Chapter 8

SEATTLE GRACE

"How long have you thinking about this?" Izzie asked Sun.

"Seriously the last few weeks. Off and on, the last year," Sun told her.

Izzie turned her attention to Jin. "When did Sun tell you about this?"

"Three weeks ago," Jin told Izzie.

"And after all the horror stories that you've heard about this hospital over the last two years, you still want to go through with it?" Alex asked.

The Kwons exchanged a glance. Then the two of them started talking in Korean.

"Which horror story are you guys talking about?" Izzie asked resignedly.

"I'm pretty sure I heard the word for appendix," Alex joked.

"You don't speak Korean," Sun responded.

"I can read body language just fine," Alex responded.

Sun and Jin had agreed that before they got their flight the next day they should at least talk to a couple of the people that Jack and Juliet had discussed. Meredith, Christina and Lexie were out of state, Callie had heard about it and out of sensitivity, they'd agreed that they shouldn't talk to Bailey yet. Izzie and Alex were the obvious choices but because they knew the group better than anybody, the Kwons weren't sure they could be entirely impartial on the subject. They seemed to be taking it seriously.

"It's not like she's going to have her residency here," Jin reminded them.

"Are you complimenting your wife or insulting us?" Izzie asked.

"Probably both," Alex said. "I mean, if you were to go through with this it's not like it would be the worst idea. Two of your best friends are attendings and you're on a first name basis with half the attendings and most of the interns."

"What guarantee could you give me the hospital would still be standing by the time I got through med school?" Sun said dryly. "For all we know, the place could be a heap of rubble in three years."

"Our residencies are over in two years. We might have blown the place up by then," Izzie said just as wryly.

"It would be on brand for us." Alex turned more serious. "Look, we know better than anyone else in this hospital what you and your husband went through on the island. Given the details you've told us about life before you got on the plane, no one in this hospital could argue you don't have the stomach for this job,"

"If there'd been a nurse like you whispering in my ear during first year, things might never have gotten as messed up with Denny as they did," Izzie said just as seriously.

"And if I'd been a resident?" Sun asked.

"You'd have made sure Iz wasn't anywhere near him after the first few treatments," Alex said bluntly.

"You think I would have sold you out," Sun was asking Stevens now.

Izzie thought for a moment before nodding. "You told Jack to stop putting his own blood into Boone when he was dying. Compared to the relationship I was having; this would have been a walk in the park. You'd have saved my reputation and maybe Denny's life."

Sun had made some tough choices who she loved over the years too. But no one knew about the affair and this was not the place to say anything.

"There's nothing we can tell you about the grind of med school or the residency that Jack and Juliet probably haven't filled your ears with a dozen times over even before you were considering medicine as a job," Alex said.

"How do I put this not so delicately," Sun said. "You're less removed from it than they are."

"I think she just called Jack and Juliet old farts," Alex joked.

"I'm twenty-eight. I'm only two years older than you too," Sun reminded them.

"Fair point," Izzie said. "Though not necessarily the best argument considering I quit my residency for a short while into my first years."

"And I failed my boards the first time," Alex confessed.

Jin and Sun blinked. "Jack didn't tell us that."

"He may not know," Izzie said. "It happened before he decided to come here and it's not like it was something you want to share unless you absolutely have to. Karev and I were dancing around each other and he didn't want to tell me."

"To be fair, you didn't exactly have the highest opinion of me back then," Alex said.

"Back then? There are still times I want to punch you in the face," Izzie joked.

"I had two hours sleep last night. Sometimes you forget minor details."

"The shower was still on. I opened the door and the trailer nearly flooded."

"We can table this discussion for later if you two need to find a closet to jump into," Sun said neutrally.

"Maybe when we're done," Izzie said deadpan. "In all seriousness, I know you saw a lot more death in the three months on the island and that many of the ones you lost were close friends. But that doesn't prepare you for the kind of things you have to deal with in your first month as an intern."

"Jack told us how much help you were with Boone," Karev said. "That took a lot of bravery, none of us will pretend it didn't. Problem is even in civilization with the medicine has to offer, you're probably going to have at least one Boone a day. And that's if you're lucky."

Jin looked at his wife. "Jack has made that very clear how demanding these rotations can be," he reminded her.

Sun couldn't argue with that. She also remembered the condition the Juliet had been in after her job had become that of having to deliver death sentences to expectant mothers.

"They throw you in the deep end," Izzie said. "I hate to use a disaster metaphor given what you've already been through but surgery is a kind of survival of the fittest. And it can break even the most gifted and balanced surgeons. Hell, just two weeks before my diagnosis Derek had a breakdown in the OR when he made a mistake in surgery and he couldn't admit it."

This story Sun and Jin hadn't been privy too.

"He might have withheld because it cut close to home," Karev said. "Young mother, seven months pregnant. Derek made some mistake in a routine surgery. The patient started slurring her words. Addison and Derek go in to surgery, it starts going badly: Derek decides that he can save her but he has to remove her entire temporal lobe."

"What the hell?" Jin said in Korean.

