Word Count: 4900
Disclaimer: Not mine…mostly.
Rating: Violence and graphic images.
Spoilers: A rough AU continuation from Ep. 402 and 403.
Summary: Alex-centric drama that also includes all other characters, conventional pairings and break ups as a car crash and subsequent shooting have far reaching repercussions for many Seattle Grace staff members.
Chapter Summary: Alex turns up…eventually.
Thanks to IceWhisper for beta-ing, all mistakes that you find are my own!
Time in Tableaus - Chapter Two
-
The clinic is surprisingly quiet for a Friday morning but Miranda can't quite shake the uneasy feeling that it's merely lulling her into a false sense of security. Despite the fact that she is waiting for the inevitable arrival of interns, relegated to her service for the day as unspoken punishment for being exactly that...interns, she is surprised when the doors are slowly pushed open and Norman enters, somewhat sheepishly, as though loathe to disturb her.
"Dr. Shale, what can I do for you?" She feels bad for him even though she knows he's not looking for sympathy and can't help but wonder if he will ever be accepted as an equal to the other interns. It seems the harder he tries to fit in, the more glaringly obvious the differences become.
"Actually Dr. Bailey, I'm wondering if you've perhaps seen Dr. Karev at all. I'm his intern as you well know and it seems he's yet to arrive this morning." He is overly polite and Miranda smiles inwardly as he ducks his head slightly so that he doesn't tower over her quite so much.
"No, he's certainly not been in here, but then again that whole group tends to steer pretty much clear of here most of the time, not much surgical action walks through those doors," she indicates to the entrance with soft nod of her head, "you've paged him I take it?"
"Yes, twice and tried his cell phone. I believe Dr. Torres has also tried to page him, she split us up between the other residents and I'm with Dr. Stevens, who incidentally confirmed that he did indeed leave the house before her this morning, though he apparently ran to work. I can't help but wonder if perhaps something untoward has happened en route."
"As flighty as that bunch are it is odd that he wouldn't turn up at all, I'll chase down Dr. Torres and see if she's heard anything from him, other than that there isn't really a great deal we can do until he gets here."
Norman nods in agreement and starts to turn back towards where he entered.
"Dr. Shale, how's it all going anyway? Your internship? Everything?"
He stops just short of the doors and appears to pause before turning back to face her. "You know, when I started I would tell myself that the first year of medical school was going to be the hardest but then, once everyone had become accustomed the novelty that I seemed to present, it would all get better, and then second year started, and third and now this and..."
"Let me guess, it's not getting any easier?"
Norman laughs softly and it sounds wise like piano notes and history books and Miranda can't help but wonder at the stories he would have to tell.
"No, not easier. But, don't get me wrong, I didn't come into this thinking that I was going to be just like the others and to be honest with you I don't want to be just like them either. I think to want that would be an insult to my past profession and to the life I have lived up to this point; to my children, who incidentally are all older than Alex, I overheard him say yelling at me was like yelling at his grandfather and he's right, I could be his grandfather, or his father at the very least."
Miranda nods a goodbye as he pushes back through the doors and contemplates for a moment what kind of person Alex would have become had someone like Norman been his father.
-
Back at the demolished diner Alex's breaths are coming short, sharp and fast and the burning in his lungs from earlier in the morning is nothing compared to the bone chilling cold that is wrapping itself around him now. His hands are pressed tightly over the gunshot wound in Lucy's abdomen. Despite the fact that the hole is leaking more than just blood and despite the fact that there is a matching wound in the centre of her forehead he still clings to the hope that the life growing inside her is desperately holding on. If he can just keep her going until help arrives then...maybe...
