A very tired Meredith Grey was on call. Zola, Bailey and Ellis were with Maggie and Amelia. Her beautiful blonde hair was scrapped into a ponytail. Her dark blue scrubs felt soft against her skin. She made her usual pleasantries in the ER with April and Owen; made sure she wasn't needed for anything and took herself to an on-call room. Maybe she could get at least an hour's sleep before someone needed her. She collapsed on the bed and fell into a light sleep.
Two hours passed
Meredith was in big trouble. The chief of surgery had been paging her for an hour and a half but she had not answered. Miranda was not the slightest bit happy. April had paged her at 3am for an emergency that Meredith should have handled. Begrudgingly, Miranda took the sweet little girl into surgery for an appendectomy. When she found Meredith Grey there was going to be hell.
April continued to page Meredith. Where was she, it wasn't like her to sleep through pages. The slightest noise woke her. She had children and that generally means you sleep lightly. It didn't make sense. Meredith always answered. April asked Owen to cover and searched the on-call rooms. There was 17 in the hospital, plus the attending's lounge. Meredith wasn't in any of them.
She began to get worried. Maybe Meredith had gone home? Or to the toilet? Or maybe she's gone for a drive? Panic set in. The young redhead went to find Owen. 'Owen, have you seen Meredith?' April asked. Owen shook his head. 'She's missing and the chief is so pissed. She'd never leave if she was on call. I starting to get extremely worried. 'Can you hold the fort if I go and ring Amelia?' Owen nodded in response and April headed towards the staff room. Amelia hadn't heard from her and neither had anybody else.
Meredith was missing. As a last resort, she rang Cristina. Cristina said that she had a missed call from Meredith but she hadn't had chance to call her back as she'd been in surgery all night. 'Should I be worried?' Cristina asked. 'I really don't know. Did she ever walk out in the middle of a shift when you worked here?' 'No, not even when she had McDreamy problems' Cristina replied. 'Oh. I'll ring you back if I find her okay?' April muttered. Cristina hung up.
Miranda finally got out of surgery and she went in search of Meredith. There was only one place April wouldn't have checked. The vent room. Cristina and Owen used to go there together. Then Meredith and Cristina. Bailey headed up there and unlocked the door. There was a woman sat on the floor, curled in a corner. It was Meredith but it didn't look like the Meredith she knew.