All I have to say is that reviews equal updates. I got a great group of reviews for the prologue and chapters 1 and 2, but if it's only 5 people reading, I doubt the story will carry on much longer. Thanks! Oh yeah...I'm pretty proud of this chapter, even though it's still not 100 to my own personal standards...any and all thoughts are greatly appreciated, criticism included. Thanks again!
Chapter 3
Shelter From The Storm
--
It was late. She sat huddled in a corner of wall near the Chief's office, on the edge of the large balcony, her knees pulled up underneath her chin and her eyes glowing with an exhausted pain that had seemed to become omnipresent within her lately. The rain streamed down the seemingly never ending window before her, trailing down in rivulets, every once in awhile getting caught on a single crevice in the glass and getting lost amongst its mates. Somehow, over looking the busy and unsleeping streets of Seattle, a sense of contemplative peace had come to rest in the belly of her distress. The tiredness that should have been residing in its place hadn't visited her weary and welcoming mind in two weeks, not allowing her the blissful escape of sleep.
Luckily, after that night, she had not heard from Simon, so she didn't know whether or not he was still in Seattle, and didn't care. But since then, her world had been silent. Well, figuratively, at least.
It seemed that every person she knew had a specific and totally unrelenting reason so be angry with her. Izzie had not spoken to her outside of work and asking her to buy cream of tartar at the grocers, and George was sullen and quiet, presumably since he now figured that he had two superior men to defeat in the sick and twisted race he had engaged himself in for her affections. Cristina was more sarcastic and griping than normal, her bitter remarks actually stinging Meredith for the first time since she met her. Even Alex, the resident manwhore, had lost the small amount of rugged, yet amiable friendliness that he had developed with Meredith.
Derek...Derek was another story. All week, even if Meredith had given a stellar presentation and earned an undeniable right to scrub in on a spectacular neurosurgery, the case would inevitably be given to another intern. Whereas Bailey would usually argue that Derek should keep his personal business out of the hospital and allow Meredith to do her job and learn, she would just cast the younger woman a both pitying and scolding glance, and carry on with her own work.
So, she had quickly learned to keep to herself, even though the secrets she was holding deep within herself would undoubtedly exonerate her from this excommunication from her life that she had been served.
A set of familiar footsteps began to ring down the hallway behind her, and she realized that even though it was four in the morning, Bailey expected her to work twenty-four seven.
As she wrapped her long fingers around the cold railing above her to hoist herself up, the stout, pretty woman appeared before Meredith, an exhausted expression mirrored on her face as well.
"You don't have to get up, Grey," Bailey said softly and uncharacteristically, "I'm not royalty."
Meredith offered her no response, just a feeble nod, as Bailey surprisingly slid down to the floor beside her. She suddenly realized from earlier, when she had ventured down to study the OR board, that her boss must have just returned from her grueling 14-hour surgery. According to the silence that enfolded them, it was not a successful one.
Unsure of herself, Meredith suddenly stumbled over herself and blurted out, "Dr. Bailey, can I ask for your advice?"
Thinking for a moment, she replied, "Well, it depends on whether or not you want my honest opinion." Only waiting for a small nod from Meredith, she said, "Then I suppose so."
With a heaving sigh, she began, "I don't have anything anymore...I mean, my friends aren't speaking to me and neither is Derek. I don't have anything left, you know? I don't know what to do..." she trailed off, and Bailey, sensing there was more to this slightly random rambling of sorts, kept quiet and waited for the young woman to continue, "I've been thinking about moving back to Boston. I mean...I haven't been there in practically ten years, but it was nice...when I was there, it was nice. And no one there knows me. No one knows about my husband and boyfriend and..." she barely caught herself in time, almost slipping on the edge of saying 'mother,' "And...no one knows my name. A fresh start, right?" Having had her eyes glued anywhere except for Bailey, Meredith finally looked up to see an unexpected and yet comforting look of sympathy residing on her hardened and kind features.
Not knowing what else to say, Bailey spoke softly, giving her a warm pat on her arm, "You'll be ok, Meredith. You'll be ok."
--
After her near-meltdown in the hallway with Bailey, Meredith spent the day aimlessly filling out charts and labs in the dungeon-like basement hallway, the boring time only punctuated by the occasional and hardly satisfactory glance or grunt from a fellow intern as they sought out the elusive Fig Newtons that seemed to disappear from every vending machine above the first floor within thirty minutes of being restocked. Every once in awhile, a random nurse or volunteer would mercilessly come to visit her with another stack of black binders, waiting in a dubious and unsteady stack to torture her for at least twenty minutes a piece.
At long last, the clock ticked 8 PM and she darted to the locker room and out to her car before she would have to face the disapproving and betrayed looks from her peers and bosses alike. Somehow, she had become the bad guy, when she in fact, was the victim here.
