˚♡ ⋆｡˚

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
now or never.
season five, episode twenty-four.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Billie, Alex, Meredith, George and Cristina all found themselves in Izzie's ICU room, somewhere around four or five in the morning. The blonde still wasn't awake after the surgery she had undergone the night prior to the hands of Derek, which was the motive of concern of all of the residents, who currently lay asleep in different seats scattered around the room. They had all fetched different-colored blankets from the on-call rooms and had covered themselves however they could, mostly using recline seats as their sleeping places even though they all knew they'd wake up sore-shouldered in the morning. Billie, however, even though she had also chosen a pretty blue blanket and the least comfortable seat in the room, had stayed awake all night, monitoring Izzie's progress and vitals to make sure that nothing went wrong-or to be there if something went right.

She was exhausted. Or maybe that was an understatement. It was true, Billie was chronically used to little sleep and continual fatigue due to the horrifyingly short time of her nights which she spent sleeping, but at least she got something. That night, she had made sure not to doze off even for a second, serving herself as the support Izzie needed while she let her friends rest. The exhaustion she felt was inscrutable, causing her eyes to droop limply and her body to feel burdensome, her every limb weighed down by the weight of an anvil. But she still wasn't planning on sleeping.

Any moment now, either Bailey or Derek would walk into the room to check on Izzie, officially indicating the start of her day. For this reason, Billie was now just waiting for the moment. And, as predicted, a few more minutes went by before Bailey walked into the room, eyeing all of her class in concern, seeing as the dark bags beneath their eyes were probably not just product of a one-day lack of sleep. When her eyes landed on Billie, however, she seemed shocked.

"Have you been up all night?" she asked, taking a look at Billie's emaciated face.

For some reason, she looked to have aged years in just a few hours, judging by the darks beneath her eyes and the paleness of her otherwise cherry lips. Bailey was genuinely concerned for the wellness of her residents.

Billie shrugged. "Yeah."

"Oh, dear God." Bailey huffed, clearly not in the mood to put up with her residents' lunacy. She grimaced in disapproval, but didn't comment anything else on the topic.

"Someone had to do it," Billie grumbled diligently. "She could've coded and all these chairs would've just been in the way. Plus, I'm the closest reach."

Bailey nodded. "Any changes overnight?"

"Nope."

At a leisurely pace, one by one, the rest of the intern class slowly grew awake. Alex was the quickest to shoot up from his seat as soon as he heard the two women speaking, only to land next to a still unconscious Izzie on the bed. It seemed as though the fear of losing her hadn't abandoned him even in his sleep, since he seemed as worried as he was before he dozed off. Meredith and Cristina woke up as well, rather slowly, and simply held their positions with sleepy faces.

Billie watched as Alex held Izzie's arm and caressed it softly, as if trying to comfort her in her unconscious state. Obviously, the most concerned out of all. It hurt her seeing him like that.

Just then, a random pager went off, causing George, the last of the resident class to jolt awake. He shot glance in his best friend's direction and his eyes filled with pain, but he was quick to disguise it as tire. He attempted at retrieving his pager, but then noticed it wasn't his device, but Bailey's. The older woman checked her own.

"That's the Chief," she said, hooking her pager back onto the waistband of her scrub pants and backing towards the door. "Somebody better make a coffee run. You all look like hell."

Once Bailey was gone, George stood up. "I gotta be in surgery in ten minutes. Uhm... Billie, will you let me know if..."

"Yeah," the woman in question breathed out, yawning softly but not displaying any emotion other than utter exhaustion.

"We should go too, it's probably gonna be a while," Meredith said after checking her watch. "Billie, you should get some sleep."

"I'll stay here," the brunette retaliated, eyes on the girl on the bed.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Shepherd said she'd wake up in the morning," Alex stated after a second, his voice soon growing angry and impatient. "What did he tell you? Was that all crap? What did he say!"

"He said... it may be a while," Meredith answered gently at an attempt to pacify him, proceeding to leave the room alongside Cristina.

Billie shot a glance in Alex's direction, noticing his pain-stricken eyes not leaving Izzie's absent ones.

"She's gonna wake up," she said, although she wasn't all that sure.

☆

"I brought you some coffee," Billie said as she walked back into Izzie's ICU room holding a carton cup meant for Alex.