"Can someone survive that kind of brain surgery?" Sun asked.

"I was there." Alex said grimly. "Derek Shepherd's usually the definition of cool under pressure. Addison had to order him to step away from the patient. He storms out of the OR and beats the shit out of Sloan. I had to pull him off."

That was pretty dark. "Jack did tell you about how he acted when Boone was dying," Sun said.

"Yeah, he told us you were the adult," Izzie agreed. "He also told us that he planned to amputate Boone's leg off, even though that would kill him and that Boone pretty much had to use his dying breath to tell him to stop. I know Jack had something of a savior complex but it's not that far removed from the kind of decision we have to make on a daily, if not hourly basis. And no matter how hard you try, you will lose more than you save."

"I didn't say I was thinking of becoming a surgeon," Sun reminded them.

"That's probably a good call," Izzie said with a sigh of relief. "Hell, you might not necessarily want to work at a hospital if you decide to become a doctor."

Sun and Jin looked at each other. "That's not the response either of us we're expecting," Sun said.

"Hey when we went to med school, surgery was the end-game. The be-all and end-all," Alex told them. "There's something in us that's driven to it that isn't in other people. We may act like arrogant and look down on everybody who isn't a surgeon, but it doesn't make us right on everything."

"Don't tell Christina that," Izzie said. "Besides Jack said the medical profession would be fortunate to have you. He didn't say the surgical field would. There is a difference."

"Does that mean that he doesn't think I have what it takes?" Sun asked.

Both Izzie and Alex shook their heads. "I think he means that you do, but that your talents are better served elsewhere," Izzie said. "Surgeons frequently forget that their patients are anything other than bags of meat. Given how you handled everything on the island, you already know their human beings and deserve to be treated that way."

"A lot of surgeons never strike the perfect balance," Alex said. "Yang and me spent too much time looking at them as procedures. Iz spent too much time in the other direction. O'Malley's the only one in our class who seemed to come in with the perfect balance right out."

Sun remembered that when Jack had laid down the law two years, O'Malley had been the only one of the group he had not singled out as a disgrace. He still held him in high regard two years later. "Is O'Malley here today?" she asked.

Izzie shook her head. "He's visiting his family." She heaved a sigh. "It's been two years since his father died and they were going to visit his memorial."

Sun and Jin both knew from Hurley that Izzie and George's relationship had taken a very weird turn not long after his father had died. They decided not to press it. "We'll talk to him when we come back here in two weeks."

"You going to talk to anyone else here before you go back home?" Alex asked.

Sun shook her head. "This is a good place to start here. Besides we know some people in LA that can give us a different approach."

"Dr. Montgomery's old friends?" Alex asked.

Sun nodded. "And one of Jack's."

M.I.T RESEARCH LAB

Lexi knew that Dan could be fidgety on a good day but he was clearly very much so here. Even after he had escorted Ben and her into the observation room, he had spent another fifteen minutes in his lab, apparently double and triple checking the work that, according to Charlotte, he'd already double and triple checked at least three times before they'd arrived.

Finally he left the lab and came up to see them. "I'm sorry, I know that I must seem like the ultimate prima donna here," he said apologetically.

"Daniel, I think we know each other well enough by now to know how important this research is to you," Lexi assured him.

"Besides, as someone who saw firsthand an organization that drove forward with science with no regard to the consequences, I appreciate the precautions," ben said.

If Karev or Izzie were here Lexi had no doubt there would have been a very snarky comment on Ben's respect for the scientific process. There'd have been a valid dig about how he'd shown no respect for Juliet or how he had decided to destroy the Dharma Initiative because they were too scientific. Lexi was aware of those flaws but had no intention of mentioning them: Dan was clearly on edge enough.

"All right." Dan took out an old cassette recorder. "This is Daniel Faraday in ST-Session 0089. Observing are Dr. Charlotte Lewis, Dr. Lexi Grey and another observer. We are two minutes away from the activation of the device."

He placed the recorder down.

"Is there a reason you're using such a primitive device to record this experiment?" Lexi asked.

Dan sighed. "I tried using a video recorder on the first three attempts to use the ray. While there isn't enough radiation to cause any of us physical harm, there is still enough to disrupt any visual recording of it is use."

"He fried two separate camcorders before we realized that we couldn't put in the lab." Charlotte explained. "The third time, we recorded from out here but the residual electromagnetism disrupted any visual record. The audio was preserved but barely."

"Did the experiment work at least?" Ben asked.

"The last two times yes," Dan said. "But that doesn't do much good for what I'm trying to prove. Charlotte observed the two successes but for the standards of research, she can't be considered 'impartial'."

"That may have been the sexiest thing my husband has ever said to me," Charlotte said deadpan.

"There a reason you didn't mention my name?" Ben asked casually.

"I wasn't certain you'd want your name out there," Dan told him. "Given how you spent your life before, I didn't want anyone asking questions that might make your life more difficult then it'd been the last few years."

