"Let her in," Christopher said, his voice cutting through Izzie's stunned gasp and DeLuca's frantic head-shake. "If the universe is throwing us a curveball, we might as well have a Hall of Famer at the plate."
The doors hissed open. Ellis Grey didn't walk; she marched. She was wearing a lab coat that looked decades old but remained blindingly white. Her eyes weren't the vacant, clouded windows of a woman lost to dementia; they were twin lasers of terrifying intellect. She didn't look at the equipment or the "future" tablet. She looked at the blood.
"Out of my way, Dr. Wright," Ellis snapped, scrubbing in with a speed that made the air hum. "You're treating this like a standard ectopic. It isn't. It's a systemic rejection of the present."
Christopher moved to the side, his sarcasm momentarily silenced by the sheer weight of her presence. "I assumed you were busy forgetting Derek Shepherd's name at Roseridge, Dr. Grey."
"Memory is a fickle thing when time is folding like a cheap suit," she retorted, stepping up to Cristina's open abdomen. She reached in with a steady hand, her fingers finding a vessel that Christopher hadn't even noticed was pulsing with a strange, violet hue. "Clamps. Now."
DeLuca handed them over, his eyes wide. "She's... she's fixing the ripple."
"I'm fixing a sloppy repair," Ellis corrected, her gaze flickering to Izzie. "Model, keep that retractor steady or find a new career in catalogs. You're shaking like a leaf."
The surgery became a masterclass in the impossible. Ellis moved with a fluid, terrifying precision, stitching together reality as much as flesh. Christopher watched, his internal monologue—usually a frantic Wikipedia of spoilers—failing to find a match for this. In the show, Ellis died. She was never the hero of a secret, time-bending surgery in a construction zone.
"There," Ellis said, stepping back as the monitor's rhythmic beep returned to a healthy, mundane tempo. The violet hue in the blood faded back to crimson. "She'll live. She'll lose the tube, but she'll keep the drive. That's all Cristina Yang cares about anyway."
Christopher stripped his gloves, the adrenaline leaving a metallic tang on his tongue. "Why are you here, Ellis? And I don't mean in this OR. I mean here—lucid, and twenty years early for a comeback."
Ellis turned to him, a cold, thin smile touching her lips. "Because Richard is about to make a choice that erases my daughter from the history books. And because someone had to tell you, Christopher, that knowing the ending doesn't mean you're the director."
She leaned in, the scent of antiseptic and old paper clinging to her. "The Chief is in the gallery. Not this one. The main one. He's about to announce the new Head of Cardiothoracic Surgery. And it isn't Burke."
Christopher's heart skipped. "If it's not Burke, the whole first three seasons collapse."
"Go," Ellis commanded, her lucidity beginning to flicker like a dying candle. "Before the man from Minnesota takes the podium and settles in for good."
Christopher bolted. He sprinted through the plastic-draped hallways, his mind racing. If Nick Marsh took the Cardio head position now, Burke would leave, the interns would never learn, and the "McDreamy" era would be replaced by something far more unpredictable.
He skidded into the main gallery just as Richard Webber cleared his throat at the podium. Below, the staff was gathered, including a shell-shocked Meredith and a furious Addison.
"After much deliberation," Richard announced, "I've decided to look outside our current roster for the future of this hospital's heart."
Christopher looked at the doorway. Nick Marsh was standing there, dressed in a tailored suit, looking directly at Christopher with a wink that said checkmate.