However, she froze in her tracks when she noticed him with his chin pressed against her wrist, eyes closed and chanting some words under his breath as if he was praying. Billie knew he wasn't religious, so she was thrown back, but when she was able to discern what he was saying, she felt fresh heartache.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up..." he said repeatedly, hoping to do good to his wife's state.

Billie remained quiet and looked at him sympathetically, proceeding to put down the cup on the bedside table and take her seat back next to Izzie's bed. There, she cocked her head on her fist and stared at the blonde's unconscious self, hearing Alex's voice as background noise in the room.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up..."

Then, a third voice disrupted them. A weak one, hoarse and almost distant, but there.

"I have a headache," she said, and Billie shot to her feet.

For a second, she thought to be dreaming, or hallucinating. Maybe the lack of sleep had caused her brain to distort the picture (and the sounds...?) that lay in front of her leading her to believe that somehow, Izzie had finally woken up.

But there she was. Izzie's eyes were barely open, her body stealthy on the bed and her chapped lips slightly parted as if her mouth was too dry. But she was there, and she had talked. Alex rose up to his feet too and shared a look with Billie, whose eyes were wide and expectant.

"You're up," he said, shocked. "You're up and you're talking."

"Oh, my God..." Billie whispered under her breath, acquiring a small smile on her face at the sight of Alex finally drawing one himself.

"You talked, right?" he asked, as if wanting to make sure he was not dreaming. "Talk!"

"Ow..." Izzie replied, earning an ecstatic laugh from Billie. "I said I have a headache, stop yelling."

"She's up!" The brunette laughed happily, sharing a second look with Alex, whose smile was growing further across his face.

Alex laughed too and looked back, towards the nurses station. "Page Shepherd!"

"Ow!"

"Sorry," he said with a smile, consequentially causing Billie's to grow.

☆

In his ecstasy, Alex had prompted Billie to (quote) get off her ass and go find something else to do, to which the girl had obliged and had gone about her day, focused on finding her persons in order to share the news.

Finally, as she strode about the hospital, she caught sight of both Cristina and Meredith, who updated charts boredly by the nurses station at the main lobby. Immediately, she changed her direction and approached them.

"Hey!" she called out, ready to share the news.

"You know, something's going on with George," Cristina said instead, taking advantage of the fact that both her persons were there and ready to listen to her. Billie was a little startled at the sudden conversation started, but followed along either way.

"What?"

"Owen hugged him. They were happy," Cristina grimaced, weirded out at the thought.

"We don't hug when we're happy," Meredith stated truthfully.

"Yeah..." Cristina agreed under her breath, then took a second. Then, as Billie was about to speak, she started talking again. "Are you two... better?"

The brunette cocked a brow. "Huh?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know, with your therapy... or whatever. You said you got well," she continued. "Well, are you? Better? Or are you just fake better?"

"I'm not following." Billie shook her head.

"No, me neither."

"I'm asking you if people, you know..." Cristina gestured towards both girls, causing them to share a confused look. "I mean, are you actually different? Do you feel different?"

"I mean... sure. I went on a date last night. Didn't get kissed, but I had fun." Billie shrugged, recalling her meeting with Jo and her brief disappointment when he dropped her off at the hospital and didn't have the guts to end the evening with a kiss.

"Oh, crazy psych ward dude? How did that go?" Meredith asked excitedly, having received the news of the gathering the morning prior.

"Oh, it was amazing. I didn't know I could miss someone that I knew for two weeks." She chuckled, fond of the memory.

"Wait, you fell for a dude you met in a psych ward? That's fucked up. And how did I now know of that?" Cristina glowered, unaware that Billie was in a preconceived healing stage from her Alex Karev era.

"No, I didn't fall-"

"Okay, I don't care. Meredith?" she continued, backing towards the previous topic of conversation. "Do you feel different?"

A small smile slowly took upon the blonde's lips, as if she owned a piece of information she was ready to share.

"I'm getting married today," she said.

Billie and Cristina's jaws dropped.

"Mhm. City Hall. No muss, no fuss. Just quick and dirty."

Cristina stuttered out a few incoherent sounds before saying: "D- Do you want us to come?"

