Playing through movies and episodes of TV in her mind had been Lexie's method for getting through boring assemblies—If she couldn't get away with doing homework in her lap. It was time management!—and to put herself to sleep at night.

People heard eidetic, and thought she didn't have to focus to retain things, but she wasn't a scanner. Every page of every book she'd ever skimmed didn't live in her head. Images took less effort to recall than words, and with movies she couldn't go frame-by-frame, unless she put in effort. Doing so had prepared her for watching surgeries. The gist of the dialogue stuck, but with conversations and lectures she was just a good student with a good memory. She'd never been much of a re-reader—she remembered enough to feel cheated—but there were VHS tapes she'd watched daily for months as a kid. The Never-Ending Story, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Clue. They replaced the scenes from Goonies and Return to Oz that'd given her nightmares.

(One of the best moments she'd had with Derek had been when she'd admitted to those and had Mark and Meredith teasing her in stereo. He'd whistled, too low for them to hear and given her the best exasperated eyeroll she'd ever seen. Then, under his breath, almost as low as the whistle he'd begun to chant, "duh-nuh duh-nuh duh-nuh,"

Mark's head had jerked to him with a scowl.

"You're afraid of Jaws?" Meredith had crowed.

Derek had winked at Lexie again. "Mer? NIMH."

Her sister had shuddered. "I was in no way prepared for that! Mom didn't read the summary, probably thought it was educational or something, and when I came to her crying over the two-hour babysitter she'd rented, she called it PETA propaganda.")

In the weeks after the shooting, Lexie had started to aware of Meredith's footsteps squeaking on the stairs before her own crying, and her face would burn at the knowledge that she'd woken the house with her nightmares. She hadn't been the only one who'd done it, but she hadn't been shot; she hadn't lost a friend. She'd saved her ungrateful fuckbuddy's life and been dumped for it. One of those nights, she'd insisted that Meredith should be with Derek. Instead of the actual words of her reply, she'd just heard "home" and "sister." The rest had been replaced by a muffled echo. "Alex. Will you take my sister home?"

She'd stopped going upstairs at night. She'd sat on the floor of the living-room watching every video in the house. Soon enough, Meredith had started flopping on the couch behind her, sometimes falling asleep—Would that have been familiar if they'd grown up together?—Once Derek had been discharged, he'd wound up there a couple of times, but it hadn't been long before he'd started appearing downstairs with his keys jingling. He'd always asked if she wanted to ride. She'd always said no, for Meredith's sake.

She'd wanted to say yes. She wished she had, to have one more memory of adventure and adrenaline she'd chosen to feel.

"Wish in one hand, spit in the other…" Mom used to say. She couldn't remember her ever finishing the rhyme (and see which one fills up first.) She must have, once, at least; Lexie had always been able to complete it in her head. She'd been fourteen, on one of their last visits to her mother's childhood home in Wisconsin when Grammy heard Mom say it and burst out in a cackle.

"Mo-om!" Mom had objected, in a tone that Lexie had just been starting to use herself.

"Hush, Susie. Alexandra's going be a doctor, for the love! Besides, it takes much longer to fill a hand with spit. The saying, Alexandra, is: wishin one hand, and shit in the other."

"Oh!" The adult feeling Lexie had from Grammy using her full name, while calling Mom "Susie" disappeared, and she'd felt her cheeks going pink. Only a week earlier that she'd succeeded in convincing her family to see Patch Adams on the day after Christmas. When Peter Coyote's character had yelled "you don't help SHIT!" at Patch, she'd tried to imagine having patients shout at her like that. What would she even do? She couldn't always pin Molly when they fought over the remote. Then, her twelve-year-old sister had leaned over to Mom and said—she couldn't have been trying to whisper, not with how loud she was—"Mom, what's shit?"

(In the car, she'd been unabashed, "I'd heard it. I just wasn't sure. We can't all recite the dictionary!")

Lexie had left the theater feeling small and young. That feeling came back in Grammy's living room. She'd known from the adults' expressions that Grammy wasn't all that concerned about Lexie going into the world not knowing an idiom. She'd had a sudden glimpse of her life in college. Everything would be like sitting at a lunch table with her classmates. Her schedule had basically skipped her up again; she'd tested out of so many freshman, and even sophomore, classes. So far, she'd been listening to her mother's admonitions about what she was old enough for, and developed a sense for when to tune them out. That January, she'd gone back determined to listen. To absorb. She'd asked questions, no longer caring if it made her sound childish. She'd be going away for college, far away. An Ivy League degree mattered a lot when it came to getting grants for medical school—and she'd need that to justify not going to UW, with a faculty discount, and a top-tier medical school.

