ao3 merder stories& one shots

~Hold On pt.3~

Chapter 3
Cristina did not want to keep going with the surgery. Hot rage boiled inside of her, and it was creeping up her body, it began to numb her view, tainting everything with a deep red color. Red, like Derek's chest. Red, like Meredith's blood spreading on the floor. Red, red, red. She wanted to throw up, she wanted to leave Derek on the table, because she needed her person, she needed her like she had never needed someone before. Because Cristina had picked her, had chosen and loved her from the beginning, because, besides surgery, Meredith had never left her alone. Not like her dad, not like Burke, not even like Owen. And she couldn't be leaving her now, not for fucking McDreamy.

Gun to your head, you would choose surgery over Derek?

"She lied to me! She... she lied" Cristina kept repeating it, it was in her head, like a morbid mantra she couldn't let go of, keeping her going, keeping her feet on the ground while she waited for Owen to just say something.

How could Cristina have asked her that? At what point did her sick imaginary scenario to try to justify her choosing Teddy become this? It was as if she had summoned this mess with her words and her stupid questions about love and surgery and crap.

Which is it, surgery or love?

Why, why, why? She was mad. At herself, at Gary Clark, at Derek and at Meredith. God, definitely at Meredith, because she had just made a choice, and it was the wrong one. And she had lied!

Fine! If I had to choose, gun to my head, I would choose surgery, okay?

"She lied!" Cristina could not bring herself to say anything else, although she didn't know why she was so fixed on it. Why she couldn't physically bring herself to focus on anything else. She lied, she lied, she chose. She had chosen to leave them. She didn't even choose Derek over surgery, she chose him over her life, over her entire fucking existence.

You're my sister

You're my family

You're all I've got

The OR was too quiet. Gary Clark could come back any minute. The clock was ticking. Red. Blood. Blood on her fingers, blood on the floor. She was going to throw up. The metallic smell of surgery she was so used to filled her nostrils. She couldn't do it anymore. Meredith had lied.

You have a room at the new house in the woods.

"Say something! Please!" from where she was standing, Cristina couldn't really see what Owen was doing.

"Just tell me! Just..." her voice broke, and the strength left her body. She would never be able to save Derek. Maybe he wouldn't even want to be saved.

"Please, I need to know"

"She's... still alive"

The way Owen paused, so unsure before saying still made her shudder.

"There's probably a tension pneumothorax, I think one of the bullets might have shattered one of her ribs, which..."

Punctured lung. Collapsed lung. Blood. Meredith needed a chest tube, right now.

"There's no exit wound"

Blood, pooling in her chest.

"There's another penetrating injury in the upper right-hand quadrant..."

That probably meant a liver laceration. Not a shallow one, a bullet that didn't just scratch it, but tear through. Common complication: Uncontrolled bleeding.

"Crap"

Cristina didn't really talk like Meredith did, but her friend's signature word was the only one that was able to slip through her thinly shut lips. Owen kept talking, assessing another injury, probably, but her brain completely shut him off.