"No, no. Just letting you know." Meredith shrugged, apparently not able to wipe the smile off her face at the thought of finally uniting her and Derek's lives officially and for good.

"Okay, okay, wait." Billie immediately began searching her every pocket until she came in contact with a stack of blue post-its. "Okay, here. This is my grocery list-it's old. The post-it stack, it's new, so here. Then, uh..." She searched the pocket of her lab coat, but was unable to find anything else. "Crap, I don't have anything for you to borrow."

"Oh, here's my pen." Cristina jumped, handing Meredith a blue pen from her pocket. "It's my favorite, so I want it back. Borrowed. And all of it is blue, so you're covered."

Meredith retrieved all of the items handed to her by her persons with a huge grin on her face, glad that her decision was entirely and happily supported. "Now see, if we were George and Owen, we would hug right now."

There was an awkward silence before all three girls walked in opposite directions.

☆

Billie was striding down the hallway having nothing left to do when her phone suddenly began ringing. Immediately, she fetched it from the pocket of her lab coat and took it to her ear, continuing her stroll about the hospital.

"Hello?"

"Oh, hey, Billie, it's Jo," the man on the other side of the line greeted.

(Billie still wasn't sure how or where he had gotten her number from, to which she made a mental note to ask him about that at some point. Right now, she thought it to be inappropriate since she didn't want to come off as rude or ungrateful, to which she simply greeted him back with as much sincere elation.)

A smile drew on Billie's face. "Oh, hey, Jo."

"I wanted to talk to you about last night," he said straightforwardly. "I had a lot of fun."

"Yeah, me too."

"I was wondering-"

"-if I wanted to meet up again?" Billie queried exuberantly before Jo could even finish his sentence. She sure hoped she was right.

On the other side of the line, he chuckled tenderly. "Yeah, that's exactly it. Maybe today night?"

"Well, I'd be more than glad to. I'd have to check my schedule, but I can make time for you," she said cheekily, playing hard to get.

"Well, I'm honored."

Just then, as Billie let out a soft laugh and smiled whipped into the phone, Callie passed her by in a frenzied run, struggling to tie a yellow trauma gown around her waist at the same time. Billie frowned at her, concerned, but with a formulating theory in her head.

"Black! There's a trauma coming in, I need you on the bay," the older woman said, proceeding to run off towards the pit.

"Coming!" the resident yelled back yelled.

"You have to go, don't you?" Jo asked, having partially heard the brief conversation between both surgeons.

"Yeah, I'm sorry. There's a trauma coming in and I need to cut into someone." Billie bit her lip remorsefully, but her words were genuine-she did, in fact, need to cut into someone before she fell asleep on her ass.

"That's... disturbing. But it's okay. You go save lives." He smiled.

They greeted each other goodbye and Billie ended the call with a smile implanted permanently on her face, to which she proceeded to tuck her phone into the pocket of her lab coat. Then, she ran hurriedly towards the ER, immediately fetching and fitting herself into one of the yellow trauma gowns before heading out to the ambulance station, where two vehicles were already pulling up.

Callie and Billie immediately opened the doors of the ambulance and helped the paramedic roll down the stretcher, since he was occupied squeezing an Ambu bag over the victim's mouth and nose. However, when the two surgeons saw the man's face (or, for what was worth, what was left of it), they gasped.

"Dude!" Billie exclaimed, disturbed by the inhuman amounts of blood.

"Unidentified male, dragged by a bus. He's clamped down, so we couldn't intubate," the paramedic explained, using a gauze to keep pressure over the man's multiple face injuries as Owen arrived and checked the chart.

"Didn't they stop when they hit him?"

"Bus driver didn't know he was there until he got halfway down the block."

From the second ambulance, two paramedics rolled down a redhead woman whose shoulder was held in place with a splint. That seemed to be the only injury she had sustained, which had Billie wondering about the consistency of the accident and the victims.

"Is he gonna be okay?" she asked in worry, sprayed with blood.

"We're gonna take care of him," Callie chanted as her, Billie and Owen rolled the stretcher into the ER and towards a trauma room.

There, they ordered an intern's help (Billie made sure it was John who was paged, and he arrived almost immediately) and then, inserted all sorts of tubes and IVs in order to keep him alive long enough to get some x-rays. However, before they could properly assess the situation, the man began coding and Billie was forced to begin CPR.