Soon, she'd learned that seeming naive had its benefits, the kind that came when you stepped out of the shadows and showed that you were earnest and not "a snobby little show-off like we all thought." (Later, she'd had that preyed upon, and determined that she'd rather show off and intimidate than placate people.)

She'd been prey for Gary Clark. She'd gone to the psych ward, and he'd still hunted her as she lay alone in the attic darkness. Every few nights, she'd give up to watch Ellis Grey's surgical videos, or the worn copy of Labyrinth shelved in the bizarre mix of genres that was Meredith's movie collection—"No bothered taking their tapes," she'd justified, but there were rom-coms with stickers from Boston and Hanover video stores—Over time, April became the one curled up in the living room chair. Jackson would wander in and out of the kitchen. Eventually, Lexie slept through most nights in a week, and then in a month. Whenever she did get up and pull a tape from the bookshelf, she'd spend the first minutes listening for creaks on the stairs.

The images on the television had ever overwritten the scenes that had been playing out in her dreams. They had made her feel less alone with them.

Now, she could burrow into her mind to find a catalog of movies to take her out of reality. A lot of them were either mindless, or Classic Cinema™, owing to the long-distance 'film club" she and her mom had founded when she started college. Sometimes Molly or Dad would pick up a receiver and join in, if they'd wandered in while Mom was watching the movie, or gone with her to the theater, but it was mostly a two-person organization. Lexie could easily identify complex shots, but often she'd watch the movie again after Mom put the story in context she hadn't had, or unpacked a character she hadn't understood. No matter how busy Lexie was, Mom would say, "if you don't have three hours to watch a movie and talk to me every two weeks, you're working too hard."

Sometimes, revisiting those films, she'd hear her mother's voice repeating a line she'd particularly loved and gone through that moment over and over just to have that echo.

Whenever someone came into her room, she had to surface from her mental screening room, to face the flashes of falling and fire. Those were the times when she heard Mark calling for her. She'd rather have been back in the attic with Gary Clark whispering her name.

The attic that she might never see again.

"Don't worry," Meredith said, midway through catching her up on the summer—Would she always feel this out of step with the seasons having missed one? —"We got everything, and Derek has no idea what's in that copy of Persuasion. It's funny, I used to keep my vibrator in a hollowed out copy of Gray's Anatomy."

Lexie tried to smile. Her facial muscles weren't affected, a spinal injury that high up wasn't survivable. Sometimes, she'd spend time—everything was time, she never knew how much of it passed—moving them. Proving it to herself. Practicing expressions she could sell to the nurses.

Her sister wasn't as easy. She didn't call her out this time. Probably knowing Lexie wasn't going to be really amused by a vibrator joke. Maybe not. Maybe she just wanted Lexie to be normal. She'd had weeks, months to adjust to the chasm Lexie kept falling into.

Mark was gone.

Not taken. Not someone else's. Gone.

She'd thought having to watch him create a family without her had been the worst position to be in. She'd been wrong.

"We weren't together-together!" she insisted."I shouldn't…. It shouldn't be…. We're not together—weren't."

Meredith scoffed at her around her forkful of pasta. "Since when does that matter? You loved him, and…. I probably never told you this, because I barely told you anything then, but the night of the candle house, Derek left to break up with Plant. And…well, I get her whole crazy slasher moment, because imagine the dreamy doctor ringing your doorbell in the middle of the night to dump you—"

"Probably better than having him do it in the ICU."

Meredith shrugged. "Julia wasn't in the bed…. Anyway, for a while after that night, I had nightmares about Derek getting into an accident while I watched the wind blow out those candles. So, I don't actually know what you're going through here, but I know the idea of it was the worst thing I could imagine."

Lexie didn't know what to say to that. She was glad she'd never taken Derek up on those midnight rides.

"Rose is a better slasher name than Julia," she said.

Meredith started to reply, and then stuck another bite into her mouth, swallowing her half-smile.

Mark had loved how little Meredith cared for propriety. If she'd been around, or Cristina, she wouldn't have censored herself.

"Her weapon of choice would be massive planting shears," Lexie added.

Her sister laughed. "Slasher Julia is green from envy, not chlorophyll like the Plant Slasher. And there's a radioactive mark on her boob where her nemesis hit her with a fireball."

If that softball had been imbued with her feelings that day, it would've burned, and Lexie wouldn't have been able to lie to herself for another seven months.

