The attending lounge was fairly empty, Arizona was at the table with a coffee and a pile of paperwork as Alex, Meredith and Amelia walked in, putting their bags in their respective lockers. They hadn't spoke much on the journey in, Meredith was always cautious not to ask about how Amelia's rocky marriage was going in front of the kids. She had no filter half the time. Bailey picked up on a sentence she said once and told anyone he encountered to 'get screwed', much to Meredith's fury.

Alex stripped off his clothes and changed into his scrubs, feeling extremely grateful that he was back in navy after his unfortunate brush up with Deluca. That was behind him now and he had point blank sworn to Meredith that he was on his best behaviour, she'd known Alex for around 13 years now, the only person from her original intern class who was still there at Grey Sloan with her.

Alex pulled on his white lab coat and stuffed his pockets with a couple of pens and a notebook. "Mer, I hope you have a good night I'll probably not see you for the rest of the day. The kids will be fine." He reassured her. "If Riggs is being an ass just call me and I'll rescue you, and if you can help it don't screw him in the car again. It gives me the creeps sitting in there."

Meredith immediately slammed her phone down and looked up at him with her teeth clenched. "Alex!" She waved her hand in the direction of Arizona. She had only told Maggie, Amelia and himself about Riggs so far.

"She already knows." Alex shrugged his shoulders, noticing Mer was looking between the two of them and slightly freaking out.

"It's true." She grinned. "Good for you girl, Nathan's hot and that accent... Wow."

Meredith sighed at Alex "Who else have you told?"

"It creeps you out, Karev?! You're always in the front. Everyone else is in the back." Amelia interrupted.

Alex began to regret even saying a word.

"Mer I haven't told anyone."

She pushed the door shut to ensure the conversation wasn't going to be heard any further.

"Riggs told me, ages ago. We hang out sometimes." Arizona admitted.

This was all news to Meredith.

Nathan didn't seem to make friends easily - Owen hated him, Alex had point blank refused to work with him because of a disagreement over a pediatric/cardio patient and Meredith herself took sides with Owen before even getting to know him.

"You do?" Meredith asked in a surprised tone, she raised an eyebrow at Arizona.

"Sure, we go for drinks. He's been over to mine a few times too. Oh, you know that board game, Operation?" Arizona asked with a grin on her face. "Well Sofia left it for when she visits and we'd just started on the third bottle of wine... You can imagine how drunk we were starting to feel, Nathan managed to get every single little piece out of there without setting the buzzer off once, with his left hand. I couldn't believe it. I tried, could barely even grip the tweezers. Set the buzzer off about a thousand times on my first attempt."

"What can I say? He's good with his hands." Meredith admitted under her breath, her eyes quickly averted to Alex who was trying his best not to snigger at her statement.

The morning rounds passed by quickly. Meredith repeatedly trailed through the halls of the hospital checking on all of her post-op patients, they were spread out on the fourth floor and all seemed to be doing well. Unless a trauma came in, she was pretty much surgery free for the entire day which she wasn't at all bothered about; there was plenty of paperwork for her to be getting on with at one of the computers at the nurses stations.

It was a good view from there, she watched as people repeatedly pushed the elevator button in the hope that it would arrive quicker. News flash, it didn't.

She noticed April across the hall with the biggest smile on her face talking to Jo, thinking to herself that she was far too happy, all of the time. But she did like April, a recent case together had brought them surprisingly closer, plus the fact she was one of Nathan's friends from the war meaning she understood the things that went on over there a little better. The war was one of the subjects which she never brought up when she was with Nathan, figuring it was best not to take his mind back to the darker places.

Meredith quickly slipped her phone out of her pocket to message Nathan, seeing as he was now in her mind even more so than usual because he wasn't at the hospital today.

'Hi, I hope your day is more interesting than mine… See you later' she left her phone on the desk and began filing some papers into the bottom drawer. Whoever had been in there last had left it in a god awful mess. Meredith let out a loud groan and slid to the floor from her seat so that she could rearrange the papers into somewhat of an order, she wasn't really expecting a message back straight away.

"Oh, Dr. Grey your phone buzzed!" It was April, loud and chipper, leaning over the desk intrusively to see what Meredith was doing on the floor.

"Yes, thank you Kepner. I got it." She pulled herself up and back into the chair, inspecting her phone to see Nathan's name on the screen. She didn't open it yet, just in case.

"Sooooo…" April continued, she was eagerly awaiting a response from Meredith about her phone going off. "Anything interesting? Any cool surgery I should know about? Don't tell me you got a Whipple?"

Meredith held her phone in her eye line and pretended to read the screen – "Meredith Grey, please be advised that your car service is due and can be scheduled at any time. To book a time please call 0214 blah, blah. Thank you for your custom. Regards, Tim Burton at Lexus, Seattle." She gritted her teeth together and forced a smile. "Pretty cool that they send me updates huh?"

She thought her sarcasm was too obvious.

"Yep. That's pretty cool! Anyways I have to go catch Wilson for something. See ya!" April hurried off leaving Meredith rolling her eyes.