one

When everything's going right, during the best surgeries, Burke lets his hands plan and carry out entire heart transplants on their own. He always knew that he would be better than good, that he would be great, that his name would mean something to other surgeons. He's the Preston Burke, the only one, the best, and his hands have never let him down. He can quiz interns and joke with the scrub nurses and all the while his hands are pulling silk thread through skin and muscle and heart tissue as easily as if he's darning his socks. And (when he is himself; when he flies through surgery like a fine dance, like making love, like letting the vibrato spin out of his trumpet until the one perfect note fades into silence) he can smile behind his scrub mask and watch his hands move. They're deft and skillful and his, and nothing is as wonderful as the moments when he can stand back and let his hands work without giving them a thought.

Nothing's gone right in a long time. Most days when he's walking around the hospital, Burke thrusts his hands into his labcoat pockets to hide them. His right hand is his enemy now, and it will betray him if it can. Maybe it's strange to assign it a personality--every time Burke thinks in terms of his hand being actively out to get him, he feels paranoid. But he used to be sure of himself and now he can't trust anything. Just when he's certain that everything is going smoothly, his fingers tremble and jerk. He has spilled more coffee over his wrist in the last few weeks than he had in a lifetime before.

He should tell the Chief. He knows that. He promises himself that he will. When he steps on to an elevator and the Chief nods a casual hello to him, Burke is ready. He smiles tightly and says, "I'm not ready to come back."

"Well, let's see," the Chief says.

Burke holds out his right arm, extending his fingers as far as they'll go, and slowly turns his hand palm-up. Go on, he thinks, I'm ready. He can feel it: his hand will shiver despite his best efforts and the Chief will ground him. As he should. And then the Preston Burke will be a scary story to frighten med students instead of a legend to live up to.

The elevator dings and the doors slide open. The Chief takes a half step out and says, "You're fine, Preston." He claps him on the shoulder. "Stop worrying. And Preston?"

Burke leaves his hand out, and he's watching it, waiting for the betrayal, but he says, "Yes?"

"It's good to have you back."

The doors slide shut and the Chief's gone. And that's when Burke's fingers spasm and he has to massage the tension out of his palm with his left hand before he can stretch them out again. One more floor and the Chi€ef would have seen it.

Burke's not sure how he manages to get through his scheduled surgery that afternoon, but the patient's already off the by-pass, and even though he had to use the paddles more than he likes to, the heart's responding just fine, squeezing out a slow but adequate sinus rhythm.

That's when it happens. It's just like all the other times, when Burke watched his hands as if they were moving in slow motion, and they solved every problem almost before it happened. It's just like those times; he is watching and his hands are moving and there is nothing he can do. His right hand twitches, and he overcompensates. He brings his left hand across to try and hide it, and suddenly there's blood everywhere. It spurts up, spattering his gown and he has to blink behind his glasses before he can see what he's done. The heart, he's perforated the heart, and oh God there is blood everywhere.

He should be rushing to close the hole, yelling for instruments and suction and gauze but instead he steps back and there's no one as good as the Preston Burke to take his place. The monitor whines flatline and someone is calling for the paddles. Burke can only hold up his hands--and they cannot be his hands--and realize that this was not the betrayal he was waiting for. That moment has already come and gone. His hands turned traitor on the elevator with the Chief, when he let himself believe--for just one more minute--that nothing in the world could ever go wrong.

two

Derek's lovelife seems destined to be shaped by how many floors he has to travel to get where he's going. Given how much has happened to him between Admit and the ICU--kisses and break-ups and get-back-togethers--he doesn't dare board an elevator in the basement and press the button for the roof. He might arrive there divorced, remarried, a father, and in debt for his kid's college fund. He smiles to himself, thinking about it, arms crossed, leaning back on the rail, on one of those rare trips when the elevator's empty except for him. These are his Zen moments, when he doesn't have to think about patients or MRIs or Addison or Meredith or New York or Mark.

So of course it's Mark waiting at the very next floor. Derek lets his eyes slide away, because he is determined to be the bigger man. He is not the one acting unprofessionally. He came to Seattle without any ulterior motives, and it's his city now. There's no room here for memories of his old life. He's moved on, or at least, he would move on if his entire circle of New York acquaintances didn't find themselves duty bound to follow him and pester him and remind him of what used to be.

"Derek," Mark greets him, in that insufferably smug tone that all plastic surgeons get after a while.

Derek wants to smile in a sad, wistful way, but he holds himself back. He is the wounded party, after all, but there's no one here to sympathize with his cause, so it would be wasted effort. "Mark," he answers, neutrally. He uncrosses his arms and rests his hands on the rail.

He's pretty sure that will be the end of it. They only have three floors left to go, and someone's sure to get on pushing beds or wheelchairs or an IV stand and then he'll have something blocking his view of Mark's intolerably handsome face.

"Look," Mark says, straight ahead to the elevator doors, "I'm sorry about Addison."

"Huh," Derek says. "Not the apology I was waiting for, actually."

"I'm not apologizing for sleeping with your wife," Mark says. "I'm apologizing for sleeping with your wife." And his hand covers Derek's on the rail.

