Hello, all. Thanks for the reviews. Here's another chapter for you.
Derek had passed out halfway through the makeshift stitching, allowing Meredith to complete the task uninterrupted. Once she realized Meredith could do without her, Cristina began digging through the suitcase once again, knowing that darkness was upon them and without a fire, they would either freeze to death or be eaten by wild animals. As much pain and exhaustion as she was feeling right then, neither of those options sounded appealing.
"Matches," she gasped. "Yes, God, finally." She directed her next comment to Meredith. "Fire. We can build a fire," she said staring down at the matches.
"We should. They will see a fire," Meredith responded, finishing up with Derek's dressing. "Let's get a fire started."
Cristina stood, looking over toward the plane debris. "Mark, we need to start a fire." He sat with his eyes closed, his body completely void of movement. "Mark," she said again. Frustrated at his lack of effort, Cristina strode over to him. "You have to help." Meredith, feeling sympathy for Mark, offered to help start the fire, but Cristina blatantly refused. "No, no. He doesn't get to do this. He doesn't get to stop helping." She turned toward him, her survival instincts strong. "I'm sorry he lost Lexie, but she was your sister, and you're still helping. He has to help because," she directed her ranting at Mark again "the sky is falling, Mark."
Derek tried to make Cristina see; tried to give his friend his space, but again, she refused. "No!" She screamed, nearing Mark angrily. "No, if there's one thing I've learned with all the bombs and guns to my head and busses running down my friends is that I'm not interested in dying." And with that, she grabbed Mark by the shoulder and shook. It was then that she realized. He was not in a depressed state. His body had gone limp, and his skin was deathly pale. "Mark?" She tilted his chin up and urged him to acknowledge her. His eyes remained closed, and his head went limp into her hands. His mouth opened then, at least proving he was still alive, but his eyes never opened, scaring Cristina. "Please, please be okay," she whispered, moving him to his back. She gripped the V on his scrub and ripped it apart, showing the horrifying crash injury all of them had failed to notice. His chest was a deep red and splotchy, indicating internal bleeding. "Oh, crap," Cristina gasped, mortified. "Mer!" she screamed, looking down at a dazed Mark, highly concerned.
Both Derek and Meredith rushed to their friend as Cristina laid her ear to his chest. After a moment, she lifted her head, speaking to no one directly when she said, "It's cardiac tamponade."
"You sure?" Derek asked calmly.
"75 percent," Cristina decided, but immediately changing her answer. "70-70%."
Meredith looked at her with doubt. "That's not very sure."
No shit, Cristina almost said, but thought better of it. "Well, if you want me to be sure, get me an ultrasound." Derek and Meredith nodded then, knowing that she was the best chance they had. Doubting her would not help. "We need to drain his pericardial sac and relieve the pressure, or his heart will stop."
"With what? We don't even have an 18-gauge spinal needle," Derek observed. They paused for a second, deliberating on what to do. "Okay, I got it," Derek finally said, twisting the cap off of a spray bottle. "Use that, right there," he said gesturing toward the long, cylindrical tube attached to the bottle cap.
"Brilliant," she said detaching the tube from the lid.
Meredith sanitized both the pocket knife and makeshift drain, narrating her process, as the only able-bodied person to perform the task. "I'm going in subxiphoid. Knife," she held out her hand and retrieved the pocket knife. As she punctured the skin, Mark jolted forward, arching his back in pain. "Okay, needle," she commanded, as Cristina gave her further instruction.
"Aim for his left shoulder. Wait, don't puncture his heart."
"I know, I know." With one swift push, Meredith broke through the pericardial sac, and blood began spewing out of the tube. Mark groaned in both immense pain and relief as the sac drained of the excess blood.
"Good, excellent. That was it," Cristina exclaimed. This ordeal was over, but Mark was just another one down. How long would it be before they all succumbed to their crisis. How long before Arizona's leg became infected, or Derek's arm? How long after that before the infection spread to the blood stream, ultimately sealing their fate? How long before the matches ran out and they all froze to death? How long before they starved to death, if they didn't freeze? How long would it be before someone found them, already?
How long?
….
