Alex stared at the scene before him. His mind was doing back flips. "Where's Izzie's? What's happened?" was going over and over in his head.
Meredith was kneeling by George asking him those exact questions but George wasn't answering. George was leaning forward in his chair, his head down sobbing.
"George." Alex had finally found his feet and walked toward him. He pushed him up right and stared down at him. "Where is Izzie?"
George took a deep breath, wiped some of the tears from his eyes and tried to compose himself. "Right after you guys left her intracranial pressure started increasing. I tried to phone you but no one answered."
Meredith touched her phone, she'd felt it ring while they were gone but she'd ignored it.
"They tried to use drugs to bring it down but the drugs didn't work. Her pressure just kept rising." George paused for a second and shudder. "It was so scary. I'd just started reading to her when it happened. Her eyes had been open and the look in them. I swear she knew what was going on and she looked terrified. Dr. Shepard's performing a craniotomy on her now." George lent forward in the chair and started crying again. The emotional stress of the last few days had finally caught up to him.
Alex turned around and walked out the room. On the outside he was composed but inside he was being torn to pieces. He went to the stairwell and started running up the stairs. He stopped on the OR floor and started running towards the operating rooms. He was only a few feet away from Izzie's when he stopped and turned around. He felt powerless enough without standing there and watching it happen. He ran back to the stairwell and kept running up. He didn't stop until he was on the roof.
On the roof he screamed. A loud, deep, hollow, empty scream. He felt like he was going to erupt, explode. He was full of nervous energy fueled by his worry for Izzie. He needed to do something but there was nothing that he could. He threw the sling he'd been wearing for his shoulder to the ground and punched the air with his fists. He felt the stitches in his should rip and begin bleeding but he didn't care. He liked the pain.
He punched the air over and over, after a while it stopped hurting. He missed the pain. He missed the physical pain because physical pain distracted him from the emotional pain that was on the verge of overcoming him.
He looked around on the roof for a way to hurt himself. Not something to cause damage, just something to cause pain. He saw the wall and he punched it. One punch was all it took. He felt the impact vibrate up his arm and down his body. He felt the blood begin to stream from his knuckles. It hurt, it hurt a lot and that was exactly what Alex wanted.
He paced around the roof some more, still not knowing what to do with himself. He needed to do something; he couldn't just sit there waiting for news. He left the roof and began wandering the halls of the hospital. In the basement he found it, a small disused gym. Inside was a treadmill, it was old, simple, manual. Alex stood on it and started walking, it still worked. Soon he found himself running.
Once he started running and he couldn't stop. It felt good to run. It was the release he'd been looking for. His heart rate increased, his lungs screamed with pain but it felt good. It felt so good, everything that had been building up inside of him slowly began to release its self. Sweat streamed down his face concealing the tears that were slowly emerging from his eyes.
Two hours later he was still running. He was afraid to stop. He'd ran him self raw, inside he felt hollow, empty and as soon as stopped he'd be full again. He was still running when someone entered the room from behind.
"Karev!" A mans voice yelled. Alex didn't react, he just kept running.
"Karev!" The man walked toward Alex, stood in front of him. It was Dr. Shepard. "Alex you need to stop running."
Alex shook his head. "No."
Shepard reached out and touched Alex's hand. "Alex you need to stop. I need to talk to you about Izzie."
Alex slowed down and stepped off the treadmill. His whole body was shaking. He knew he needed know what Shepard had to say but a part of him was afraid to hear it. "What is it?"
"She's out of surgery. She's back in the ICU."
"Good." Alex used his arm to wipe some of the sweat from his face. "I should go see her." He started walking out the room but Shepard called out to him.
"Alex stop. You can't go see her yet."
"Why not?"
"Because you're covered in sweat and dirt and I need to talk to you." He gestured to a spot on the grown. "Sit down."
Alex glared at Shepard, how could he, tell him he wasn't allowed to see Izzie. Then he looked down at his hand and his shoulder, they were both covered in dried blood. Shepard did have a point. Reluctantly Alex sat on the ground and Shepard followed him.