Ben was clearly trying to hear if there was any sarcasm in this. "I appreciate that," he finally said. "So as an unnamed observer, what exactly are we going to be seeing?"

"If it works the same way it did the last two times, something that may revolutionize how we look at space and time," Dan said slowly.

Lexi knew that this was something that she and Mark had discussed before she had left for Boston. It was another thing to hear it verified so calmly. Then again, Dan had had nearly two weeks to get used to the idea.

"When does this groundbreaking revolution take place?" Ben asked wryly.

"In approximately five seconds," Dan looked at his watch. "Three…two…one."

Lexi was used to scientific revolutions often looking banal but she'd been watching the lab and she hadn't seen anything happened. In the observation room, however, a bulb that had been glowing yellow turned green.

"That's it?" Lexi asked doubtfully.

"The action is all in the lab," Charlotte said. She pointed to the center of the room where a cage with a white mouse in it was standing under a large electronic device.

"It never looked like much was happening in the Clarendon Lab either," Dan said. "Granted the ray was nearly three times as large, but unless you were right there you wouldn't know anything had happened."

"And from what I understand, when you were experimenting in this vein as an undergrad, you acted as though it wasn't the case," Ben surmised.

"I didn't take sufficient precautions, that's right," Dan acknowledged. "It is possible I've gone too much in the other direction, but when you're still suffering from occasional memory loss more than a decade after your original experiments, the term 'better safe than sorry' takes on a whole new meaning."

"Something that I'm relatively sure we can appreciate now," Lexi said. "When will it be safe to go down?"

The green light bulb turned off. "Now," Dan said. "Then again, that was the easy part. Now we have to see if it actually worked."

LGLGLG

"All right, this is test subject 04 aka Angstrom," Dan said, taking the white mouse out of the cage. "Lexi, would you mind removing the tarp?"

Lexi nodded. She was not surprised to find that there was a fairly large maze underneath it. "I'm kind of shocked you didn't name it Algernon," she said with a small smile.

"Yeah, every research lab has at least one mouse named that," Dan said. "The joke gets old after the first hundred times."

"You should be impressed that it's still being read after forty years," Ben said absently. "So what exactly is the trick?"

Charlotte handed them a camcorder. "Take a look at the recording," she told Lexi and Ben.

Dan was placing Angstrom in the entry to the maze and pulled open the slot. The mouse hesitated for just a few seconds before it began to move.

"Test subject 04 is beginning to move through the maze," Dan was clearly trying to maintain detachment but Lexi could sense the excitement in his voice. "You're noting the stopwatch?" he asked his wife.

Charlotte nodded. The actual experiment didn't take that long, even though the maze was intricate. According to the readout, Algernon managed to complete the maze in one minute, twenty three seconds.

"I'll admit that Algernon is a very clever mouse, but I'm not sure I understand what exactly this experiment was supposed to do," Ben said slowly.

"I think I do." Ben turned to Lexi, whose voice was clearly some combination of dumbstruck and amazed. "Take a look at the footage."

Ben didn't quite get it at first. The footage showed Dan constructed the maze and it was clearly measuring the final moments of his doing so.

"Not the maze. The clock," Lexi said slowly.

Ben saw it, blinked and looked at his watch. It read 1:12 pm. But the counter on the maze showed him finishing construction at 12:15 and covering it with the tarp. Then Charlotte had brought in Angstrom at which point Dan had covered the maze. Ten minutes later Dan had walked down to see them.

"You weren't just making sure the lab was secure," Ben said slowly.

Dan nodded. "I finished building that maze an hour ago. This lab has been secure ever since then. As you saw, at no point in the last hour did I show the subject the maze."

"What just happened?" Lexi asked.

"I have spending the last week inputting coordinates that essentially allow the subject to not see time the same way we do," Dan said softly. "For this test subject, that meant that it was able to experience the future and the present simultaneously."

Lexi nodded. "Like on Quantum Leap," she said.

"Forgive me, I'm not familiar with that particular program," Ben said.

"The theory on the show was viewing a person's lifetime" Lexi saw a piece of string on the table. "Do you mind?" she asked Dan.

"It's how they did on the show," Charlotte said with a smile.

Lexi picked it up. "One end of the string is birth. The other is death," she told Ben. "The theory of the show was that if you scrunched the string together, " she did so, "would touch each other so that you could experience them all simultaneously. I think that's what Dan just did to Angstrom."

Dan nodded. "Obviously this is a far more primitive version, albeit with more efficiency then the one I was working on at Oxford." He walked towards the device. "Don't worry, it's no longer active."

Ben and Lexi moved slightly closer to it, though still keeping their distance. "You were working on experiments in time travel," Lexi said.

"I was, but I never came close to cracking it," Dan told them. "I've spent the last three months working on the same premise, but even with more advances in technology and funding, I still got nowhere. I was about to scrap the whole thing – and then I found out, I had the answer all along."

Ben had a sneaking suspicion what Dan was going to tell them even before he took it out. "The journal from a timeline that never happened," he said slowly. "The one that Eloise had but never told you who gave it to her."