"Push twenty of etomidate and a hundred of sux," Owen demanded.

As they continued the process of saving his life, the redhead woman, Amanda, walked into the room, holding her injured shoulder. She seemed horrified at the sight of the bloodied man.

"He saved my life," she said, finally resolving Billie's query. "The bus was gonna hit me, he threw me out of the way."

"Rogers, get her out of here," Callie demanded.

"It was supposed to be me under the bus. He's all alone. They don't even know who he is!" She seemed to grow desperate when John approached her. "Please!"

"Stand over there and just don't move," John ordered frustratedly, obviously unable to get her out of the room quickly.

When the previously flatline on the monitor displayed a set of ripples, a nurse called out: "He's back!"

"Okay, let's get a trauma series, trauma labs and O-neg blood in here," Callie demanded once Billie stopped compressions. She then checked the patient. "Severe avulsion injury to the left forearm."

As the other doctors analyzed the rest of the body for more injuries they hadn't seen, Billie headed upwards and lifted the piece of gauze that was previously covering the man's bloody face. Once she did, she gasped softly, seeing as there was very little of his face that still vaguely resembled a face.

"Woah!" Callie gasped too.

"Skull's bashed in. Page Shepherd!"

"And Sloan!"

"Start antibiotics and start cleaning out those wounds," Owen demanded.

Just then, Amanda hunched over and puked on the floor. All doctors turned towards her.

"Uh..." Callie looked at John, "now can you get her out of here?"

☆

After a few minutes, Mark walked into the trauma room snapping on a pair of latex gloves. He took a look around and when his eyes landed on the man's beaten up body, his eyes widened and he gasped softly.

"Woah!"

"Man versus bus," Callie explained briefly.

"Bus won," he stated the obvious.

"Check out the left arm."

Soon, as Mark did as told, the heart monitor went haywire once again, signaling an unstable heart rhythm-or the lack of it thereof.

"He's crashing again!" Billie announced once she took a look at the monitor displaying the man's absent vitals.

Derek, who had also been paged, walked into the trauma room. "What do we got?"

"We got roadkill," Mark said.

"You mind? He stepped out in front of a moving bus so he could pull a woman out of the way. He's a hero," Billie snapped.

"Can you fix the arm?" Callie asked as she began chest compressions.

"His fingers are already blue. If it's gonna happen, it's gotta be in the next few hours," Mark explained.

"Pupil's blown. Stop CPR," Derek demanded after a short neurological assessment. Callie did as told. "Get me a cranial drill, please. Black, wanna practice your burr holes?"

Billie was unsure, but once the nurse got Derek the drill, she nodded and positioned herself by his side.

"Stabilize the neck, please," he asked. "Give me a ten-blade." He cut a small incision on the man's skull. "Drill."

A nurse handed Billie the drill. She felt sure of herself, although not any less nervous.

"Go in slowly. You feel a grab, stop. Otherwise, you're gonna be hitting the brain," he delineated before Billie turned on the drill and began her work, all eyes on her. At some point, she felt the grab and everybody in the room jumped.

"Okay, that's it, that's it!"

Immediately, she pulled away the drill and a spurt of blood came out. The man on the table shifted just barely and Billie felt her heart pounding in her chest, but a wave of relief washed her over.

"Nice work, Dr. Black," Owen congratulated once they noticed the man was slowly starting to wake up.

"Let's get his head rotated. Easy."

Soon, the man shifted fully awake, his one healthy green eye opened widely in horror.

"Welcome back, sir." Billie smiled. "You had us worried there for a minute."

☆

"What did you do to O'Malley?" Bailey broke into the trauma room, yelling exclusively at Owen.

"Excuse me?"

"Uh, somebody else around here likely to convince someone to join the Army and be a trauma surgeon in Iraq?" she scolded bitterly.

Billie was shocked. "What? Army?!"

"What?" Callie chorused, equally aghast.

Just then, the heart monitor began beeping for a third time.

"V-fib!"

"Charge the paddles to three sixty!" Billie ordered once a nurse handed her the paddles.

"Just call who you have to call and undo this," Bailey demanded fiercely, still hung up on the topic.

