Chapter 19 Pick me

Disclaimer: GA and all characters belong to Shonda and ABC.

Fiona's POV

At Mercy West

Staring at the amplified HER2-CAR T cells in the test tubes, I was starting to thinking about the cocktails. There could be problems with the percentage or there could be interference with pathways. It was hard to tell and it testing it on mice or rabbits wouldn't help because human hearts were way more complicated. At this stage my best bet would be altering the speed of injecting the solutions, otherwise I would have to prepare a different T cell cocktail from scratch and it could be too late for Nason. So what do I choose now? More patients to test if the current theory was right? Or start over to make it safer for Nason?

Just when I was hesitating, a loud beep from the pager indicated 911 in NICU, it was from Shane. I ran across the hall and downstairs, turned over several trays that nurses were carrying and scurried to NICU. All the machines that Nason was hooked up to were giving out alerts. From the waves on the ECG it was clear that Nason was having a v-fib and Shane already cracked his chest. He was barking orders and injecting epi.

"Shane, step aside, I'll do the cardiac massage. Get prepped and get him in the OR as soon as possible. People let's move!" I knelt down on the gurney, massaging the heart when they wheeled the gurney hurriedly to the nearest OR. Life was draining from Nason's face rapidly. His cheeks were unnaturally red due to the fever triggered by the stress brought by the tumor. His lips were purple due to the lack of oxygen. The cardiac tumor had worn him out. His limbs scattered in all directions like a ragged doll.

After being shocked twice, Nason was finally stabilized. Though I knew taking the bet now was his best shot, I couldn't stop my hands from trembling.

"Shane, remind me why did I do this?" I hoped he could say something, anything to put me at ease. Staying at the OR for long-hour ground-breaking surgeries used to be my one and only pleasure. But at this very moment, my body was blocking me to take the risk for the patient's good.

"You're doing this to save his life. If you don't do anything, he will die. If you took the bet he could die or he could live." This time Shane didn't panick or wave his fist towards the wall. Everyone was extremely quiet in the OR, waiting for me to make the decision - test my luck or wait for longer.

" She was actually a better surgeon than I was... She was my beacon, my relay station, my hopes and dreams. I dedicate this award to her- a brilliant surgeon..." Burke's voice was playing repeatedly in my head. I could nearly feel his oval brown eyes staring at me. Replaying his words and encouragements soothed me instantly. I took a deep breath and started my work. This time and this time only I need some reassurance.

"Dr. Ross, let's get started. Keep in mind, when my screen shows 50%, yours should be indicating 30%, which means you should be injecting 20% slower than I do. You ready?"

"More than ever, Dr. White." Feeling the touch of my 'ju-ju'- Burke's lucky scrub cap on my head, I started to push the cylinder. Monitoring the stats closely, I let go of the breath I was holding ever since the operation began. Now it is out of my depth. I could only hope for the best. I threw my bloody gloves and gown in the trash bin and headed towards the lounge.

"Already in the lobby. Emergency surgery?" Burke's text popped up on the screen so I walked downstairs to the lobby and caught sight of him. He was sitting on the sofa, wiping his glasses. He was adorable with his glasses on, serious, professional but also adorable. I stared at him for several seconds before he felt my glaze and walked towards me. "Hey Cris, just finished the surgery?"

There was a small curve at the corner of his lips but I could sense something was bothering him. We've been trying so hard to make it work since we rekindled our chemistry. Somehow it was different now. He used to tell me everything that was bothering him. It was almost like some ritual. Now he wouldn't do that anymore. He was acting like telling me bad stuff would burden me. We were kicking around the bush and avoiding talking about the bad stuff that happened in our lives.

At the end of the day, he would still listen to my whining about the stupid interns and laugh at my sarcastic comments. But it doesn't feel the same now, we were different, we've both changed so much than we were a year ago. When we first started this relationship, nobody thought it would work out because I was anti-Burke in so many levels: He was an attending, I was an intern. He was clean, I was a slob. He was a control freak, I was a wild girl riding a motorcycle. He was a gentleman, I was sarcastic and had no manners. We tried to make what wouldn't work work against all odds because we loved each other. And whatever is bothering him now wouldn't matter because we were in love.

Walking alongside with his tall and rigid body, I felt someone was watching me from a distance. I turned around to search if anyone was near me, but I got nothing. "What?" Burke brushed his lips against my forehead and asked me playfully. It's probably just my hallucination. I had a long day after all. "Nothing." I replied by dragging his ties and stumbled towards the car. Little did I know that fate had a way to punish the couple like us who were together against all odds and rules.

