S5 EP24 & S6 EP1

[CW: slight description of injuries, character death]

NORAH SAT TIREDLY IN the room with the four other residents who were asleep; Izzie had yet to wake up. Bailey stepped into the room quietly to check on the patient, and they started stirring up from slumber.

"Any changes overnight?" Bailey asked, and Norah shook her head 'no'.

The Chief Resident's pager rang, waking everyone else up. "That's the chief," she took a glance at it before turning back to her half-awake residents, "Somebody better make a coffee run. You all look like hell."

"I gotta be in surgery in ten minutes," George stated as he stood up. "Um... Mer, will you let me know..."

"Yeah."

Norah tossed her blanket aside and got up from the chair. "Let me know, too." She left the room after George; the latter scratched his head while standing at his spot. "Don't you have surgery, George?"

George turned around, facing her with a serious look on his face; Norah furrowed her brows at him. He pulled her aside so that they were alone, which only added confusion to her curiosity.

"If you're wondering, no, I did not eat your yoghurt cup last night. Cristina did," Norah informed, and George quirked a brow at her.

"Thanks for letting me know, but never mind that-I... I did something yesterday," he confessed, "And I need to tell you before I tell Bailey, so I know what reaction I'm supposed to expect if Bailey decides to kill me. But I am sure about my decision, and I have never been this sure in my entire life."

"Okay, that's a good... preface? Go on..."

He took a deep breath and blurted out, "I joined the Army to be a trauma surgeon, and I report for duty tomorrow."

Norah blinked at his words as her eyes slowly widened with surprise. She was speechless for a good while but seeing the certainty and confidence on her friend's face, a smile slowly formed on hers.

"George, I would really wanna shove your face into the wall, but-holy crap?!" she exclaimed, and the man exhaled in relief, a grin slowly grew on him, too. "Wait, wait, wait... If you're reporting for duty tomorrow, that means today's your last day here?"

"As a surgical resident, yes," he nodded enthusiastically, "I'm leaving after my surgery with the chief later."

Norah could not help but feel delighted about the decision he made. Without warning, she threw her arms around him and engulfed him in a hug. "George O'Malley, I'll be waiting for your stories when you return!"

"I'll be sure to remember the most gruesome ones," he chuckled.

When they eventually separated themselves from a long hug, Norah was nearly teary-eyed. "See you, George."

"I'll see you soon."

"I guess this is our farewell, huh?" she spoke.

"Nah, this is only our first goodbye."

If only they knew that it was their first and last.

❦ ❦ ❦

NORAH WAS DOZING OFF while she signed off some charts at the nurses' station. Her eyes were struggling to stay open, and her back was sore from sitting in the same position on the patient room chair overnight.

Before her head drooped once more, a soft kiss greeted her on the side of her neck. Tiredly, she turned her head to the furrowing brows next to her. "Coffee?" Mark asked, holding up his cup, but Norah shook her head.

"I've already finished a large one," she stated with a sigh, "Caffeine isn't quite helping right now."

"Adrenaline?" he suggested as he set the cup of coffee on the counter, his now-free hand softly rubbing small circles on her sore back.

"Maybe," she shrugged. "I couldn't sleep. I was up the whole night, making sure Izzie didn't croak or whatsoever. It's funny, you know? I might not be the biggest fan of her, professionally, but I really don't want a dead friend."

"You have a spot for compassion-that's one of the many things I love about you," he mumbled before pressing his chest onto her back and moving his arms to either side of her, resting his hands on the counter of the station. "Rest your head on my shoulder and close your eyes."

"But I can't sleep-"

"-without a ticking clock. I know," he finished her sentence, "Just rest your eyes, Laurie."

She gave him a tired smile before resting her head on his shoulder. He stood, not moving while he listened to her soft breathing next to his ear; his free hand went to sort the last of her charts quietly.

He stared at her as though watching a child drifting off to slumber-fluttering eyelashes, little scar along her jaw, fair skin on the side of her neck.

"You know, if you keep staring at my neck like that, people might think that you're a bloody vampire," she mumbled with a light smile, "Or a mosquito."

"Hey, I'm not a mosquito," he chuckled softly before placing a kiss on the skin on her neck, "But I'll be your bloody vampire." Just then, his pager went off, causing him to grumble in annoyance and her to lift her head from his shoulder.

"My bloody vampire is getting paged," she noted before giving him a kiss, "I'll see you in a bit."

❦ ❦ ❦

"I GOT A 9-1-1 IN THE ER. You coming?" Derek called out while he walked past Norah urgently, and she immediately bolted towards him.

The attending and resident made their way to the ER and headed straight for the trauma room, where he had gotten paged to. The rapid beeping of the heart monitor filled the room when he pushed open the door; Norah gasped at the sight within.