Derek should just jerk back and say something along the lines of "What the hell?" But that bridge was long since burned, somewhere back in New York, so instead, Derek doesn't stop himself from looking sideways at Mark, who's still examining the doors with the kind of intensity that probably means he's considering giving them some really spectacular breasts. "We are still not friends," he says with all the finality he can muster.

"No," Mark says. "But then, that's never exactly what we were."

Derek doesn't say, "Stop it." He doesn't say, "Get the hell out of my city." And he definitely doesn't lean closer (in exactly that way that Meredith did when she totally and completely didn't kiss him one day on probably this very elevator).

That's when the doors open. And, of course, because Derek is destined to be fucked over by the gods of mechanical contraptions, Addison steps in before she even looks up from the file she's studying.

When she does, her eyes dart to their hands, and then back to Derek's face, and she says, "Oh," in this voice that immediately tells him a dozen things. She understands everything that's ever gone on between them without having to be told. She's not surprised in the slightest. She's slightly peeved that the universe has decided to add this to her already long list of Derek-related burdens. She wishes Seattle had a place that serves bagels just the way she used to like them from that little bakery on 42nd Street.

Mark smiles at her, and shrugs a little, and takes his hand back casually.

Derek really, really hates them both.

Hate. That's what it must be. He gets off the elevator, leaving them together (because they deserve each other, and Meredith has her vet, and oh, isn't everything perfect?) and spends the day reviewing every time and place he's ever hated either of them before.

(He never once imagines hating them both simultaneously. He's at work, after all. He'll wait until he gets home to do that.)

three

It's stupid to be homesick for a hospital. Callie knows that. But it'd taken so long for anyone to catch her that she'd started to think it wasn't going to happen. Objectively, that's pretty dumb; every time she ducked into her storage room there was a risk that someone would follow her and figure the whole thing out. So it's stupid, but she loved having a place where she didn't live out of boxes, and where the hum of craziness was dulled down by the walls until it the air was only just crazy enough, the kind of crazy she could dance to.

Hotels are different. Hotels are even more impersonal than hospitals, and it's worse because they try to hide it behind lots of chintz and some really sick-looking plastic ferns. The only thing that's remotely the same between the hospital and the hotel is the way she's always running into people she knows at the worst possible time. Addison Montgomery caught her crying when she thought the hallway to her room was clear. Derek Shepherd seems to live in a twisted, symbiotic relationship with the lobby mirrors, where he stands around pretending he's not stalking his wife or ex-wife or whatever she is now, and looking pouty and assholishly broken. And then there's Mark. Callie's never sure if he gets on the elevator intending to go to her floor, or if that's just where he ends up after she convinces him he'll have a better time with her.

Once is possibly forgivable. Once is being able to say clichéd things like It just happened and It didn't mean anything. A week later is too late to say those things, but Callie doesn't stop herself from jumping hot plastic surgeons whenever they show up ready and eager to be jumped. So it's dirty and bad, but it's hot, and she needs to be hot at least. Meredith's the hospital bicycle but nobody gave up loving her because of it. Izzie's the one who used to pose half-naked for the camera, but everybody's forgotten that now because they're all busy draping her in cotton wool and running off to sit with her for no good reason.

Thoughts like that make Callie a terrible person. Having her tongue shoved down Mark Sloane's throat on a fancy hotel elevator makes her a terrible person, too, but at least it also helps her forget about the other stuff. He's a distraction, from homesickness, from missing George (the guy she thought she knew; the guy she thought she loved), and from the daily drama that will not leave her alone, even though she's at the hospital less than half the time she used to be.

What she should have remembered is that the hotel is the only other place in the world she's likely to meet anyone she knows from Seattle Grace. So when the doors roll open and it's George standing there, looking as hang-dog and wilted as the flowers he's carrying, Callie's not surprised. He gets all hurt and mad and jealous. It should be everything she's waiting for, but of course it's not; it's too late for any of that.

She's only upset that this means that someday, down the road, when he's finally grown up, she won't be able to offer him another chance after all.

four

Izzie is going to deposit the cheque. She is. Right now. All she has to do is get into the bank, get up to the fourth floor, smile at the manager, and, just like that, she'll be a millionaire.

Izzie clutches her purse in one hand and the cheque in the other. Ten more minutes and she will be rich. The elevator muzzak is humming something soft and mournful, and Izzie's determined-to-be-cheerful grin slowly freezes in place as she recognizes it. It's the song they were playing at the prom when she left to check on Denny. The last time she ever checked on Denny.

When she starts to cry, it feels like slow motion; it feels as cold as the bathroom tiles against her cheeks, and as hot and hard as an inflamed, inoperable tumor. Izzie's breath catches and she opens her mouth to pull the air in, huge panicked gasps that she can't control, and the tears drip salty into the corners of her mouth. The sobs are thick and hard enough to suffocate her, and she can't stop, and this isn't the place or the time but she cannot stop crying.

The elevator doors open and everyone in the bank is staring at her.

She's the crazy crying lady, and if she falls apart like this in the OR, then she doesn't deserve the break that everyone's been offering her.