Two days later

"Nason was in a good shape. His last angiogram and portable chest X-ray showed that his cardiac tumor has shrunk dramatically in size. If nothing went wrong, he could came out of the NICU soon." Shane reported the latest update on Nason to me with a huge grin on his face.

"Ok, that's good to hear." My tried my best to hide my smirk at the great news.

"Just ok? Dr. White, do you realize that you just changed the face of medicine? This would be the first case to shrink cardiac tumor with immunotherapy. This is huge!" It was clear that the resident was jumping in joy.

"No gloating! This isn't a done deal yet, until then you have to keep a close eye on him in case any complication happens." I squeezed Nason's hand once more and left the NICU.

I was walking pass the hallway and caught sight of Dr. Thomas. He smiled at me warmly and gave me a pat on my shoulder. "Way to go, Fiona. I've heard about your little miracle. You gave your A game." His praise meant a lot to me. It was his encouragement that pushed me to go ahead with my trial. "Thank you, sir. You told me to start this, so the credit went to you as well." He laughed at my words and walked towards the other end of the corridor whispering "I knew it" along his way.

My shift ended so I walked towards the parking lot, dialing Burke's number hoping he wasn't in surgery. I didn't pay attention to the footsteps approaching until a wet cloth was put under my nose. Soon I lost conscious. The last thing I heard was a large bump of my phone dropping on the pavement.

I was waken by the discomfort in my wrists and ankles. I felt my hands and feet were tied up tightly by a rope. Apparently someone kidnapped me. I looked around, in the dim light, saw an unconscious woman lying in the ground. I froze at the sight of the familiar figure. I could never forget her face. It was Katey Kim.

She was back! Now that all the dots are connected, everything make sense to me now. This is what Meredith and Burke tried to hide from me all these days. They conveniently ignored to tell me that one of the most important women in my boyfriend's life was back. Hell, she was probably working in Seattle grace now. She saw him every day. I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I was betrayed by my best friend and my sorta kinda boyfriend at the same time. Fabulous, just great! I have to find out that the devil was back by being kidnapped and locked in the same room with her. How could Meredith of all people chose not to tell me? Kim was Burke's Addison and I Burke's Meredith. I would never hide a news as big as Addison's return from Meredith. I thought it was never about the love story between Meredith and Derek. I thought it was always the love story between us. But clearly, I was wrong. In the choice between Derek and I, she picked Derek and she made me promise I would forgive her for doing so. I was there the whole time when Derek wasn't, but yet she betrayed me.

I felt the world was laughing at me. I was always grateful that Burke was there soothing me when I lost my dad. Now came to think of it, it was my father's tragic death that brought our first encounter. It was a mistake from the very beginning, yet I was inspired to become a cardio-thoracic surgeon. Ironically, because of my father's death and my overachieving, extremely competitive personality, I couldn't trust anyone and nobody wanted to make friends with a hard-core girl like me. Twenty years later now, I learned to trust people and make friends because I believed even I could love someone and be loved. I believed firmly that they were loyal, honest and trustworthy people. However, god might laughing at me now because it turned out that they were not. I refused to think about Burke right now, about how long Kim could have been back, about what they could have done in the on call rooms.

Now I need to focus on myself. Who would take Kim and I? As if to answer my question, a half-asian man in his late forties came into the room. As soon as he came in, his face rang a bell to me. He was the serial killer FBI was looking for all over the states. Taking Asian girls with long ebony curls was his MO. But I don't have a curly hair anymore, why would he choose me? It suddenly came to me that the feeling of someone watching me the other night was not my hallucination. He must be spying on me and stalking me for a few days. But why me?

He seemed to sense my doubt because he was kicking Kim constantly now to wake her up. A painful moan escaped Kim's lips as she slowly came to conscious. Her first instinct was to fight the robes, but she stopped staring at the crazy man and I in horror. Apparently she knew who the killer was as well.

He seemed to enjoy torturing us. "Good afternoon, ladies. You must be wondering why I took you too. Ladies, that was a long story. You should all thank my precious mother. She was a cheeky slut that brought home every man on the damn street. If they were rude to her, she took it out on me." He pointed at Kim furiously and continued, "You, you look just like her. When I was finally on my own feet and came back to get my revenge, she died in your hospital, on that nigger's table. He was the reason I couldn't torture that bitch. So he deserve it."