Unfortunately, it'd taken until now for fire to follow her out of her dreams. It tore up her back, and she could smell the jet fuel; the flames had reached her—"Dr. Grey? Can you lie still for me?"—the metal pinned her to the ground—"I'm going to give you something to help with the pain, all right?"— Dirt was clogging her nose, was going to collect in her lungs—"What the hell's happening? Lexie, hey, hey, Lexie, we've got you, sweetheart."

Pain had her, filled her, she was made of it, and it was pulling her apart at the same time. It was all she could see, feel, be—and then Meredith's face came into focus above her. One of her hands was holding hers, the other was cool against her cheek. Her own screams were echoing in her ears. She must've been panicking patients all along the floor. The intern behind Meredith was definitely wild-eyed.

"Don't worry about any of that." Either the words slipped out, or Meredith could read her better than she realized. That's Brooks, that's just her face. Right, Brooks?"

"Right, boss," the intern said.

Meredith rolled her eyes, mouthing, "kiss-ass." Lexie wondered if she knew how formidable she was, or that she carried herself differently in navy scrubs.

"Are you kidding?" Alex asked, dragging the recliner to the foot of the bed so she could see him at the acute angle her bed was set at.

The PT team had put her on the tilt table that day, a milestone she used to prepare her own patients for, as though she'd understood what they'd go through. Derek made his students experience being moved via mechanical lift, and be strapped onto the table, but he couldn't keep them in bed for weeks first. She'd known exactly what was happening and why: improved circulation, basic bladder and bowel function; increased chance of further recovery. That had done nothing to mitigate the fear that had washed over her at being hoisted into the air while unable to feel the pull on her legs. Humiliatingly, the table had barely been upright before her blood pressure had spiked, and she'd passed out.

"Mer thinks this group is just soft or something." Alex continued. "She doesn't want to be her mom, or their mom, but to keep them from doing the dumb shit we did, one of us has to keep them in line. Who else is it going to be, Kepner? Gunther? That was a joke."

"Not you?"

"Oh, for sure," he said, like she'd made a statement. "That's proof of their cluelessness: what were they going to get from sleeping with me? A month of being hurled on by kids? Win Mer over…well, you're getting hurled on by grown-ups, but, I mean, they know she doesn't have time for their bullshit. Kind of hilarious. We were the ultimate bullshit interns."

"Hey, cabal."

"L-VAD."

"Same thing: crazy blonde chick wielding a blade."

"Nah, that's your sister."

Smiling was like having someone touch the outside of her hand. She knew it was happening, but that was all. She couldn't feel anything below that. Soon, they'd go over every inch of her body and determine exactly where she was actually numb. Where on her body. The American Spinal Injury Assessment didn't score reacting to something funny, but not feeling amusement.

"She's not though. Crazy."

"Maybe that's it."

"What?"

"We were all shit scared of Bailey. More than any attending. Don't think we realized it 'til she went on maternity leave, but we were totally lost without her. She was reliable. Stable. For these guys, Mer was the one staying. She's not their resident, so maybe I'm totally off—"

"Mer was going back to Boston."

"Nah." Alex waved the suggestion off with his whole body. She wasn't sure she'd noticed the way he moved in the past, or that he never stopped. "Not by July. She didn't tell them to buzz off right away, but unless you and Yang had both woken up and put her in the car…." He held his hands up, balancing scales.

"What…What about Mark?"

"Shepherd had been offered a dream job. What would Sloan have done?"

"Told him to go. Called him a lucky son-of-a-bitch, except not, because he loves Mrs. Shepherd."

"Exactly. And…." Alex scratched the back of his head. "He was…He was conscious while they were deciding, so…seemed like less of a factor. Doesn't mean he wasn't a consideration, but they were already staying by the time he went downhill."

"What about you? What are you doing here? Other than interns?"

"Who've you been talking to?"

"Techs have conversations during the rotation rotation." Another thing she'd never appreciated; no matter how many nasty bedsores you'd seen, being repositioned made her feel like furniture. Furniture wasn't grateful.

"Wanna name names?"

"Really, Really Old Guy."

"He wasn't conscious." Alex reached back, plucking the card out of the flower arrangement behind him.

"Those are all from Derek's sisters."

"Ah," he said, withdrawing like he'd put his hand in poison ivy. "That's…I don't know what that is."

"It's weird. But so was finding out you lived in my dad's first wife's house."

"Never thought of it that way."

