"Keep the change," the cheery brunette giggled, brushing her curly hair over her shoulder as she casually tossed a 20 dollar bill onto the bar. Alex nodded curtly, stuffing 17 dollars into the cash register and shoving 3 in his pocket. He hadn't seen her before, but the place teemed with new people since the merger, most of them after his job.
"Go home, Ray's here," Joe called from behind him. "You want me to call Mere?"
"I had two beers," Alex snorted. "Think I can make it."
"Right," Joe smirked, signaling Ray to take over the register as he pulled out his phone.
"Mere's on until midnight," Alex noted, almost wincing. He'd forgotten that, again, when he drove in to the hospital with her that morning, trying to save on gas money.
"I can take you," Jenny broke in, folding her apron as she grabbed her bag. "I'm going that way anyway."
"I don't need-" Alex started, avoiding Joe's look.
"Jen or Mere" Joe insisted, motioning toward the server he'd hired a few weeks before as he flipped his phone open. "I can't take you tonight."
"Whatever," Alex grumbled, following Jen to her car. She'd flirted with him once or twice, the way bar maids did, out of habit mostly. He'd seen it all before.
"You're a doctor, right?" she asked, minutes into the drive.
"Um-huh," he agreed absently, as he watched the light snow blanketing the road under the streetlights. That was one point in her favor; she didn't know she was supposed to feel sorry for him. He might even have looked twice, but her eyes were too brown, and her hair was too blonde, and she chattered about everything, even her horoscope.
"So how come you work in a bar?" she asked casually.
"This is good," he said, popping his door open as she rolled up to a stop sign.
"What?" she asked suddenly. "I thought you lived-"
"Yeah, this is fine," he cut her off, closing the door before she could say another word. He was vaguely familiar with the neighborhood, and walked until he saw the darkened house, his numb fingers groping for his keys. Slamming the door shut behind him, he sat heavily on the floor. He'd go upstairs tonight, he'd promised himself; he'd go this time, when his legs were less rubbery, after he'd caught his breath.
Change is good, Meredith muttered to herself through clenched teeth, parking her car in front of the house as Muriel Swenson's latest lecture echoed through her mind. She's as bad as my mother, she continued, cursing the new Head of Neurosurgery, and the merger, and Dr. Wyatt's advice at her last session, as she navigated the slippery walkway.
Change is good. Meredith repeated Wyatt's phrase like a mantra as she climbed the stairs, shaking the fall's early snowfall off her brown wool coat while she fumbled for her house keys. Pushing the heavy front door open, she cursed Joe for forgetting to lock it behind him, and for leaving Alex in the hall where she could trip over him, again.
Joe probably hadn't been there that evening, though, she realized a moment later, since the bar would still be open, and Alex was half covered with melting ice crystals, which were dripping on the hallway floor, where he slumped awkwardly under the coat rack.
Grumbling to herself, she half pulled, half pushed him into the den, wondering if it was just as well that she wasn't sure how he'd gotten there, and whether he was too drunk, or too tired, or just too cold to notice what she was doing. Change is good, she repeated wryly, echoing Wyatt's insistence, as she ransacked the cluttered closet.
Peeling off his soaked clothes, she winced at the chill of his clammy grey skin. It would embarrass a normal person, she imagined, to be unwrapped like a dead fish on the faded oriental rug, even in the dimly lit room. But they were both doctors, and they'd seen it all before, often enough to no longer notice much of anything.
Hastily bundling two blankets around him, she moved his sopping jacket aside, almost jumping as a few coins tumbled out of his pocket, clattering onto the floor. Change is good, she repeated, as she sat back against the wall, watching an errant dime spin wildly before settling into place. It was probably his food money for the month, she thought, as she tallied the thirty seven cents, or his tips from tending Joe's bar that night.