After all of the things Simon, her Satanic hopefully soon-to-be ex-husband had done to her, she was the one suffering for it now. She had tried numerous times in the first few days after the incident to explain the situation to someone, to anyone who would listen, but every time, a fake pager would erupt or a continuous stream of, "Ohhh, I have to go..." would pour from their mouths. Eventually she gave up, figuring that she got whatever she deserved, for not disclosing this vital information.
Too distracted with digging her enigmatic keys out of the bottomless pit of a tote bag she carried, she didn't notice the unfamiliar car in her driveway, nor the red-head sitting on her front porch.
"Simon," she said as she followed the path to her front door, her tone much the same as the one she had held the first night he showed up in Seattle, "What are you doing here?"
"I came to apologize," he replied, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, "And to take you home with me," he paused before continuing, "You don't belong here Meredith."
Meredith, too angry to think of anything clever, said, "Your apologies mean nothing, and I am staying right where I am."
"Now...that's where you're wrong," he said, standing up to take a few paces towards her, and suddenly Meredith was thrown back into a harsh memory of the night she left.
--
"Simon?" she said, a steady river of tears cascading around the rims of her eyelashes, blurring the sight of a tall, voluptuous, brunette woman mounted on top of her husband, and in her bed none the less.
"MEREDITH!" he said, the shock of her coming home early from her interview in Seattle clearly portrayed in his strained voice. He roughly shoved the mysterious woman to the side, not really paying attention as she cried out from the loss of his warmth.
Meredith said nothing. She turned and walked down the hall, extracting a suitcase from the hallway linen closet.
--
"You're going to go inside, pack your things, and say goodbye to your friends," he said, his low and condescending tone familiar from both the night he showed up and the night she left.
--
"Meredith," he said, and she was suddenly very clear and level-headed. For weeks, she had suspected. She was never one to forgive and forget, and she promised herself that if she ever found out for sure, if she knew that he was cheating on her, she would leave. She planned on keeping that promise. " I swear it's not what it looks like," he pleaded, his eyebrows furrowing into an expression that, months ago, would have made her weak in the knees, but now only made her nauseous.
"Really?" she said as she continued to pack her things, astonished at his stupidity and audacity, "Did I not just find you in the throes with a random whore? Were you not fucking a woman other than your wife?" When he didn't reply, she said, "Hmm? Are you going to answer me?"
"Meredith, I swear, it was only a one-time thing..." he tried, taking a different approach, to appeal to the forgiving side of his wife.
"I don't care if it was a one-time thing, or if you've been screwing her since before we were even married," she yelled, as she finished throwing her clothes and almost all of her belongings, save random trinkets she had kept from their relationship, into a massive suitcase, "I want a divorce," she spat, trying to end the conversation then and there. What happened next - she did not expect.
--
"Simon," she said, trying to capture some of the level-headedness that had been bestowed upon her on that fateful night, "I think you should leave. And I don't think you should come back." She began to slowly edge around him so that her back was now turned towards the front door of the house, hopefully giving her more opportunity to flee than she had before. It wouldn't matter where she was standing, though - what was going to happen next had been inevitable since the day they had met.
--
"No you don't," he said, his face suddenly an angry mask that mirrored her own.
"What?" she said, her voice a shocked, hoarse whisper. He had never acted like this to her, or anyone for that matter.
"Unpack your things, you're not going anywhere," he growled. Things began to escalate, and the next thing Meredith knew, she was on the ground, a bruise beginning to form on the tender pink flesh beneath her left eye. She wasn't scared, and she wasn't upset...she was angry and ashamed that she had allowed him to defile her in such an evil way. She would wait until that night, take her still-packed suitcase, and flee on the first flight to Seattle, hoping that closing her bank accounts and changing her address to a post office box would suffice to leave the mess that had become her life behind.
--
"I'm not going anywhere without you," he said, wrapping his strong fingers around her wrists, and she could already feel the skin and muscle underneath it begin to bruise. She tried to wrench her arms away, but only proceeded to make it hurt more as he pulled on them simultaneously
With a violent thrash, she felt her head crack viciously against the pillar of the porch behind her, the resounding thud splintering out into the silent night, and everything around her subsequently began to swim. His face in front of her became a mix of red and blue, but as soon as it began to get blurry, it was gone, and the dark midnight sky replaced it.
"Get off of her!" a growling voice said from somewhere to her right, and she hoped that it came from the person that had peeled her abusive husband away from her.
The sudden sound of knuckles meeting cheekbones jolted her a bit, and the scene in front of her became a little more clear.
Derek stood over the crumpled form of Simon, who was clutching his bloody face and teetering on the verge of consciousness.
Derek turned to her, all of the anger from the past weeks replaced with the loving and concerned expression she had grown so used to.
"Derek..." she managed to mumble, her eyes beginning to flutter closed as she tried her hardest to support herself against the column which had served her this blow.
"Oh my god Meredith..." he said, his voice scratched with the pure fear of her ever being injured at all, and the last thing she felt was his arms wrapped securely around her, and finally, she fell into a black abyss.