She had. It had been in the background of the pictures in the boxes in the basement. The ones she never asked about, with the lady in the doctor's coat who she'd secretly admired. She'd wondered where the house was, and if she'd passed it every day on the way to school. (No. But it hadn't been far.) A couple of the photos had a girl who she'd known must be her big sister. Who would've stood up for her with the kids who didn't like having a seven-year-old in their fourth grade class. As she got older, she told herself the idea was make-believe, until Dad called with "something…uh…something important I need to…to… fill you in on."

"What are you doing here, Alex?"

"Told you, I've got an hour between—"

"So, go screw an intern. I mean…." Lexie brought a hand to her face. She almost forgot she could. As though she had the same understanding of "tetraplegia" as the average pre-med student—seeing Christopher Reeves on talk shows. "You weren't sitting by my bedside a couple years ago."

"We weren't friends, then."

"Oh, thanks."

"Level with me, here. We were both trying to replace someone."

"It's no secret that Robbins iced you out. None of this is your fault, Alex, and whatever I might've wanted three years ago, you're not him. You ditched me then because of trauma. I get it. I don't need you to make it up to me. I'm not a project."

He pulled his eyebrows up and his chin jutted out slightly. She started at the ceiling—She hadn't counted the tiles; she couldn't stay present for something so useless—and waited for exasperation, for a comparison to Meredith—She doubted it was coincidence that he was here on a night she or Derek weren't—for him to laugh like Mark would've.

"Nah. That's the house."

"What?"

"My project. I'm gonna ask Mer if I can buy the house. It'll take some work, but what do I have to do besides work and, like you said, screw interns? It was fun when I was leaving, now it's a whole HR thing." He grabbed the incentive spirometer off of her bedside table. "C'mon, show me what you can do with this. With the condition that attic was in, you should be glad they're keeping an eye on your lungs."

Meredith punched the pillow in her lap like it was Alex's face. "I know he was busy being an orphan-saving drunkard, but did he miss that we had both houses inspected before the baby came home?"

"Safe and marketable are different," Derek pointed out from the chair beside Lexie's bed. It was weird. Lexie had lived with them for years, but only Mer sometimes ventured up to her room. She'd sat on the foot of their bed talking, or lay next to Mer watching movies, or hanging out while her liver regrew, but mostly they overlapped in halls, common areas, and carpool. "You just don't like knowing Murphy has been there."

"I wanted her on peds to learn to deal with kids, not accidentally make one!"

Derek winced. Was he thinking of Mark, or just annoyed at the mention of Alex's sex life?

"Who notices crown molding when they're just there to get it on?"

"I told you you had nice flooring."

"Did you?"

Lexie had spent months in a coma, and Mer zoned out sometimes, but this was the first time she'd seen Derek's mind fling up a 404 Error.

"You…You're bullshitting me."

"About what?"

Lexie had been hit by the lasers in Derek's narrowed eyes, had had the truth melt out of her, from the time she was an intern risking being put on SCUT, to a…three months ago. He'd asked where the leftover pizza went, she'd known Meredith would kill her for selling her out—didn't matter. She'd experienced no exposure-based immunity.

Meredith didn't squirm.

"The…The thing I said."

"I wasn't super focused on your words, bud."

That, Lexie was pretty sure, was a lie.

"You can't have forgotten…. You just want me to retell it in front of Lexie."

"I don't know what you mean, Derek. Parts of that night are just…." She gestured next to her head. "In the ether."

It was a weird moment to realize her sister was officially an attending—not even a fellow like Alex. All grown up as a doctor, but also so much more confident as a person than Lexie. Could she have gotten there in a ye…nine months from now? If she'd been in her sister's place, and lying, she'd have gotten shrill and giggly, all I swear, I swear! Being honest, she might've said something too cute, like, blame it on the Cuervo. Meredith showed no defensiveness. Nothing overly coy.

And she has him by the smalls. Lexie almost wrinkled her nose at the Mark in her head.

A stare-off between the couple ended in Derek's sigh. "Okay, okay. I've lived the past five years believing this exists in your head. If I'm putting it there now…. You made it dirty."

"Me? Make something dirty?"

"You? Being a brat? Uh…after…. When we fell off the couch…the, er, the second time. You were convinced it was your fault. You got kind of frantic, saying you gave up on the freaking furniture, dumping pillows and cushions onto the floor. I told you I liked the floor just fine, and…I caught you with a throw and pulled you down—I was going for suave."

"You usually were."

She didn't say he failed, Lexie noted.

"You gave me this look, like I was speaking in tongues, and I…for some absurd reason, I felt like I had to keep talking. I said, 'you really can't go wrong with hard wood.'"

Meredith's initial cackle of delight dissolved into giggles.

Lexie knew it was funny, and that she loved seeing her sister like that. She smiled. That was all.