There is a wailing in the distance that Alex thinks is probably the paramedics. He wonders for a moment where his cell phone is because rounds started ten minutes ago and his interns will be waiting for him and Addison needs to be warned that he's coming in with a seriously injured pregnant woman. Then hands are pulling him off her and he remembers that Addison isn't in Seattle any more and he knows he's not good enough to do this by himself so he lets them take over with little fuss. Standing up proves to be a much more painful task than sitting down had been only minutes ago and despite intentions to the contrary he obviously verbalises his sudden discomfort rather vigorously as he is suddenly surrounded by gloved hands and concerned faces that he fights to push away.
"No, no, I'm fine...you need to...she's only got a week to go so...you need to get..."
He's waving his hands around in the air in front of him hoping that his frantic gesticulations will explain what he wants the paramedics to do more clearly than his incoherent ramblings are currently achieving. He obviously does something right though as they turn from him and close in on the woman who only moments earlier was begging Alex to help her.
-
"Eight o' clock and still no action...what's with Seattle today?" Christina stretches out her upper body across the nurses station desk and rests her chin on one hand. She has a pen curled in her fingers and is repeatedly clicking it open and shut distractedly.
"Christina, seriously...you need to stop with the incessant whining because really, isn't that my job? Or Izzie's job? What's got into you? You don't whine...ever."
Meredith contemplates her question for a minute before choosing to answer it herself.
"You know what, I don't think you're craving surgeries, I think you're having sex withdrawal."
Meredith proclaims her diagnosis with such glee that Christina immediately stands with righteous indignation.
"I am not withdrawing from sex..."
"Okay, so maybe not withdrawing but you definitely need to get laid."
Christina's mouth is agape at the words and the nurse who has been standing at the station with them suddenly finds something much more interesting to do somewhere else and flees.
"And sooner rather than later...for all our sakes."
Meredith's pager sounds, bringing an end to the conversation but as she turns to leave she calls back over her shoulder to a re-slumping Christina, "Maybe I'll hire you someone, you know...to scratch the itch?"
As Meredith disappears around the corner she hears Christina yell behind her, "Excuse me, I'm Christina Yang and I do NOT pay for sex."
Lexie is passing Meredith on her way to meet Christina as the words float down the hallway and she raises her eyes to Meredith inquisitorially but Meredith simply shrugs her shoulders and rolls her eyes back in a wordless answer and continues walking.
-
Callie sighs and presses open the doors to the ER for the second time that morning and is almost flattened by a body pushing through from the other direction.
"Callie, ah...Dr. Torres, I was just coming to find you..."
Callie raises her eyebrows in a silent what the hell do you want now and fights the urge to sink to the floor and bury her head between her knees. She can't remember ever feeling this heavy before and it's all she can do to look Miranda in the eye.
"Have you heard from Dr. Karev yet? There still appears to be no sign of him."
Callie struggles to hide the oh shit look from her face, feels it appear seconds before she can school her features back into the blank canvas she has been valiantly sporting all morning.
"I'll take that as a no then?"
Caught out, Callie decides she can't even be bothered making up a plausible excuse for her error.
"Shit, I completely forgot, I got called out and..."
Miranda raises a hand and Callie bites down hard on the urge to slap it away.
"It's fine, Dr. Shale has paged him numerous times to no avail so..." Despite her words there is accusing in her tone that Miranda can't quite smooth out, doesn't want to smooth out.
"...I'll keep trying him myself."
As Miranda walks away Callie leans back against the wall heavily, drawing strength from the feel of something solid at her back, of something at her back. Even if it is just a wall. She taps her head softly a few times against the plasterboard in a silent admonishment of her lapse in concentration before reaching for her suddenly beeping pager.
-
The Chief fills Callie in on the little detail he has been able to glean from the police at the scene. A possible ram-raid and a shooting at a small diner filled with morning breakfast goers, and Callie gathers her team in the ER to brief them on what to expect.
"Our first incoming is approximately five minutes away, I want everyone ready with their interns out of the way initially as we don't have full details of what to expect."
There is an authority and confidence in her voice that are only in small part faked and for that she is somewhat pleased with herself. This is her job and her job she can do. The other stuff, the marriage and the affair and the George and the Izzie, it is background noise that she needs to push aside for the moment.