Lexi had heard stories about this from her sister but she had not yet seen it. "Seriously, you couldn't have been working on the cure for cancer?"

"No, Lexi, that was what the island was there for," Ben reminded her. "Although I wouldn't recommend that to any of your terminal patients."

"Most people who have Stage 4 brain cancer probably wouldn't mind taking the chance of dying in a plane crash," she reminded him. "Some of them would prefer it over the alternative."

Ben couldn't exactly deny that.

"This is a little small for a particle accelerator," Lexi said.

"Believe me I'm not trying to transport a person through time," Dan said. "What I'm trying to do is closer to cause Angstrom to transport his mind so that he is experiencing his timeline in a nonlinear fashion."

"I'm gathering that's why you were so fond of Slaughterhouse Five," Ben said. "Same principle."

"But not exactly as entertaining as Quantum Leap," Charlotte said. "And just as difficult to control."

"That's partially the reason I wanted Lexi here and not Izzy," Dan said. "I know about her position on animal experimentation."

"I think given what you're talking about here Isabel would be more than willing to make an exception," Ben pointed out.

"I don't doubt that. It doesn't make the end result any less painful." Dan said.

Lexi couldn't exactly disagree. "Just how expensive has your specimen budget been leading up to this?"

"It's not the money that would bother M.I.T. so much as the publicity," Charlotte said.

Dan nodded. "The animal rights people were background noise in the 1990s. They've become their own fringe group now. Bad enough when they're being tested for vaccines…"

"But if they find out you're trying to use them to travel through time, they'll be calling you a mad scientist," Ben finished.

"Something which my MRIs aren't going to actually lend much credence to," Dan agreed. "At least when you're working towards a cure for smallpox or HIV, you can at least make the argument you're trying to save mankind. This?" He gestured towards the ray. "The wrong people find out about this; I'll be lucky if I only get fired."

Ben might have spent most of his life on an island in the specific but he knew enough about human nature to know that for much scientific work, the wrong kind of people could be a very large number. Someone found out about this…

"We may want to tell Meredith this is the point to stop," he said to Lexi.

He expected some argument from either Dan or Charlotte, maybe even both of them. He was a little surprised he didn't get any.

"This is walking a very fine line," Dan admitted. "I admit I followed this particular path mainly because I wanted to find out if there might be some parallel with my research to what we were doing."

"And the fact that you've succeeded isn't a reason to keep going?" Lexi asked.

Dan walked towards the maze, reached in and pulled out Angstrom. It took only a moment to see that the mouse wasn't moving. He looked at his watch. "Thirty-two minutes. I'll have to do an autopsy to be sure, but I know what I'll find. Angstrom died from a brain aneurysm; the inevitable consequence of the mind not being able to handle experience time in a non-linear fashion."

Charlotte nodded. "The previous two mice managed to do exactly the same thing Angstrom did. They also died within roughly the same amount of time."

"It can be very hard to get funding for scientific research as you are very aware of," Dan point out. "The lion's share of must be directed to something with a practical application."

"It's why the easiest grants at Seattle Grace involve pharmaceuticals," Lexi agreed.

"I have managed to prove that time travel is possible beyond the theoretical," Dan said. "I don't deny it's a groundbreaking revolution. The problem is, it's clearly not practical, at least not in this form. If the animal subjects die within minutes of being irradiated by this formula, then there's no way I could possibly be able to get it to the next phase. Who in their right mind would back a study where even if it works, the subjects will inevitably be killed?"

"Most clinical trials lead to the deaths of human subjects," Lexi pointed out.

"Meredith was trying to treat neurological trauma and cure disease," Charlotte said. "Richard Weber was barely willing to get on board with this idea to begin with. You want to go to him and say we know how to make mice travel through time? Just mentioning it will flush all the rebuilding you and your friends have spent the last year working on in less than a minute."

"You don't think M.I.T. would be more receptive?" Ben asked. "They knew the work you were doing when they hired you."

"It's a gray area," Dan acknowledged. "They might be willing to hear me out when they learn what I've accomplished. But even allowing for this, it's years, possibly decades of work before we get close to something practical. They might be willing to let me publish it in some journal if I spoke in theoretical terms. But I don't have enough of a reputation as a scientist to be taken seriously."

Everyone knew how hard it must have been for Dan to admit this point. "Did you know that when you invited us here?" Lexi asked. "That you were planning to shut down your work?"

"Henri Becquerel was researching fluorescence in the 1890s. In the midst of his work he happened to find out that certain aspects of an element were giving off readings that didn't seem to match with his studies." Dan said. " By accident Becquerel had discovered what we now call uranium and what would later be known as radioactivity. When he learned the possibility of his studies, and just how dangerous it was he later regretted that he'd ever reported his findings. That was decades before Bohr and Heisenberg realized the true potential of the atom."

Dan looked at them. "The problem is that once you let the genie out of the bottle, it can never be corked up. I believe with all the sincerity in the world that even if we could master time travel, changing the future is impossible. But that's one theory I don't ever want to test."