The coins settled near his right hand, his fingers still bare, though she knew he was still paying for the ring he buried Izzie with. It was absurd, really, how he scoured the city the day after she died, as if finding the perfect wedding band could bring her back to life. That was crazy, since Izzie was the only one of them who ever believed in miracles.
He was still shivering slightly, and she reached quickly for another blanket from the pile, throwing it over him as she ran her hand lightly across his back. It would be her luck, for him to freeze to death in her well heated house, under a mound of down. People died on her like that all the time: they got hiccups, or moles, or got hit by busses.
She could get him dry clothes, she thought idly, so he'd at least be dressed if another hearse came. But she'd have to go upstairs for that, where Izzie's laughter still echoed through the hall, and the tee shirts Derek left behind still lurked in her closet, beside her simple black dress, and boxes of her mother's journals, all in her freaking haunted house.
Change is good, she'd insisted, when Derek swapped the Range Rover for a BMW, and the trailer for a Chicago high rise, after the merger, and his failed bid for Chief; after Izzie died on his operating table, and they'd gone to too many funerals.
She'd repeated it for a month afterward, until Cristina swapped her Moped for a moving van, and pulled away with Owen, to San Francisco Memorial. It was absurd, really, that Cristina Yang surrendered her job and her apartment and her friends to follow a man she barely knew to who knows where, for who knows what.
Pulling a blanket around herself, she sat back against the wall, away from the ghosts upstairs, weighing just how absurd it was to almost envy them: Cristina, still tangling with Owen's demons amid the Bay area's fog, and Alex, the world's least likely widower, who slept slumped under a coat rack, with thirty seven cents to his name.
"I didn't think they were that important," Meredith admitted three days later, almost cringing as she piled hot stringy cheese back onto her pizza. She couldn't quite make out his expression in the shadowy room, but she could feel the anger radiating from him as he plucked his own slice from the box, settling back against the wall with a bottle of beer.
Change is good, she reminded herself, as she warily surveyed her cavernous new condo, with exposed brick walls, and polished cement floors, and three gas fireplaces, including one in each bedroom, and modern bathrooms that would never house claw foot bath tubs.
"I could try to get them back," she volunteered hesitantly. "But I think the salvage company cleared everything out already," she added, as if noticing it for the first time: She'd left almost everything but their clothes behind, even the ornate antique coat rack, and the guitar he never played, and Derek's tee shirts, and the trophies that always stood on Alex's windowsill, and which he apparently still wanted.
"No kidding," he snorted, vaguely motioning around the empty condo, where they ate pizza by streetlight on the floor, under the exposed metal duct work. "You could have at least told me," he growled, between huge bites of crust.
That was true, she thought. She could have said something about selling her mother's house, before she piled his stuff in with hers, and moved it to the converted warehouse across from the hospital, stuffing the new keys and address into his locker without a word. But he'd worked double shifts the last two days, and stayed at the hospital the whole time, and she doubted he'd miss her mother's house any more than she would.
"You hate change," she muttered between bites.
"Does this place even have electricity?" he asked incredulously.
"We have electricity," she confirmed. "We just don't have light bulbs yet."
"The salvage company took them?" he asked sarcastically.
"And the beds," she called after him, as he scooped up the empty pizza box and paper plates and tossed them into the garbage, with the toilet paper they had used instead of napkins. She'd sold it all, curtains, furniture, silverware. She had to; it was haunted.
"I left your sleeping bag on the floor." she noted. "I'm off tomorrow. If you really want me to try and get them-"
"Just get some light bulbs, okay?" he grumbled tiredly, tossing his sleeping bag to her before retreating back into his own almost empty room.
She bought a television the following day, and light bulbs, and ordered new furniture, and scrounged up some towels. She didn't do domestic, and she doubted he noticed, anyway, since he still ate his cereal out of the box, and dried his milk glass on his shirt.
Izzie would have killed him by now if he did that in her kitchen, she thought more than once that week, halting the words before they tumbled out.
