Then: Sleepless in Portland

Fourteen months ago.

Izzie lived on the seventh floor of Greenleaf Towers, a surprisingly posh Portland apartment building, only a half-hour away from Community-Southeast Hospital, home to her new job and a world away from her old life. Few people came knocking, but that wasn't for lack of friendliness on her part or anyone else's. She had nice, fairly well-to-do neighbors who liked her from the first day (she brought muffin baskets to the other five apartment doors on her floor, just as you would have expected her to), and the building staff always had a genuine smile for her, even when she had to use the supposed-to-be-locked revolving door before five o'clock in the morning or slouch back in after nine at night without being able to find her security card (ditto on the muffins, plus she knew how to tip and when).

The new job was good, too. The surgical staff at Southeast was a welcoming mix of older and younger doctors, with a number of really fine, patient and skillful teachers among them. The department chief, a truly spectacular general surgeon named Abby Colquitt, had taken Izzie under her wing from minute one of her initial shift, but didn't lead her around by the nose or hover over her shoulder. Egos were less pronounced, disputes were minimal – the atmosphere wasn't conducive to storms. In other words, Izzie had found – for her, anyway – just about the perfect place to be a doctor.

"Cristina would hate this place," she said to Colquitt while sitting in the cafeteria at the end of that day's shift, after getting a comical, in-jokey wave from a fellow staff member. "Meredith, too." She found herself smiling at that. "And my ex. And Shepherd. And Bailey."

"You think so?" her boss asked with a hint of the merry laugh that Izzie liked to hear. "None of your former Seattle cohorts would like working here?"

Izzie didn't have to wait very long for George's image to pass through her mind. "Well, okay, maybe one."

Colquitt caught the affection in her tone. "Ah, your soldier," she said, her tone lightly teasing.

Izzie frowned a bit. "He's not mine," she groaned. "We're friends. That's it." Then she let out a little sigh. "If that."

"What do you mean?"

"We had a fight," Izzie said. "I hung up. He didn't call back."

"When was this?"

"Seven weeks ago," Izzie said softly. Her eyes dropped a bit. "Almost eight."

"I'm sorry, Stevens," Colquitt said, shaking her head. "Would it help if I called him a jerk who doesn't appreciate you?"

"Not really."

"Well, then, I won't." Colquitt took a chance. "What did you fight about, if you don't mind me asking?"

"He's considering re-enlisting." Izzie glowered at the very thought. "That means doing another 18 months after this term's over, which doesn't end until 18 months from now. Or then, as it was."

"Yeah, huh?"

"I told him that he's done his duty. He needs to come home."

"And he doesn't agree," Colquitt said.

"He said I didn't get it. That I didn't appreciate what he's been doing."

"Do you?"

Izzie blew out a breath at Colquitt's question. "Maybe ... maybe not." She looked her boss in the eye. "Look, I don't think there's a better, braver surgeon in the entire U.S. Army Medical Corps than him. And I know he's saving lives there."

"But."

"He's putting his own life on the line," Izzie said. "And that needs to stop. There are people in this country who could use his skills. His mom and brothers, they need him. His friends need him."

"And you?"

Izzie dropped her head into her hands. "You want to hear about how much I miss him? How I haven't been able to sleep the last few weeks? How much I've regretted saying what I said to him?"

Colquitt chuckled at her charge. "I think you just told me," she replied.

"Well, I want to tell him. And I can't, because he's there and I'm here, and I hung up and he didn't call back." And then Izzie sat back in her chair, out of words, as impatience and frustration clouding over her.

Colquitt leaned back, too. "You know you love him, right?"

Izzie sat silent for a moment. "Yes," she finally muttered, looking away.

"Does he know?"

Izzie's lips screwed into an unhappy pucker.

"Maybe he ought to," Colquitt declared.

"I can't tell him anything if he won't call me back."

Colquitt shrugged. "Write a letter. Send a postcard. Email him, for God's sake. But let him know, if only for your own mental health."

"What if ... "

"He doesn't respond?" The older woman seemed to pluck the words directly from Izzie's brain, then shrugged and stretched. "Maybe he won't reply. Maybe he will. I don't know." Colquitt stood up, and Izzie's eyes followed her. "But I do know one thing, Dr. Stevens. You need to let him know how you feel, for your own sake, at least."

Izzie's day had felt longer than it really had been; the whole conversation with Colquitt was pinging around her brain all the way home. Once she had found her way back into her apartment, she immediately found the shower. Once done, she toweled off, dressed in a slouchy tank top and pajama pants and began contemplating dinner. Thoughts of pizza drifted through her mind while she went to work drying her hair.