"That's exactly what happened, then." Derek said, ruefully. "Insisting that I was talking about flooring only made it worse…made you worse. For the rest of the night it was, 'oh, yeah, hard wood's so much better,' and 'imagine doing this with soft wood.'"

Meredith lit up, like he'd given her some gift that would seem unbelievably weird to anyone else. Derek shot a pleading look to the ceiling, but it did nothing to stop her from saying, "I do remember some soft wood."

"I'm not convinced you don't remember everything, minx."

"Oh, come on, could I have resisted material like that while we built a house? That house particularly?"

"Yes," Derek and Lexie said at the same time. Lexie hadn't seen the house in person, but there'd been enough references to cabins that she could imagine.

"When it comes to mocking me," Derek continued, taking Meredith's hand. "You rarely have to scrounge for material."

"You make it so easy."

"Couldn't be that you're clever and observant."

"Maybe that," she offered, with a shrug. Derek's eyes widened above a fond smile, maybe having same thought about her confidence that Lexie had had a minute ago.

"I think selling to Karev would be a good decision," he added. "Keeps it in the family."

"Home ownership is one of those adult things we don't all get to do in residency," Lexie pointed out. "Mostly it's bouncing between crappartments and rented rooms. And he's still got five years before the orphans are off his credit report."

"You say he's you, three years ago," Derek said. "You had a house."

"Not by choice," Meredith grumbled. Even Lexie knew that was a misrepresentation.

The nonverbal exchange that followed was familiar. Meredith wanted him to broach a subject, and he gave her the she's your sister look.

"Speaking of money," she finally said. "They're going to come in tomorrow morning to ask you about what you remember. About the crash."

"Tell them to clear their schedules," Lexie said. It came out more flat than jokey. She wasn't sure how she'd meant it. "Who's they?"

"The plane people. And the union rep. Jeanette."

"Like Janet the social worker?"

"That's what I said!"

"Jeanette," Derek said. "Who has no control over her name."

"Technically…." Lexie started, but what point would there be to explaining how changing your name worked in Washington State? It was useless information; just an instinct to support Meredith, without saying, I saw you flinch every time your phone rang until Zola's birth certificate was in the safe. "Never mind."

"They're going to want us to settle," Derek said. "That would mean a one-time pay out, probably made as quickly as possible. But the company wouldn't be admitting responsibility. If we sue…it could go on a long time."

"Like the water slide guy."

Their hands moved. Someone offering comfort, someone taking, though Lexie couldn't tell which way it was going. She closed her left hand. She knew the side of it was moving across the sheet. She couldn't feel it.

She told herself it wouldn't be any different if Mark was there to hold her hand, as if he wouldn't have adjusted his grip to ensure she could feel all five fingers on her skin.

Wouldn't he?

"…infinite funds," Derek was saying. "From what I've gathered, this has already affected their bottom line." Meredith snorted. "They're a small company. Not the one we used while I was chief, so I have no idea what their people are like."

Whatever they were like, they'd lost one of theirs, too. Lexie remembered the sounds of the animals sniffing around their camp, hoping to grab the pilot's body.

"…Mark's estate."

"Sorry, what?"

Derek's braced hand reached for the penlight in his pocket, but Meredith interrupted the reflexive neuro exam. "Whatever we do, Sofia will be taken care of. And Sloan Slo—Riley. He named her, specifically, so…. Callie's his executor, which means she's representing his…they say his 'interests.'"

His interests. Mark was—had been—interested in a lot of things. Weirder things than she'd expected, sometimes. There was a well-thumbed Star Wars reference book on his shelves, with small text and citations, not the photo-heavy kids books Lexie had seen when the prequels came out. He could rattle off stats for multiple sports, but he'd also watched every documentary he could on The Wizard of Oz. His knowledge about the development of plastic surgery went deep, and once she'd come over unexpectedly to discover him listening to an opera on vinyl. Unlike some guys, he hadn't been embarrassed; he'd told her about going to the Met with his mom whenever her dad was given tickets, and then explained the story to her. She was certain that there were dozens of other things that she hadn't come across; Meredith had told her last year that there were still details that surprised her about Derek.

Anything new Lexie discovered about Mark would be second-hand. Another fact to put in his Lexipedia entry. One of her interests, and what was the point of that?

Meredith and Derek were looking at her, and she knew she'd missed something.

"It'll have to be a group decision," Meredith said, touching Lexie's shoulder. "One we won't make until we know what they're offering, but…your opinion is gonna matter a lot here."