"Holy mother of-"

"What do we got?" Derek asked before the resident could cuss out.

"We got roadkill," Mark joked, and several eyes glared at him.

"You mind?" Owen interjected, "He stepped in front of a moving bus so he can pull a woman out of the way. He's a hero."

Derek flashed his light in the man's eyes while Norah stood next to him, observing the man's injuries. He was soaked in his own blood, and parts of his flesh were exposed-not to mention his skull that had been obviously bashing in that caused his face to be totally unrecognisable.

Roadkill, Norah thought. She felt squeamish.

"Pupil's blown. Stop CPR," Derek ordered, and Meredith lifted her hands from the man's chest. "Get me a cranial drill, please," Derek requested and turned to the resident next to him, "Lawrence, want to practice your burr holes?"

"Ooh, yeah, sure," Norah nodded and took was handed drill from the nurse.

Derek had shaved the part of the man's hair, then made a small incision on his scalp and pulled it open with a small retractor, exposing the piece of the skull for her to start drilling.

"Go in slowly. Feel a grab, stop," he informed when the drill started whirring in the resident's hand, "Otherwise, you're gonna be hitting brain."

"She drilled into a man's head with a power drill on a ferryboat," Mark reminded, "This is nothing for her." He received glares from both the neurosurgeon and the resident holding the drill.

"Okay, let's go, quickly."

Norah could feel all eyes on her as she aligned the drill towards the exposed skull. But just as Mark had said, this was relatively easier than a power drill in a crashed ferryboat; she felt calm under pressure. She carefully drilled into the man's skull while Derek held the head in place.

"Okay, that's it!"

Norah pulled the drill back and handed it back to the nurse, exhaling in relief.

"Nice work, Dr Lawrence."

Derek was putting gauze over the blood that pooled out of the man's head; everyone else was quick in doing their parts. Mark gave Norah a glad nod, and she returned it with a smile. Meredith nudged Norah in the arm when she saw the man's eyes snapping open not long after.

"Welcome back, sir. You had us worried there for a minute."

❦ ❦ ❦

NORAH TORE OFF THE CRUST of her sandwich before devouring her lunch like a wolf that had not eaten in weeks. Next to her, Meredith, too, was eating her burger ferociously.

Cristina stared at the both of them with narrowed eyes, silently calculating when they were going to choke on their food. "Are you two gonna chew?"

"Our dragged-under-a-bus guy's in Angio," Meredith replied through a mouthful, "We're gonna get paged anytime now."

"One of you are gonna choke, sooner or later," Cristina shrugged, "And I have my bets on you, sweetheart."

Norah frowned at her fellow resident and shook her head. "Well, you'll just have to choke me, then," she stated with a smirk, and Cristina snorted.

Alex sat down with them, his face lacking colour and mood. "How's Izzie?" Norah asked, "Is she remembering yet?"

"No," he replied with a sigh.

Bailey and Callie walked up to the group of residents who were busy filling their stomachs. The four of them lifted their eyes to the two senior residents as they stopped next to their table.

"Okay, uh, at six p.m., your idiotic colleague George O'Malley will finish his surgery with the chief," Bailey prefaced.

"And at six p.m., you will be standing beside us in the OR hallway prepared to join in an intervention," Callie continued.

"What polite company might call an intervention, though I'm not sure interventions involve whupping people on the behinds with a belt," Bailey interjected, her voice hard.

Alex raised a brow at the two senior residents, "What? He's got a drinking problem now?"

"Nope," Norah coughed out as she gulped down her bite of sandwich. "George joined the Army."

"What-?!"

"Double-O-Seven?" Alex questioned disbelievingly, "He can't go to the Army-he's the guy that gets killed!"

"He's the guy who gets killed cleaning his own gun," Cristina added rather disturbingly.

"He seemed very sure about his decision, though," Norah spoke up, "Shouldn't we support him? As his friends...?"

"No!"

Norah turned to the five of them who had chorused a disagreement, her eyes wide. "Alright-we're not being supportive... Got it."

"Grey is going to coax him back as a loving friend. You're gonna use logic and reason to point out the idiocy of his ways. Stevens will make sad cancer eyes, and if all of that doesn't work," Bailey turned to the two other residents, "Karev, you're gonna pull out your 'I-was-raised-out-back-with-the-trash-cans' roots, and Lawrence-you just beat the crap out of him."

The four residents stared at her wordlessly before glancing at each other, unsure whether Bailey's words were serious or not. "So, we're gonna do good cop-bad cop, then play the cancer card, then guilt-trip him... before beating sense into him," Norah concluded, raising a brow as Bailey and Callie both nodded firmly.

