Like a Criminal
Disclaimer: Not mine. The character assasination belongs to Shonda. I'm just attempting to redeem a character that I once believed to be my favorite.
Rating: Hard R, for sexual and adult themes, underage drinking, drug use, controversial topics, and possible gore.
Word Count: 2502
Summary: Post "My Favorite Mistake" (319). Izzie Stevens has secrets, and she prefers to keep them that way. But after numerous mistakes in judgment, she feels the need to reclaim the things she's lost. Izzie/OC.
Izzie gathered a change of clothes and placed them inside a duffle she kept in her closet. Once done collecting any material possessions she needed, she quietly shut the door to her bedroom and walked toward the bathroom, where sounds of sexual extravagance from Meredith’s room left her blushing like a school girl. She quickly grabbed any hygiene products she would need, paused at George—Alex’s bedroom door to find he wasn’t home, and jogged down the steps and went into the kitchen.
She had made a batch of cupcakes when she came home earlier. She had used a leftover marble cake mix she’d found in the cupboard and decorated them with red food-colored frosting and sprinkles. She carefully placed some inside a Tupperware container and licked the frosting that had got on her fingers, very satisfied at the final product.
As she reached the front door, she looked back at the house and oddly enough, felt like she was running away, though in no way was she. Shaking her head, she removed the loose strands of hair that had fallen into her face, and left.
Backing out of the driveway, she finally got on the road and cringed at the bubblegum pop song on the radio, not in any mood to listen the high-pitched, scratchy vocals of some pop princess. Going through her list of preferential stations, she paused on a metal station she hardly tuned into nowadays. The song that played had a heavy beat and clear-cut lyrics that she faintly recognized and found herself tapping her fingers against the steering wheel to.
When she had lived with Andy, she always listened to this station, but after living a year with Meredith and George and carpooling to work, it had definitely had an influence over her tastes. Not that it was unusual to have different tastes, but it had taken a while for her to stomach some of the stuff they listened to.
Stopping at an intersection, Izzie rummaged through her purse to find her mobile to check the time. Her car had a habit of not starting right away in the morning, usually requiring her to lift up the hood of the car and mess with the battery, which would then reset the clock. When she found her phone, she saw that it was half past one. By the time she reached the apartment complex, it was almost a quarter ‘til and she suddenly felt bad for having woken him at such an hour, especially after such a busy day with Sophie.
She punched in the code to open the gate and pulled forward. She maneuvered through the complex with amazing ease and smiled when she parked next to Andy’s Silver F250. Out of the car with her duffle over her shoulder, she couldn’t help but to pause and look inside his truck, where she saw Sophie’s car seat, a blanket, a couple toys on the floor, as well as some dry cleaning Andy hadn’t bothered to take inside.
“Do you enjoy looking into other people’s cars?”
Startled, she threw her body against his truck and placed her hand over her heart. “Jesus, give me a heart attack why don’t you?” She gazed at him where he stood at the top of the first flight of steps, leaning against the railing with his arms crossed. “I didn’t realize you’d be waiting outside.”
“It’s dark out,” he replied simply, shrugging his shoulders. With a smirk, he added, “And you thought chivalry had died.”
Izzie snorted, and lifted her duffle back up to her shoulder from where it had slipped to her elbow. “Seriously,” she stepped onto the sidewalk and began ascending the stairs, “with the men at Seattle Grace, I wish it had died. They try to be every girl’s night in shining armor but fall just a bit short of the goal,” she remarked, Meredith and Derek purposefully coming to mind. “Though,” she started, “I’m not sure where that leaves you.” She stood a few inches from him now, his stance still the same.
His eyes surrendered warmth as he gazed into her questioning brown ones. Every time she stood so closely to him, it amazed her how much his height overwhelmed her own, particularly since she was in no way considered petite. He was of a sickeningly slim build, standing at an astounding 6’8” and weighing a measly two-hundred pounds.