"You said Callie—"

"Not because of Mark, sweetie. You and Arizona will both need equipment, but…she'll be back at work in a few weeks. This…."

"It changed all of our lives," Derek said. "None of us know exactly what that's going to mean, but looking at things objectively…."

"I could be paying for the rest of mine."

They both grimaced at her phrasing, but if they had a better way of saying it, they kept it to themselves.

A lifetime's worth of paying.

The first time an envelope had arrived at her parents' house with the insurance company's emblem, her once placid and gentle father had exploded. He'd declared that he was going to sue. Lexie hadn't pointed out that everything would've cost the same if Mom had survived, and he wouldn't have considered that. He wouldn't have thought of the bill at all, because Mom would've written the check.

Derek was doing the admin work of Head of Neuro, and "advising" on surgeries—Did they determine how many patients whose lives he would've saved in the time he'd spent on medical leave, much less in the far future? Did they use his save percentage to do that math, when every patient came with their own odds? Did they assume she would've decided to keep preferring his O.R. or bet that she'd follow her sister's path to general?

She replayed everything she could from commercials for personal injury lawyers, but her perfect recall didn't apply to something she hadn't cared to remember. She'd never imagined needing that information.

Except for cutting her fingertip off that time, she'd never been injured. Not beyond the bumps and scrapes that came from playing softball, and being the kind of kid who ran away by climbing trees. It'd been Molly crying in the middle of the night had changed the course of her life.

She'd stood in the hall while her parents went to her sister's bedside. "What is it?" Dad had demanded. "What's going on? What's wrong with her?"

"I don't know, Thatcher, I'm not a surgeon!" her mother had said. Then, there'd been sirens, and lights, and somehow—too many house calls on Dr. Quinn, maybe—Lexie had gotten the idea that if she had been a surgeon, Mom could've opened Molly up right there, taken out her appendix the way she'd picked gravel out of Lexie's skinned knees, and sewed her up.

That impression hadn't lasted long; there'd been E.R. and Chicago Hope to give her a better understanding of modern medicine. Big words, numbers, chemicals.

Lexie had become obsessed.

Molly used to go on about how Lexie was the favorite because of her grades, and it wasn't fair—"with her memory, it's practically cheating!"—and if she answered the phone when Lexie called home she'd be sure to say how insufferable it was that their parents were always going on about her. "'Our oldest is at Harvard,'" she'd mock. "They're so proud, it's gross."

Lexie had believed it. She hadn't figured out that was Molly's way of saying she was proud, too.

She hadn't explicitly known that Dad didn't want her to be a doctor. She'd heard him ask Mom if she didn't think they should "encourage her in another direction." For a long time, she'd thought it was her. She'd put together just enough to understand that he knew what it took, and he hadn't thought she was smart enough, decisive enough, competitive enough. She'd been determined to prove him wrong.

Turned out, it had never been about her.

"I've been taking care of your loan payments," Dad said, a little too casually for it to be off-hand. "On time, thanks to Dani. She suggested you look into getting a forbearance. One less thing for us all to worry about."

Lexie didn't say anything. She hadn't let him pay for her degree. She'd been so sure she'd be able to take care of them herself. Right before saying he owed her a lifetime's worth of pride—which happened to equal what he'd spent on Molly's wedding—he'd said that independent streak was just like her.

Nothing to do with Lexie.

Loans were the sort of thing a settlement was supposed to settle. The difference in salary between being a resident and…a what? Did they factor in the possibility that she might recover? Her injury was incomplete, which meant her training might not be.

Poking and prodding was a cliché description of a doctor's exam, but Lexie used to think it was an accurate explanation of a check-up. Then, she'd encountered the ASIA exam.

It'd been abstract. A tool to map the body out mathematically. Something that could be put into a spreadsheet. (Yes, she had been a total sucker for the golden ratio in art class,) She'd been aware that it was invasive; it was as thorough and, hopefully, carefully done as a sexual assault kit. She'd never imagined being put through one.

"You sure about this?" Meredith asked, for the fourth time. "I can be in the room, no matter who does it."

"Derek trained you, right?"

"Uh.…yeah."

Lexie never wanted to know the implications of that pause. "It'd be weird for him to do it."

"I get that, but you have other choices that aren't Nelson." Meredith pronounced the other surgeon's name like she hated the taste of it. Lexie hadn't been in his O.R. as frequently as she had, but she'd heard things that made her absolutely sure she didn't want him seeing any part of her unclothed. "Schafter. If you want a woman, Ramsey's not Derek, but she's certainly capable. Rumor has it we have neurologists around here, and Gretta—"

Lexie sighed. "I meant it'd be weird for Derek."

