Here's my new story. I've been thinking about it for a while and I've finally got around to starting it. I hope that you enjoy it. I've tried to include all of the major characters so there's something for everybody. Please review. I love to read feedback. It encourages me to keep writing.

CHAPTER ONE

"How do we treat hemachromatosis?" Cristina asked Lexie from Callie's legendary quiz cards.
"Hemachromatosis is…" Lexie started, sounding the word out as she said it. "Um… hemachromatosis is treated by…"

"Too slow," Cristina interrupted.

"What?" Lexie asked, surprised.

"You only have a limited amount of time to answer each question," Cristina snapped, annoyed. Lexie looked at her watch. It was after midnight and she was exhausted.

"Can I please take a break?" Lexie asked. "I've been working for ten hours and you've been quizzing me for the last two."

"No," Cristina said sternly. "I'll be damned if my interns are gonna fail. Your results are a reflection on me and you're not going to make me look bad just because you're tired." Lexie sighed.

"Can I at least get some coffee?" she asked, defeated.

"Fine," Cristina said. She pulled a twenty dollar bill out of the pocket of her scrubs and handed it to Lexie. "Get me one too." Suddenly her pager went off. "Forget the coffee," Cristina said. "We have incoming." She started to run with Lexie trailing her. "Oooh I hope it's an aortic aneurysm. I'd kill for an aortic aneurysm right now."

Cristina spotted Izzie at the other end of the hall, responding to the same page.

"Mine!" Cristina shouted.

"No!" Izzie protested. "You got the last one!"

"It was a sprained wrist," Cristina argued. "That hardly counts." As they stood there arguing, Meredith ran past them.

"Mine!" she said as she got into the elevator.

"God dammit!" Izzie said as the elevator doors closed. Cristina looked annoyed.

&&&

"You should have gone home hours ago, Chief," Bailey said as she approached Richard who was standing in front of the surgical board. "You could have had a whole night to yourself. My residents are fighting over who's gonna do sutures in the pit."

"Hmm," Richard said, sounding concerned and staying focused on the surgical board.

"Quiet board," Bailey observed.

"I hate a quiet board," Richard said. "It's always a sign of trouble."

"Don't tell my residents that," Bailey said, checking her pager as it went off.

"What is it?" Richard asked.

"Surgical consult in the pit," Bailey answered. "Your luck could be changing after all, Chief."

"What do you have, Grey?" Bailey asked Meredith who was looking at some patient CT scans.

"Cerebral aneurysm," Meredith said, handing the scans to Bailey. "I think he might be a candidate for standstill surgery. I wanted to check with you before I woke Doctor Shepherd."

"The guy's lucky to be alive," Bailey said, in awe of the enormous aneurysm on the scan. "Call Shepherd now and get him in here immediately. He won't be happy if the patient strokes out before he gets a chance to see him."

"Right away, Doctor Bailey," Meredith said, trying to express her delight that she would see Derek that night. Although it was early days and Meredith obviously had some issues to work through, they were together again. It was light, fun and not too serious which was what Meredith wanted. She headed off to call him.

"Hello?" Derek said wearily into the phone. He had been fast asleep in his trailer.

"Hey," Meredith said, happy to hear his voice.

"Is this a midnight booty call?" Derek asked.

"I wish," Meredith said with a little laugh. "Bailey wants you to come in and see a patient." Derek moaned, clearly exhausted.

"Cant it wait?" he asked. "I just got out of surgery two hours ago."

"Bailey wouldn't ask unless it was urgent," Meredith said. Derek knew that she was right. "Bedsides, you do want a standstill surgery don't you?"

"I'll be right there," Derek said, enticed by his favourite surgery. Meredith giggled. There was an awkward silence at the end of all their conversations where a less complicated couple would say 'I love you.'

"I'll see you soon," Meredith said.

"Yeah," Derek said, ignoring the obvious awkward moment. "See you soon."

&&&

Derek yawned as he drove through the Seattle traffic. There were always cars on the road in the city, no matter what time it was.

Derek drove through an intersection on his way to the hospital and suddenly he felt the ground rumble beneath him. It was a feeling that he'd never experienced before. The ground shook with a violent, thunderous sound that increased in magnitude. Derek slammed on the breaks but still felt his car being thrown across the road. It hit another car before slamming hard into the wall of a nearby building. Chaos ensued in the city centre as terrified people began running from apartment buildings and offices. The city was filled with the terrified screams of its people as they took in what had happened. The power was gone and Seattle was plunged into total darkness with Derek one of many trapped and injured.

&&&

Izzie, Cristina and Lexie sat in the hall on a vacant hospital bed. Izzie was still annoyed at missing the surgical consult and Cristina was annoyed at Lexie who looked as though she was going to fall asleep while answering another one of Cristina's quiz questions.

"Hey," Meredith said with a satisfied smile, as she approached them. Izzie and Cristina looked at her bitterly, not responding. "Oh grow up," Meredith said. "I'm sure Derek will want as many hands on deck as possible for the standstill surgery."

"You have a standstill surgery?" Cristina and Izzie asked in unison, leaping off the bed in excitement.

"Is it a good one?' Cristina asked.

"Bigger than Joe's?" Izzie asked. She smiled. "This is gonna be awesome." Meredith laughed at their reactions.

Suddenly whole hospital shook. What lasted a few seconds seemed much longer as objects began flying off shelves and machinery rattled. Lexie held onto the bed that she was sitting on while Izzie and Meredith held on to a nearby vending machine. Cristina wasn't quick enough and the tremor sent her sliding across the hall, her ankle crashing into the wall at great speed. She cried out in pain. When the tremor stopped, Meredith and Izzie ran over to Cristina as the lights flickered before going out. It took a moment before the back up generator kicked in and the lights came back on.

"Was that a bomb?" Lexie asked, suddenly very awake and terrified. Meredith and Izzie didn't answer. "Meredith?"

"I don't know, Lexie" Meredith snapped, trying to examine Cristina's ankle which was causing her a lot of pain. "I don't think so."

"I think you broke it," Izzie said to Cristina. She tried to touch her ankle but Cristina nearly kicked her.

"Oh come on!" Cristina said through the pain. "There could be major surgeries and I get an injury!"

"Stay still," Meredith said, as her pager went off.

"It freaking hurts!" Cristina snapped back as all their pagers went off. Something very major had happened but they weren't sure exactly what.

&&&

Alex switched the television on as his pager went off. The power outage hadn't extended into the suburbs. He had slept through the tremor.

"Did you feel that?" George asked, bursting through Alex's bedroom door in a panic.

"Feel what?" Alex asked, confused as to why he was being paged in the early hours of the morning. He turned his attention to the CNN reporter on the television.

"In breaking news," the reporter began, "An earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter scale has struck Seattle causing major destruction in the city centre. The number of casualties is not yet known, however, a similar scale earthquake in China earlier this year killed an estimated two hundred people. Authorities are-" Alex switched the television off.

"Cool," he said, getting ready to go in to the hospital. George turned the television back on, still in shock over what had happened. Alex switched it back off. "We gotta go, O'Malley," he said.

"We just experienced an earthquake," George said in disbelief.

"Yeah," Alex said. "And we're gonna miss out on all he good surgeries too if we sit around watching TV all night. Let's go."