Christina, who's own pager sounded shortly after Meredith's departure, nudges Meredith while indicating for her interns to stand back with a quick raise of her chin in their direction.
"Incoming blood and gore. Today is finally looking up. And MVAs and GSWs in one, seriously, could I ask for more?!"
Meredith rolls her eyes, "Only you could be pleased that people are crashing their cars and getting shot. Really, I think you need to speak to someone about this."
"Ha, says you," comes Christina's unimaginative retort, her mind too filled with surgical possibilities to be bothered with anything more biting.
"And don't forget Grey, you owe me."
"I owe you nothing! Hey, I can always lend you my knitting needles..."
-
Alex steps back as paramedics swarm past him. He hears one of them yell about finding a pulse and he swivels as much as he can to see if his prayers to a God he doesn't even believe in anyway have been answered. But Lucy is lying all alone, the small round hole in her forehead long since stopped oozing blood and brain matter indicating a pulse is the last thing they will find for her.
Instead medical personnel are surrounding the collapsed body of Lucy's killer. He is still where Alex unceremoniously dumped him in his frantic attempts to get out from under his heavy bulk and the thought that Jason might still be alive, even with most of the side of his face blown away, sends waves of roiling nausea from Alex's stomach to the back of his throat.
He forces himself away, refusing to watch as they place life saving equipment over his nose and mouth and start hooking up saline bags and attaching electrodes. He sees a young girl lying on her back near the windows where a bone-chilling breeze is blowing through the open space where plate glass and 'now open' signs used to be. He can see her yellow employees t-shirt, stained through with red that could be her blood, could be someone else's. There is so much of it, it's difficult tell which pool or which splatter belongs to which injured patron. Alex thinks some of it might even be his but he is too tired and too cold to care.
"Hey there..."
He pulls one of her hands out from under a tipped stool, slides the stool away with the tip of his toe and concentrates on feeling for her pulse. He can see now that most of the blood is hers. He guesses she was standing right beside the window when the car came through and was showered with glass shards that have torn through her young skin with no remorse.
A paramedic kneels down beside him and brushes some glass off her forehead with his gloved fingers and her eyes flutter open and catch Alex's straight on.
"Hey there..." he repeats, "my name's Alex and..."
He stops short because the sentence reminds him too much of his first to Lucy and he thinks that if this girl was to meet the same fate then Alex might actually find Jason's gun and shoot himself in the head.
"What's your name?"
The paramedic continues for him and the girls eyes flick slowly from Alex to him as she stammers out a terrified Kelsey.
"My name's Kelsey."
"Well, hey there Kelsey, I just need to go get some more stuff from outside okay..." he turns to look at Alex, noticing for the first time the condition the young jogger is in.
"Hey, you okay there buddy? You get hit too?"
Alex shakes his head but doesn't answer, keeps his eyes locked on Kelsey, as though she might disappear if he looks away.
"Okay, well, I'll be back in a sec, can you sit with her till then? Keep her talking okay?"
Alex nods this time and breathes out a yeah that has the paramedic standing and walking back towards outside.
Kelsey's eyes squint in sudden recognition and she tries to push herself into a sitting position but Alex's hands on her shoulders keep her down.
"Hey keep still for a bit longer okay, just till we've had time to check you over..."
"But…you, I saw you...are you sure you're..."
"I'm fine okay, nothing to worry about, let's just concentrate on getting you out of here..."
-
The first patient through the door is classified as a gun-shot wound to the head and Christina can't be more pleased. Derek hurries over and a crowd gathers as paramedics gush in hushed whispers that he's the shooter, he's the one...
The left side of his face, or what remains of it, is covered in thick gauze that is already soaked bright red with blood. Derek lifts it from one corner and takes in the mangled mess underneath before turning back to the ambulance staff.
