Code Blue | Grey's Anatomy // Book 2 // COMPLETED

27 | The Wreckage of What's Left

My eyes shot open to the sound of screaming and I could hear Cristina's voice as she prompted Meredith to get up. Okay, so Cristina was still alive and hopefully, so was Meredith. The screaming didn't belong to either one of them, and it was a girl's voice, so it must have been Arizona or Lexie screaming.

My mind worked frantically as I tried to piece together what had happened and what was currently happening with the little information I possessed at the time. 

The sun shone down right into my eyes, causing me to squint as I looked up at the thick canopy of trees above, but that was the least of my worries. Taking deep breaths, I blocked out everything else as I concentrated on myself. My leg hurt. My right leg hurt a lot and it felt wet, so I must have been bleeding. Also my left side...it had the same kind of pain. Exactly the same.

"ELLIE!" Cristina screeched. "ELLIE! GET UP!"

My arms felt fine, so with a low grunt, I used them to push myself up to a sitting position. As I slowly rose, my side started to throb. It was agonizing, but I had no energy to scream. Once I was up, I peered down at my leg, afraid of what I would see but too curious to not look. My pants had been torn and there was a large gash that ran all the way up from my ankle to my knee. It was deep enough that it was still bleeding and not broken, but shallow enough not to expose any bone or risk nerve damage. Taking another deep breath, I turned to my side, which was soaked in blood from another large gash I had sustained just below my ribs. 

Ripping my eyes away from the horrors on my own body, I looked up and saw Meredith staring back at me with Cristina by her side. Cristina was favouring one arm — the shoulder most likely dislocated — but Meredith looked fine. The screaming continued.

"Oh." Meredith looked down at her thigh and I followed her gaze to see a shard of glass sticking out of it. "How long was I out?"

"I don't...I" Cristina grabbed her left arm. "I don't know. I lost my...I lost my shoe."

Without warning, Meredith ripped the shard out of her leg. Glancing around some more, pieces of the plane scattered all around us, I could see Mark a few feet away looking for the others who had been on the plane with us — Derek, Lexie, and Arizona. 

"Where's-where's Derek and Lexie?" Meredith asked as she stood up.

Cristina groaned, her focus on a million things at once. "I don't-I don't know. I lost a shoe."

"What happened?" I questioned as I tried to stand, but the sharp pain in my leg every time I put weight on it was making that task difficult. 

"The plane crashed, that's what happened." Cristina panicked, almost as if she was only now realizing what had happened. "We were in a plane, and it crashed. Plane crash."

Feeling slightly cold as a gentle breeze passed through the trees, I wished I hadn't taken off my jacket on the plane. All I had to keep myself warm were my blue scrubs. We were all wearing blue scrubs; dressed as surgeons in the middle of nowhere. Sighing, I took my blue scrub shirt off, since I was wearing a long sleeve underneath, and tied it around my leg to slow the bleeding since the gash on my leg was larger than the one on my side.

"Where is Derek?!" Meredith cried as I used a nearby tree to help myself stand. "Cristina, where is Derek?"

Cristina was silent for a moment as she thought. "He was sucked out the side when we hit the trees, and then the back of the plane came off. It came-it came off."

"Lexie was in the back," Meredith recalled.

"I-I looked back, and all I could see was freakin' sky," Cristina explained.

Meredith rubbed the back of her head, "Where is she?"

"I don't know! I only have one shoe!" Cristina snapped.

"Who-who's screaming?" I hobbled over to them, following the constant noise with my eyes and spotting Arizona on the other side of the demolished cockpit lying down and screaming bloody murder. 

"I'm bleeding." Meredith rubbed her head some more.

Finally having enough of the incessant yelling, Cristina turned to Arizona and shouted. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

"Do you hear...do you hear that sound?" Meredith asked as a banging sound rang, only then audible in the absence of screaming. "Where is that sound coming from?"

"There." Arizona pointed in the opposite direction. "It's coming from over there."

"Derek!" Meredith shouted as Mark rushed passed us and we followed him. "Lexie! Derek! Lexie!"

We stopped when we came to another part of the plane in a clearing. "Lexie." Mark gasped as we saw a hand sticking out from under half of a snapped-off plane wing, banging the metal part from a seat belt on the metal side. Running over, we found Lexie under the rubble.

"Lexie. Lexie." Mark leaned down and checked her pulse.

Lexie weakly smiled, obviously glad that we had heard her banging. "I knew you'd show up."

"How is she?" Meredith asked.

She's awake and responsive." Mark replied before turning back to Lexie. "How you doing in there?"

"I'm-I'm great." Lexie breathed out, her face covered with small cuts and her lips and teeth red from blood.

"Yeah? Good girl." Mark smiled. "We're gonna get you outta here, okay?"

"Okay." Lexie stayed calm as we all stood back up.

"She's tachycardic and short of breath," Mark told us.

There was a moment of silence before Meredith began to scan the trees with her eyes. "We have to find Derek," she breathed out. 

