The first day back was hard. Physically demanding, and as soon as Abby got home, she quickly showered and climbed into bed. It felt like she had just fallen asleep when she heard someone calling her name. She could have sworn when she had fallen asleep, she had been all alone.

"Abby, open your eyes," she recognized that voice. "C'mon Abby, I know you can hear me,"

"Ugh, I'm tired, what is it?"

"Would you open your eyes and look at me first?" she felt someone grab her hand and squeeze it tight. Who the hell was in her apartment? Normally, she would have been terrified, hearing a male voice, in her apartment, in the middle of the night. But she wasn't, she was calm, wasn't scared in the least. She knew the voice, and for some reason, when she realized just whose voice it was, that's when she became a little unnerved.

"Fine, geez," she forced herself to sit up and open her eyes. Immediately she knew something had happened, Mark Greene was sitting next to her, and no longer was she in her apartment, it looked like she was back at County. "Crap... What now? Where's K-"

Mark took a deep breath and sat down next to her. "Abby. I need you to listen to me okay?" he waited, wanted to make sure she was truly listening.

"What's wrong?"

"You were attacked one night in the ICU." another slow deep breath, "You've been in a coma for the past three months," he was quickly interrupted.

"Where's everyone else?"

Mark shook his head, trying to word it gently, but it simply couldn't be. "Abby, you never woke up," he said softly.

Abby stared at him for a minute, letting his words sink in. Then began shaking her own head "Stop it, stop it, stop it. I don't want to hear this." She said quickly realizing what Mark was about to tell her.

"Kerry, Luka and Susan, along with the rest of your doctors had a meeting last night. They decided to discontinue life support.."

"They didn't. I'm not... I want to talk to Kerry. She's here. I'm not. I can't be..."

"Abby the last time you ever had any sort of consciences activity was when you spoke with Kerry in the snow that night. You made it out of surgery but have been deteriorating since then. You never regained conciseness."

"No, I survived. I was at Mercy... Hernandez... Lizzie..."

Mark shook his head. "No Abby, you were in multisystem organ failure, you've have had no brain activity since the surgery, you developed sepsis..."

"No... I'm healthy. Working again. Weaver got septic after she lied to everyone..."

"They pulled life support at 5:32, time of death was called a few minutes later. It was fast, it was over as soon as the took you off the vent. Abby they didn't know it and they never will, but you never would have regained conciseness, never could have. Stenton had done so much damage..." he decided not to mention a certain aspect at that moment.

"Shut up. Stop lying. This is some sort of bad joke or something."

"Okay Abby, you're here now, the only reason you are here, talking to me is because they finally let you go. You died, you never stood a chance," he told her gently.

"I can't be dead, I just worked a shift."

"The last time at County, it was right before they removed life support. I can't explain it, but somehow it coincides with what you thought was really going on. Your shift ended when they called your death."

"Mark, no. Please tell me this is a bad joke. Please. After all this, I can't be dead."

"Abby..." he shook his head. "I wish I could say it was a joke, I do Abby."

"I'm really dead?"

"Yes Abby. Stenton murdered you that night, physically you were there, but kept alive only by machines."

Abby was shaking all over, "Stop it."

"What can I do to prove it," he reached over and grabbed her index and middle fingers, then pressed them to her own neck. "How are you talking to me, when you don't have a pulse Dr. Lockhart?"

"I... Damn you. No. This is just a very bad dream."

"I know Abby, I know," he reached and pulled her shaking body into his arms. "But it's not a dream, your body simply couldn't handle it..."

"But I don't want to be dead. Not after everything, not now."

"Everything you think happened, never did, each time you saw us it was a time when you coded in the ICU, your suicide attempt was when you developed sepsis.,. Kerry's supposed organ donation to you was when your liver started to fail. It's all connected. Your constant fighting with Susan was parallel to your constant fighting for life."

"Is it like this for everyone?"

"Not everyone went though what you did Abby. We've been watching over you for three months now."

Abby looked at him, not knowing what to say. "Why did they decide to pull life support? Do they think that's what I would have wanted."

"Yes."

"But it's not Mark, its not at all."

"It'd been three months with no sign of improvement."

"No," she shook her head, "people have come out of comas after three months, longer sometimes…"

"You couldn't breathe on your own, needed dialysis, eventually a colostomy, there were signs of severe brain damage, Abby, you weren't going to get better."

"I might have..." she said desperately trying to hang on to hope.

"You couldn't, Abby."

"NO! YOU DON'T KNOW THAT!" she had worked so hard, at least she thought she had. "You don't know that Mark,"

"I'm so sorry, Abby. But I do."

"But..how did I, if he had done so much damage, how did I live for three months?"

"Will power, you didn't want to die, and they didn't want to let you."

"And I still don't Mark! Send me back please!"

"I can't, Abby."

"Was Stenton. I mean did he come back and still inject me with whatever it was, or was that part of whatever it was.." she said after a few minutes.

"He did, but no one caught him."

"No, no. Kerry caught him one night, she was in the room..."

"No, Kerry had to take care of her son that night."

