Alex fumbled his keys. He couldn't get them into the lock. His hands were shaking. "Izzie I'm right here." He called again but she didn't respond. He had heard her call out hadn't he? He took a deep breath and steadied himself. Finally he unlocked the door and busted into the apartment.

Izzie lay on the floor beside the couch, the mug she'd been drinking from lay broken beside her. She was convulsing violently, her head was slamming against the floorboards. Alex dropped the milk; he felt his insides twist within him. He ran over to her and grabbed her head. He cradled it in his hands and waited for the convulsions to stop. There was nothing more he could do, he wasn't at the hospital, he couldn't shoot her up with diazepam, all he could do was wait. He watched the clock, the seconds, the minutes ticked by painstakingly slow. He felt completely powerless. He prayed she hadn't hurt herself, he prayed she'd be okay; he prayed the seizure would actually stop.

After three minutes her body went limp. She didn't move and Alex's heart skipped another beat, the seizure had stopped but it took another ten seconds for her to start breathing again.

Izzie opened her eyes and blinked. Her head was pounding, she couldn't see straight. She was on the floor, soaking wet, she couldn't remember how she got there. "What happened?" She asked looking up at Alex.

"You had seizure." He told her, gently laying her head on the ground. "I'm going to get some towels; I'll be back in a second."

Alex pulled half a dozen towels from the closet. He could feel his heart rate slowly returning to normal. The immediate crisis had passed, now all he had to clean up the mess, fix things.

He placed the towels on the coffee table beside Izzie. He lent over her and undid the draw string on her pants. The last time he'd tried to do this she'd yelled at him. She'd told him she could undress herself but now she just lay there. She let him remove her clothes and wrap her in towels. He carried her over to the bedroom and lay her down on the bed. Then he went back to the lounge, he striped the sofa of its covers and threw everything into the wash.

Izzie watched Alex clean and then walk over to the bed. He sat down beside her and ran a hand through her hair.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

She didn't know how she should answer. She felt horrible, her head throbbed, all she wanted to do was fall asleep but she didn't want to tell Alex that. She didn't want Alex to know how she was feeling because she knew where this conversation was heading.

"Fine." She said smiling as wide as she could.

Alex nodded but he could tell she was lying, she wasn't anywhere near fine. "That's good, really good." He gave her hand a squeeze. "I'll let the washing finish and then we'll go down to the hospital."

Alex held his breath and waited for Izzie's reaction. He knew she wouldn't like, he knew she'd protest and argue. She didn't like the hospital but this was one argument he wasn't going to let her win, not this time.

"I don't want to." She said just like Alex knew she would. "I don't need to go to the hospital. I'm fine." She tried to sit up but Alex held her down.

"Iz, you're not fine." He told her. "You just had a seizure. You fell off the sofa, you hit your head. You need to go to the hospital so the doctors can check you out."

"You're a doctor. Why can't you check me out." She hit a nerve with that comment, tapped right into Alex's insecurities, his feelings of inadequacy and helplessness. He was a doctor, but he couldn't help her.

"I would if I could." He told her. "But I don't have the equipment."

/\/\/\/\

Izzie continued to be difficult. She didn't want to go and she made sure Alex knew it. After she stopped being hostile, she cried. She sobbed and begged Alex not to take her back but he didn't have a choice. He'd already let her have her way once this morning and look where that had got them, he wasn't about to let that happen again. She refused to put the clothes he'd pulled out for her on. He tried to put the clothes on for her but she kicked him away. In the end he pulled another blanket out the closet, he wrapped her up in it and threw her clothes into a bag.

She wouldn't walk down the stairs, she couldn't walk down the stairs but she wasn't about to admit that, so Alex carried her. She tried to resist, she twisted in his arms until he threaten to call an ambulance to come get her. He told her that if an ambulance had to come, they'd make her stay longer and throw her up on the psych ward. The threat finally stopped her fighting. This was one argument she wasn't going to win. She let Alex carry her to the car; she stopped fighting the urge to sleep.

She was so incredibly tired. She was asleep before they even reached the hospital and she woke only briefly when Alex lifted her from the car onto a gurney. He'd phoned ahead so Shepard was waiting for them at the door. They took her straight up for a CT and then to the same hospital room she'd been in before.

The CT results were unremarkable. She'd gotten lucky, there were signs of a mild concussion but nothing that would require immediate intervention. They set up another EEG and drew some blood. Izzie barely said a word the whole time. Once she stopped fighting all the life and spark she'd had disappeared.

/\/\/\/\

While Izzie slept Shepard and Alex sat in the corridor and talked. They talked mainly about Izzie. Shepard asked a lot of questions about the seizures. He needed to find out what was causing them, what triggered them off so he would know how to treat it. At the moment all she was on was a standard anticonvulsant that didn't seem to have worked. Alex wrote down everything he knew, which wasn't a lot, he hadn't been there when it started. He asked how well Izzie was progressing. Shepard said she was doing well but when Alex asked about her long term prognosis he dodged the question and changed the subject.

He asked how well Alex was coping and if he'd given any consideration to hiring help. Alex hadn't thought about getting help. Every time the idea would even begin to cross his mind he'd push it out straight away. There was something about the idea that bothered him.

"There's no shame in getting help." Shepard told him. "You're not going to be able to keep doing this by yourself forever." Then Izzie started calling for him, the conversation was over.

/\/\/\/\

Two days went by and nothing happened. Izzie spent the whole first day crying and the second day complaining but she didn't have another seizure. Nothing in the tests showed anything to indicate what might be triggering them. Even when they took her off the anticonvulsants she didn't convulse. Shepard didn't know what to do. He didn't want to send her home without something concrete, but he couldn't keep her in the hospital indefinitely.

He began going through his notes again. He looked at her test results again. He even took them home with him and showed them to Meredith. He needed to find an answer and he needed to find it soon. He was going through the information Alex had given him and then he realized the common link between the two seizures. It had been staring him in the face the whole time.

a/n: Thanks for the reviews please keep it up I really appreciate them.