and understood"

"I did" Lea replied.

"All right…" Lim said and handed her radio to her. "Shaun's been asking if we've found you, so maybe you should let him know we have. The channel is open on his side, I'll get another radio…" Lim added as she got up from the chair she was sitting on.

"Thank you" Lea said and Lim nodded once in response.

"Take care" Then the doctor walked away, talked to an EMT and that same guy, minutes later, approached Lea to give her a blanket and told her they would take her to the hospital as soon as they could to which Lea just nodded, not really paying attention again.

—If he dies in there, it's gonna be my fault…— Part of her thought.

—He's not gonna die, calm down— Thought the other part.

—He could…—

Lea spent several minutes staring at the radio, debating whether she should communicate with Shaun and let him know she had been found or abstain from it to avoid distracting him, because he needed to focus on the woman he was with and his own well being.

She watched paramedics and firefighters come and go from the tents and trucks to the brewery carrying tools and other things as they worked on trying to take Shaun and the woman out as soon as possible as well trying to help a boy who was trapped under a beam, but all Lea could think about was the last time her and Shaun had talked, how everything went wrong and how they broke each other. She also couldn't help thinking about the possibility of him dying in there if the place where he was wasn't stable enough.

If he died, she would have never had the chance to say she was sorry, really sorry for what she said to him and maybe really explain why she did it. She'd feel guilty for the rest of her life for hurting him the way she did and he would die hating her. Her life would never be the same... Truth was, her life had changed since she met him.

—If he hated you, he wouldn't have gone in there to try to save you…—

She sighed and stared at the radio some more, then she heard voices through it… Shaun and the woman he was helping were having a conversation.

"If we get out of this alive, let's promise to move on. You can do better than Lea. Not that I have any business suggesting that. I might die because I'm still hung up on Paul…" Said the woman.

—He's been talking…— Lea thought as she listened.

"Isn't moving on just an euphemism for giving up, for failure?"

"What? You think you failed? No, Shaun, accepting loss makes us stronger"

"Refusing to accept failure makes us not fail. Shouldn't we keep trying until we succeed?"

"Not always! Sometimes it prevents us from moving on to other victories"

"I don't want to move on" Shaun replied after a minute.

"But Shaun, she doesn't feel…"

Cutting her off, Shaun continued "I always knew I could be a good doctor… But until I met Lea, I never knew I could drive a car, or enjoy music, or sing karaoke, or take tequila shots… or fall in love" He paused for a moment and Lea's heart hurt a little as she listened to him and remembered all those moments he mentioned.

"I don't want to stop being the person I am with her… Lea makes me… more…" Shaun added and Lea's eyes's filled with tears as she felt a knot form in her throat while he continued. "But I don't make her more… If I did, then Lea would want to be my girlfriend…"

Everything on the other side of the radio went quiet again and Lea thought about almost every moment she had spent with Shaun.

The day they properly introduced themselves to each other…

"What's your name?"

"I'm Lea"

"I'm Dr. Shaun Murphy, nice to meet you"

The first time he said: "I like you" knowing it had been different from any other I like you she had ever heard, but she played it cool hiding herself behind the wall she had put up years before that, so the only thing she replied with was: "Well, who wouldn't? I'm very likable"…

The first and the second time they kissed and the spark that lit up each one of those times, realizing that she had never felt such thing with anyone else before or after him…

How even miles away she kept thinking of him, and every time something good happened in her life, the first person she thought of telling was him…

How it hurt her to admit her love for him because she's never really loved anyone the way she loves him and didn't want to ruin it, but also, no one has ever loved her the way he does…

And how much she had actually been missing him… Even after what happened, he was always in her mind…

"You still got a lot to learn about life, my girl… You're never going to find the perfect man, one with no flaws...You like because, and you love despite. You like someone because of all of their good qualities, but you love them despite their faults… Obviously there's faults that are a big ´no, get out of there', but I'm talking about the other ones…"

She recalled her grandma's words to her the last time she saw her, and her best friend's words, too.

"…Not everything is flowers and rainbows all the time! We have our moments, like every other couple… It's not exactly what we do wrong, what's important is how we overcome those things together, because we're a team… You're afraid of making mistakes that you can't even know for sure if you're gonna make. You're thinking way ahead instead of taking one day at a time…"

"We can take you to the hospital now" An EMT said interrupting her thoughts. She quickly wiped her tears away with her good hand and got up from her chair without letting go of the radio.

"I - I wanna stay here"

"Dr. Lim said I should take you to the hospital so you can get your hand and head examined by a specialist"

"No, I'm…"

Both were interrupted as rumbling was heard and the earth started shaking again. Lea, with her heart racing and her fear at peak, reached to hold onto the ambulance that was parked next to the tent she had been under and the EMT did the same.

"Hang on, it'll pass soon!" Said the EMT.

Seconds later the ground stopped moving and Lea took some deep breaths trying to calm down.

"I fucking hate this!" She let out and groaned.

"The joys of living in California, huh?" The EMT joked and Lea glared at him. "Sorry…" The guy added "We should go now"

"I'm fine, I wanna stay…" She replied and held the radio up to her mouth to talk to Shaun, but Dr. Lim spoke before Lea could say anything.

"Shaun, are you okay down there?" Lim said through the radio.

"I am okay… except for the water that's coming out of a pipe that broke during the aftershock"

"We're gonna drown in here soon!" Said Vera, the woman Shaun was with.

"Mmh… at the rate the water is filling, I think we have about an hour, maybe some more, so please tell the rescue workers to hurry"

Fear and worry took over Lea's body again, she felt her stomach twist and she quickly turned, leaned over a little and threw up on the ground. The EMT immediately moved closer and held her.

"See? We have to get you to the hospital"