The two men sat in silence for a while. Alex scratched at the dried blood on the back of his hand. Shepard watched him. After a while Alex finally asked.
"What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"
"I wanted to talk to you about you."
Alex glared at him again. "You've got no right to talk to me about me." He started to get up but Shepard pushed him back down.
"Maybe so, but I've been watching you these last few days, when I've been checking on Izzie. I wanted to offer you some advice."
Alex stayed but he didn't respond.
"I've seen through the years a lot of head injuries. And a lot of families forced to deal with this. Some families seem to have it all together and then they break down right when their loved one needs them the most. Others have seemed on the verge of collapsing but somehow manage to keep everything together."
"What are you trying to say?"
"No one families experience is the same and neither is anyone persons but I've seen things that work better than others. What you've been doing, it seems like the right thing to do but you're not going to be able to keep it up."
"How would you know?"
"You're hand is bleeding."
"So."
"You punched a wall. People who are coping don't punch walls."
"How do you know I punched a wall?"
"That's not the point. All I'm saying is that you need to take time out. You need to go home, have a shower and get a good nights sleep. You need to start looking after yourself because in the long run you're not going to be able to help Izzie if you haven't."
Alex nodded. Shepard had a point. But he didn't want to go home. He didn't want to leave Izzie but he was also afraid of what he would see once he got there. His apartment was full of Izzie. He shuddered at the thought of being there. He didn't want to be there.
"Do you think she'll be okay?"
"I don't know. Head injuries are hard to tell. But she's still with us, she's still fighting."
"Yeah." Alex smiled a little. "She's tough isn't she?"
"That she is."
The two men went silent again. Alex was thinking about Izzie and how things used to be.
"Can we go up stairs now?"
"Yeah I think it's time." The two men got up and left. On the way out Shepard picked up Alex's hand and examined the damage. "You're going to have to let me fix that up before you can see you."
Alex nodded. He knew Shepard was right on that one.
/\/\/\
It was almost 6pm by the time Alex was cleaned up enough to go see Izzie. He was wearing a freshly laundered pair of hospital scrubs, his arm had been pulled into a new sling and his hand was heavily bandaged. Nothing was broken though, for that he was supposed to be grateful.
Shepard led him up Izzie's room. "I'll let you stay here for an hour and then I'm coming back to take you home. I'm not letting you spend another night here."
Alex nodded, he'd been told. When he was just about to enter Izzie room Shepard spoke to him again.
"Remember what I told you right at the start. Only positive thoughts in her room. She's the one fighting for her life, pessimistic thoughts are not going to help her."
"Okay." Alex entered Izzie's room.
Inside were George and Meredith. George was crying again and Meredith was doing her best to make him stop but it wasn't working. Alex took one look at the scene and moved over to George's chair. He grabbed the back of it and pushed it out of the room.
"Alex! What are you doing?"
Alex closed the door to Izzie's room and pushed George to the end of the corridor. There he stood over him and yelled, "No more crying. You will not cry in Izzie's room anymore." Then he left him sitting alone in the corridor.
He ran into Meredith on the way back to the room. "Alex, what's going on?"
"No more crying Meredith, no more crying." And he pushed past her, took a moment to steady himself and entered Izzie's room.
Things were going to be different now. He was going to handle himself better. He was going to be there for Izzie. He was going to be there for the long haul and he needed to take care of himself. He needed to take care of himself because Shepard said she would need him more later. She would need him as she got better. She was going to get better and he needed to believe it himself.
"Hey Izzie," he said taking his seat next to her bed. "You gave us a bit of a scare there." He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed it. "You're going to be okay though. You're going to get better."
For the next hour Alex sat with Izzie and talked to her about things. He told her about his conversation with Shepard, well some of the conversation anyways. He told her that he wasn't going to spend the night but that he'd be back in the morning. He kept telling her things were going to be okay. Saying that was more for his benefit that Izzie's. He was trying to convince himself that it was true.
That's it for now. Thanks for the previous reviews and please keep reviewing it is much appreciated.