First of all, thank you so much for responding. It really makes this whole thing much more fun and much easier for me. In the future, if you're reading but don't have time to respond, just type in a "I'm here" or a random letter or two, just to let me know there are people out there. Of course, I love comments best.

Do you guys want mostly Gizzie, other ships, some medical stuff? I'm up for suggestions. It's Gizzie-centric, but there's got to be other stuff in there, so let me know what you like. I'm new to the Grey's writing.

Hope you like this chapter! It's a little talky and slow-moving right now, but it'll pick up. I'm getting my footing.

- Leems

Chapter Two

Callie stormed in, a second after George and Izzie jumped apart. She threw her leather jacket down on the couch, shook rain from her hair, and looked at the two of them with pure venom.

"You have no business being in the same room as my husband," Callie said to Izzie, who was pressing her lips together, as if it would wipe the evidence of their contact with George away.

Callie's face was pale and soft from the absence of her usual mascara, and her hair hung in unraveling ringlets around her face. She looked sad and beaten, and when Izzie saw her, the usual pang of fear and anger in Callie's presence was suddenly tinged with guilt.

Izzie gave a last glance at George and ran upstairs.

"What are you doing?" Callie asked, when she had heard the thundering disappear into an upstairs bedroom.

"I need some time… away. I'm moving back into Meredith's house."

"Are you insane?" Callie's voice rose. "Away? Izzie is living in this house! That is not away by any stretch of the imagination!" George said nothing.

"Oh," Callie said, her eyebrows relaxing into their usual places above her large, tired eyes. "You mean away from me. You pick her, then? You pick your horrible, selfish, bitchy little friend over me." Callie ground her teeth after that. She sounded like the whiny, clingy women she had always hated; she was trying to hang on to someone who didn't want to be hung on to.

The idea of letting go, though, was even more impossible.

"I said I forgive you," Callie told him. "After you cheated on me. And then you leave and move in with her?" But the battle was lost. She was done, scrabbling to keep something that had long slipped away.

"Listen to me, George," Callie said. "I will wait. I love you, and this is a terrible, terrible part of our marriage, but we can make this work. If you will help me, we—the two of us—can put this whole... thing behind us." George nodded, not so much in agreement but as something to do other than stare blankly at his sodden and panicking wife.

Callie picked up her coat and threw it back over her shoulders, and finally asked the question that had been running through her head since she came in the door.

"Have you slept with her since that first time?" George shook his head no, still not speaking, and Callie exhaled.

"Okay." She zippered her coat up to her chin. "And George?" He raised his eyebrows as a motion for her to go on.

"I am definitely not pregnant." When his face betrayed no emotion, Callie tossed her hair out of her face and walked out.

George went upstairs and into Meredith's room, where she was folding a stack of laundry, some of which was hers and some of which was almost certainly Izzie's. George sat down beside her, and Meredith looked up, surprised to see him.

"George?"

"I need someone besides Izzie to be my best friend right now."

"What?"

"I talk to her, you know? When I have a problem, she's the one I go to. But when she's half the problem, what am I supposed to do?"

"You need to let her be your best friend. You need to yell at her to put aside her own whatever and deal."

"Seriously?" Meredith nodded and picked up some tan cashmere contraption, slightly creased from air-drying.

"I'm going," George stood.

"That's the spirit!" Meredith yelled, but he was already gone. He had walked to the end of the hallway to Izzie's room so many times—to laugh, to help her cry, to seek advice, and once, to have sex with her.

"Izzie." She, too, was stretched across the double in the middle of her room, and broke into a smile when she saw him.

"Is Callie gone?"

"She's not going to leave me, Izzie. I'm going to have to leave her."

"You're moving out, though? Isn't that basically you leaving her?"

"She wants to make it work, Izzie." She pulled on his hand and he lay down beside her. Izzie turned her head to face him.

"But do you?" His mouth formed several words that never made it into the air.

"We don't have to do this, George," Izzie said. "You can go back to being Callie's husband and my best friend. Or…" she inhaled and looked at his face, a little blurry from proximity, "you have a choice to make, and you sure as hell know what my vote is."

"I need your help," he admitted.

"I can't give that to you, George."