(no subject)
Title: Echo
Character/Pairing: Izzie, Izzie+/Addison (?)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 783
Spoilers: Season Two Finale
Summary: Izzie goes back to the hospital after prom.
This was written as a one shot, but I could continue it...
I would love to hear any comments or criticisms you have. Also, nothing has been beta-ed so if you catch any mistakes, please let me know!
Izzie lay in bed, listening to the activity in the hallway gradually dying, feeling silence settle over the house, and thought of nothing. She had a block of ice in her stomach and a weight on her chest that was making it hard to breathe. She had tears coursing steadily down worn paths on her cheeks, and pictures of Denny burned permanently into the backs of her eyelids, and a desperate impulse to get back to the hospital. But no thoughts. The dry, silent emptiness in her mind was driving her insane. Maybe if she could just think, then all this wouldn’t be so terrifying.
Izzie slowly opened her door and walked gently, silently down the hall. She passed two dark forms slumped against the wall before reaching the stairs but didn’t look to see who they were. She didn’t make a sound the whole way down the stairs and out the front door, but there was nothing in her posture to suggest that she was creeping or sneaking. She wasn’t leaning slightly forward, her shoulders were drooped rather than hunched, she wasn’t on tip toe, and she didn’t pause on each stair to make sure that she hadn’t been heard. She wasn’t trying to be quiet, because she knew that even if someone did hear her or see her, there wasn’t anything they could say or do to stop her from leaving.
The closer she got to what she still thought of as Denny’s room, the harder she had to focus just to remember to breathe. She could feel thoughts beginning to form in the back of her head and she was pretty sure that she had been wrong earlier, and that thinking was not going to make anything better. She stood by the window for a while, afraid that if she walked through the doorway her knees would give out and she didn’t want to have to be carried from that room twice.
She kept scanning the ICU, looking for some indication, some bit of evidence that everything that had happened in that room had been real. She wanted to find comfort in knowing that the sheets on the bed, that those sheets had been pressed against a living Denny only hours ago. But the crumpled sheets had been removed and the bed had been remade with sheets folded into agonizingly clean, brutally perfect angles. The Scrabble board was gone, so were the sweater she had knit and the book he had brought from home. She felt dazed; it wasn’t possible that a person could be so wholly, irrevocably removed from the world so quickly. She was left with nothing, not even shreds to cling to. She could still see his smile and hear his voice, but it wasn’t enough, because what she really wanted was something to touch, something she could hold indefinitely.
It didn’t seem fair. On her way into the hospital Izzie had noticed that there were still remnants of the prom in the lobby. The few balloons that had slipped through fingers and were now nestled in the beams of the ceiling, the scuff marks from heels clipping the linoleum, the bits of sparkly foil decorations that had evaded the brooms and could still be seen wrapped around chair legs or caught in hallway corners. The prom was still there. But Denny, Denny was just …gone.
Izzie sat in the waiting room and stared at the nurses’ station, numb, watching people come and go without seeing them, and without thinking or caring about what might happen if they saw her. She didn’t think she could stand going back to the house now. They all meant well, and she had been able to deal with or ignore the delicately placed questions and nervous glances earlier when her mind had been completely frozen, but now... she didn’t think that she could stand that and the thinking. Because the thinking hadn’t stopped, even though she wished it would, and the longer it went on, the worse the thoughts got.
Izzie felt someone drop slowly into the chair next to her and turned. It was Addison. Her hair was still pulled back the way it had been at prom and her make-up was still flawless, she obviously hadn’t left the hospital tonight. She sat quietly for a moment before tilting her head toward Izzie and murmuring ‘hey’. Her voice was strained and almost inaudible, and her breath caught slightly as she exhaled. Izzie shifted so she could rest her head on Addison’s shoulder. ‘Hey,’ she whispered back.
They had been sitting there for nearly an hour when Izzie realized that Addison hadn’t flinched when her tears had hit the salmon scrubs.
