The last time she had seen him, everything had seemed ok. They had seemed to be in love, they hadn't been fighting, in fact they seemed perfectly happy. It wouldn't be until later that night she realized that not everything is truly how it seems to be.
Meredith hadn't been sleeping. Between being an intern and her seeing her worst nightmare whenever she closed her eyes, she honestly couldn't remember the last time she had gotten a good night's sleep. At the current moment, she was walking down the hallway of the hospital with George. She heard her name be called and glanced back to see her best friend and basically big brother, walking towards her, eating a sandwich while carrying files. She rolled her eyes and let him catch up to her.
"Hey, I hear you did a capage with Burke." He said just as he caught up. She nodded not even really focusing on what he was saying. She was much more worried about the fact that when she had been scrubbing out, she realized her nail had popped a hole in the glove she had been wearing. She was conflicted because she had no clue what she should do. "Did you hold the heart?" he asked interrupting her thoughts again.
"yeah" she said with a small smile on her face. She was able to forget her problem for a minute, by thinking about the first time Derek and Mark had come home, seeming like they were high. When she had asked what their deals were, they had both replied with smiles on their faces that they had held someone's heart in their hand that day. She cut off her own thoughts, not wanting to go down the road of thinking about him.
She glanced over at Derek before walking into the elevator with George. She knew that Derek had realized something was up, and she was thankful he hadn't said anything in front of George. She watched the elevator doors closed, but not before telling Derek they would talk later.
It had been a couple hours since she had seen Derek. She had been filling out paperwork and checking on Mrs. Patterson. She wanted desperately to tell Derek. He would know what to do. But then again, she knew if something bad was going to happen, if Derek knew and tried to protect her, like he tended to do, they both would be in a lot of trouble and the less people who knew the better. She was also stressed out about the party her roommate Izzie was throwing. She had been told only a few people were coming, but ever since then everyone in the hospital had been talking about it. Frankly she wanted to strangle Izzie. The last thing she needed today was a huge party in her house.
Derek came up behind Meredith and set his chart down next to hers. "Blow off the party tonight." He told her. She turned to look at him and raised an eyebrow.
"I can't." She said simply.
He looked at her for a moment before replying. "Going home, stressing out, getting drunk and waking up tomorrow with a hangover isn't going to make it go away Mere." He said kindly.
She looked up sharply at him. "I'm aware Derek. But it's a hell of a lot better than going home and pretending to have never had any feelings for them either." She said. She snapped closed her file and handed it to the nurse at the station before walking away. She loved Derek but sometimes he could be so brainless. As she was walking away, her pager went off. She glanced down. "Shit" she mumbled before taking off at a run towards Mrs. Patterson's room.
It felt like her phone had been ringing off the hook all day long. Between calls from him and calls from her mother's nursing home, she felt like it was never ending. Add this to getting chewed out by both the Chief and Burke, and all Meredith wanted to do was go home, crawl into bed and pray the day would end very soon. When she walked into her house, she was shocked. There was loud music, and people everywhere. She had known that Izzie had invited a lot of people but hadn't had a clue that meant this many. After yelling at George, which she did feel guilty about, she jumped onto a table with Christina and started dancing. She stole the bottle of Tequila out of Christina's hands and took a long drink from the bottle. She didn't know what else to do but enjoy the night.
After she had been dancing for a while, she felt hands pulling her down from the table. She turned and saw Derek helping her down. "Der!" she squealed excitedly, wrapping her arms around Derek. She drunkenly made him dance with her. He laughed and went along with her, knowing drunk Meredith was a lot more stubborn than sober Mere. When the music was flipped off, she turned to see who had turned it off. The man standing there defiantly brought her the biggest shock of the day. She felt Derek tense next to her, and knew she wasn't having a drunk dream.
"Mark." She said so softly she wasn't sure anyone had even heard her.