Everything Changes (A Grey's Anatomy Fanfic)

Aftershock

A/N Heyyy I know I'm hitting y'all with a lot of rapid fire updates, but I have updates written already so why not post them right?

A moment of silence fell down over the room. Finally, Derek broke it. "Yeah, um... She um... She has quite a history."

Callie felt sick to her stomach as she watched Meredith turn to her husband. "Right, well... I really hate to say this but... But I... I think that there's some fairly recent damage." At that, she got a reaction. Mark closed his eyes, his hands curling into fists. Derek looked as stunned as Meredith, mouth hanging open.

"Recent?" Mark asked, eyes still closed. "How... What..."

"Look, there's um... There's no way to be sure without asking her but her veins are thrombosed, her airway is an absolute mess, her arteries-" She closed her eyes, shaking her head and shuddering. "But the thing you really need to know is that her heart is... It's giving us a lot of trouble. She has coded... At least three times since the crash. So, um... It's not looking good."

Derek leaned back, running his fingers through his hair as he shook his head. "I can't believe I didn't know."

"It's not your fault," Mark whispered, now staring blankly. "She hides it well. Always has. If you blame yourself... You'll go down a rabbit hole that you can't get out of."

Callie looked over the solemn group. "Look, um... There's still a chance, okay? I have to tell you that the odds are slim, but... We've beaten odds before, right?"

Karev nodded. "She's gonna be okay guys."

Mark laughed, startling everyone. He laughed and he couldn't stop laughing without a trace of humor. For what felt like forever, he just kept laughing. Finally, he forced out the words, "When is Lydia Shepperd ever okay anymore?"

***

For hours, they waited. Update after update came, some positive, but the majority negative. Arizona and Alex stayed, taking turns with the baby as they sat with their friends. Finally, Callie, Teddy, Bailey, Jackson, and Nelson all came to stand in Mark's doorway.

Meredith gently shook her husband awake and instantly, he bolted upright. "What? What happened?"

Mark searched their faces, trying to deduce what they were going to say. He felt his stomach sinking at the solemnness of their expressions. "Is she dead?" he asked quietly.

Miranda Bailey shook her head. "No, she made it through the surgery, so you can stop worrying about that." Instantly, a collective sigh swept through the room. Mark leaned his head back, closing his eyes as a small portion of the weight on his shoulders vanished. "Now, as I'm sure you all know, that does not mean that she is out of the woods, yet. In fact, she is very much deep into the woods still. She lost a significant amount of blood and we had to stitch a lot of extremely friable internal tissue in order to stop the internal bleeding. We also needed to pump her with a substantial amount of anesthetic in order to keep her under due to an apparent excessive drug tolerance. She also had some organ damage which we were able to asses and address as needed which we will continue to monitor. It um... It looks like she will need a liver transplant, but like I said, we'll monitor the situation and go from there." At that, Bailey looked towards Callie, who took over.

"Well... Ah, we were able to do a simple fix of her right arm since it was just two fairly clean breaks," Torres explained, her eyes glued to the stunned Derek and Meredith. "Now, um... Her leg and ribs were a little bit harder. We ended up seeing the bones broken from the right leg were in 6 pieces, which we repaired using two rods and four screws. Her ribs on her right side were pretty messed up, so we had to put in two plates to hold them in place." She nodded to Jackson, who sighed deeply, before starting, his attention focused solely on Sloan.