Drowning on dry land
Season three, Episode sixteen

Max was drowning.

She thought about Maeve and how she was at school waiting for her, she tried to think about her ninth birthday, teaching her how to drive or watching her get married.

She thought about her family, her Mom, Dad, Leo and Derek, she thought about wanting to be there for Derek when he finally got his happy ending or for Leo when he finally opened up his own research center.

She thought about Mark and how much she wanted to be with him, get married and have a couple more babies, just wanting to grow old together. There was so much she wanted to say and she didn't want to leave without saying it.

But most importantly, she thought about trying to stay alive.

As soon as her body hit the freezing water she felt herself go into shock, she could process anything like she forgot how to swim, her legs were aching from trying to swim against the water and then the next thing she knows, she's completely under.

Derek was walking everywhere to find if someone needed his help, "You guys good? You okay?" He kept asking the paramedics as he went past, all of them seemed to be in good hands.

"Yeah, what do you got?" He asked a man who had waved him over.

"Nearly severed leg, but he had his artery tied off, so that's something" The paramedic told Derek.

"Yeah, who ties off the artery?" He looked at the mans leg then traveled up his eyes landing on an I.D. "Was it Dr. Mallard? This is her jacket"

"We found him like this, she must have moved on" The paramedic shrugged.

"Yeah, okay" Derek told the guy and then started looking around to see if he could find her, he turned back around to see the little girl that Max was watching but someone had called after him so he could go over there.

"Yeah, just stabilize the fracture and get him to the hospital as soon as possible" He told the guy before walking away.

He took off his gloves as her approached the little girl, "Hey, you okay?" She just stared up at him not saying a word, "Hey, did-did the Doctor bring you here? Huh? Max? Is Max okay?" He wanted as she shook her head no and as much as he was trying to be patient his friend might be in danger.

He grabbed her hand and started walk, anywhere that might help her remember what had happened, when she stopped walking Derek bent down to see what was wrong. "What? It's okay. Just think, where is she? Which way? Take all the time you need, you're doing great" He watched as she started to remember "Okay, good"

The girl walked away to show him where Max was, they had walked in between two buses to find a hidden area, she stopped when she reached the side of the wall, where Max had tripped.

"Okay, use your words, where exactly is Max?" He had bent down to her level, turning his body when he says it, she lifts up her arm and points to the water.

It didn't take him long to find her, which he was grateful for. He grabbed her arm and started swimming to the top gasping when his head finally hit the air he began to swim to shore.

He put her on the dock then jumped out of the water, bending down to pick up Max bridal style he made his way up the ramp, he was out of breath himself but he wouldn't let the stop him from saving Max's life.

He ran to the nearest ambulance and put her on the gurney, telling the driver to drive to Seattle Grace he began to do C.P.R. not stopping until they were at the hospital.

"What do we got?" Miranda asked the paramedic as soon as the doors opened.

"Jane Doe, hypothermic drowning-"

"She's not a Jane doe. It's Maxine Mallard. It's Max" Derek said interrupting the paramedic but still doing C.P.R.

"Derek. Derek, how long has she been down?" Miranda said in a hurry, she climbed into the vehicle to help Derek try and save Max.

"I don't know, She's- she's alive. One, two, three. She's alive"

"Derek. Okay, I need you to help me get her inside. Clear a trauma bag, stat!" She yelled out to the other doctors that were standing around.

They began to run into the building making all the turns necessary to make it to the room, Derek was losing his mind and it didn't help that he was cold and dripping in water but he wasn't worried about that the only thing he was worried about was his best friends.

"They could only put a 20-gauge I.v in, but I think it blew" Derek tells Bailey, he was in shock anyone could see that.

"I'll start a central line, but you have to get out of the way"

"We-we our, uh, three milligrams of EPI down the E.T. tube-"

"Derek!" Miranda said again trying to get his attention.

"The last dose was three minutes ago. We should push-" Derek continued to talk to them, his body was shaking and his heart was racing.

"Shepherd, get out"

"I think we should push just one at-atropine, I think I saw some reactivity in her pupils before the atropine, and I think she might have actually had some cardiac activity-" Derek rambled again.

"Shepherd, get out" The Chief yelled out again, he then pushed Derek aside so that he could leave the room.

"We need to put an external pacer on just to make sure" Derek said softly, his eyes glistened when he looked down at Max's blue face.

"We need to save her life, you can't do this. We need to do this. Now go" Chief tells him as he counted the chest compressions in his head.

Derek looked down again, softly rubbing her head he gave her a sympathetic smile before looking at Miranda, silently asking her what he should do.

"Go and make sure that Sloan, Leo, Addison, Graham and Callie know but make sure they know how important it is not go come in" Richard said again as Miranda gave Derek small nod telling him to go.

"Okay, she has a new 18-gauge in her left A.C. push one of EPI through it" Miranda told the nurse, she didn't wait for Derek to be completely out of the room since she knew how immediate it was.