When she felt an arm wrap around her shoulders, she came to and realized that he was signaling for them to head in. The warmth had left his eyes and was replaced by concern but he didn’t bother asking if she was all right and took her duffle bag instead, not without protest from her of course.
Walking inside, she was surprised at the similarities and differences of the place. The red couch still had the multicolored afghan she had knitted folded over the back of it. Andy’s collection of DVDs and video games had increased. There was a playpen in the corner of the room filled with toys and plush animals. Some of the photos on the entertainment center had been exchanged for more up-to-date ones; ones she didn’t recognize. She noticed the older photographs, though: her and Andy’s tenth anniversary (though they were never wed), her Med School graduation (where she looked utterly exhausted), Noreen (Andy’s mother), Sophie’s birth . . . she hadn’t realized she had moved until her fingers gently touched the glass of the frame.
“Not exactly the same but close enough,” Andy said from where he stood against the entrance to the small kitchen, nostalgia evident. “Amazing how big she’s got,” he began walking toward her. “Some days it doesn’t seem plausible that 15 months has passed since her birth.”
“Yeah,” she acquiesced. “Some days it doesn’t seem that it was almost a year ago that I left.” She crossed her arms tightly across her chest, her heart near palpitations at the anxiety that was building within her. “I want to see her,” she demanded, “please.”
The desperation of her words caused Andy’s chest to constrict, and though he would like to discuss things – work things out first, he consented. Izzie followed him silently up the hallway and he gently turned the knob to the Sophie’s room. A crescent moon nightlight gave the room a dull luminescence, and the small girl lay peacefully resting in her bed.
“When’d you switch to a toddler bed?” Izzie quietly asked, crouching down by Sophie, delicately caressing the child’s face.
“Three months ago. She learnt to climb out of her crib, so Mum recommended I go out the very next day and buy Sophie a bed unless I wished her to have an accident. Very happy when I got her it, as she always hated her crib.”
“Doesn’t like to be confined,” Izzie replied off-handedly. “You know, even with the little light in this room, the red in her hair is quite visible. I’d always hoped that she’d inherit your mum’s red hair.”
“Me too,” he nodded. “Anyway, let’s go to the kitchen. I’ll make some tea, and you can tell me all about your year.”
Five cups of tea, four cupcakes, three cookies and two glasses of wine (between them) later, Izzie had poured every agonizing event that she and her colleagues had endured in the 11 months of her first year of residency. She couldn’t read the expression on Andy’s face as he silently ploughed through each incident in his head, but the white knuckles of his folded hands and his tense shoulders told another story. He had allowed Izzie to rant and rave without interruption, and now that he’d heard everything, she was afraid of his reaction. He had a tendency to be brutally honest, and she had inkling that her tear ducts still had the means to leave her gushing once again.
“So, uh, I’m going run through each thing I feel is relevant to me, and I want you to explain to me why. I don’t care if you don’t have an answer. I’m not even sure I want to know most of what’s about to come, but I feel it’s important that we both understand. That everything gets out in the open.”
“Okay,” she agreed; her voice small and fragile.
“I warn you, I’m going to relate everything to myself, because it’s the only way I can explain any guy you were with during your absence. I’m not being selfish or insinuating that you cannot function without me, but otherwise I can’t stomach your having left your daughter and trashing our thirteen years together to only fall in love with other men, which I don’t believe for one moment you did.”
Izzie gave a mute yes, casting her sight downward so not to read the disappointment in his eyes. Hearing it in his voice was enough.
“Hank, I get. He was the buff hockey player; the complete opposite of me. You said you never slept with him, and that he’d only been with you to most likely sleep with all your model friends. Basically, he used you.
“Now not to get all psychological, but with Alex, he represents the asinine side of me. I realize that I can be blunt, and that it takes someone like you, someone who’s known me since childhood, to be able to read me. And that even now, it can be difficult to extrapolate what I mean. I can be closed off and too honest for my own good, which I can definitely find a relationship to. But was it love, sex . . . both?”
