-1A quick note - if you're reading this, please review. Good, bad, ugly, whatever - a huge number of people have read this or put it on their favorite/alert lists, and only two have reviewed, and that's really not fair to me. I'd love to hear what people think and, as always, I hope you enjoy!

Could Be Anything (Part Two)

Cristina is stitching. Gurney after gurney of non-emergency cases roll in and she is in charge of piecing their ripped flesh back together and patting them on the back. She goes through the motions - and does a damn good job, thank you very much - but the entire time, she is so angry she could tear a few holes in someone herself.

This isn't the first time Burke has barred her from scrubbing in because of a personal issue. She should've seen it coming. They're alike, after all. If she was in his position, she would probably do the same thing. When you're in a war, you use whatever ammo you've got. But being on the receiving end of such treatment doesn't sit very well with her.

It's not fair, the way he's always holding his power above her head and trying to make her dance for it. She's not a monkey, for God's sake. And what about him giving her the silent treatment after she'd helped him through all those surgeries? How ridiculous was that? She knows she was right about that. And she may have told him she didn't want his forgiveness, but damn it, she deserved an apology. A marriage proposal isn't an apology.

"You're kind of ... hurting me," a man with a sizeable gash on his forehead tells her.

"Well, at least you're not dead," she reminds him, but the usual sting isn't in her words. She finishes up on him and moves on to the next stretcher, mentally compiling a list of horrible insults she can hurl at Burke later.

She's gotten up to seventeen - and they're getting more and more graphic - when the doors burst open with yet another gurney. "Put 'em over by the right," she commands without even looking, then does a double take. "Doctor Shepard...?"

He is soaked to the bone and blood-streaked, but that isn't what stops her. There's a look in his eyes she's never seen before in the confident, charming doctor - the kind of fear that comes from absolute desperation. He looks like he doesn't know what to do.

"It's Meredith," he tells her, and his voice isn't familiar either. It cracks on the second syllable, the first piece of him to break apart. More will follow, but neither of them know that yet. "She fell into the water, hit her head ... she's half drowned and not responding."

Cristina stops stitching. She might stop breathing, she's not really sure. For once, she finds herself frozen. Usually, she sees incoming cases as chances to prove herself, which is why she approaches them with such gusto. But this ... Meredith, lying cold on a stretcher... this could be the first lost opportunity Cristina's ever had to face.

XXX

His system is working.

It's a grim, devastating system - asking near-hysterical family members to study these pictures, to stare at the battered, bleeding bodies and try to identify them as Gary (who was on his way to meet some buddies for a game of touch football) or Savanna (who had an art show scheduled for this evening). But it's working. Slowly, the pictures are being labeled and the pieces put back together, for better or worse."

"Alex." George's voice, frantic - but when isn't it? - reaches him through the crowd and Alex turns away from watching a mother reunite with her seventeen year old daughter. "Alex, have you seen a little boy? He's about seven, answers to Christopher?"

"Check the board."

"The board?" Confused, George looks around, then his eyes land on Alex's masterpiece. "Is this ... are these the patients?"

"Every one we've seen so far," he confirms, trying to keep the smug grin off his face. It's been a terrible day, but he still can't help being proud of his contribution. Between that and pulling his pregnant woman out from beneath the pylon, he's starting to feel like a real doctor. "Check it out, see if you can find ... who are you looking for again?"

"Izzie?"

Alex's head snaps up at that. George is staring, stricken, at one of the unidentified pictures, his eyes as wide as planets. "What are you talking about?" Alex demands sharply, then shoulders the other man out of the way when his explanation doesn't come quick enough. "Oh, my God. Is that her?"

George looks like he's about to be sick. The subjects of the Polaroids are hard to distinguish, the various injuries and medical equipment making it hard to see the details, but he'd recognize that blonde hair anywhere. Even matted down with blood as it is in the picture.

"That's Izzie," Alex is saying, his voice trembling as much as the finger that reaches out to brush the glossy photo. "How did I not see that? How could I not have noticed?"

"This isn't the fatality board, right? Right?" In a flash, George has a fistful of Alex's scrubs and is pushing the taller, stronger man up against the board in question. "Alex. Focus. Is this the fatality board, or just the ones in surgery?"

"Surgery." Being shoved has brought Alex back to himself, and he easily removes George's hands from his shirt. "These are the ones in surgery. I have to go find her."

"You? You missed her the first time," George points out combatively. "I'll go."

This time it is Alex to do the pushing and George who finds his back pressed against a wall of missing people. "You have a little boy to find. I'll find her." The other intern looks unconvinced. "George. I'll find her. And then I will page you and I will tell you, face to face, that she is fine. She's going to be fine."

He's trying to convince himself as much as George, but it works. George relents - mostly because he has promised a mother he'd find her child and he intends on doing so. "Page me the minute you find her," he says urgently, then thrusts an arm out to grab Alex's as he walks away. "Alex. Promise me."

"I promise," Alex tells him, and tries to grin. "Trust me, George. She's going to be fine."

And even after he's walked away, and there is no one around him to hear, Alex keeps repeating it to himself: "She's going to be fine. She is going to be fine."

XXX

"We don't need you here, Doctor Montgomery."

That's the third time Mark has said that to her since she burst into the O.R., breathless and bewildered, but Addison still makes no move to leave. "I was paged just like you were," she replies, keeping her tone crisp and her eyes on the Chief's hands. "And I have no other emergency cases, so unless Chief here thinks I'm crowding him, I'm staying."

"How many is that?" Richard asks, ignoring their bickering as he concentrates on the procedure at hand.

"That's the fourth round, sir," Addison hastens to respond. "She's still not responding."

Seemingly in defiance of that assessment, the machines they've hooked up to Meredith's still body begin to beep - loud and fast, the kind of beeping that quickens the doctors' heartbeat as the patient's slows. Richard's eyes flash to the monitor, where everyone else has already seen the truth.

"Pressure's dropping," Richard barks out, followed by, "People, we are losing her."

His words send everyone into a flurry of motion - to get the crash cart, to send for more help, and, in Addison's case, to flee the room entirely. Derek is waiting somewhere down the hallway, having been barred from the room due to personal involvement. She needs to find him, to be sure that he hasn't collapsed from despair or exhaustion or just plain heartbreak.

She doesn't have to go very far. She nearly trips over his sprawled out legs two feet from the door. Even as it clicks shut behind her, she can hear the high-pitched, extended tone that signals a flatline and knows that he hears it, too.

Derek looks up at her, waiting for her to deliver the news, and for a second, she thinks of the day he proposed. It was a similar setup - her looking down at his expectant face, knowing she held his fate in her hands. The flashback reminds her of all the moments he and Meredith will never share, all the time she herself robbed them of when she came to Seattle. And for what, exactly? Why had she ever thought she had a right to try and recapture the man she'd lost?

When she lowers herself to the floor and wraps her arms around his neck, they are both already crying.