He then turned to me, "You are that nigger's girlfriend, I saw you kissing outside his car. If you want to blame someone, blame him. He is the reason why I took you." His hysterical laughter was hovering in the small room. Kim stared at me in disbelief when he said I was Burke's girlfriend. I was speechless. I felt numb. He was abused by his mother and when he wanted his revenge, his mother died on Burke's table, so he wanted to torture Burke's girlfriend to get back at him. He took Kim with me because Kim was his MO. This is ironic, a serial killer brought the two woman together, really ironic.

"Aha, I guess you don't know the thing between that bitch and your man. Obviously that bitch was seducing your man all the time. I saw her when I was following him. I won't kill both of you because he will then just forgot about you two and move on. I will do something far more interesting." He smirked and approached Kim.

"What do you want?" Kim was shivering in fear, tears were rolling down her cheeks, her ebony curls shaking along with her. "Don't be afraid, sunshine. Take a guess, if I told him to choose between you two, which one will he choose? If only one of you get to live, who will he choose?" At that moment, Kim shoot a sideway glance at me and we both knew what the psycho wanted for the first time we came into the room. He wanted to ruin Burke. Whoever he chose, he would have to live in remorse because he killed one of us. And he would never get to be happy and content with the survival because he will live in guilt forever.

"Wait for him, the show is on in no time. He should be on his way now. Since you're his girlfriend, I will play around with you first." He put on his evil smile and slowly walked towards me. Every footstep he took was stepping on my heart. I tried to escape, but I was cornered. I could feel his hand sliding through my tops, ripping my jeans off me. Just as he was about to rip my panties off, Kim's shaky voice stopped him, "Wait, took me first. You want your mother right, I look like her. Took me." She even licked her lips and stuck out her chest to show her boobs. I was stunned. Why did she do that? Kim looked at me right in the eyes with the saddest expression I've ever seen- I could see empathy, love, guilt, self-sacrifice and determination in her eyes. In the split second I understood. She was doing this both out of love and guilt. She was guilty that Burke lost his girlfriend after they were caught in bed. She loved Burke too much to make him lose another girlfriend again. At that moment, I felt bad for her because we were desperately in love with the same man. At that moment, two strangers or rivals were connected. At that moment, before the psycho could do anything further, Burke barged into the room.

"What do you want? Let go of them, you want me, you can do anything you want to me. They're innocent, let them go." Burke was begging him. That was the first time I saw Burke begging someone. I wanted to look at him in the eyes, I wanted to feel his touch to wash over the nausea brought by the killer, but I couldn't stand to look at him right now. I don't know if it was because I felt hurt by his betrayal or if it was because I was scared to hear his choice. I wanted to look him in the eyes and tell him to pick me, choose me, love me like Meredith once did, but I couldn't. I couldn't talk to Burke right now, I couldn't put the life of the woman who just saved me in danger. So I just stared at the ground, waiting for my karma to come.

"Here you come. The great Preston Burke. Don't be in such a haste. We have plenty of time to play this game. We are going to have so much fun. Now you have a choice to make. Only one of these two will live. And it depends solely on you. Be my guest, it is all on you now." The room was filled with his crazy laughter again. I glanced up and saw Burke's jaw clenched, his hands fisted. Rage and glassiness walled up in his eyes. Silence filled the room again. Neither Kim Nor I said a word.

"I chose Katey. Let her go." Never in my life have I heard his voice so clearly. He said he chose her. I poured my heart out to him, he stumped on it and smashed it to pieces, twice, over the same woman. Everything afterwards became a haze to me. I barely remembered hearing the killer's laughter again, the sound of Burke throwing him to the ground and kicked the gun out of his hands and the sound of police intruding in. I felt every bit of energy in me was consumed and conked out. A Bout De Souffle, the famous film, I finally understood what it felt like.

A/N: I know you guys might be mad at me for making Burke choose Kim. But if this was a choice for Derek to make, would he watch Addison die in front of him? I guess not so it would be the same with Burke. He could take a bullet for Cris to make sure nothing happened to her (of course he didn't in this chapter, nobody is physically injured in this accident). But if he were to choose again, I believe he will make the same choice over and over again. And that is the charm of men in SGH, they had an incredibly soft spot in them despite their arrogance. Feel free to PM me if you think differently.