"So he shot his pregnant ex before shooting himself..." they nod in confirmation and Derek turns back to the patient, "and now I get to be the one to try and save your ass...Dr. Grey?"
He looks up to find her in the gathered throng, saying her name as a request for her to assist him on the case.
"Oh, no, no, no...Grey, you promised!"
Meredith shrugs her shoulders quickly at Christina's stunned expression.
"Sorry, this one's all mine."
"But...you..."
"Knitting, Christina, trust me, it really does help."
-
The paramedic has returned with an extra kit and begins pulling out gauze to wrap Kelsey's myriad of cuts and slashes. Alex reaches forward for a pair of gloves he can see poked into the side of the kit but is halted with a sharp hey.
"Oh, sorry, guess I should introduce myself, Alex Karev, I'm a surgical resident over at Seattle Grace...I'd shake your hand but..." he grins slyly and raises his arms, palms forward, covered with dried blood and dirt from his meeting with the pavement outside.
The paramedic appraises him briefly before nodding slowly, a grin spreading out across his leathered features.
"Hey, I thought you looked familiar...you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah, I'm good, I'll give you a hand here and ride back with you if that's okay?"
"Yeah, fine with me, what about you Kels? You think you can share your ride with him?"
Kelsey nods and smiles tightly, the movement pulling at a deep gash through the corner of her upper lip.
"So, have you ever been in an ambulance before?"
Kelsey nods that she has before answering verbally, "I broke my ankle ice-skating once, a few years ago."
There is blood on her teeth and bubbling, red saliva flecks her chin and cheeks and Alex forces himself not to look away, to take a deep breath and to concentrate on checking her over. She is shivering with cold, as cold as he is perhaps, and he pulls a silver emergency blanket out of the kit and tucks it around her legs, uses the movement as a deliberate distraction.
"Okay...then you know all about it."
They patch her up the best they can, Alex having donned two pairs of surgical gloves as extra precaution and protection and they slowly secure a neck brace on her before loading her carefully onto a stretcher. By the time they have her into the back of the ambulance Alex is barely able to conceal his own agony and he attempts to take a quick inventory of where he hurts. His left wrist is slowly becoming completely useless and his knee is throbbing in time with his heart beat, his legs feel strangely disconnected from the rest of his body but he puts that down to the fact that he doubts he's ever been this cold before.
The paramedic, Charlie, must see the shivers he's trying to hide because as they pull away from the destroyed diner he slides another foil blanket out from a compartment at his feet, unwraps it and hands it to Alex with a grin.
"You can stop pretending now you know..."
Alex tries to grin back at him but the shivers are causing his back muscles to cramp and his teeth to chatter so he thinks it's time to end the false bravado.
-
Mark Sloan passes Derek in the hall on his way to the ER and pauses quickly to confirm whether the rumours are true.
"I hear you've got the shooter?"
Derek nods, a brief movement that conveys everything else Mark could ever need to ask, so he doesn't and instead continues on his way.
His arrival in the ER coincides with the arrival of the latest ambulance and Mark's attention is quickly grabbed as Alex steps through the doors trailing a silver emergency blanket tucked under one elbow and holding a saline drip at head height with his other hand.
"Dr. Sloan, we could use you over here...seventeen year old Kelsey Churchill, covered in glass as the SUV came through the diner window beside her. She's one of the employees...got cut up pretty bad...we've patched her best we could out there but...she could sure use some of your magic."
Alex grins at him trying to cover up the fact that he knows he must look shocking, shivering and pathetic and wanting nothing more than to float to the floor of the ER and have someone else pick him up. Luckily, Dr. Sloan doesn't appear to notice, he is already lifting the gauze from various parts of Kelsey's face to inspect the damage and he calls for Izzie to take over from Alex.
"Karev, go get cleaned up, warmed up, whatever, you look like shit...then get back here..."
Alex nods and refuses to look in Izzie's direction, he knows for a fact that she will be harder to fool.