Character/Pairing: Izzie, Izzie+/Addison (?)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 783
Spoilers: Season Two Finale
Summary: Izzie goes back to the hospital after prom.
This was written as a one shot, but I could continue it...
I would love to hear any comments or criticisms you have. Also, nothing has been beta-ed so if you catch any mistakes, please let me know!
Izzie lay in bed, listening to the activity in the hallway gradually dying, feeling silence settle over the house, and thought of nothing. She had a block of ice in her stomach and a weight on her chest that was making it hard to breathe. She had tears coursing steadily down worn paths on her cheeks, and pictures of Denny burned permanently into the backs of her eyelids, and a desperate impulse to get back to the hospital. But no thoughts. The dry, silent emptiness in her mind was driving her insane. Maybe if she could just think, then all this wouldn’t be so terrifying.
Izzie slowly opened her door and walked gently, silently down the hall. She passed two dark forms slumped against the wall before reaching the stairs but didn’t look to see who they were. She didn’t make a sound the whole way down the stairs and out the front door, but there was nothing in her posture to suggest that she was creeping or sneaking. She wasn’t leaning slightly forward, her shoulders were drooped rather than hunched, she wasn’t on tip toe, and she didn’t pause on each stair to make sure that she hadn’t been heard. She wasn’t trying to be quiet, because she knew that even if someone did hear her or see her, there wasn’t anything they could say or do to stop her from leaving.
The closer she got to what she still thought of as Denny’s room, the harder she had to focus just to remember to breathe. She could feel thoughts beginning to form in the back of her head and she was pretty sure that she had been wrong earlier, and that thinking was not going to make anything better. She stood by the window for a while, afraid that if she walked through the doorway her knees would give out and she didn’t want to have to be carried from that room twice.
She kept scanning the ICU, looking for some indication, some bit of evidence that everything that had happened in that room had been real. She wanted to find comfort in knowing that the sheets on the bed, that those sheets had been pressed against a living Denny only hours ago. But the crumpled sheets had been removed and the bed had been remade with sheets folded into agonizingly clean, brutally perfect angles. The Scrabble board was gone, so were the sweater she had knit and the book he had brought from home. She felt dazed; it wasn’t possible that a person could be so wholly, irrevocably removed from the world so quickly. She was left with nothing, not even shreds to cling to. She could still see his smile and hear his voice, but it wasn’t enough, because what she really wanted was something to touch, something she could hold indefinitely.
It didn’t seem fair. On her way into the hospital Izzie had noticed that there were still remnants of the prom in the lobby. The few balloons that had slipped through fingers and were now nestled in the beams of the ceiling, the scuff marks from heels clipping the linoleum, the bits of sparkly foil decorations that had evaded the brooms and could still be seen wrapped around chair legs or caught in hallway corners. The prom was still there. But Denny, Denny was just …gone.
Izzie sat in the waiting room and stared at the nurses’ station, numb, watching people come and go without seeing them, and without thinking or caring about what might happen if they saw her. She didn’t think she could stand going back to the house now. They all meant well, and she had been able to deal with or ignore the delicately placed questions and nervous glances earlier when her mind had been completely frozen, but now... she didn’t think that she could stand that and the thinking. Because the thinking hadn’t stopped, even though she wished it would, and the longer it went on, the worse the thoughts got.
Izzie felt someone drop slowly into the chair next to her and turned. It was Addison. Her hair was still pulled back the way it had been at prom and her make-up was still flawless, she obviously hadn’t left the hospital tonight. She sat quietly for a moment before tilting her head toward Izzie and murmuring ‘hey’. Her voice was strained and almost inaudible, and her breath caught slightly as she exhaled. Izzie shifted so she could rest her head on Addison’s shoulder. ‘Hey,’ she whispered back.
They had been sitting there for nearly an hour when Izzie realized that Addison hadn’t flinched when her tears had hit the salmon scrubs.