Down for Love

chapter 8

by greyeyedgirl

It was still dark outside. The Seattle air was cold, blowing harshly from the February sky, leaving a trail of destruction as it caused snow to fall and stripped the life from several innocent, beautiful plants.

Miranda Bailey made her way slowly through the parking lot, her hand lying gently on her stomach. Less than 48 hours since Dr. Shepherd's death, and yet she still felt cold all over, remembering time she'd spent with them. Remembering his tears on the elevator. Music floated gently down to her ears. If love were enough.

Somewhere in her memory she stirred the image of him calling her Miranda, and her teasing him about his hair. Over-moussed, she had said. She had tormented Grey for falling in love with him. She rubbed angry tears from her eyes with her spare hand. Why couldn't she just let anybody happy? Was she really a---Nazi?

Derek's death hit everybody hard. His grin in the hallway, the twinkle in his eye as he asked Meredith if she needed a marker, or informed Bailey of Dr. Webber's "super secret sunset surgery."

The automatic door seemed to be broken, probably from the storm the night before. Miranda frowned as she pushed the door open, hearing the little click-ing noise as the door rattled against the hard metal floor. Per usual, doctors and nurses hurried restlessly through the hospital, but it was different now. Quieter. There was no laughter, and no juicy gossip was being murmured through the halls. The staff's faces looked like an uncomfortable snapshot, their appearances frozen into a look of solemnity and pain. She caught sight of Dr. Burke strolling past the door to the locker-room, his face expressionless, his hand woven delicately into the one of Cristina's.

Grey was leaning against a wall, wearing scrubs, but they looked dirty. A gray spot was embedded on the right shoulder of one, and there was a tiny hole in the thigh of her pants as if someone had unknowingly scratched it out. Bailey vaguely saw George walking down the halls towards her, and Bailey shook her head at him. The last night Grey needed right then was another guy she could fall in love with, especially when he was so madly in love with her.

"Rounds," said Bailey almost inaudibly, and Grey shot up from her spot on the wall. "Not you," said Miranda pointedly. "Yang is going to take you home and stay with you."

Meredith frowned, but Cristina didn't object, simply removed her hand from Burke's, carefully leading Meredith towards the door. "Please," Meredith said, turning towards Bailey. "What am I supposed to do all day?"

Cristina turned her head towards Bailey, too. "I'll take care of her," she said quietly. Bailey nodded, bending her head and rubbing her eyes.

"How's she doing?"

Cristina toyed with the cord on the phone, wandering aimlessly through Meredith's kitchen. "She's sleeping," she told George.

"Good. That's, uh, good, right?"

Cristina shrugged into the phone. "It's not bad," she said doubtfully.

"But it's not good."

Cristina ground her shoe into the tile floor impatiently. "The man she loved just died, at the hands of the man I love. Nothing could be good right now."

There was silence on the phone. George's voice came out hesitant. "The man you what?"

"What?"

Cristina froze, realizing what she had said. It caught her off guard. "George, that's not the point. The point is-"

"You love Burke." George's voice was marveling at such a thought.

"I do not. Now, we have to talk strategy. We have to do something to make Meredith smile."

"Strategy in the face of tragedy."

Cristina groaned into the phone. "George!"

"Sorry."

Cristina paced restlessly through the kitchen. "What do we do, what do we do..." She was murmuring quietly, and didn't know if George could hear her.

"When's the funeral?"

Cristina make a noise of frustration, running one hand quickly through her thick hair. "Two days."

"Is she-Do you think she should go?"

"No."

"Oh."

"She has to, though. And she might want to."

She could hear George breathing through the phone. She felt her breath catch in her throat, and her eyes filled. "George, what do we do?"

Her voice was muffled, she was trying to cover her face from her new seat at the kitchen table. George's voice came out equally emotional, though he couldn't form any actual words.

Every, single, day, the five interns under Dr. Bailey faced death in some way. Their patients died, their friends' patients died, they heard of someone dying when they stood on the elevator, just wanting to go home. Death was, inevitably and hypocritically, a major part of life.

Yet no one could deal with it. When it was one of their own, one that they talked to and loved, it was worse than not being able to deal. The big empty space that was Death was painful to all who could witness it, and it was nothing to the friend that was Life. No one knew much about life or death, just knew that you had to somehow, incompatiously, get through both. There wasn't a choice about it.

For one, who had suffered the slipping away of someone loved literally right through his fingers, the death of Derek Shepherd was incomparably difficult. For another, the love she had unknowingly yearned for had been ripped away, right when things had been falling into place for them.

And now those two were stuck, balancing dangerously between two ultimatums, in that little space where hard decisions were made. For Meredith Grey and Preston Burke did have a decision to make, whether they knew it or not, each of them wallowing in their own quiet form of self-pity and grief. And so they stood there, above the great fiery pit and below the cool rushing water, in a place, a place for the dead that are not really dead, and the living who are not quite alive.