Survivor

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Oh my god," Meredith groans, opening her door to step outside. Her head is spinning from being thrashed, but in a few moments, it clears. The other doors of her car open, Derek, Olivia, and Cristina all getting out, disoriented for a minute, then stopping to take in the damage in front of them.

All three FBI vans on are unscathed, they slammed to a stop just in time. Alex and the rest of the FBI team gather around Derek in the center of the road. Behind them, traffic stops, people yelling and honking, but it's nowhere near as bad as the sight in front of them.

Olivia is on her phone in an instant, calling 911 to get multiple ambulances and cops to the scene. Four or five cars litter the road in front of them, not that you can even tell these vehicles were cars. Most of them are flipped, each destroyed in some way, piling on top of each other. There's a small fire smoking from somewhere near them. The street is covered in track marks and metal, parts of the cars that have flown off. 

"Everyone okay?" Derek calls, looking to eight people surrounding him.

"Yes sir," Maggie, Ryan, Vanessa, and Olivia say at varying times, and the three surgeons nod at him. 

"Okay, Howard and Webbs you're on crowd control, no one comes near here unless it's the cops or emergency staff. Lohan, see if you can track help, get them here as fast as possible. Prenton, you're with me and these guys," Derek fires off orders and gestures towards the surgeons. "Let's get people out of their cars and help them however we can. Move fast!"

The agents split up to obey. Meredith's gaze is drawn to the closest car to her, flipped on its side. She can hear faint shouting from inside and without thinking she runs across the road to the vehicle. The pounding of feet behind her tells the blonde that Derek is right behind her for help. Cristina and Alex veer off to different cars, Olivia going with them.

Derek and Olivia do a lot of the heavy work, having trained day in and day out for the amount of physical labor this requires, while the three surgeons go into triage mode. Time flies, Derek pulls out two people from his car, and at the moment, Meredith forgets everything that's happened in the past few weeks as her medical knowledge comes flooding back to her.

She fires off orders at Derek, using whatever she can find to treat the man and woman, both unconscious on the ground in front of her. This. This is what she loves. Practicing medicine, saving lives. Meredith seems to have forgotten just how enthralling it is to do this in her time off, but it doesn't affect her now. Right now, she's a surgeon, just a surgeon doing what she does best. Save lives.

After what seems like hours, they can hear sirens. The group has pulled out five people from different cars and already has one casualty. Ambulances pull up and multiple paramedics Meredith recognize hop out. In a blur, patients are being loaded into the backs of the vehicles, cops have arrived to help direct traffic and firefighters are beginning to pull more victims from their cars and clear the road.

Without hesitation, Alex hops into the back of an ambulance with a little boy he's treating, shouting at the paramedics to get to Grey-Sloan. Cristina's patient is being loaded up, but she hesitates before getting into the back, glancing at Meredith, who has since moved off to the side. Her clothes are covered in blood and dirt, matching Cristina's. As the cardio surgeon approaches, Meredith jumps but relaxes slightly when she recognizes Cristina.

"Alex is in an ambulance, he's going to the hospital," Cristina announces.

"You should go too, that guy you were working on didn't look good," Meredith replies, not meeting her gaze.

"Are you sure? You're going to be okay? I don't know when I'll get back home."

"Cristina, I literally have bodyguards. I'm probably just gonna shower and try to sleep."