She removed her vision from the tabletop and answered, “It was mainly sex, and I believed that I could, possibly, make it with him, but when he slept with Olivia it made me wake up to what was happening. That I was falling for him and maybe consciously hoping it would be love, but without any provocation, I’d have moments where I’d see your face. There were a couple times I was close to calling out your name when Alex and I’d have sex, as hard as that is to hear.”
“Okay,” he exhaled haggardly, taking the first blow. “Next: George. Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me that it was the alcohol leading you. ‘Cause no offense, the way you’ve summed up yours and George’s relationship, it just sounds incestuous that you’d suddenly realize that you’re in love with him, especially since your vehemence towards his wife can be interpreted as jealousy. And I just don’t see that. Not you at all.”
Though having taken Alex in stride, Izzie could all ready see that Andy’s composure was beginning to wane, particularly since he’d intentionally skipped a certain heart patient, but she understood that Denny would be the most difficult to expound and digest at this point.
“Don’t worry, it was the alcohol. As the entire time I was with him, I was thinking of you. I even told Dr. Montgomery that I slept with the wrong person. And I know I shouldn’t have been drinking the bourbon in the first place, and that I should’ve declined.
“When I came home last night, I completely de-sheeted my bed. I was so close to a psychotic episode that I called you, something I should’ve done long before then.”
“Like before the whole Denny Debacle, which is the one I’m dreading most as you’ve probably already concluded.”
Izzie watched him lean on the two back legs of his chair, his right pierced brow lifting in question as to what was to spew out of her mouth next. When she had got to the LVAD cutting, Andy had close to lost it, and she was surprised that he managed to keep it in control, as her integrity was in question. It was then that she had seen darkness in his eyes she only ever remembered seeing whenever her mother was brought up in conversation. Though it was a rare occasion when her mother was mentioned, Izzie’s mum was one of the few persons Andy would ever go out of his way to make a snide remark against.
Andy exhaled. “Denny. Denny Dupet or whatever the hell it is his last name was.”
“Duquette,” she corrected sadly.
“So you cut his LVAD wire, which was what would have essentially, from my understanding, kept him alive for another year, maybe three. You cut his LVAD,” he repeated, “so that he’d receive a heart transplant that he’d need to live another twenty years, but there was another recipient for the heart that was on the list 17 seconds before him. Am I following?”
Again, she corrected him. “There were two hearts: One for Denny and one for the other recipient. Unfortunately, the heart that Denny was to have, the guy flat-lined before they could harvest it, to which Dr. Burke stopped the other surgeon, Dr. Hahn, from harvesting the heart for her patient.”
“Okay, thank you. So because there was now one heart, they had to call the transplant people to find out who was in more desperate need of the heart, or better put as the person who was on the list first.”
Izzie solemnly nodded, not sure how well she’d hold up to Andy’s next inquiries.
“So what made you go through with this cockamamie plan in the first place? Why were you so desperate to get him the heart when you knew damn well that he could’ve survived with his LVAD for another year or two? You knew him for what, a couple weeks to a few months at most? How can you claim you were in love with him? Because that’s not the Izzie that I know at all. The Izzie I know is very careful with whose hands she places her heart into. Unless that desperation stemmed from some untreated psychosis,” he emphasized, “give me a legitimate reason why.”
Her breath caught in her throat as she attempted to give him answers to his questions, but when she tried, she found that each breath became more difficult. She could feel her entire body starting to quiver and it was not long before her eyes welled with tears for another countless time that night. Before the anxiety could wholly envelop her though, she answered, “I know that I did it. I know that it was wrong, that though I say that he was prone to strokes that I know deep down that I killed him. I have tried to come to terms with it on my own, without showing anyone the regret I feel, as bad as that is because it makes me look like a sociopath, but in all honesty, there are missing pieces. Like I can see the scissors in my hands, but the next moment I remember in sequence is sitting on a bench, pounding my fist against my arm, and listening to George yell at me hysterically for what I had done.”