She wondered if it was easier for cancer to have taken Izzie from him, before she could walk away of her own accord, like Derek had. It was absurd, she knew, to almost envy the certainty of their dissolution; it was even crazier, how much she resented him for it, for having some lame excuse, at least, for why Izzie left him behind.
"Big spender," she teased, the following week, noting the second pudding on his lunch tray. She knew it bugged him that he was still scrounging for money, and would've been living in his car without her. That made the jabs harder to resist.
"Hungry," he grumbled, shrugging as he poked warily at the green blob on his plate.
"Are you on a case with Bailey?" she asked, pondering what the day's vegetable was.
"Huh?" Alex asked, spearing part of the blob with his fork. "No. Palmer."
"She was looking for you earlier," Meredith noted.
"She asked me if I wanted to go back to Peds," he shrugged.
"Do you?" Meredith asked, sniffing suspiciously at what she thought were string beans.
"You too?" he snorted. He'd heard that all before. The snickers from the nurses, the taunts from Sloan and Yang, even Izzie had chimed in.
"You always seemed to like it better," she said, shrugging casually. "And you're always complaining about Palmer."
"He's a-" Alex interrupted, wide-eyed.
"A jack ass," Meredith filled in from rote, almost laughing. "I've heard. Heard he yelled at you again today in the O.R.," she added quietly.
"Bailey tell you that, too?" he growled.
"No," she admitted. "I over-heard some of the scrub nurses talking. They hate him, too. Apparently he was no more popular when he was the head of Ortho at Mercy West."
"He's a rock star," Alex insisted smugly.
"Carpentry," she crooned, echoing one of Cristina's favorite digs.
"You sleep with the new Neuro Attending yet?" he smirked, ignoring her commentary as he pulled the lid off his first pudding.
"She's a girl," Meredith reminded him, rolling her eyes.
"Cool," he smirked. "Can I watch?"
"No," she retorted, "you'll be doing your carpentry. Really," she continued curiously, watching as he devoured a pear, "what's with all the time you're doing on Palmer's service? You always said Ortho was boring when we did our intern rotations."
"I like it," he snapped, jabbing at his pudding. "It's not baby catching, it's not the gynie squad, it's hardcore."
"You could switch back, you know," she said quietly, in that tone he loathed. "Bailey would understand, even the Chief would understand. You just weren't yourself after-"
"This has nothing to do with Izzie," he hissed, deliberately lowering his voice.
"Okay, okay," she insisted, shaking her head. "But we'll be applying for fellowships next year," she reminded him quietly. "We can't waste time-"
"You going for Swenson?" he asked, inhaling the rest of his pudding. .
"I don't know," Meredith hesitated, toying with the papers near her tray as Alex eyed her closely, half frowning.
"I know," she exhaled. "But I'm also thinking about Neurology." Or anything else, she sometimes thought, to get away from Muriel Swenson.
"Huh?" Alex asked, baffled.
"I've been thinking about my mother a lot lately," she said. "It destroyed her life, the Alzheimer's, and no one's doing anything about it."
"She's dead," he reminded her bluntly.
"I know that," she snapped. "But so many other people-"
"You showing early signs?" he taunted.
"You're the one showing early signs," Meredith retorted, rolling her eyes.
"You're a surgeon," he insisted, shaking his head. "You cut."
"Like my mother?" she demanded.
"What's wrong with that?" he snorted. "She was a rock star."
"She was…" Meredith retorted, her voice dropping off as she glared at him. "You're telling me I should be like my mother?"
"You already are," he pointed out.
"That," she snapped, pointing her plastic fork at him, "that's why you're Evil Spawn."
"Right," he nodded, piling his trash on his tray and grabbing his folders. "You're a surgeon," he repeated. "You don't baby sit doddering-"
"It's not like a broken bone, you know," she insisted, gathering her things and stalking after him. "Surgery can't fix everything. It's a brain thing. It's more complicated."