"Oh. Well, yeah, but it's one of the things he could still do, Okay. I'll get the interns to submit handwriting samples. See whose twos look the least like ones."

That night, Lexie had to ask for something that would help her sleep, or else she'd have driven herself crazy trying to gauge exactly where she'd be able to feel the prick of a pin or the swipe of a cotton swab.

Lexie had never imagined that a test she couldn't study for vould give her a grade that would affect her future.

"I'm gonna ask one more time—"

"You've cathed me, blind, with almost no room to maneuver," Lexie reminded her. "I think we can do this."

Brooks's eyes formed perfect circle. Meredith's actions over those days hadn't become part of her lore. With Derek out of the O.R., Dr. Yang gone, and her own condition to overshadow everything, had the story been told?

Lexie should've been doing it. Should've been telling PT Rhys, who came in with more gossip than director her treatment plan—and he had plenty of those—but she didn't have the words.

She could still smell the mix of floral shampoo, disinfectant, and perspiration in Meredith's hair while she'd wedged her hand through a gap at the top of the hunk of metal pinning Lexie to not only insert the tube, but to thread the bag through another gap lower down to keep it from kinking. It hadn't been a comfortable experience for either of them, but she had to see why Lexie would trust her to do an exam that was still moderately invasive in comparison.

"Okay, Brooks," her sister said in a tone that was honestly more reassuring than the one Lexie had been hearing from her, or at least more familiar. "What are we doing here?"

"An ASIA Exam," the intern said, confidently. Meredith raised her eyebrows. "An ASIA Exam, ma'am?" The intern's lip twitched, presumably at the rhyme. Meredith's sigh of exasperation almost made Lexie laugh. Almost.

"Dr. Grey?"

Lexie scowled, knowing exactly what she was doing. "The American Spinal InjuryAssociation Exam for the International Standards for Neurological Classification of Spinal Cord Injury."

Brooks's mouth formed an understanding "o."

"Let's try again. When was the ASIA exam introduced, and what did it replace?"

"In 1982. It replaced the Frankel Grade, which had been used since 1969." The intern offered up a smile with the extra information. Meredith snapped on a pair of gloves.

"Why?"

"Why….? Oh, because good ol' Frank…el didn't give enough information. Like, they both give letter grades where A is complete injury and E is fully recovered, but the C and B classifications were about the level of movement below the injury, which mighta been okay, except it doesn't give the level of injury. Not super useful for passing between docs."

"How long after injury are most practitioners willing to give a prognosis?" Meredith asked, opening a cotton swab.

"The, um, the patient's status at the one year mark is the most predictive of…future ambulation."

Point made.

"Why?"

"Muscle strength and sensory perception improve."

"But there's no comparison without an initial measurement," Lexie cut in.

"Good point!" Brooks chirped.

Her sister was uncharacteristically silent, staring at the safety pin she was sterilizing with an alcohol swab.

"I had to do it. He would've bled out…his thumb, it's…I just…it's all I can hear, Lex. His screaming is all I can hear."

Was that why she'd resisted doing this?

Not wanting to draw the intern's attention, Lexie hesitated, before finally reaching over to rest her hand on Meredith's wrist. Her head shot up, eyes wide, and for a second they were there again, together, Meredith working blindly to find a way to keep Lexie's bladder from bursting.

Then, Meredith blinked and turned to Brooks. "Okay, get the clipboard, let's go."

She continued to quiz the intern as they went—"twenty-eight dermatomes," "myotmal, the muscle groups innervated by a single spinal nerve," "dorsiflexors"—and her questions, alternating with her instructions—"hold your wrist right there, Lex. Don't let me move it."—kept Lexie from being able to hold the numbers she pronounced in her head.

Not that it actually mattered all that much. If she couldn't fully flex her metacarpal phalangeal joint—"small finger abductor," Brooks supplied—or feel the dorsal side of the same finger, she couldn't operate. Standing, walking, she didn't like the idea of losing those skills, but she'd figure it out. Fine motor? Hand sensation? If Derek Shepherd had been sidelined over functionality in one hand, she couldn't keep her job without dexterity in both.

"Last step," Meredith said. "What am I testing for here?"

Silence.

"Brooks?"

"Oh! Me. Uh….""

"Are you a doctor?"

"Yup. Uh, yes. Yes ma'am."

"Great. So am I, so is Dr. Grey. And since it's a deciding factor here, I think we can all deal with the phrase 'deep anal pressure.'"