Ben looked at Dan with something close to admiration. "The Dharma Initiative never seemed to grasp the wisdom that there are some forces that are better left to their own devices."

"Is that why you decided to have them all killed?" Charlotte asked quietly.

"That decision came from Dan's parents, not me," Ben paused. "Though I won't pretend I didn't play my part in it. And I'll confess that may be why I agreed to help Meredith. Another attempt to atone for my sins."

As far as Lexi knew Ben had not even admitted to the Oceanics of his complicity in what he called the Purge.

"The consequences of the Initiative led to their own form of destruction that I was not responsible for," Ben said. "And while it is no justification for what we did, they were in the process of experiments that could have been at least as destructive as what they were doing here."

"What was the Orchid for?" Lexi asked. "Dan has some kind of record of it in that journal and you clearly know about it, but you haven't told me what they were trying to do."

Ben looked at them. "I didn't learn the truth until well after the Purge. What I can say is that they seem to have succeeded on a larger scale then what Daniel may have achieved here."

Dan didn't need a map drawn. "They were working on time travel."

Ben nodded. "If the Orientation film can be believed, gotten to a point. Controlling it, that's another matter."

"Too bad the videos are still on the island," Charlotte said.

"That may not be completely true," Ben said.

"Please don't tell me you've been lying again," Lexi said.

Ben shook his head. "I was going to hold off telling you this until we could all reassemble in Seattle but since we've got what amounts to a quorum and there's no question you'll share the details with your sister when you get back to Seattle, I don't see any harm in telling you now."

"What, you have another confidential informant on the mainland who has some deep dirt on the Initiative?"

Ben smiled in a way that none of the Oceanics or his people would have recognized. There wasn't any guile or craftiness to it. Rather it was…affectionate.

"You might say that" he said. "It's Annie."

CHICAGO HOPE

OBSERVATION ROOM

"So this is where the magic happens," Christina said looking down.

"How can it? I'm not down there," Jeffrey Geiger replied.

"Of course. I'm in your hospital. I realize I didn't sufficiently genuflect," she said. "I naïvely assumed you were controlling all the surgeons with the sole power of your mind."

"If only it were that easy," Geiger said. "I admire your restraint. Even the most truculent residents would have asked a couple of questions of me by now, and you haven't even posed one."

"I wanted to make sure we were alone for this one," Christina said slowly.

"Is my virtue at risk?"

"I didn't know you had any." They both smiled. "Honestly, my default attitude is ridiculously blunt. I think it's the best approach to life but it hasn't exactly made me popular."

"And you were afraid of offending me? You should know my skin is practically armor-plated."

"Meredith couldn't bring herself to just tell your friend what she wanted to ask over the phone because she has too much professional respect for him. I think it's safe to say I'm in a similar situation." Christina said. "And I have to tell you this question isn't particularly easy for me to ask. Because it involves," she sighed, "introspection, something I never really do."

"In that we are alike." Geiger admitted. "Though in my case, I don't look inward because of my demons. I find it hard to imagine you could have amassed a similar amount at such a young age."

"Demons, no. Regrets, I'm getting there."

Everyone in Seattle Grace – including Meredith – would have been stunned by the Christina Yang they were seeing. This Chrstina Yang was fidgeting, looking in every direction but at Jeffrey Geiger, inhaling and exhaling.

"Okay. No way forward but to say. When was the first time you knew you had gone too far?"

The moment she'd said it Christina knew it was the right question.

"Are we talking surgically or ethically?" Jeffrey asked.

"For now, let's say they're one and the same."

Geiger looked at her. "Honestly, I'm not sure I can even remember any more. That's not a great sign, is it?"

"How about you pick one that you very quickly knew was a mistake?" Christina asked.

Geiger thought for a moment. "I had been working on my artificial heart. One of my patients had just died. I went to her husband, and after I informed him of this, I convinced him to let me test on someone who I had pronounced dead no less than thirty minutes before."

Yang took a blink. "Not gonna lie, that's pretty bad and I have a pretty high bar for that kind of thing."

"You've peaked my curiosity." Geiger said.

"Finish your story, and I'll give you a quid pro quo," she agreed.

"It got reporter to the board of the hospital. Now they'd wanted to get me for a while and I told them I had gotten consent. Then I bragged to them that they couldn't get me." Geiger said. "It wasn't until the patient's husband confronted me that I realized what I'd done and I apologized to the board."

"When was this?" Yang asked.

"Fall of 1994."

"You were the second ranked heart surgeon in the country that year," Yang said. Geiger nodded. "And they were considering termination?"

"The vultures were circling," Geiger acknowledged.

"You must have been an even bigger prick then your reputation suggested," Christina couldn't help but say.

"Philip once clocked me. Said it once took me just thirty seconds to make a person I just met hate me." Geiger acknowledged. "I guess you could call it a gift."

"Here we see the difference between you and me," Christina said. "I'm not so much an asshole as cold. I have a hard exterior which covers an only slightly less hard interior. I have drive, ambition, and intellect. When I came to Seattle Grace, I was a royal pain in the ass to everyone but no one was going to call be on it because I had the potential to be a great surgeon, and that as you are painfully aware, will cover a lot of flaws."