"That's the beauty of Ortho," he smirked. "Patch 'em up and move 'em out."
"Oh," Meredith taunted, "the famed Karev compassion makes an appearance."
"Stick with Swenson," he grumbled, "even if she won't sleep with you."
"Don't leave any hammers in your patients," she called after him, emptying her tray as she watched him walk away.
--------------
She thought surgeons who used staples were lazy, Alex remembered, watching idly as Dr. Palmer cleaned and re-checked the open wound, preparing to close along the medial side. She would've hated this, he thought with a frown.
"Dr, Karev," the senior Orthopedic Attending repeated sharply, drawing Alex's attention suddenly back to the operating room, "are you planning on removing that retractor now, or should I just staple right over it?"
"No, no, sir," Alex protested, hastily pulling the instrument back as the impatient surgeon glared at him over his mask.
"You have something more interesting you're day-dreaming about there, Karev?" he demanded as he finished his work. "Care to share it with the rest of the class?"
"No sir," Alex stammered, forcing his attention back to the surgery. It was at least the tenth knee replacement he'd scrubbed in on over the past two weeks, and still he did nothing but hold retractors.
At least he doesn't make me pick up his dry cleaning, Alex muttered hours later, as he filled in the routine post- op diagrams. It's not even carpentry, he grumbled, as he dropped onto an on call room bed somewhere around three the following morning; it was more like factory work, the kind losers like his father did, if they could hold jobs at all.
Jolted by the shrill beep of his pager a few hours later, he fumbled for it too quickly, cursing as it clattered across the floor. Scooping it up at a run, he charged up to the patient's room, relieved to find Palmer already there.
"Dr. Karev," Palmer noted, eying Alex suspiciously as he arrived out of breath, "did you bring Mr. Jensen's latest films?"
"Um, uh, no," Alex said, turning to leave. "I'll go get them now." Retrieving the thick binder from the Nurses' station, he returned to the room, listening as Palmer reviewed the surgery's results and out-lined the patient's remaining course of treatment.
"Dr. Karev will go over the specifics with you, and we'll see that you're discharged with a complete post-operative plan. Isn't that right, Dr. Karev?" Palmer asked abruptly.
"Yeah, yeah," Alex agreed, struggling to clear his head as he looked the chart over. The surgeries he'd been on over the past few weeks were all blurring together, and he'd been on-call for the last four nights, and he was starting to see knee replacements in his sleep.
"Fine." Palmer noted, turning to leave. "Dr. Karev," he added, under his breath, "when you're through here, I need to speak with you in my office."
"Yeah, okay," Alex nodded, shaking off his distraction as he went on to explain the next few steps to Mr. Jensen and his nervous, high strung wife. Twenty five minutes later, he sat impatiently in Palmer's office, waiting to hear what he'd done wrong this time.
"Dr. Karev," Palmer began, finally hanging up his phone and leaning back in his desk chair, "I realize it's early, but have you given much thought to the Fellowship application process yet?"
"No, uh, not yet," Alex admitted, his eyes nervously scanning the office, stacked floor to ceiling with files, and over flowing with ceramic models of joints and muscles, and three half assembled skeletons strewn in a garish heap, like a Halloween prank gone awry.
"You're planning on applying here next year?" Palmer noted coolly, more as a statement then a question.
"Yes," Alex agreed.
"Of course," Palmer acknowledged. "But you understand that we have a number of fine Residents who are already quite committed to developing my department's reputation as a premier provider of total joint replacements."
"We're all interested in that, sir" Alex agreed, barely hiding his puzzlement. Palmer had made his ambitious plans well known to anyone who would listen, from the moment he'd joined Seattle Grace in the merger, along with several of his senior colleagues. He was a rock star, and definitely hard core; it was the only thing about him that Alex could stand.
"Yes, but as I was saying, some of my Residents have worked with me longer, they know my expectations, and to be honest," he added quietly, handing Alex a thick file folder, "I think you would also be well served to consider some of these other opportunities."