"Dr. Bailey-" Owen growled as he performed the compressions, "-a little busy here."

"Clear!" Billie called, shocking the man on the table once.

"George? George O'Malley?" Callie seemed disbelieving.

"It wasn't my idea!"

"No change," the brunette said with a glance towards the heart monitor, apparently, the only one who was one hundred percent focused on the wellness of her patient, no matter how much George as a soldier worried her. "Charge again. Clear!"

"Look, I did what I could to give him a decent education in trauma. I didn't know he was gonna go and enlist," Owen argued as Billie shocked him a second time.

"He keeps coding." She huffed frustratedly, feeling completely alone.

"Here's why: open-book pelvic fracture," Callie said as she analyzed the recently arrived x-ray.

"There's too much bleeding. We take him to an OR now, he'll die on the table." Owen sighed, still carrying out CPR.

"He needs to go to Angio if we're gonna stop the pelvic arterial bleeding," Callie said.

"Sinus tach. We have a rhythm. Barely, but it's there," Billie finally claimed. "Let's stabilize the pelvis."

"I know what goes on in this hospital," Bailey said after a moment of quiet in regards to the topic she was first arguing. "I know you're messed up from that war. And not in a small way." She stared Owen down. "Get him out of it."

She ended up storming out of the trauma room just as Mark walked in. Then, Callie proceeded to rip off her trauma gown.

"Page me if you need me, I've got other patients," she said wryly, leaving the room as well.

"How'd you piss off all the women?" Mark joked.

Owen rolled his eyes. "Let's get our guy to Angio."

"Angio? Are you kidding? He's barely got a pulse." Billie argued.

"It's now or never if we want him to live. Let's move!"

As the stretcher was rolled out of the trauma room by Mark, Owen, Billie and a nurse, Owen looked down at the patient and said: "Sir, I know it's tough, but I'd personally be really grateful if you'd try and stay alive for the next few minutes."

☆

"You gonna chew?" Cristina asked Billie with a disgusted grimace, since she was chomping on her vegetarian sandwich at great speeds (the former was surprised she hadn't yet choked).

"My dragged-under-the-bus guy is in Angio, they're gonna page me any minute and I'm starving." She huffed, working on so little sleep her vision blurred in and out.

Just then, Meredith sat down at the table with them, followed shortly by Alex, who seemed rather grim.

"What's wrong with you?" Billie asked, unaware, within a mouthful of her food.

"It's Izzie. She's not retaining anything," Meredith explained for him.

"Jesus." Billie sighed.

After a minute or two, Callie and Bailey approached the table. The one to speak was the latter.

"Okay, uh, at six p.m., your idiotic colleague George O'Malley will finish his surgery with the Chief," she said.

"And, at six p.m., you will be standing beside us in the OR hallway prepared to join in an intervention," Callie finished.

"What polite company might call an intervention, though I'm not sure interventions involve whupping people on the behinds-" Bailey added, "-with a belt."

"What? He's got a drinking problem now?" Alex mocked with a laugh.

"He joined the Army," Billie muttered.

"What?!" Cristina yelled.

"007? He can't go to the Army, he's the guy that gets killed." Alex laughed once more.

"No, he's the guy that gets killed cleaning his own gun," Cristina corrected.

"Jesus, have some faith in him, will you?" Billie grumbled under her breath.

"Grey is going to coax him back as a loving friend, Yang is gonna use logic and reason to point out the idiocy of his ways, Stevens will make sad cancer eyes, Black's gonna use all her dark-and-twistiness to show him that going to the Army is not gonna help him or anyone, and if all of that doesn't work, Karev, you're gonna pull out your 'I was raised out back with the trash cans' roots and just- beat the crap out of him," Bailey explained, causing Alex to smile and nod in satisfied agreement.

"Six o'clock," he said.

"Six o'clock," Callie confirmed.

☆

Billie and Owen were now in the Angio room, ready to get the procedure started. The man's face had been cleaned and bandaged, so the only visible part now were his beaten up eyes. The little green that could be detected on his irises provoked some sense of comfort in Billie.

"Hey, there." She smiled softly, hoping to deflect his attention towards her and induce in him some tranquility. "I know this is probably scary for you, but for whatever's worth, you're a hero. You saved that woman's life."