The elevator doors close on the room full of staring faces, and Izzie crumples the cheque in her fist and shoves it into her pocket. She swallows her tears all the way back to the lobby, and long enough to make it home before she can't hold the hurt in any longer.

Later, she tosses her jeans in the wash and forgets to check the pockets. When George finds her, she's sitting on the laundry room floor sifting through the lint trap.

"I'm sorry," she's saying, over and over, her eyes hot and wet. "I'm, I'm sorry, so sorry--"

"They--that can't be the end of it," George says. "They'll write another cheque, it has to be illegal or something if they don't."

But it's not the money Izzie's crying for. It was one more time Denny trusted her, and she let it all fall apart again.

five

"Remember last week?" Meredith asks as she and Cristina get on the elevator, both of them balancing ridiculously tall stacks of charts. "Remember that moment right after Izzie stopped baking and before George told me to kick Callie out? Things were good then."

"There were six hours between those two things at most," Cristina says, trying to shift her charts into one hand so that she can maneuver her Starbucks cup closer to her mouth with the other. "And you were sleeping during at least five of them."

"Mmm, but it was excellent sleep." Meredith smiles dreamily and leans back against the elevator wall. Her pile of charts tips alarmingly.

Cristina lets her paperwork fall (saving her coffee) and shoves Meredith's stack back into her arms. "I hate you," she says. "You dream threesomes with a brain surgeon and a not unattractive animal lover, and I dream that Bailey's cornered me in OR 1 and she's testing me on my sutures while I'm trying to reconstitute chicken stirfry into something that squawks and lays eggs."

Meredith tilts her head sympathetically. "Did you pass?"

Cristina only looks at her, and Meredith nods: of course she passed. But it's not like dreaming about live chickens is any better, compared to sex with someone--two someones--who are so into you they're competing over every second of your time, instead of burying himself in medical journals and moping and since when does Preston Burke mope?

"I don't like change," Meredith goes on, mainly oblivious in that annoying way she has that assumes the world's interested in having her life narrated to them. "I am not dating Derek, and I'm not dating Finn. And there are no more snacks. Last week there were snacks, Cristina."

Cristina snorts. "Are you saying that the only thing you miss are your boyfriends bringing you coffee?" she demands.

"No, that's not the only thing," Meredith says. "But it's the only thing I can let myself think about, otherwise I'm going to go crazy."

"...Er," Cristina says, and when Meredith blinks, she emphasizes, "Crazier."

"Yeah, well, I don't think you're in a position to judge," Meredith says. "You still have a boyfriend."

"Oh, you don't even get to go there," Cristina said. "You got dumped once and you dumped someone else once, you're no better or worse off than you were before. It's equal."

"Equal? Are you kidding? Since when is there math in relationships? There's not. There is no math in relationships." Meredith lets her own heap of charts fall, so that she can cross her arms and pout.

"Burke thinks I'm pushing him." Cristina starts pacing, taking two jarring steps to cover the length of the elevator car and turning around to do it again. The best way to get one's own problems aired when trapped in a tight place with Meredith is to just assume the conversation would have gotten there sooner or later. It's a very generous assumption, but then, Cristina's not as selfish as some people believe.

"Hey," Meredith says, grabbing Cristina's arm to stop her. "How are you guys doing? I thought Burke was fine?"

"No," Cristina says. Burke keeps making her time him, and she wants to be supportive--she is a very supportive person!--but he won't talk to her, and she never thought that would be a problem, but somehow it is.

"Well..." Meredith's clearly at a loss for words, a minor triumph, and Cristina smiles in the way that usually means "please stop standing so close to me because I can feel you about to hug me", but in this case actually means "physical contact would not displease me at this point in time". Meredith seems to know the difference, because she puts her arms around Cristina gingerly, the way you'd hug someone with a potentially catching skin condition. Cristina lets her breath out and relaxes as much as she ever does when there aren't orgasms involved. It's bad and wrong and peaceful, which explains the 'bad' and 'wrong' parts.

"I'm not falling for it," she says.

"Falling for it?" Meredith asks, stepping back and looking into her eyes.

Cristina backs out of the tail end of the hug and holds up her hands, feeling ridiculous because she doesn't know what to do with her coffee. "Oh, I've heard plenty of stories about you and elevators," she says. "Especially when you're pretending to be single."

"What? No-- What?" Meredith says, and okay, maybe she has even less clue than Cristina does about what it seems like she was about to do. She seems to be working through the implications pretty quickly, though. Cristina looks around for an escape route, but--right, elevator. She picks up her charts to avoid Meredith's eyes.

"Look," she says, "Burke's fine. I'm fine. So now is not the time to try anything."

"There's a time?" Meredith asks, and she's about to say something else, but the doors open as if they're wired straight to Cristina's embarrassing-situation-escape-hatch thoughts. She darts out and leaves Meredith grabbing up her paperwork and calling after her, "Why didn't you tell me there was a time?"

It's just Meredith-induced elevator psychosis. Cristina decides to take the stairs from now on. She's pretty sure she needs the exercise.

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October 25, 2006