"Alex?" she calls, "...are you...?"
"I'm fine, none of it's mine...I don't think...just cold, I'll be back in a minute..."
-
Izzie is finding it increasingly difficult to keep her hands from shaking and pulling slivers of thick transparent glass out of a young girls skin is not a good time for your hands to be shaking. Her newly acquired shadow for the day is leaning over her shoulder watching, compounding the problem ten fold and Mark is opposite her looking at x-rays on a light board and waiting for her to finish so that he can come in at the end and sew her up all perfect and claim the credit. As usual.
"Dr. Sloan, I hear Karev came in with your patient, don't suppose you know where he is now."
Mark peels his eyes away from the x-rays and lowers them towards Miranda.
"I sent him to get cleaned up and changed, he was filthy and freezing cold, told him to go shower and then come back and help."
"So...he was okay then? He's been AWOL all morning, which...is understandable now I guess but I just wondered exactly how caught up in it all he had been..."
"Said he was fine when I asked, just cold. Had blood all over him but, he said none of it was his..."
"And I 'spose you took his word for that?"
"Well, what was I supposed to do? He's..."
"Forget it, I'll go find him and check for myself, seems everyone's keen to pass him off today..."
Miranda leaves with as little sound as she entered, her words leaving Mark with an unsettling feeling that he's just been told off and he had no idea why, the welfare of interns, junior residents, whatever...not his responsibility.
"Excuse me..."
The voice behind him is muffled through an oxygen mask and Mark reaches over to replace it with a less restrictive nasal canula instead.
"What's up?"
"That doctor, she's looking for Alex right?"
"Yeah, she is...why's that..."
"I heard you say he was okay, when he came... you know? That he told you he was okay..."
"Yeah, that's right..."
"Well, I don't think...I mean, I was there right?"
Mark nods cautiously, meets Izzie's eyes for a second and notes that she has halted her actions, her hands frozen in place over the girls left arm.
"Well, I'm pretty sure, I mean, no... I'm definitely sure, because I was right by the window when it happened you know? On my way to the back with some coffees...he was jogging, I remember that because I was watching him when it happened...noticed 'cause he's pretty cute, yeah?"
"When what happened?" Izzie ignores the last comment and fights the urge to grab hold of the girl's hand and squeeze it in an attempt to get the words out faster.
"When the SUV hit him..."
"When what?" It's Mark's turn to want to squeeze the girl for information and Norman's fingers fly to his lips with a shocked oh dear.
"The SUV, the one that went through the window...it hit him first, I'm sure it was him. He moved kinda last second but it still got him hard, he went over the hood I think though I'm not sure 'bout the rest 'cause by that stage I was lying face up under an inch of broken glass but..."
"Norman, go after Dr. Bailey. Make sure she finds him and gets him thoroughly checked out..."
"Yes, Doctor," he calls, although he is already retreating from the room, slightly sideways and backwards in his attempt for haste.
Mark looks towards Izzie again, her hands having now completely abandoned their work and sitting, shaking on the bed in front of her.
"Shit."
-
"Derek, have you seen Karev yet?"
Callie is slowly starting to feel less and less worried and upset at herself and more and more angry and annoyed at Alex's repeated ignoring of her pages. The level of disrespect she has been shown since taking her new role has astounded her and she wonders if Alex has heard the news and has taken a Team Izzie t-shirt.
"I heard he came in with one of the vics but I haven't seen him."
"Nice of him to let me know..." she mutters but is cut off by Meredith coming to stand next to Derek.
"You ready to go? They're just transporting him to the OR now..." she asks Derek before turning to Callie to throw some defense behind Alex in his absence. "Sounds like it was a bit of a mess out there and he was pretty much in the middle of it all, I'm sure he'll come find you when he's cleaned up."
She offers up a small smile of understanding that Callie mis-reads as condescending and sarcastic.
"Is he walking, Grey?"