The man shifted slightly, his hand coming in contact with Billie's arm, which he gripped tightly. Then, he slowly shuffled his fingers downwards, towards hers, causing her to frown. Soon, he stuck out his index finger and began drawing a senseless pattern on her palm.

"Are you tryna... write something?" Billie frowned, unsure. To help him, she took out from her pocket a notebook and a pen and held a page open whilst handing him the pen. "Can you hold this?"

The man attempted at grabbing the pen, but it soon slipped out of his grip uselessly. When Billie noticed his struggle, she squeezed his hand reassuringly and drew a soft smile on her face.

"It's okay. You'll be stronger tomorrow," she said.

"Call OR 1. Tell them to get ready for him," Owen requested, to which Billie nodded and began leaving the room.

However, when she closed the door behind her, she was surprised to find Amanda, the redhead woman, peeking into the room through the window.

"Amanda, you can't be here," she scolded.

The woman sighed. "Would you wanna be all alone at a time like this?" Billie remained quiet. "We had thirty seconds of interaction before he saved my life, and... and I wasn't even nice. I was standing on a corner when this ordinary-looking guy stands next to me and smiles, and... and I'm so busy scoping for someone hotter that I don't even give him a second look. The next thing I know, he throws me out of the way of a bus I'm about to walk in front of and almost gets himself killed. He literally... he swept me off my feet." There was a pause, and she looked back into the room with teary eyes. "That is my prince in that bed."

Billie hesitated, but finally caved. "Okay, you can stay until they take him to surgery."

☆

Owen, Billie, Derek, Mark and Callie were gathered at the scrub room, ready to discuss the surgical plan for the man that had been dragged under the bus before they finally went into surgery.

"Alright, here's the plan for our John Doe," Owen, who was the lead surgeon, said as he scrubbed. "Shepherd, you'll evacuate the epidural, Black and I will correct the internal injuries. That'll make room for Torres to place the internal fixator. Sloan should still have time to work on the arm if the patient doesn't get too acidotic or hypothermic."

"You really think he has a shot?" Billie said with restored hope, looking at her patient through the glass of the scrub room.

"I've seen people come back from worse."

The girl nodded in understanding. "Good enough for me."

☆

The surgeons found themselves hours into the surgery. Billie's anxiety had swallowed the room whole, inhibiting her from talking or making any snide remarks, which were things she'd normally do. The man on the table, for some reason, meant too much for her to make jokes over his body.

"How's the arm?" Derek asked as he worked from his spot on the John Doe's brain.

"Nerves are still intact, just have to reattach the vessels," Mark explained, focused on his work by Billie's side.

"You ready for me?" Callie asked, approaching the table.

"I'm almost done with the major internal crush injuries. Pelvis will be all yours in a minute. Get me some more laps, please," Owen informed.

"You think you could do it?" Mark asked after a second. "Step in front of a bus for a perfect stranger?"

"We'd all like to think we would, but..." Callie reasoned, trailing off near the end to leave an obvious incognito.

"That's more or less what major Hunt's been doing every day for the last couple of years," Derek intervened.

"No, the guys did. I just came in behind them with a dustpan and a broom and swept up," the man in question corrected humbly.

"You sewed up soldiers under fire. You didn't sweep up."

Owen didn't say anything. Instead, he changed the topic. "How do you think O'Malley's gonna do over there? Do you think he can handle it?"

"No... I don't." Callie sighed guiltily.

"I think he's gonna surprise us all," Derek said optimistically.

"I think he's coming back in a body bag," Mark interrupted.

"I think you all should just shut up," Billie snapped, earning everybody's attention. "Just shut the hell up. Please."

☆

After the surgery, Billie found herself searching the hospital for Alex, as if to vent for a little while. However, when she remembered his current situation, she stopped the search and, instead, found her brother, who had apparently just come out of an extremely tedious seventeen-hour craniotomy that had presented a lot of complications for the surgical team.

He felt tired too, but when he noticed his sister's expression, he knew she was likely the one that had gotten it worse that day.

"You good?" he asked, delivering a chart to the nurse behind the counter at the station.