"Not as many as you think," Geiger told her.

"Well, in that sense, I'm ahead of you. Not on the surgical part, obviously, but when it comes to driving people away, " Yang said. "I am very good at that. Indeed, I was recently informed that I'm far too good at it for my own good."

"Did Kate Austin tell you that?" Geiger asked.

Christina shook her head. "I think that the Y chromosome may be the only thing that has allowed her to hold her tongue this long." She paused. "Truthfully, under other circumstances I shouldn't have been at Seattle Grace for her to lecture me on it."

Geiger raised an eyebrow. "They considered kicking you out during your residency? Even I had enough self-preservation to know that you wait until after you become an attending to get an ego worthy of that."

"Eject me from the program? No." Christina paused. "But there are things that I did that should have been enough to get me thrown out in most hospitals."

"I've heard stories," Geiger said. "I try to dismiss most of them because I know seven or eight years ago they were saying them about Chicago Hope but there was a grain of truth to those rumors. So in this case…"

"I'm not going to confirm anything about the attendings at the hospital," Christina said. "Residents and interns, go ahead and ask."

Geiger paused. "Two years ago, you had an Erica Hahn as your chief of cardiac surgery."

Christina stiffened. She had a feeling about what was coming. "What did she tell you?"

"Last year, she came here because a patient of hers who had been on the UNOS list for nearly two years had reached a point that he was nearly about to die. " Geiger said. "One of the surgeons who mentored her, Dr. Alberghetti, had gotten a donor heart and Hahn came here to pick it up herself. Hahn had a relationship with this patient, but she still didn't have to do that, so while we're waiting for the organs to be harvested, Francesca asks her why she's going to such care. She says: 'Given what happened the last time we were this close, I don't want a fucking thing to go wrong.'"

"Then she tells Francesca in a coldly angry tone that her patient was supposed to get a heart three years ago but it ended up going in the chest of another patient who was seventeen seconds behind hers on the list. She knows that because she had to perform the surgery herself and was still in town when that same patient coded less forty-eight hours later."

Christina knew this story. "How did the story end?"

"You know perfectly well how it ended. It was at your hospital. Hahn didn't mentioned any names, but she mentioned that she had been working there and was relatively happy until she learned that the only reason her patient had to wait another year for a heart was because a resident had cut the L-Vat on the patient who ended up getting it." Geiger said slowly. "Now I'm not really good on first impressions, but you don't strike me as the kind of person who'd do that. However, I find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe you didn't at least know the resident who did it."

Christina wasn't sure what to do. "Did Hahn tell you who the resident was?"

"No. She didn't go that far. But when she learned about this and Weber made it clear that no action was going to be taken, she had no choice to resign." Geiger paused. "I'll confess, if I had been in her shoes, I would have been more inclined to raise hell."

"I didn't know why she left," Christina said. "But what you told me tracks."

"You know the resident. I'm not asking you to break the code. Now this hospital has had its share of ethically questionable incident during my tenure, while I was absent and when I returned. But I'd like to believe that if something like this happened, at the very least the resident in question would have been thrown out of the hospital when this came to light."

"She should have been," Christina paused. "All of us should have. There is no good reason this happened, certainly none that is justifiable. Everyone in the hospital cared very much for Denny. But that didn't make him special and it certainly didn't qualify to violate UNOS laws in order to save his life. "

"So you know what was happening," Geiger said.

"The resident who did was close to Denny. It was apparent to everybody with eyes and ears that their relationship was inappropriate." Christina said. "Someone should have stepped in. Hell, I was barely paying attention and I knew enough to know this was a mistake. That's my part in what happened."

"Is that the point where you went too far?"

Christina gave a mirthless laugh. "I didn't think I could give a lecture on ethics even if I'd wanted to. I'd been at Seattle Grace less than six months and if anything, I was more ethically compromised than that resident was. As far as I was concerned, anything she did was fine with me as long as I got to assist when the transplant happened. Denny was a potential procedure to me. What was I going to say about something who actually gave a damn about him?"

Geiger was silent for a long moment. "The man I told you about, the man who held the OR hostage and demanded we transplant his heart into his brother?" Christina nodded. "One of my colleagues managed to convince him that the man in the OR deserved to live more. The brother took this into consideration, told us that he had a donor card in his pocket, and put the gun to his head before any of us could stop him."

Christina was floored.

"Four years later, when I officially took over control of Chicago Hope, I fired five doctors as my first act." Geiger paused again. "One of them was the doctor who'd probably saved my life. What does that say about the kind of doctor I am? The kind of man I am?"

Christina thought for a moment. "You know who Jack Shephard is?"

"Do you assume I live under a rock?" Geiger asked.

Christina gave a sheepish grin. "You remember what it's like to be a resident? I knew his reputation as a surgeon. I didn't learn about the crash until the media frenzy on the first anniversary."

