Not affiliated in any way with Grey's, ABC, or Shonda Rhymes.

Wish I were, though.

.x. Time After Time .x.

She was familiar with the fickle intricacies of time. Time had slowed when she realized she was pregnant, it had sped up and blurred when undressing became her job, and, just months before, time had frozen. For the first time, she had experienced the crushing sensation of immobility as she lay on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor in her ridiculous dress waiting for the clock to move again. Denny was dead. Her fiancé was dead.

Death was her job. Students learned in medical school that death was prevalent in their job description – patients died on the table or with IVs still in their arms at night while you caught up on all of the sleep you lost treating them, and, when they did, it was your job to walk into the waiting room where their loved ones sat and explain why you weren't there. Where you went wrong. Because to the patient it is always your fault.

That was the warning each professor gave as they led their students to the cadavers. "See this man? Age thirty-five, father of three, submitted for a tonsillectomy. Died of infection. Nothing the doctor could have done, but you can bet that his wife is still convinced that having someone else on the case would have saved his life." That was the problem. People put doctors on pedestals; doctors decided who lived and who died, and every time they lost a patient, the doctor harbored some blame. Usually, they told you, deaths resulted from unforeseen or unpredictable complications or even the actions of the patients themselves. Her professors had told her and her peers never to blame themselves.

That time, however, it really was her fault. She had cut the L-VAD wire and she had forced him into the surgery he didn't want. The surgery that had killed him.

And just as she begins to forgive herself, time stops again. She wakes up next to her best friend after a night of drunken stupidity and all of the sudden, her whole life changes. In an instant, she loses her best friend and becomes overtaken by a jealous green monster. And in the drop of a hat she comes to understand why she can't stand Callie.

Which doesn't exactly seem fair to her. Actually, it seems like a screaming infidelity, a crackpot idea, and a elephantine injustice combined into one glaring mistake, almost like a typo on her destiny. Not, of course, that she believes in destiny. Or does she? She can't remember. She can't remember a simple, definitive, basic belief. It's almost like not being able to recall whether or not she believes in God.

And with that thought she realizes she can't. Or maybe she just can't decide anymore. Maybe this ridiculous affair sparked by the hazardous combination of hard liquor and her best friend has ruined everything.

And maybe it's all her fault all over again.