As her brother, naturally, he had sensed her energy (or lack of it thereof) strong enough to notice she was drained, both physically and emotionally. The night prior, for starters, Billie hadn't arrived home, since she had headed back to the hospital as soon as her date with Jo was over. After that, throughout her stay at Izzie's ICU room, Billie had forced herself to stay awake in case the blonde's vitals changed, which wasn't a good idea, but she didn't know she would be followed by such a hectic day. Now, despite the fact that her date had been a complete success and had therefore boosted her spirit, she was still extremely weighed down by the John Doe's case, plus knowing George had enlisted for the army, plus Izzie's cancer, plus the growing distance between her and her best friend, plus... everything else.

"Yeah, you could say." Billie ran her hands through her hair in exasperation.

Ian eyed her warily. "Okay, spit it out."

The girl took a second, as if hesitating, but she finally slapped her hand over her tired eyes. "I need sleep."

"You stayed up all night again, didn't you?" Ian asked, not surprised in the slightest. "You are so fucking dumb."

"You're dumb!"

He grimaced at her. "You want me to talk to the Chief for you? Get you the day off."

"Please, I'm not spoiled." Billie rolled her eyes. "I'll just suck it up."

"Till you collapse in the OR in the middle of a surgery? Yeah, no."

"Dude."

"Have you been taking your iron supplements?" Ian asked suspiciously, squinting her eyes at her as if calling her out on her deception.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Billie frowned at her brother, throwing her arms into the air by her sides.

"For someone so smart, I sometimes doubt your intelligence."

"Fuck you."

"I'm talking to the Chief," Ian almost threatened, but just as he was about to walk away in direction of Webber's office, Billie's pager went off.

"Would you look at that? My John Doe needs to go into surgery again. I'll sleep when I'm dead," she said, flicking his forehead before walking away.

☆

"How's his ICP?" Derek asked while him and Billie trudged into John Doe's ICU room, occupied already by Owen and Amanda.

"Uh... worse. OR's expecting us," the man explained, then frowned at the neurosurgeon. "I thought you were getting married."

Derek smiled. "I did."

"Really? Congratulations." Billie grinned cheekily, punching his shoulder in a manner that, to her, seemed friendly, but had him rubbing the area of impact due to the pain.

"Congratulations," Owen said too. "You sure you wanna start your honeymoon in an OR?"

"Oh, I'm sure."

Both men nodded in agreement and headed out of the room, towards the nurses station. Billie, instead, took the opportunity to tread towards Amanda, who hadn't left the stranger's side in the entire day, holding his hand like a soldier.

"You can't be in here, Amanda, I'm sorry," Billie said. "I'll come and get you in the waiting room as soon as we're done with the operation."

"Hold his hand until you put him under," the redhead whispered, eyes and nose red due to excessive crying. "It really does make him feel better."

Billie nodded and checked one last time John Doe's vitals, then watched as Amanda let go of his hand and walked out of the room with a stifled sob stuck in her throat. When the brunette noticed the patient was starting to wake up, she smiled kindly.

"Hey, there, you're awake," she said, entwining her fingers with his to somehow provide him the comfort her words couldn't. "Sadly, we have to take you up to surgery again, I'm sorry. But you'll be okay. You know? You have an excellent team up there."

The man slowly let go of her hand and began scribbling unintelligible doodles on her palm.

Billie looked down. "You wanna try writing again?"

Immediately, she fetched a pen from the pocket of her lab coat and tried handing it to him, but he refused it and, instead, kept using his index finger to trace the letters on her palm. Billie paid profuse attention.

"Okay, let's see," she said as he began drawing circles on her hand. "O... O..." The girl frowned in confusion. "Seven?"

The man repeated the pattern.

"00... 7?" Billie was still a little confused, but when the man stopped writing and squeezed her hand instead, it all suddenly clicked.

☆

"IT'S GEORGE! IT'S GEORGE!" Billie yelled as she raced down the hallway, towards the lobby of the surgical wing.

There, Callie, Owen and Derek stood, wearing their scrub caps and ready to go into surgery. When they caught sight of the young resident screaming out into the air and running like a maniac, they all turned to her, confused frowns on their faces and wondering what all the fuss was about.

"It's George!" she yelled, out of breath. "John Doe... it's George."

☆

Three...

"We're losing him!"

Two...

"Charge the paddles!"

One.

Flatline.