Chapter 23 – Mr Ice Age

Izzie walked through the cafeteria where she had been told Mark Sloan and Alex sat, accompanied by a young girl.

She felt abit uneasy about being the one to tell them, partly because it had been a rather long time since she had had to give anyone bad news. It rarely happened up in the OB/GYN ward where life was born. Not that Zadie had lost hers, but it had been close a cpupleof times during surgery, and it still was. Another part of why she felt uneasy was alos the fact that it was personal. Zadie was Meredith's daughter, and Meredith was Izzie's friend. Some would probably think that she hadn't known Zadie long enough to feel anything, and Izzie kept telling herself that so she wouldn't start to cry cause she didn't want to do that infront of Mark who seemed to have been something of a father figure to Zadie, and Skye who was Zadie's bst friend. Alex, she didn't care about. She had cried infront of him before, but with them it was a hundred times different.

Derek, Izzie couldn't in a million years imagine how he felt, how he pulled through doing the surgery. Izzie had asked him many times on the way to surgery, despite knowing they couldn't wait, if they shouldn't get another surgeon,
The final time she had asked before they went into surgery, he answered with a voice of, being quite frank desparation: 'I haven't known her long enough to not do the surgery, but long enough to never forgive myself if anything happens. There's no one else here, so what do you think I should do?"

And Izzie didn't know...

Now she could hear their voices as she entered the table filled court yard. She could see them lauing and smiling. Alex pulled his usual crappy jokes, but the laughed cause they hadn't heard them as many times as Izzie had. Soon they wouldn't be laughing.

She stood for a second, out of sight of the trio, just looking at them, taking in ther happy faces, remembering their laughs. She felt she needed that before going to them, so that she could be the cheery, happy person, to be the one saying that everything was going to be alright, and she hoped Derek had enough to help himself, and Meredith.

"What are you doing?" a voice said from behind and Izzie spun around.

"Oh my god! You scared me!" Izzie looked startled at Christina and George.

"Oh, you're spying on Sloan..." Christina raised her eyebrows micheivously. "He isn't too bad, I mean for being his age..."

"Well, then you're stuck with Mr Ice Age..." George mumbled under his breath, and Christina reacted, but didn't say anything back.

"What? No!" Izzie shook her head in disbelief. "Where have you been? And where did you go!?" she looked at George.

"She," George patted Christinas shoulder. "was hiding out in a supply closet, and I found her and we talked about her fear of best-friends-who-moves-away-but-comes-back, and now everything is fine..." he smiled but no one else is following his example. "Don't you get it? Fear?... Friend who mover away?... Mere-"

"Shut up George..." Christina muttered and turned to Izzie. "You had a surgery? Anything cool?"

"what?" Izzie said and Christina pointed at her head. Izzie raised a hand and felt the scrupcap still on her head and she quickly took it off. "No, ehm... Derek had a surgery..." she said quietly and twisted the piece of fabric in her hands.

"And you what?" Christina looked oddly, but a little amused at the blonde. "Joined in and played intern?"

"No! No I didn't!" Izzie exclaimed harshly and both George and Christina froze. "While you two were playing hide and seek or Dr Phil or whatever it was you two were doing, Zadie collapsed and was rushed into surgery. So no, it wasn't a cool surgery I joined in on." Izzie turned on the spot and started to walk towards the party of three, leaving George and Christina behind

"Izzie!" Skye smiled widely and stood up. "God it took a while... We started to wonder if something had happened..." When Izzie didn't answer, but just continued to walk up to them, Skye's smile quickly faded. "Nothing happened right?"

"Izzie?" Alex said, as both him and Mark stood up as well.

"I-" Izzie stopped and looked at them. It was really odd how it could in a matter of seconds change for cheerful happiness to unknowing despair without her saying anything. But maybe that was it: she didn't say anything. "Zadie's on a coma..."

"What?"

TBC