Grey's Anatomy: What If?

-Lexie-

It was a pretty sunset, with the blazing horizon visible beyond the glass window of the plane. Lexie Grey was curled up in her seat, gazing out the window. Or rather, gazing anywhere except at Mark. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought. 

He loves Julia. He'll have babies with Julia. 'Thank you for your candor'-- what the hell is that? If he loved you... well, he wouldn't say 'thank you for your candor'. 

She unbuckled her seat belt in order to get more comfortable. As she shifted in her seat, she went over the charts for the surgery at Boise in her mind. Having a photographic memory had its perks. What she needed was candy, preferably peanut butter cups, to take her mind off of things. Unfortunately, her stockpile was back home in Seattle. 

She was lamenting the absence of the candy when she felt the plane bump and heard a groan. Unperturbed, she snuggled down in her seat, hoping to get some rest. She had just fallen asleep when she was woken by a loud screeching and crashing, as the plane helplessly fell from the sky. Crap. I forgot the seatbelt, she thought.

...

Pain. Unimaginable pain. The kind patients must be in, but few truely experience.

Screams. Desperate, terrified screams. Coming from the people she cared about. Coming from her.

Lexie opened her eyes, staring up at the giant sheet of metal hovering over her vision. From far away, she could vaguely hear Arizona screaming, and Meredith, and Cristina, and-- Mark. She couldn't hear Mark. Which meant one of two things. He didn't have a need to scream because he was fine. Or he was dead.

She tried to get up. It was only then that she registered the fact that she was trapped beneath something. Glancing around and moaning from the pain of movement, she discovered that the lower half of her body was crushed beneath the plane's engine. 

Realizing that she was completely immobile, she attuned her ears to try and guess the status of the others. She could barely make out their voices.

"Where is she?!"

Good. They know I'm missing. They'll find me. 

"I don't know! I only have one shoe!"

Never mind. I'm dead.

She drew a deep breath so that she could scream- and almost passed out from the effort. With her abdomen crushed, all she could do was move her arm. Desperately, she looked around for anything- anything - that could help her friends find her.  A glint of metal shining in the sun caught her eye. Reaching for it and ignoring the tears running down her face, she grabbed the object in her hand. 

My seatbelt.

With tremendous effort, she lifted the buckle and began to hit it against the metal with all her might. It wasn't long before the voices grew nearer. 

"Lexie!"

"I knew you'd show up," she breathed.

...

"We're going to get you out of there," Mark insisted.

After ten minutes, Lexie gave up any existing hope that she would be freed from the engine. She also doubted that she would live.  Assessing her injuries, she noted that while she could feel one crushed leg, the other must have been gone. The engine rested over her abdomen and pelvis, but luckily, didn't lean on them. Which meant they were unharmed. Her chest hurt, which suggested that she had a hemothorax. Relating all of this to Cristina and Mark, she could tell that her odds still weren't good.

Using a straw, they managed to (very painfully) drain the hemothorax and buy her some time. 

"We're gonna have the best life, Lexie, you and me," Mark said.

He never left her side, not even when they heard the roar of a helicopter overhead.

...

"All right, today we're going to fit you both for prosthetic legs," the Dr. David. Arizona refused to look at the expert or space where her leg once was. 

"I'm ready," said Lexie. She was ready to continue her life.