"Is that what killed me then, not because of the injuries but because of whatever he was injecting me with?"

"It contributed, but it wasn't the final nail in the coffin lid."

"So Stenton is still free?"

"Yes."

"Was he my neurologist? Did they ever suspect him, do they now?" she was full of questions.

"No, they don't."

She shook her head again. "Will they ever?"

"I don't know."

Abby reached up and wiped the tears off of her face, she had died, she had become a murder victim, and worse, her murderer had yet to be caught. "He wont hurt anyone else Mark?" she asked almost pleading him.

"I don't know."

"How long ago did I..." she couldn't bring herself to say the word.

"Three days."

"And I just woke up? Has there been a funeral, what the hell is going on?" she screamed at him.

"The funeral's today. You've been resting."

"This isn't happening Mark, it can't be. I couldn't do that to Luka, or Susan, or Kerry..."

"You didn't do anything to them."

"I stuck around for three months, and suddenly leave them?"

"You weren't going to get better, they understood that."

Another nod as she kept absorbing the information. "Then who was Hernandez?" she had never met the women in her life, and then suddenly she has a major role in Abby's recovery, which turned out to never had happened.

"She was a nurse at the hospital. She sat with you, watched over you, took care of you. One of the only ones that would talk to a coma patient, something about preserving dignity. She helped them decide."

"Mark, I didn't want to die, I thought I was fine, I was getting better, I had gone back to work," the tears were full force now. "Why the hell did they give up on me? Three months is nothing! It's nothing Mark! They had to give me more time!" Abby knew medically they had made the right decision, but for so long she thought she had survived.

"Because you were already gone, Abby."

The words stung badly, but it was the truth, Stenton had won. "So I never took a deep breath, I never spoke to any of them again, never opened my eyes?" scary, beyond scary. "I never got to tell them goodbye."

"But they told you."

"I never heard Mark, I had no idea," she cried and Mark held her tighter, rubbing her back, trying to comfort her.

"Your brain had stopped functioning beyond the most rudimentary level. Your funeral is today. You can watch it if you want to. They'll be there, they'll say goodbye again."

"Its not fair Mark, its not fair..." her tears soaked his green scrubs, she couldn't pull away.

"I know it's not, Abby. I know, believe me."

"Did you know that first night that I wouldn't make it?"

"I was pretty sure."

"Did I come here immediately?" she remembered in her supposed recovery, how they would bring in "dead patients" had she arrived like one of them?

"You drifted for a little while."

"So I had a chance then?"

"No."

She didn't answer him for a while. Just let Mark hold her, assure it that it would be okay now, that she couldn't be hurt anymore. "Where do I go now?" she asked after a while.

"Your funeral, or stay here, or go wherever you want. You're free now."

"The funeral, will you go with me?" she still wasn't even sure she wanted to go. But she knew if she did, she defiantly didn't want to go alone.

"If you want me to."

She nodded again, to choked up to speak. "Does Maggie know?"

"They couldn't reach her."

Another blow. "my own mother doesn't even know that I was murdered. How is that possible with all the damn media?"

"She might know, but no one could get her by phone or mail."

"So after the funeral, I can do whatever I want, go wherever? Then do I come back here?"

"If you want to."

"I'm dead," she finally said after another moment of silence, accepting what Mark had been telling her for a while now.

"Yes."

"Can we go to the funeral then?"

"Of course."

She stood up, and fully realized that she had to be dead. She had no lingering pain from any stab wounds, any of the surgeries, she seemed perfectly healthy, except that she was dead.

"Follow me," he said, standing as well.

"Okay," she agreed and wrapped her arms around her as she followed him out the door. They were on top of a hill, green grass beginning to sprout out from under the old snow. It was foggy, people in black stood out clearly against the white. A lot of people, mostly dressed in black, there was a white casket in the center of the group, her casket, her body lying inside. Luka, surprisingly, wasn't among the pallbearers, instead he walked with Susan and Kerry. Abby watched but didn't turn her head as Mark once again brought her close to him. They remained silent the entire service, Abby to shocked to know what to say. She saw the tears on everybody's faces, those that had worked so hard to save her life. She didn't want them to feel like they had failed, and then in the very back, just as she thought the service had ended beautifully, Dr. Stenton walked over to Susan and put his hand on her shoulder. Abby shook her head, wanting to scream, if only they knew.

"Abby, bad things have happened, that's life, and that's death, and you need to accept it."

"I don't think I ever will be able to, the bastard is right there talking to them."

"And one day, he'll get caught. Or he won't, and he'll die, and he'll face a miserable afterlife."

"Just don't let him hurt anyone else, that's all I want."

"I can't interfere."

"Can I?"

"I wouldn't suggest it."

"What are they going to do Mark, kill me?" she said sarcastically as they last of the mourners left, returning back to their own lives.

"I don't know. I don't think either of us wants to." Nothing else was said, they just stood there for a while watching as the casket was slowly covered by the snowfall. And then, just as the last of the mourners had departed, Mark grabbed Abby's hand and silently led her away, away from the graveyard, the snow, life, and into the afterlife.