"I know he's an attending at your hospital," Geiger said. "How does he relate to this?"

"About the end of his first year, myself and four other residents get called into a meeting by Weber. Except when we get there, who should we meet but Jack Shephard. He spend the next thirty minutes listing, in great detail, every single sin we have committed as doctors the first two years of our residency, many of which he only knows by gossip. He concludes his lecture by reminding us of what happened to Denny and tells us that if he had been in charge, all five of us would have been shown the door after that happened, and some of us would be in prison." Christina said. "He told us we were not merely horrible doctors, but little better than protoplasm. "

"Those were his exact words?" Geiger said with a raised eyebrow.

"Well the protoplasm thing may be an exaggeration but that was pretty much implied," Christina told him. "Then he tells us that he has spoken with Weber, and he is taking over our instruction. He tells us as far as he's concerned, we are all at day one of our residency and we will not make a move back to an OR until he sees fit to say so. He says he is the final authority until we 'un-learn' all of the flaws we clearly have been taught in the last two years and until we can look at patients as if they are more than procedures, we have no business touching a scalpel. I took this very hard. Of the five of us who were called in, I resisted the longest."

"When did you give in?"

Christina sighed. "Less than six weeks ago. I have a hard head."

"Speaking as someone with an equally hard one, I sympathize." Geiger paused. "He must be tired of being asked what it was like."

"I think he may have transferred to Seattle Grace so he wouldn't be. We were willing to give him the space he needed and eventually he opened up." Christina help up her hand. "Again, not going to share so don't ask."

"You do know just by detailing his kind of discipline you've made him sound like the kind of doctor I'd want to poach."

"I'll save you the trouble. He wouldn't be interested. A, he has enough money left over from the settlement that there's no salary you could offer that would interest him, and B, he's made it very clear there's nothing you could offer him when it comes to advancement as he's the only attending at the hospital who works fewer hours than he has to and has no interest in upward mobility."

Geiger considered this. "Did Austin tell you why I took a leave of absence from here in '95?"

Christina considered her words. "She told me that you took over guardianship of the daughter of lead counsel for the hospital."

"I didn't know Kate could be tactful about what happened," Geiger said.

"She's not. I am. Believe me, it's not a picnic for me either." Christina confessed. "Actually she said she wanted to pass a message on to you."

"How many four-letter words does it contain?" Geiger asked in jest.

She shook her head. "She said that she when you left she couldn't understand why anyone would sacrifice their job for their child. She didn't realize until fairly recently that it was because she had never been willing to do the same."

Jeffrey Geiger clearly was a little surprised to hear this. "Alicia wasn't Allan's daughter either," he said slowly. "When she was born she had a hole in a heart. She's had to have several surgeries ever since to correct it. Two weeks after Allan made it clear, I asked him if he could do this. I never forgot what he told me. 'It's the easiest thing I ever did.'"

Christina couldn't help but think of Bailey – and herself. "You know who Jack's father was?" she asked instead.

Geiger nodded.

"I don't think he'd mind if I told you that he and Christian had a difficult relationship. Both men were deeply flawed and neither could express their feelings well – or at all, really." Christina said. "Jack thought Christian died with him hating him. It took a long time for him to realize his father did love him; he just couldn't figure out how to show it."

Christina hesitated. "Your daughter, do you love her?"

Jeffrey nodded with a smile.

"Does she know that you love her?"

"I do everything in my power to prove it every day," Geiger said.

Christina paused. "I couldn't do what you did. I couldn't be the greatest surgeon in the world and walk away from it for anybody. The fact that you could, I don't what that says about the kind of the doctor you are, but it speaks volumes to the kind of man you are."

"That is a very noble and generous thing to say," Geiger said.

"Well, don't take it that way. As long as you're being busy playing Mr. Mom, it means I'll have no problem walking over you to become Number One myself," Christina said deadpan.

Both of them laughed at that.

"Do you consider that a virtue, Christina Yang?" Jeffrey asked. "That you don't have that in you."

"Up until fairly recently I wouldn't have even considered that a real question." Christina admitted. "However recent events have led me to believe that the single-minded pursuit of excellence at the expense of all personal relationships might not be all it's cracked up to be."

"And that's why you came to seek my guidance." Geiger was more serious now.

"I've been told by reliable sources that if there were a ranking among people for their ability to isolate others, I'd be very high on the list," Christina said seriously. "And considering that the only thing that shakes you from that kind of thing seems to be a cataclysmic event, I'm hoping there's a way that I can avoid, you know, surpassing you on that particular title."

"I've managed to gain some empathy the last few years," Geiger hedged.

"From what I saw with Meredith, it's not as far behind you as you'd think," Christina held up a hand. "I'm not in a position to throw stones in this regard but I would like to know what I can do before I move into a similar glass house."

Geiger paused. "You said you weren't involved with Duquette's L-Vat being cut. You now have to share your own sin."

"I have to pick just one?" Christina paused.

"The more time you ponder, the more worried I get."

"I'm trying to pick the one that gets the least people in trouble," she admitted.

