I Lived

Cristina turned abruptly around, "shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Then she calmed down, "you can't keep screaming because we know okay, something hurts, we got it!"

Arizona started to cry. The pain in her whole body was overwhelming. All of it. Every square inch of her hurt more than life itself, but it was mainly focussed in on her leg. As the others walked away from her to find Derek, she pulled herself up and came face to face with the pilot's lifeless body. She shifted her legs round ninety degrees so she could lean her back against the wing of the plane. Then she got a good look of the pilot. He was laying with his bloodied head on the controls. His eyes closed and his skin a deathly shade of grey. Clearly the blood was draining out of his body from somewhere. She'd seen a lot of dead bodies in her life, a lot of tiny coffins. But she couldn't look at him just laying there for very long without feeling grim.

The bone in one of her legs was sticking up through the skin, that added to the grim feeling. There was so much blood, so much dirt in the wound, leaves in her hair, and she was thinking about how Callie would be able to fix this if she was here. She hated how funny that was.

Mark held up Meredith as the three of them walked deeper into the forest. He couldn't exactly remember where he'd woken up, or which direction Lexie had walked off in, but he knew he should've told her to stay.

The further they got, the more Meredith thought Derek was probably dead. Cristina was barely holding it together as it was, but she knew that if she broke, Meredith would go down along with her. Mark stumbled on with them trying to recognise the ground they walked on, but there was nothing flickering in his mind. Meredith started to cry, so Cristina took her hand to steady her.

Lexie managed to get Derek's hand tied enough that he could stand and walk. The bleeding was slowing gradually the longer he clamped down on a t-shirt that'd been lying on the ground. He was trying not to think about sepsis. Lexie's good arm was around his shoulder but really he was the one keeping them upright. Her ribs were aching under the weight, she knew because she kept coughing like her breath didn't want to stay in her chest. She felt like she was rattling.

She pictured Mark's face to conjure it into being, her own shock was stopping her from remembering where she'd left him too, so they were aimlessly wandering. Derek was shouting for Meredith every few steps. So when he looked up and saw her standing twenty feet away, he shouted a little louder. "Meredith!"

Meredith looked up, then around in a circle, "I can hear him, Derek!" Mark walked her a little further. "Derek!"

Lexie looked up at Meredith's voice and they all finally saw each other. Lexie pointed through the trees and Derek nodded, "there."

Derek staggered as best he could, through to a mini clearing where Meredith, Mark and Cristina were standing. "I heard your voice," he said. As they got closer, he blinked a few too many times, his head started to feel light. Cristina grabbed a branch from the ground and handed to her to keep her upright as Mark walked forward towards Lexie.

He could see the fear amounting in her eyes, and the protective part of him worked on overdrive to stop him from passing out. He put both his hands on her shoulders and just looked at her for a moment until she calmed down. Then he said, "how's the arm?"

She tried stretching it out but she still couldn't move it much, "the same. I'm going to need a sling or I'm not going to be any use." She looked over at Derek, "Derek's hand, it's not good. I've wrapped it up but he's gonna bleed out unless we do something."

They walked over to where Derek and Meredith were sitting on the ground, "we need to look for supplies. I'm going to go look through the bags." Cristina said, heading back over to the front of the plane.

A few of the bags were there in a big pile, just their overnight essentials, Derek's shirts and Mark's underwear and Lexie's wash bag. After a rapid search, Cristina found her other shoe and slipped it on. "I found my shoe!"

Arizona yelled back, "hey! What's going on?!"

"Derek's arm is bleeding, we gotta fix it." Cristina shouted back before dragging one of the suitcases back to where Derek was lying.

"My leg's bleeding" Arizona said in reply, but she was gone.

Back on the ground, Lexie was watching Meredith pour a bottle of contact solution over Derek's arm. She'd removed the t-shirt and tied it round his bicep as a tourniquet. Lexie should've done that, but she hadn't been thinking clearly.

"I've got a safety pin," Cristina said, her hand still rummaging through the suitcase.

"Bring it over," Derek replied. "Loosen the tourniquet, we need to get the wound closed."

"But you'll bleed to death," Meredith said.

"I can't lose my hand."

"Okay, okay."

The result of Meredith pushing a safety pin through Derek's arm was his muffled screaming into a shirt stuff into his mouth. Then they grabbed whatever medical supplies they could from the first aid kit and bandaged the wound again the best they could. Derek passed out from the pain. There was basic supplies for band aids and field injuries, but no drugs. Nothing for pain. That was something they were all going to have to bear.

They left Derek where he was, covering him with a jacket. Lexie sat back in Mark's lap as he made a sling for his arm. His chest was still tight, only getting tighter by the minute. His breaths were shallow but he was trying to ignore it. The others were his priority - Lexie was his priority. "I love you," he whispered into her hair as his eyes began to close, his weakness overtaking him as he sunk to the ground.