Leo came running into the trauma hall, looking at a sobbing Derek for just a second before turning to the small window on the door to see his sister.

"What the hell happened, man?" Leo stressed, "How the hell does a person just drowned?" He began to pace back and forth gripping at his hair to remind himself that he could punch a hole in the hospital wall.

"I don't know" Derek simply said.

"What do you mean you don't know? You were there, why weren't you there to help her!" Leo shouted.

Derek got up from his crouching position and gave Leo a bear hug, "I don't know" he said through the hits he was receiving from Leo as he tried to break free.

"Why does this keep happening to me" Leo cried into Derek's shoulder, he thought about seeing his little sister lifeless body in a casket and cried harder, he wouldn't know what to do if he lost Max.

"You know Max, she's a fighter she won't go down without a fight" Derek said gently. Leo let go on Derek nodding his head.

"You're right, man" Leo agreed, he put out back against the wall and slid down with Derek following after.

"I've got to figure out how to tell Mark, how am I supposed to tell him something like this?" Derek stressed, rubbing his hands against his wet eyes.

"How am I supposed to tell my parents that there last living daughter might be dying or telling a eight year old?" Leo sighed with his eyes closed, he didn't want to think about it.

"The Chief kicked me out, I couldn't imagine how he feels trying to save his nieces life or Bailey, there best friends and there's no one in this hospital that doesn't have some kind of relationship to Max" Derek laughed a little, the situation wasn't funny but he couldn't help but laugh at the way god would let someone like Max go through something like this.

"Give me a new warm blanket, her temps still only at 80 degrees" the chief called out to one of the nurses.

"What can I do?" Dr. Peck, one of the other Cardio attending asked.

"She needs an A.B.G." The Chief told her, "Whoa. Was that v-fib? Charge to 300, lets go, let's go, let's go" he chanted to get everyone to move at a faster pace.

Dr. Peck grabbed the defibrillator and put some gel on the paddles, she raised them above Max's chest and waited for a 'Clear' from the chief.

"Clear"

Addison had walked in as Max was getting shocked, stopping in her tracks she looked at her friend with worried eyes.

"Back to asystole, keep compressions going" The Chief tells the team.

"Oh, my god" Addison let out when she walked closer and noticed Max's blue body.

"She's hypothermic" Dr. Peck tells the chief.

"Uh... have you tried a warm peritoneal lavage or even a continuous bladder lavage with warm fluids? You could do a thoracotomy" Addison tells the Chief and Dr. Peck, she knew she wasn't supposed to be in the room but she couldn't not do anything.

"Get back the A.B.G. okay, now let's go people"

Derek and Leo could hear the screeching of tennis shoes, three to be exact, he looked up and saw Mark, Calle and Graham running toward him.

"What happened?"

"Is there anything I can do?"

"What the hell, Derek?"

The three of them yelled at the same time, they were all out of breath and shaking.

"She almost drowned, I don't know how long she was under for but it's not good" He looked up and saw there worried faces and sighed, patting the floor next to him.

"Max knows how to swim, how could she let herself drown?" Callie asked the group before sliding down the wall and onto the ground.

"It was freezing out today, Cals and probably Arctic in the water, she probably hit the water and then went onto shock. I mean we all know Max, she would just let herself drown, she's got too much unfinished business" Graham looked at Callie's tear filled eyes with his own.

"She can't just die, she has a daughter, she has a family, she has a life here, here with me. She can't die and leave me here, it's not fair and it's sick and twisted and I don't know what I'm going to do if she dies. Derek tell me what to do" Mark ranted out, he wasn't willing to cry in front of his friends so getting angry seemed perfect.

"We are going to wait, we will wait until she gets better and then we will go see her and she will smile and we will cry but we will wait because it's the only thing we have to keep us going" Derek have Marks shoulder a small comforting pat.

"It's Max? Are you sure it's Max?" Christina called out from the end of the hallway, she was looking at her boyfriend and her heart cracked seeing the look on his face.

"It's Max" Leo got up from his spot on the floor and walked over to her, but she started walking toward the door that Max was in, "We can't go in"

"But it's Max, she cant die before we tell her. We have to tell her" Christina frantically tells her boyfriend, he pulls her in a hug.

The six of them sat on the floor waiting for someone to update them or give them news, none of them willing to move until they knew she was okay.

Addison gave Max a worried stare, she watched as her cold body was struggling to come back to normal and tried to find any sign of her getting better.

"Push another EPI" Richard said to the nurse keeping his eyes on the monitor for any changes, "How many is that?"

"This is her fourth round, sir" Miranda tells him.

"We've been here for twenty minutes, sir" Dr. Peck informs the chief.

"She's still in asystole" Addison mentions.

"We're losing her"

They all looked at Max but she was somewhere else, she wasn't sure what was happening or how she even got there but the face of her dead little sister was starting to creep her out.

"Am I dead?" Max asks her sister.

"Seems like it"

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If I believe you- the 1975