The air in OR 1 was a heavy, static pressure. Derek Shepherd lay on the table, a 9mm cavitation through his chest, his life leaking into the thoracic cavity. Cristina Yang was shaking, her hands hovering over the internal cardiac massage.
"I can't do this! I'm an intern!" she gasped.
The doors hissed open. Christopher stepped in, his left arm strapped to his chest in a bloody makeshift sling. His face was the color of sterile linen, but his eyes were cold, sharp diamonds. Jack trailed behind him, a medical-grade mallet gripped in his hand like a gavel.
"Step aside, Yang," Christopher drawled, his sarcasm a fragile, lethal thread. "I've had a bullet through my deltoid and I'm still the best surgeon in this room. Unless you want to explain to the board why you let McDreamy die because of a lack of confidence."
Christopher scrubbed with his right hand alone, his teeth gritted against the searing agony in his shoulder. He stepped to the table, operating one-handed with a fluidity that defied physics. He bypassed the atrium, his fingers dancing through the blood to find the hail of lead near the spine.
"Pressure is tanking!" Cristina yelled.
"The monitor is lying, Yang. I've clamped the aorta. He's stable," Christopher muttered, sweat pouring down his face.
Suddenly, the OR doors burst open again. Gary Clark stepped in, the 9mm raised, his face a mask of sorrow. "Stop," he whispered. "Let him die. Like she did."
Christopher didn't even look up from the chest cavity. "Jack... handle the litigation."
In a blur of unscripted movement, Jack Brady lunged from the shadows behind the anesthesia machine. He tackled the widower with the weight of a hundred lawsuits. The gun skittered across the floor. Jack pinned Gary Clark to the ground, wrestling the weapon away and securing his wrists with a surgical gown tie.
"You're under arrest, you son of a bitch!" Jack roared, his voice trembling with fury.
Christopher clicked the final clamp into place. Derek's heart resumed a steady, rhythmic sinus gallop. Christopher stepped back, his vision graying.
"He's intact, Cristina. Close him up," Christopher whispered, before his knees finally buckled.
Jack was there before he hit the floor, catching him with the same hands that had just apprehended a killer.
"I've got you," Jack whispered against his hair.
"The Thai food is definitely going to be cold now," Christopher smirked, fainting into the darkness.