"Six o'clock."

❦ ❦ ❦

NORAH WAS IN THE CT room along with Mark and Dr Nelson, the resident having to brief the neurosurgeon about John Doe's case. The pre-op and post-op scans were side-by-side with each other; the one on the right showed a re-bleed, which Dr Nelson was going to operate on.

The door was knocked and pushed open quickly, and both Derek and Meredith stood on the other side. He was in a suit while she was still in scrubs, yet they were beaming from ear to ear.

"Dr Nelson, thank you for your time, but I can take care of the surgery now," Derek insisted, and the other neurosurgeon sighed and left.

Mark furrowed his brows at the pair. "Aren't you two heading to City Hall?"

"Like..." Norah checked the time on her watch, "Right now?"

Derek and Meredith held each other before breaking into bright grins. "We already did-we are married," he announced, and Mark and Norah went wide-eyed.

"Congratulations, you lucky bastard," Mark gave his best friend a hug while Norah hugged Meredith tightly.

"How'd you do it so quickly?" Norah queried.

"We got married on a Post-It," Meredith clarified. The brunette raised a brow at her confusingly, then remembered that she was Meredith Grey, and he was Derek Shepherd.

"Wow, well-congratulations!" she exclaimed, giving Derek a hug, too. "Well, do you two wanna spend your honeymoon in an OR?" she offered, "I can back out from this surgery."

The pair shared a look before accepting Norah's offer. She handed the CT scans over and quickly shooed them off. "Oh, wait, Norah-could you check on Stevens for me?" Derek asked.

"Sure, now go save a life," Norah nodded, and the two left the room. "Congratulations, again!"

Mark snaked his arms around her waist from behind and buried his face in her neck. "A Post-It?" he snorted, and she broke into a laugh.

"They never fail to amaze me, do they?" she shook her head, happy for both her friends.

He placed a trail of kisses up her neck as she melted into his hold. "I'm apartment hunting," he whispered, "Finally got fed up with the hotel."

"Good luck with that. Took me a while to find the apartment I'm staying in right now."

A prick of chills ran down her spine-one that was telling her that something was not right.

She frowned at the chills before turning around and giving him a quick kiss. "I have patients to check on... See ya."

Mark stood at his spot when she ducked out of his hold and hurried out of the room. His question had yet to ask, but she had... fled? He rubbed on his jaw, confused but hopeful.

❦ ❦ ❦

IN THE ICU, THE MAN ON the bed grasped the resident's hand.

He was not strong enough to hold a pen-he knew that. So, with his finger, he traced.

" 0 "

A nickname that once made him seethe could now be the only thing that identified him.

" 0 "

He felt like he was using all the strength he could muster to write, which meant that his body was weak beyond his hoping. He knew it.

" 7 "

He was pleading-begging-for her to understand what he wrote because this was his last shot. He knew it.

" 007 "

And when he saw the light vanishing in her eyes, hearing the loud gasp escaping her mouth, he gripped onto her hand tightly.

She knew it, too.

"Oh, god! Oh, god-!"

❦ ❦ ❦

NORAH EXHALED IN RELIEF when they had managed to resuscitate Izzie-ignoring her DNR-and the blonde's eyes had flown open. Alex, who had been standing by the wall, covered in his tears, had finally stopped crying hysterically. Cristina, too, had a relieved look on her face.

"Whoa, whoa. She wants it out," Alex stated as Izzie tugged against the intubation tube taped at her mouth, a small smile settling on his face. "Can we take it out?"

"She's breathing over the vent," Norah notified.

"Alright, let's pull out the tube," Webber nodded in agreement.

Bailey shook her head as she took deep breaths, trying to calm herself down from the scare.

"Dr Bailey," Meredith called out, her voice firm but uncertain. Bailey turn to her, as well as Norah and everyone else. Meredith stood at the door, still in her OR gown and struggling to form out her words.

"Mer?" Norah tried. The drain of colour on the other resident's face made her feel off. The chills from before seemed to have returned in ten folds when Meredith finally spoke in a shaky voice,

"John Doe is George."

John Doe is George? Norah's eyes widened at the other resident's words.

The man who came in after roadkill is George? She felt frozen right down to her core. All sense of her was reduced to null.

The proud grinning face and tight hug from this morning is... gone?

Norah was the first person who darted out of Izzie's room, followed by both Bailey and Webber. She ignored the yelling from nurses and other staff-she had only one aim, one destination, and she sprinted towards it.

―

"Norah's been shot, too. She's unconscious and-"

"Where is she?"

"George-"

"Damn it, Cristina, where is she!"

"Trauma 3."

George immediately took off and left the room.