A buzz emanated from the intercom speaker by the front door. She wandered over to it, rubbing her hair with a towel. She stopped for a moment to press the TALK button. "Yes?"

"Dr. Stevens, sorry to bother you; it's Walter down at the main desk," a familiar voice replied over the soft hum of the speaker.

She smiled a little. That was always the way he always started conversations with her: "Dr. Stevens, sorry to bother you." He seemed to have this undying respect for her, like he was her own personal security guard and he felt a little unworthy of interrupting her. It was really rather sweet. "Evening, Walter," she said. "What's up?"

"I have a delivery down here for you," he said. "It came in earlier today, but I'm guessing Ernie misplaced it."

Izzie thought for a second. She had a few items on their way from various on-line shopping sites. Probably one of them, she supposed. But she was hungry and tired, and whatever it was that the day shift guy had put in the wrong basket, it could probably wait. "Mind if I pick it up in the morning on my way out?" she asked.

There was silence on the other end for a bit, then Walter said, "Well, whoever it was that dropped it off marked it 'Deliver Immediately,' so I - "

Aw, crap, Izzie thought. Probably work stuff. And if it had been misplaced for a whole day ...

"Yeah, okay," Izzie replied. "Send it up."

"You got it, doc. It's on its way."

"Thanks," Izzie said into the speaker box.

Then she walked back toward her living room, picked up her cell phone and scrolled through her listing of favorite pizza places. Tonight, though, each one sounded like the wrong choice. Billy and Sal's – Too thick. Pizza House – Too thin. Hank's – Too much sauce. Giuseppe's – Not enough cheese.

She settled on the last one on her list: Mama T's. She was actually secretly pleased; it was her favorite of the five. As she started to plan what she'd order (the pepperoni trio, with extra cheese), a knock sounded on her door.

Her package had arrived. She looked through the peephole.

George.

She raced to unfasten the chain, so she could swing the door wide open.

And as she did, in one fluid movement, he was through the doorway. Her arms wrapped around him, holding him tight to her body, and he did the same. The kisses were warm and sweet and passionate, like none she'd ever experienced before. Clothing melted away as she tried to guide him along the shortest, quickest path to her bed.

They got as far as the couch in her living room.

That's where she pushed him down on to the cushions, her lusts fully awakened as she gazed at his aroused form. Their eyes met, ablaze with carnal need. Silent questions were met with silent replies. She dropped to her knees next to the couch, next to his prone, stripped body. She could feel him ceding control of his being to her as she oh-so-deliberately tongued the length of his manhood, teasing the head until he trembled. Then she moved up his body, kissing his stomach as one of her hands caressed his chest, and the other grasped and manipulated his stiff, heated flesh until he was moaning her name. She felt a gentle hand on the back of her head, stroking her long blonde hair; it was permission, approval.

She heard and felt and tasted him as his muscle and skin tensed and tightened, as the low moans turned to hard cries. Then, with a loud shout, his body jerked upward, where he held himself until the releasing throb had run its course. Then he seemed to float down to earth again.

"Thank you," George panted, as Izzie laid her head on his stomach. "Oh, God, thank you."

"You're welcome," Izzie replied.

"I forgot about this," he said. "How good it feels."

"Yeah," she replied, feeling like he was reading her mind. "Me too."

Suddenly - incredibly - Izzie's world felt right again.

George was lazily drifting back into consciousness, exiting a good, deep, real sleep, one of the first he'd had in months. Years, maybe.

Sure, he'd ceded his bed to Izzie last night, but that didn't matter to him; he could tell that she'd needed some rest. Besides that, she'd fallen asleep atop his mattress, and it reminded him of all those times - even before they were sexually intimate - that he'd awakened with her close to him.

For the briefest moment last night, he'd considered staying with her, if not in the same bed, at least in the same room. But he didn't. Instead, he'd retired to the old couch in the first floor room that once was his dad's den. Even though the cushions were filled with the remnants of stale cigarette smoke, it was a thousand times more comfortable than any bunk he'd ever clung to in the Army.

Frankly, he had found himself relishing the experience. He'd dropped into the kind of slumber that can only be achieved in a place where you know you're safe, where there's love and kindness and understanding around every corner. Now that he was coming out of that sleep, he recognized the sound of water running through the pipes in the bathroom a floor above.

She must've stepped into the shower. His mind couldn't help drifting to thoughts of her under the spray, the warm water cascading down the length of her. Maybe he should have stayed with her, he thought, a smile creeping across his face.

Then his reverie was split apart with a pair of piercing screams. He snapped upright at the waist to the sound of his mother's half-panicked, half-angry scream of "GEORGIE!"

He sprung from the couch. "That's not a good sound," he muttered.