Cristina turned to her and nodded. "Okay, you know what? We've got Lexie. So go. Go find him. Go, go. Go try and find him."

"We gotta get her outta there." Mark gasped for breath as Meredith took off.

"Pop it back in." Cristina turned her dislocated shoulder towards Mark, knowing she couldn't be of any use with it. "Pop it back in." Nodding, Mark grabbed her shoulder and she instantly winced before taking a second to compose herself afterward. "Ah. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, do it."

With one quick movement, Mark popped her shoulder back in. Cristina screamed in pain as Mark and I grabbed her to stop her from falling. However, I couldn't hold on for very long before my side began to throb and I was forced to let go.

After getting Cristina's arm into a makeshift sling, we attempted to lift the plane wing off of Lexie. We tried again and again, but with our injured states and the sheer size of the debris, it was just impossible for the three of us to lift. "One...two...three," Mark called out and we started to pull, attempting to try a different method.

My side was in so much pain every time I tried to lift or pull or do anything, but despite that, I still gave it everything I had when Mark insisted we try again. Eventually, though, it began to sink in that there was no way we were getting Lexie out. 

Dropping down to her knees, Cristina looked to Lexie and sighed. "Lexie, run it down for me."

"My legs and my pelvis are crushed." Lexie began to list her injuries. "And I can't f-feel my other arm, so I'm not sure it's even there anymore. And, uh, my chest feels like it's gonna explode, so it's probably a massive...hemothorax."

"Oh, oh, we-we gotta..." Mark panted. "We gotta get the oxygen from the plane, okay? And fluids. Fluids. She needs water bottles. And, uh, uh, the tubes, the oxygen tubes. We can get her fluids. We can get her fluids, okay? Go get 'em. Go. Go get 'em. Go get 'em."

Cristina and I stayed right where we were. "Why aren't you doing anything?" Mark asked.

"They...they know it won't help." Lexie gasped.

"No." Mark refused to believe the facts. "No. You are gonna be fine. Stop. You're gonna be fine. Go! Get 'em!"

Looking down at Lexie, who was staring back up at us, her breath shaky, I caved. "We are gonna be right back," I told her, tears in all four of our eyes by then. No one wanted to admit it, but we all knew it was a lost cause.

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I could hear birds crying and screeching as Cristina and I gathered supplies from the cockpit of the plane. However, these supplies were for Arizona as we had to treat the fact that her bone was protruding out of her thigh. "I'm gonna try and splint this," I said as I leaned down and set the handful of belts and other supplies on the ground.

"No, I can do it." Arizona sniffled. "I can do it. Uh, Jerry needs c-spine stabilization."

"Who's Jerry?" Cristina asked.

Arizona looked up to the cockpit. "How are you doing there, Jerry?"

"I give us four hours tops before they find us." Jerry, the pilot, called back. "There's a transmitter in the plane that lets out a squawk that should lead 'em right to us."

As Cristina and I re-entered the plane, Jerry managed to get his seat belt off. "Did you find Derek?" Arizona asked.

"Uh, not yet," Cristina told her. "Uh, Jerry, uh, do you, uh, have any tape?"

"Uh, yeah. In the bulkhead." Jerry replied. "In the cabinet to your left. There's a flare gun in there, too. You hear a chopper, you fire it straight up."

"Yes." Cristina sighed in relief as she opened the cabinet and began pulling out the supplies.

"And Lexie?" Arizona followed-up.

I took a deep breath and shook my head. "Not good."

There was a short yelp of pain as Arizona tugged the belt tight around her leg, but with no worrying sounds following after, Cristina and I continued to help Jerry. "Okay, keep your head very still," Cristina instructed as I ripped the first piece of tape. "Jerry, is there a first aid kit?" 

Jerry thought for a second as Cristina taped his head to the board. "A..yeah, a big one. In the cabinet on your right, behind the cockpit."

"There's no cabinet there," I said as I looked back to where there was once a cabinet, but now only a gaping hole. 

"Just tell her to hang on for another four hours," Jerry said to us as we found some water bottles in the still in-tact mini-fridge. After packing away the waters and some of the other helpful items we had found into a backpack, Cristina and I began to head back to Lexie.

"Hey, hey, wait. Don't leave." Jerry called."I-I can't feel my legs. That's because I'm trapped, right? I mean, I'm gonna be okay, right? I'm not paralyzed. I'm gonna walk again. I'm gonna be okay, right?"

Huffing, Cristina grabbed a pen and stabbed it into Jerry's leg. "I'm sorry," she told him before we took off. Arizona kept screaming as she continued to do her own splint.

"Cristina. Ellie." Meredith came out from the trees, a shred of fabric around her leg as a tourniquet and a walking stick in her hand. "I can't find him. I looked everywhere. I can't find him."

"Maybe he's fine," Cristina suggested. "Maybe he went for help."

Meredith nodded. "Maybe, but I gotta-I gotta keep looking."

"No, Meredith." I stopped her. "You should come...help Lexie."