"Uh...yeah..."
"Is he talking?"
"Ummm, apparently..."
"Then he has no excuse," she finishes, before turning and flouncing away as Meredith and Derek share a look of raised eyebrows and silent what the hell was that about's?
-
Miranda rounds the corner and finds Alex leaned up against a wall. At first glance he looks barely awake but his eyes blink slowly and he turns his head slightly to face her.
"There you are, we've been looking for you. What, you not answering your pager today?" His arms are entwined together across his chest and he continues the slow blink. At first Miranda thinks he isn't going to offer any explanation for where he's been or why but then...
"Mark told me to get changed, there was...I was...but...I don't think it was..."
"Alex?"
He turns his head towards her again, he's as white as Miranda's ever seen a conscious person be before and there's a gash under his right eyebrow that is slowly seeping dark red blood. He's still doing that slow blink and Miranda thinks it's the most disconcerting thing she has ever had to witness.
"Are you okay?"
Slow blink, it feels like his lashes stick together every time they touch and there is immense effort required, almost more than he can manage, to pull them apart again.
"There was so much...and the screaming, God. Why do chicks have to scream so loud, hey?"
He chuckles softly and Miranda smiles back reflexively before a grimace of pain crosses his features and he seems to curl into himself slightly against the wall.
"No, I mean are you okay? Are you hurt at all?"
He straightens again at her words, trying to prove a point, to himself as well as to her. The muscles in his back scream their protest but he swallows harshly, thickly, around the rock that has suddenly appeared in his throat.
"Yeah, I'm fine, I..."
"Alex..."
She says his name like a warning, like a don't lie to me, like an I'm standing right here and can see it written all over your face.
"Oh..." he gets it. Never could hide anything from her, not when she was his boss and especially not now. He goes for the lesser of two evils.
"My wrist hurts...and my knee, I think...but I can't really remember and..."
"What exactly happened?"
"What?" Shit. He's not ready for this yet. He can feel his heart hammering deep in his chest and his mind wildly tries for likely scenarios he can spin that will buy him some time but thinking is becoming more and more difficult and he's still freakin' cold. Like maybe he's still lying in the puddle at the side of the road.
Miranda's heard bits and pieces over the course of the morning and his panicked what tells her she should probably, against her gut instinct telling her there is something more going on, leave it at that for a while longer.
"Let's get you down to the ER then and have a look at that wrist, hey?"
-
Everyone seems to arrive in the ER at once.
Miranda has finally managed to get an ominously silent and increasingly breathy Alex safely there from where she had originally found him near the residents lounge. Callie has stormed in that direction after her run in with Meredith and Derek while Norman arrives just in time to see her catch sight of Alex and Dr. Bailey in front of her.
He smiles briefly to himself with relief that Alex is upright and apparently okay but before he can speak is shocked into silence by a loud Karev.
His initial impressions of Alex's health fall over completely as he watches him turn, slowly and painstakingly back towards Dr. Torres. He looks like death and not the warmed up variety either as Dr. Bailey raises a hand to his shoulder and says something to him that Norman is still too far away to catch.
"Dr. Torres, I'm just going to..."
"All due respect Dr. Bailey, but I'm talking to my resident..." Callie's voice is unnecessarily loud and an octave or two higher than normal but she can't seem to bring it back under control.
"Karev, where the hell have you been? And more importantly, why the hell have you ignored all of the pages I know you have been sent this morning? Half the damn hospital has been running around looking for you. Your interns have been largely unsupervised and..."
Miranda grunts indignantly and prepares to say something before instead choosing to close her hand around Alex's upper arm and pull him back towards the cubicle that had been their initial destination.
Norman watches as the sudden movement causes Alex's face to shift from its blank, unseeing facade to a shattered mask of agony and panic. At the moment his legs give way both women are staring furiously at each other, leaving it to him to stop Alex from hitting the hard floor at his feet like a lead weight.
TBC