―

She pulled one of the surgical masks from its box and covered it hastily over her face. When she slammed open the OR door, the sight within the room was... dead. Several nurses assisted in closing up the man on the table-the man on the table being George O'Malley.

Callie was gasping and shuddering at the side of the room, with Owen comforting her. Other than her sharp inhales and chokes on the air, the OR was quiet. The surgical field was silent-they were mourning.

The door opened again behind her. This time, Bailey and Webber entered, and they both had the same expressions as Norah did.

"Derek?" she gulped.

"His ICP went through the roof," the attending informed, "We did everything."

"Derek."

Derek lifted his eyes to her, her hazel eyes staring back at him, yearning for an answer. "It is George," he confirmed, his voice rather breathy with a slight shake to it.

Next to her, Bailey stared blankly at the man on the table, shaking her head in disbelief. Norah lowered her eyes to the Chief Resident, whose eyes were glistering with tears.

And when one started rolling, the rest flowed out, too.

She wrapped her arms around Bailey as the latter sobbed into the younger resident's shoulder. Unlike Callie, Bailey's cries were soft and quiet.

―

"George is a real doctor. He is one of the best in our class, too. He is quick, smart, sharp-he will be a bloody fantastic surgeon one day."

―

"Derek, I-I wanna stitch him up," Norah requested. "He has to have the best... best presentation, you know? H-He's my friend, one of my best... h-he just... He has to."

Derek nodded, and Bailey, too, lifted her face from the younger resident's shoulder. Norah was walking towards the scrub room when Bailey spoke, "That... That wouldn't be necessary, Lawrence."

Norah hung back for a moment, staring at the door... before silently nodding and walking over to the surgical field.

The nurse handed her the prolene sutures; everything and everyone was silent. And when she started suturing George's forearm, slow and certain-she felt the back of her eyes started to sting.

The scrub room slowly filled with people. Bailey stood numbly, and Callie, who was still sobbing. Through the glass, where a few other surgeons entered, words were exchanged between them. She did not know what-she did not want to know what.

❦ ❦ ❦

"HE GRABBED MY HAND and squeezed it, and he wrote with his finger," Meredith explained for what felt like the fifth time in three minutes.

"He wrote with his finger?" Derek questioned.

"You know, in my hand. He wrote '007'."

The group of surgeons narrowed their eyes at her, not believing her words. And when Bailey tested Meredith's ability to read the traces on her hand, everyone was mumbling to one another.

They all grasped upon the last hope-last, false hope-that John Doe was not George, even though deep down, they all knew.

―

"You helped me out when I first came here. We ought to keep helping each other out, right?"

"Absolutely-I'll repay you for this!"

"I'll be definitely waiting for it, then."

―

"Nor?" Timothy nudged her softly, "Are you..."

"That is George," Norah stated firmly.

"We don't know that yet," he reasoned while dialling George's number along with the rest of the group, "You don't know that."

"Except I do, Tim," she shook her head. "I felt chills down my spine, just like I did the morning Mum died, and with the bomb, and when I got shot. I just... know."

Timothy turned his head to Mark for help, but the latter could only hold his girlfriend tight in his arms. Timothy, too, was holding Lexie, who was breathing heavily next to him.

"He has a freckle in his right hand. It's shaped like Texas," Callie spoke up, "I used to tease him about it..." Everyone had turned their heads to the woman; Norah gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. "...I'll check."

But when Callie broke down in the room next to the bed, everyone had gone still and silent.

Several pages started to beep, one after another. "You people, answer your pages," Webber instructed, but nobody moved-nobody wanted to move.

"George O'Malley jumped in front of a bus today. He knew what he was doing, and he did it anyway. And he did it to save a life," he spoke, "So I'm not gonna allow you doctors to stand here. There are lives on the line-there are lives we can save."

―

"You got the first solo surgery!"

"And one day-soon, hopefully-you'll get yours, too."

―

And as the realisation sank it, Norah felt a rush of feelings running up her throat.

She now had a dead friend.

"So, if George O'Malley can jump in front of a bus... we can answer our damn pages. So let's go."

She was the first one who darted away from the scene; Mark, who was holding her in his arms just a second ago, followed after her.

This time, she was running aimlessly, no destination. Her legs took her, and she allowed them to. When she finally felt her legs giving out, she staggered herself into the nearest stairwell.

Mark caught up to her, and when he opened the door, his heart sank at her strangling sobs.

"Oh my god, Mark..." she choked out, her body shaking, "I... I drilled burr holes i-in George's..."

He did not say a word as he walked towards her, wrapping his arms around her body. He raked the back of her hair, softly and soothingly, while he let her tears slowly stain his scrub top.