Alex nodded blankly, taking the folder.
"I'll write you an excellent recommendation," Palmer added. "And this by no means indicates that you shouldn't apply here when the time comes. I'm just suggesting that-"
"There are people here you'd rather have more," Alex noted bluntly.
"Dr. Karev," Palmer interrupted uncomfortably, clearing his throat, "I understand that it's been difficult for you, with the merger, and your wife-"
"Leave her out of it," Alex hissed, so coldly that Palmer leaned back abruptly.
"I just meant-" the older doctor began.
"I get it," Alex interrupted, gripping the folder tightly as he rose from his chair and stalked toward the door. "I'll let you know," Alex added, without turning back, "where to send the recommendation letters."
"That's fine," Palmer called, still seated at his desk as Alex closed the door behind him.
Finishing his shift in a blur, Alex returned home just after midnight. He wasn't being fired, he was just… he was… He could still change Palmer's mind, he thought wildly, he could do better, he still had time, if only he could…Retreating to his room, he paced, too tired to sleep, and enraged all over again that she'd left his trophies behind.
He'd earned them, he'd won something, once; he'd done something right, once, before it all went wrong again; he'd even had proof. Dropping onto his rumpled bed, he glared at the empty windowsill. He'd earned them. He ignored the idiot coach screaming in his ear that he'd never take first place in his weight class; he'd just run further, and lifted more, and fought harder, and he'd earned them. He could do that again, he insisted. He should have seen it coming, anyway, since he'd seen it all before.
"Next time, you pick," Meredith insisted a few weeks later, watching as he unwrapped his hamburger. "At least it was half price," she reminded him as she sat at the food court table. Wednesday movies at the Mall Cinema were always half price; it was the only way he'd go. Lately, it was one of the few ways to get him out of the hospital at all.
"Whatever," he grumbled, roughly pulling the pickles from his hamburger, and placing them on hers. His ears were still ringing, and he wondered how she could even follow the damn plot with so many idiots yelling their heads off all around them in the theater.
"I can't believe you don't like Slasher movies," she protested, piling the pickles more neatly as she reached for a napkin.
"Who said I don't like Slasher movies?" he retorted. "I just-"
"You kept looking away," she laughed. "You're such a baby."
"I wasn't looking away," he snorted. "It was boring."
"Right," she nodded skeptically. "So next week, you pick. Maybe they'll be playing a nice Disney movie," she added, wrinkling her nose at him.
"Back to your Snow White fantasies again?" he taunted, as he slurped his drink.
"Well," she retorted tartly, "I do live with Grumpy."
"Just because you can't pick a decent movie…" he growled, shoveling French fries into his mouth. "I like serial killers," he added smugly.
"Oh," Meredith teased, giggling, "so you just didn't like this particular serial killer?"
"Couldn't root for him," Alex insisted, shaking his head vigorously as he slurped his soda again. "He reminded me of Palmer, sloppy cutter."
"You're comparing your Attending to a serial killer," Meredith noted, raising her eye brows at him as she wiped her fingers.
"He's a…" Alex retorted, shaking his head as he stared back down at his empty tray. He hadn't told her. It didn't matter. He was going to change the jack ass's mind.
"You're just sulking because he won't let you do anything," Meredith insisted, gathering her things as she stood to leave.
"Right, like Swenson's so much better?" Alex smirked, following behind her as they exited the food court.
"I have an early surgery tomorrow," she corrected, pushing him toward the car. "At least Swenson actually lets me do things," she added, "besides hold retractors."
"Yea, paperwork and photo copying," he taunted. "You're a secretary."
"Shut up," she huffed, swatting his arm. "We're doing a tumor resection and shunt placement. She'll probably publish an article on it. You're just jealous," she teased, shrugging her coat off into his hands as he hung it with his beside the entry door.
