Chapter 19: A Moment Away

Lexie's name froze on his lips as he watched her walk away. Feeling light headed, he leaned against the wall and tried to catch his breath while trying to understand what he had just seen. Logically, he knew that the woman he just ran into couldn't be Lexie since he had been with her when she had died 5 years ago. But for that brief moment when they touched, his body had surged with a jolt of awareness that he had only felt when he was around her. Mark pushed against the wall determined to follow her, but was stopped by a nurse telling him that everyone was needed in the ER to assist with Emergent patients coming in from the Mall. Nodding in agreement, he made his way to the ER and pushed the doors open to find it filled with injured patients placed around the room in an organized chaos. Quickly putting on a trauma gown, he made his way inside and could see that Bailey was working on a young woman with lacerations all over her face and arms.

"Doctor Bailey, why don't I take over suturing, while you get the glass out?" he suggested coming up behind her.

"Doctor Sloan, what are you doing here? You weren't supposed to get back till this weekend?" She asked, surprised by his sudden appearance.

"Well with Hurricane Felix heading toward California, we decided to come back early to avoid airport closures. Besides we did the whole Disneyland and Beach thing for two weeks; there's only so much I can handle with two lesbian women an year old girl."

"Did Sofia have fun?" Bailey smiled.

"Oh Yeah…. She had a blast, up until she threw up all over her princess costume after riding Space Mountain. But she was better the next day and we avoided the crazy rides….. She wants Zola to come with us next time." He chuckled as he meticulously sutured the cuts on the woman's face.

"Hmm, I guess that would depend on how her legs are doing?" Bailey said seriously.

"Yeah, well we'll see what happens." He remained quiet for a few moments then said. "Bailey, I've got to tell you something and I hope you don't think I'm going crazy, but I've got to tell someone."

"Okay, Sloan just spit it out." She said impatiently, knowing by his tone this is a personal issue… which she hates talking about.

"I…. umm saw Lexie in the hallway just outside the Attending's locker room a few minutes ago." He said hesitantly, "and I swear to you I have not been drinking, so I know it's not a hallucination…. I just….I just don't know what to think."

Miranda stopped working on her patient and looked up into Mark Sloan's sad and confused eyes. Losing Lexie Grey, the love of his life, had nearly destroyed this man and it had taken months of therapy for him to accept her death. Once he had recovered from his injuries, he had broken up with Julia to spend more time with Sofia and then focused the rest of his energy on his burn clinic. In fact, she hadn't seen him with a woman since the accident and had often wondered if he was trying to remain faithful to Lexie's memory.

"Oh, that's right you weren't here when the board held a meeting about a prospective Neuro Fellow visiting today with Derek Shepherd. According to Doctor Webber, who had met her at the boards in San Francisco, Doctor Scott's resemblance to Lexie is uncanny. So they all warned us in preparation of her visit." She said and once again looked down to work on her patient, but minutes later Meredith was shouting for Bailey to help with a person coming in with a damaged liver.

After hearing Bailey's explanation, he was relieved that he wasn't going crazy and hoped he could formally meet Doctor Scott to find out if what he had sensed around her was merely a physical reaction to her looking like Lexie or if there was a deeper meaning. Mentally shaking off his thoughts, Mark yelled for an Intern to help pull the glass out of his patients arm and focused on the job at hand.

Meanwhile, Miranda Bailey had met Meredith in OR 4 and they were working on a patient whose liver had been perforated during the explosion at the Mall.

"Was that Mark assisting you on the woman with multiple lacerations?" Meredith asked.

"Yeah, they came home early to avoid traveling problems from Hurricane Felix." Miranda stated. "He… umm ran into Shepherd's Fellowship prospect, Doctor Scott and she …. Well….freaked him out. He thought he was seeing Lexie's ghost." She finished, worriedly watching her former students reaction.

"Oh, she's here? I thought Derek would have called her to cancel due to the Mall situation." Meredith replied calmly as she continued to work on the patient.