Cristina had never been so exhausted in her entire life. She gently laid the tarp holding Mark Sloan on the ground next to Arizona, doubling over and heaving as much oxygen into her lungs as she could manage. Derek, Meredith, and herself had created a makeshift tarp to lay Mark on so that they could return him to the main crash site with Arizona and Jerry. The trek had been a grueling half mile, one that none of them were in any condition to make, but this was not a matter of general health at this point. It was a matter of life or death.
"Mark?" Arizona said quietly. "What happened?" Her concerned look turned to the group's leader, Cristina.
"Tamponade," she managed to gasp out. "Mer did a pericardiocentesis." It was all she could say at the moment, at least until she caught her breath.
Meredith filled in the rest for Cristina. "He's holding on for now," she said, crouching next to Mark.
Arizona looked around slowly at the group and realized someone was missing. "Where's Lexie?" Derek looked at her once, then back at the ground, a look of repulsion on his face. "Where's Lexie?" she asked again, much louder than before.
Mark spoke up then, for the first time in hours. "Lexie's dead," he said simply, a barely perceptible tone of bitterness showing through the weakness in his voice.
Arizona looked at him, anguished, her face contorting, but showing no signs of tears. First her leg, then Mark's heart, and now Lexie was…dead? Meredith broke her thoughts. "So, we should get a fire started."
"I-I've got the matches," Cristina said, digging them out of her pocket and handing them to Derek. "We have five left."
"Make it big so they see," Meredith said distractedly, fussing with Mark's chest incision.
Arizona started to tear up, her voice cracking as she asked the pilot, "What happened to four hours, Jerry?"
Cristina looked up, annoyed at that point. Did they actually believe him when he gave his four-hour estimate? "It's been more than four hours," Meredith said, levelling Cristina's pessimism.
Arizona ranted at the pilot, as if she had indeed believed, or at least hoped in vain, that someone would come for them in four hours or less. Just then, the pilot screamed at the top of his lungs, "CHOPPER!"
The group immediately searched the sky for the plane, hearing the blades pierce the sky with bellowing snaps. Cristina's heart began to race as all three able-bodied survivors began waving furiously toward the sky. They screamed as loud and as long as their lungs and vocal chords would allow, jumping and running around the crash site. We're going to live. Oh my god, we're going to live, Cristina thought, fighting furiously for their rescue.
"Grab the flare gun!" Jerry shouted, and the group sprang into action. Meredith retrieved the flare gun and aimed toward the sky. She pulled the trigger and…nothing. What the hell? "It's not working!"
"Shoot it again!" Cristina yelled in her face. Meredith released the trigger once more and still, nothing came out.
"Give it to me," Derek said calmly, taking the gun from Meredith. He tried to shoot it himself with the same results as before.
The group was all screaming at once as Derek tried furiously to make the gun shoot, but soon enough, the sounds faded, and the helicopter was gone. "Oh, my god! No, no! Come back!" Cristina shouted hopelessly. Their situation had gone from worse to abysmal in a matter of ten seconds. That was their rescue; their one shot at survival, and the fucking flare gun didn't work. How much more could they possibly take of this?
Derek had similar thoughts, frustration rising within him. He had reached his limit. He was done being calm; done pretending that it was helping anyone. He looked at the flare gun momentarily before hurling it into the woods.
Cristina sunk to her knees, dumbfounded. They were actually going to die out there. This would be her legacy: brilliant surgeon whose life was cut drastically short by a freak plane accident. Her thoughts drifted again to Owen. Was he looking for them? Did he even know they were missing? Surely by now, he knew. What if he didn't? What if the animals got to them before he was so much as notified of their disappearance? Mark would be lucky to die of a heart attack at this point. She actually wished it for him. And Arizona and Derek? She hoped their wounds contracted an intense infection that spread so rapidly that they stroked out in their sleep and died. Yes, that was the humane way to go. As for Meredith and herself? Well, they were the unlucky ones, as usual. They would go out one of two ways: animal attack or starvation, possibly a combination of both. If they were too weak from days of no nourishment to fight off a wild animal, they were helpless.
Cristina shook the thought from her head. No, she had come too damn far to give up now. It hadn't even been a full day, and she was already resigning herself to death by animal attack? She stood then, looking around at the dejected faces of her colleagues. "What are you moping around for?" She asked solemnly. "Get up and start helping me with the fire."