"Palmer will cave," Alex insisted, shaking his head as he went into the living room. "And when he does, I'll be an Ortho rock star."
"Not again," she grumbled, handing him a beer and dropping onto the couch as he scanned the channels for the old sitcoms he watched when football wasn't on. "They're never going to get off that island, you know," she said, pointing her bottle at the screen.
"Oh, they'll get back," he insisted, nodding his head seriously and wincing as Gilligan toppled unceremoniously into the lagoon, before he flipped through the channels again.
"The Munsters?" she scoffed.
"Nothing else on," he shrugged, the light from the fireplace she'd just lit casting a shadow over him as evening settled into the room.
"Admit it, you have a thing for Marilyn Munster," she taunted, motioning to the busty blonde on the screen.
"Right," he smirked, sipping his own bottle.
"I always liked Morticia Adams better," she noted smugly.
"Remind you of your mother?" he taunted.
"I wish," Meredith grumbled, eying the barren mantle above the giant fireplace. She'd volunteered to work for the rest of the week, happily switching shifts with people who wanted Thanksgiving off. She'd always spent holidays in the hospital, waiting for her mother. It was what surgeons did, her mother always said. They were dedicated, they knew what was important, and they didn't waste time on trivia.
Izzie would hate this, she observed idly, surveying the room, which bore no trace of the holidays. It would have been their first Christmas together, she thought, glancing at Alex as she imaged Izzie decorating Ellis' old house, cancer be damned, and filling brightly colored stockings on the mantle – an activity Ellis would have hated on principle - and driving Alex and everyone else crazy.
Everyone except Derek, she thought abruptly.
"He's probably already shopping for his nieces and nephews," Meredith muttered, sighing at the sight of a sappy Christmas car commercial. "He's got like fifty of them, and he picks something out for each one of them. Who can even learn that many names?"
"His new girl friend, maybe" Alex noted bluntly, hoping to shut her up. He'd heard this all before, and he hated when she went on and on about that loser. As if she hadn't seen it coming when the bastard was sniffing around after that stupid nurse or his hot ex, as if she should have expected anything else.
"He wraps them himself, too. I'm a terrible wrapper," she rambled. "My mother never saw the point. She wouldn't even let me wait up for Santa. She said if he was that fat he probably had arteriosclerosis, and would have an elevated stroke risk."
"She said that?" Alex noted, with an admiring nod.
"I was five," Meredith protested. "Who talks like that to a five year old?"
"Didn't she give you that ugly doll in your locker?" he asked, scowling.
"Yeah," she sighed, "probably something she picked up last minute at the hospital gift shop."
"So, what, she was supposed to lie to you, about some fat dude coming down your chimney and flying around with freaking reindeer?" Alex asked.
"Oh," she objected, "they didn't have Santa in Iowa?"
"Just corn," Alex insisted, shaking his head.
"You never waited up for Santa when you were a kid?" she teased.
"Lived with him," he shrugged. "My dad was a rent-a-Santa to make extra money."
"At least you got to see him," she noted wistfully.
"Thought he was a nasty drunk," Alex corrected. "Couldn't figure out why anyone would wait up for him."
"We're not doing this right," she insisted, shaking her head as she vaguely surveyed the room again. "We need to do something for Thanksgiving."
"On call," Alex noted smugly, finishing his beer.
"Yeah, me too" Meredith admitted, "for the rest of the week. But I can at least learn how to wrap presents," she insisted.
"Why don't you just suture?" he suggested.
"What?" she asked, not sure she heard him right.
"Put some medi-gauze around whatever you're wrapping and suture," he noted, as if it were perfectly obvious. "You know how to suture, right?" he added sarcastically.
"Medi-gauze and 3-0 silk, to wrap a present?" she repeated incredulously, rolling her eyes at him. "You're worse then my mother."
"She," he reminded her, rising from the couch to retrieve two more beers for them, "was a rock star."