Before We Turn to Stone

Season 16, Episode 15: Do I Wanna Know?

"Do I wanna know
If this feelin' flows both ways?
Sad to see you go
Was sorta hopin' that you'd stay
Baby, we both know
That the nights were mainly made
For sayin' things that you can't say tomorrow day."

* * *

Izzie considers herself a calm person. When you're a surgeon, a mother of twins, and a woman in a male-dominated field, you kind of have to be.

But her child has been in the hospital for a week. A stranger – albeit a very capable, encouraging surgeon – is about to remove a piece of hardware from said child's brain, which started swelling because of a careless idiot on a bike. She's been fending off calls from her anxious mother all week – her mother who is upset that her daughter and grandchildren couldn't come out to see her because of the aforementioned brain surgery (though not upset to drive down from Chehalis herself.) And now she's been on the phone for over an hour with their hotel, trying to extend their stay for yet a second time, and they're telling her that between several conferences in town and an incoming snowstorm, there are no available rooms.

Oh, and she still has to tell her children that the doctor they've become so fond of the past few days is not only a friend, but also their father.

So, all things considered, she's a little less calm than she might like to be.

She's on hold again, pacing up and down the hall while the very kind concierge reaches out to other hotels in the area on her behalf. She pokes her head into Eli's room and, as she has every other time she's glanced in there, gets a little jolt in her chest when she sees Alex and his new wife, playing Go Fish with her children.

They're both great with the kids. Alex is full of the worst jokes, the kind that sends the twins into gales of giggles. Jo is patient and kind and both Eli and Alexis seem to like her – a fact that somehow makes Izzie both pleased and irrationally annoyed.

Not annoyed, a maddening little voice reminds her. Jealous.

Shut up, she tells the voice firmly.

Alex senses her in the doorway and glances up. He flashes her an "All good?" thumbs up, to which she crosses her eyes and sticks out her tongue. He grins at her and she can't help but grin back.

Twenty minutes later, she's finally off the phone, but the news isn't good.

"Well?" Alex asks as she comes back into the room.

She presses her hand over her eyes and sighs. "No dice."

"Everything is booked?" he asks incredulously.

"There are two educational conferences in town, and three separate industry conferences," she says. "Plus, the weather service has issued a winter weather watch, so they had a lot of travelers book at the last minute."

"So, what are you going to do?" Jo asks. She looks sympathetic, but Izzie perceives an undercurrent of wariness in her tone; she's clearly afraid Alex is going to invite them to stay at their loft.

Izzie bites back a grin. She imagines she'd be more than a little wary if her own husband invited his surprise family over for a snowstorm sleepover too.

"I guess once Eli's discharged we'll just drive out to my mom's," she says. The idea doesn't exactly thrill her – Robbie isn't the most soothing influence at the best of times, to say nothing of when Izzie is feeling jangled and exhausted – but at this point she's out of ideas.

"Grandma Robbie's house stinks," Alexis proclaims.

"Yeah, it stinks," Eli answers. He pulls a face. "Like stinky smoke."