"That's not discouraging at all," Geiger scoffed.

"I had a relationship with my attending," Yang said. "That's not the worst gossip at our hospital; compared to some of the other's its actually healthy. But I spent so much time doubting every aspect of it that I left him at the altar – and he resigned from the hospital."

Geiger considered this. "How old were you when that happened?"

"Twenty-six," Yang said.

"Normally people just get so pissed with me they resign. I don't have to bother sleeping with them to drive them away."

"Is this a victory for feminism or have I set it back a decade?"

"Well, even five years you would have had to resign, so I guess it's progress," Geiger said. "What does Kate think about it?"

"She's never told me," Christina said. "But I can't imagine any part of it makes her happy. It pissed off pretty much every other resident at the hospital and a few attendings."

"I was going to argue to make personal connections, but this is not what I had in mind," Geiger said.

"If it makes you feel any better, I've basically been a mess ever since," she pointed out. "In fact, it's pretty clear I've been getting worse ever since he left the hospital."

"When was that?"

"Close to three years ago."

"Have you tried to move on?"

"Once. It didn't go well. This time it was him, not me." Christina hesitated. "I spent nearly as much time pushing away anyone who could be considered a friend since then. I've spent the last three months doing triage."

"This little trip with Grey,; that part of it?"

Christina nodded. "Some women go on pub crawls; we visit hospitals." She paused. "Shephard thought talking to you would be…instructive."

"On what not to do?" Geiger sounded like he was joking.

"On the cost of being the best." Christina wasn't going to start lying now. "Something he has a fair amount of experience at."

"There's always a price. The question is whether it's worth paying."

"Is it?"

Geiger paused for a long time. "What do you think?"

"Six months ago, I would have said absolutely." Christina looked at the OR. "Today, I'm not sure any more."

"It took one of my closest friends dying on my table for me to even think the question. I spent nearly four years away from the OR before I was ready to come back. The fact that you're at least pondering the question nearly fifteen years before I did, well, that's progress if nothing else."

"Are you going to answer my question or not?"

Geiger smiled sadly. "I'll tell you when I figure it out."

"You know I thought the greatest cardiac surgeon in the country might be able to give an answer better than a Magic 8-Ball."

"I can teach any lesson in cardiac surgery. I can tell you every aspect of how the human heart works." Geiger said. "I can tell you what it's like to be the best surgeon in the world. And I can also tell you that being Alicia's father and Aaron's friend has brought me more contentment than any of that."

"It's true what they say about it being lonely at the top," he finished. "So you've got to be sure that there are at least some people who are worth coming down to spend time with."

Christina sighed.

"Too schmaltzy?"

"No, it's a perfect answer." Christina shook her head. "It's just not the one I was hoping for."

"Why not?"

"Quadruple coronary bypass, piggyback surgeries, heart lung transplants," Christina said. "They're cakewalks to the kind of scut work I'm going to need to do the next couple of years. And it's not like I was good at it to begin with."

She sighed. "I would have preferred if you'd stayed vague."

"Then you're welcome to get a second opinion," Geiger smiled.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

It made sense for Sun to start with Izzie and Alex as they know the most about the Losties situation. Best to the start with the biggest wound both dealt with. The storyline involving Derek Shepherd took place in Season 5 of Grey's Anatomy and involved the first Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice crossover. The story still happened in this world; the only difference is that Addison never left Seattle Grace to go to LA in the first place.

There is going to be a discussion with George down the road, probably in the next chapter or two.

The experiment is essentially the same one Dan did in The Constant, of course and I figured the parallel from Quantum Leap was the right one to use. The decision to walk away from the experiment may come as a shock to fans of the show – until you remember what happened to both Dan and Teresa in the original timeline as a result of his continued his experiments. Dan has gotten wiser.

The story of Becquerel is fundamentally accurate as well as his regrets about the discovery.

I wanted the Jeffrey Geiger/Christina Yang heart to heart (sorry) as soon as I decided to put Chicago Hope in the story. The two surgeons were on parallel tracks.

For those of you who don't know, Geiger's competency was called into question in the Season 1 finale, and the storyline I gave had the same result on the show. The surgeon in that case was Dennis Hancock played by Vondie Curtis-Hall and everything Geiger says about him happened on the show. (It's never been clear whether Curtis-Hall resigned or was fired after Season 5.)

If you are a fan of Grey's you know that Erica Hahn's story played out in Season 5 of the show and was the impetus for Hahn leaving. (We still don't know why Brooke Smith chose to leave early in Season 5.) I decided to let her patient finally live, which was never made clear after her abrupt departure. The circumstances basically played out as the Denny storyline did at the end of Season 2.

Alan Birch (Peter MacNicol) adopted Alicia in Season 1. The exchange between Geiger and Alan took place in the following episode. Alan subsequently made Geiger Alicia's godfather and he adopted her after Alan died on the table. (I wasn't going to bring up Christina's pregnancy here.) I think Jeffrey is being honest here, which isn't what Christina necessarily wants to hear (but needs too).

Read and Review!