"Meredith, did you hear me….she looks enough like Lexie that Mark actually thought it was her. How can you be so calm about this? I mean if it was me and I saw another woman with my sister's face…. I'd be… I don't know…. worried she was a pod person from invasion of the body snatchers." Looking up at Meredith, she could see that behind the mask, her eyes were crinkled in amusement.

"Pod people, really Doctor Bailey?" Meredith chuckled.

"I like Science Fiction, okay! So when I hear stuff like this… it just makes my mind go there." Bailey huffed defensively. "But seriously are you okay meeting this woman?"

Meredith stops to think for a moment before answering. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I mean, I've known about her visit for a few weeks but I've never really considered my reaction to seeing her for the first time. Realistically, I know that she's a different person. But a part of me that doesn't want real life, wishes she was Lexie and that she's been missing for five years because she lost her memory in the crash or some other made for TV movie that has a happy ending where my sister didn't die." Looking over to see the tears in Bailey's eyes, she continues.

"So you see my mind can go there too. Especially since there wasn't a body to bury….." Meredith stops again and sighs heavily. "I can only hope that when I meet Doctor Scott…. I don't break down and start crying, because that would be really embarrassing." Blood suddenly squirts up onto her gown and the monitors go crazy as the patient's heart begins to become erratic.

"Crap, I've got a bleeder! I need more suction here!" Doctor Bailey jumps in and they both refocus their efforts to save the patient.

A few hours later, Owen Hunt was standing next to Allison Scott as they scrubbed out of surgery on the young boy she had come in with. He was pretty impressed with this young doctor's surgical ability, not only had she skillfully maintained control over the boy's bleeders, but she had also repaired the tear that the glass had made into his heart. If he didn't know better, he would have thought she was here for the cardiothoracic program instead of Neuro.

"Good Job, Doctor Scott! You may have just saved that boy's life…. I could certainly tell that St George's teaching program offered you a well-rounded education in regards to working on the whole body instead of just one specialty." He said and grabbed a towel to dry off his hands.

"Thank you, Doctor Hunt." She said and flashed him a smile that looked so much like Lexie that his heart almost stopped.

"Umm, Doctor Scott…. I think I should warn you that there may be a few people in this hospital who appear uncomfortable around you."

"What? I don't understand…I haven't met anyone in this hospital except you… why would anyone be uncomfortable?" Allison asked, even though she knew the answer.

"Well, it's umm… just that you look like a young doctor who used to work here and when she was killed…. It was….bad. Doctor Grey was well loved and people took her loss hard." Doctor Hunt said trying to explain.

"Oh…..wait, your residents were talking about a Lexie Grey the night before our boards, they said the hospital's name was changed in her honor." She replied, once again giving the appropriate response to something she already knew. "Do I really look like her?"

Doctor Hunt looked uncomfortable but answered, "Well actually…. Yes. I mean there are quite a few differences….you're younger, the eye color is different and of course you have an accent, but when you smile...you look just like her."

"Well….if it's that upsetting, maybe I should just leave now and look at one of the other Fellowship programs, I've been offered." She said pulling the scrub cap off of her head.

"No, don't leave!" Owen said putting a hand on her shoulder. "It was not my intention to scare you off; I just wanted you to be aware of the situation, in case you notice someone staring at you."

"Alright I'll stay and thanks for the warning. That does explain something that happened earlier." She replied and watched him sigh in relief.

"Why don't we head back down to the ER, there are probably a lot more emergent patients arriving from the Mall." He suggested and followed her back to the ER.

A few minutes later they pulled on new trauma gowns and entered the ER to find most of the beds filled and more ambulances arriving with new patients. Nodding to the young surgeon to continue helping were she could, Hunt went off to find Doctor Kepner and help her set up a mobile trauma room in the Clinic. Undecided on where to start, she glanced around the room until she saw an Intern struggling to put in a central line in a badly burned middle aged man.

"Here let me show you what to do." She said and began giving him directions, so he would know what to do the next time. After getting the central line started, she gave the moaning man morphine and began her examination of his injuries. She found that besides the burns covering his face, arms and chest; his lungs had decreased breath sounds due to smoke inhalation. Moving to the man's head, she began giving the intern, whose name was Doctor Fraser, directions on how to intubate the patient. Within minutes, the man's struggling vital signs improved and they began debriding the burns.