That was what Lexie had counted on. Meredith had been right; any number of people at Seattle Grace could've performed an ASIA Exam, but only she had the particular attitude that came from having had more embarrassing things brought up at her mother's dinner table. Any awkwardness their relationship could've added disappeared after she had part of an organ removed for Lexie. They could take care of the thing, and the next time Lexie went through this—the next, and the next, and the next—she'd have been on the patient's side before.

She'd thoughtshe was always on the patient's side.

She'd thoughtshe knew so much.

"Okay. That'sa yes."

"What, what in the butt!"

Meredith didn't have to be touching her for Lexie to feel her freeze. "Brooks!"

"Crap! I know, inappropriate, Heather! I…I spent last night writing twos and I—"

"Out! Get out, and don't let me see you for a minimum of twelve hours."

"Yes ma'am. I'm so sorry, Dr. Grey….other Dr. Grey…that was so unpro—"

"Brooks!"

"Bye!" The door closed harder than Lexie had ever heard a hospital door slam. Meredith took her arm, and started to help her roll over. She'd gotten halfway when their eyes met.

"So," Lexie said. "That happened."

Meredith's expression, which had still been the icy one the intern had run from, melted into a smirk. "Believe me about the interns now?"

This time, it was funny, and the next thing Lexie knew, Meredith was wiping tears off her cheek. "It's so dumb—"

"But Mark would've loved it," Meredith finished.

Lexie nodded.

"The other thing he would've loved," she said, sitting on the bed and picking up the clipboard Brooks had dropped. "Is that you are a C on this scale, and it's gotta be the only time in your life that's been good news."

"D would be better."

"Cs get degrees, little sister. And you're at C-8 for sensory on the left, C-7 on the right, and C-6/7 motor on both sides. Considering you could still have muscle weakness from being casted, I think you'll see improvement."

What did that mean, really? Independent bowel and bladder function? Moving from a power wheelchair to a manual one? Of the two of them, Lexie was supposed to be the optimistic one. The one asking when she could start looking into robotics and clinical trials.

She'd been that person in May, when she'd stood outside of the hospital and told Mark he was an infection.

That part still felt true.

Callie's irises blended into her eyeliner every time she glanced sideways at Lexie. "Anyone tell you an intern hit on me?"

"No."

"One of the girls. I don't consider how they identify to be my business, and I do not have much of a radar." She glanced around the room, like she had to make sure she hadn't forgotten about leaving one of the ducklings in the corner. "Sort of floored me when your sister told me she and Harris had a history, but…."

"Once you knew, you knew?"

"Exactly. I know it's a cliché, but my God, she never sits in a chair like a normal person! But this one, she's straight as hell. Her face when I played along…. Kid just thought I'd be that flattered by the attention. Just like Harris did, back when I was a skittish baby bi. Before I knew….Before I knew what real attentiveness looked like.

"I scared the crap out of her, pretending to take herserioiusly, and when she scuttled off, the only person I wanted to tell was Mark. He'd think it was hilarious. But also, I know what he'd have done—"

"Seduced her?"

Callie pursed her lips. "Not for a long time, Little Grey. Sorry if it makes it easier to tell yourself that." Lexie shrugged. "He'd flirt with her. He'd flirt hard, and somehow he'd be helping her see that she's better than that. He'd have her sucking up with self-respect. Not offering anything she wouldn't do if she wasn't a shark with blood in the air.

"I should've asked him how he did it. Not for the interns. They'll muddle their way through. Karev's not taking anything less than yes, and better people have been there.

"No, I want to give it to Sofia. I want him to. I can make a good guess at what he'd say. I can put it though the Mark Sloan filter in my head. But I can't ask him." She put Lexie's right leg down, and put her hand on her wrist, just above her hospital bracelet. "A minute ago, I almost asked you if you thought Mark would want us to sue. Doesn't seem like him, but you know things I don't. You do," she added, when Lexie turned away. "But whatever either of us know, whatever Derek knows…. Mark's not here to confirm. And I'm supposed to speak for him."

He wasn't. He wasn't going to stride into her room and drop into the chair, ready to tell her about his latest case. He wouldn't ask her for her thoughts, never sounding like he was mining Lexipedia.

She'd wanted more. She'd wanted to go to New York with him, and hear him tell her about growing up there. To Napa for a weekend. To Vancouver. She would've stayed in the woods with him.

"It should burn them," she told Callie. "It's like…like someone burned a swath out of our lives, right? So, whatever we do, they need to be the ones getting burned."

Callie nodded, and while their gazes held, Lexie knew they were feeling the same thing: pissed as hell.