Unbeknownst to Allison, her arrival in the ER had not gone unnoticed and everyone was now aware that Doctor Shepherd's prospective fellow, was indeed Lexie Grey's doppelganger. In one corner of the ER, Alex Karev kept glancing towards her and then started humming the bars to the Twilight Zone theme song. Across the aisle, Callie Torres began muttering a prayer in Spanish, while she was splinting an arm. Jackson Avery had stood next to his patient with his mouth open and just stared until an intern started calling his name and he refocused his efforts on his patient. And a few beds away, Arizona Robbins looked up from comforting a small child to see the face of a woman she had last seen while flying on a doomed airplane. She gasped in disbelief and felt a chill race through her body as if someone had walked on her grave.

Suddenly EMT's rushed in with an older woman with a severe head trauma. Pulling off her gloves, Allison gave the intern orders to continue debriding the man's burns and made her way to the EMT's side to check the woman's eyes. Seeing that one of her pupils were blown due to subdural hematoma, Allison began yelling for instruments that would temporarily help alleviate the pressure inside the woman's brain so that they could get her into surgery before there was permanent damage. Completing the fix, she sighed as the woman began to stabilize.

"Doctor Scott, I presume?" Allison looked up at the familiar voice to see her brother-in law, Derek Shepherd smiling at her and nodded her head in acknowledgment.

"Hey Allison, it's good to see you again." called another familiar voice, as Doctor Shane Ross walked up behind his mentor.

"Shane, it's nice to finally see a familiar face." She said, giving him a brilliant friendly smile.

Derek took in a sharp intake of breath; Richard had been right to warn him about Doctor Scott's appearance…. She really did look like his little sister, Lexie. Having her here for this visit was going to be harder on them than he thought.

"Doctor Ross, can you please take the patient to CT and have an OR prepped for surgery? We'll meet you there in a few minutes." Derek asked and watched as Shane nodded and began pushing the patient toward the elevator.

Turning back to his Fellowship prospect, he held out his arm so that they could shake hands in introduction.

"Doctor Scott, Sorry about the crazy welcome you received here at Grey Memorial Hospital, I'm Doctor Derek Shepherd head of the Neurosurgery department." He said and began walking her to the elevator, so that they could meet Ross in the CT lab. "My assistant was supposed to call and cancel our appointment due to the accident, when did you arrive?"

"Actually, I arrived several hours ago in an ambulance carrying a 12 year old boy, who had been impaled at the Mall with a large piece of glass." She said turning to face Derek as they got into the elevator.

"You were on the scene?" he asked in surprise.

"Umm, well….I was actually inside the Mall when the explosion occurred." She began, but what interrupted when he grabbed her arm and yelled. "What!"

"Yes, I had arrived earlier this morning and couldn't check into my hotel, so I stopped at the Mall to go shopping. I was just about to leave when the explosion hit and since I wasn't hurt, I stayed to help the victims." She continued.

"Oh my God…. Are you okay? You should get checked out…." He began as he began to worry that she had been unknowingly injured.

"No!" she quickly jumped in, knowing that an examination would be a quick way for them to realize that she was different. "I'm okay…. I was far enough away from the blast that I wasn't injured. It just scared the crap out of me and I'm sure later once everything calms down, I'll start to feel the effects."

Derek watched her face to make sure she was telling him the truth and nodded his acceptance before sighing in relief. 'Unbelievable,' he thought to himself, 'she wasn't even here for a few hours and she almost died…. Maybe this hospital really is cursed, just like Cristina says.'

"Well, I'm very happy you were uninjured. Let's take a look at the patients head CT so we can see what we're up against and then I would very much like it you can help me come up with a plan for her surgery."

"I'd like that very much, Doctor Shepherd." She relied excited to once again be working with her beloved brother-in law and mentor on a complex brain surgery. Her day had just gotten brighter.