A/N: Okay, so I'm aware that this makes TWO updates in ONE day. I just finished writing this chapter and I was so excited to post it that I couldn't help it lol. So before you read this, MAKE SURE YOU CHECKED OUT CHAPTER EIGHT as well. I'm sorry if the two updates in one day confused you...I'm just so excited for you guys to read this. So uh... M rated stuff in this one.
Last night was rough. Like I said before, I've had my fair share of bad nights but last night took the cake for worst overall night in my life. I'd never willingly admit this to anyone…and I'd deny it if I was ever asked, but I literally spent the entire night lying awake…crying. Izzie is the only girl that has ever made me blubber like a baby the way I did last night. I'm seriously so exhausted because in case you didn't know, crying and sleeping don't mix very well so crying was in and sleeping was out. I hope the day in Peds is slow because I need an hour in a nice, quiet on call room. I need a nap and I'm as serious as a heart attack about that.
I get to spend the first half of the day in the NICU which is actually a good thing since no new babies have been admitted since yesterday. Since there are no new cases in the NICU, I might just let Jo round on them herself because I'm sure she can handle it at this point. I'm not sure if that counts as favoritism but if it does, I don't really care. Mere and I were talking when we both came in this morning and apparently Hunt's been talking to Cristina about my "blatant favoritism towards Dr. Wilson." She said that he said if I don't stop treating her like she's superior to all other interns she'll be banned from Peds for a month. I wouldn't want to punish Jo for something that I'm doing. If I'm favoring her I haven't really noticed but I guess I'll try to stop because that would be unfair to her to be punished for my transgressions.
Speaking of Jo… she should've been up here already. I didn't go down to the locker rooms to get her because she got her pager today and that means I don't have to go get her anymore. I paged her up here, but maybe she didn't get it…or maybe she hasn't figured out how to answer it. She's late.
I grab an electronic chart off the charging dock and head towards the elevator. I'll excuse the fact that she's late for rounds today. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and just say that maybe she's unaware of how to use the pager yet. I push the button to call the elevator to my floor and stand in front of it, waiting. I'm also not looking forward to tonight either. If sleeping without Izzie was impossible last night, I imagine that tonight will be the exact same thing. I just have to deal until Wednesday without her then maybe I'll be able to get some sleep once she's back in bed with me.
The elevator doors open and out walks a group of nurses and standing in the back behind all of them, clutching two manila lab folders to her chest is Jo. She looks like she's had a rough day already and I know that she's only just gotten here half an hour ago at the most. I step aside and wait for her to get off. Rubbing her left eye with an opened hand, she walks off and stops right where I'm standing. "I'm so sorry I'm late for rounds Alex… I…I got your page but then Dr. Robbins paged me and I wasn't real sure whose page I should've answered first…I'm sorry. But uh… here's the labs you said you wanted…" Her voice is really dry and raspy.
"What's wrong with you?" I grab the labs out of her hands and start walking in the direction of the NICU. I don't know much about her but if I didn't know any better, I'd say that she sounds like she needs to cry. She either needs to cry, she's been or crying or she just stopped crying. "Wilson, you look like crap. Go back to the locker room and get yourself together." Don't do that. Remember what Mere said. Mere cautioned me to tone down on the favoritism before he bans me from working with her. But it's not favoritism it's just me being a nice guy I think. "Do you need a minute?"
"No, I'm fine." She rubs her eyes so hard that I wouldn't be surprised if they popped out of her head. "I just had a really bad night. I'm really sorry for letting it affect my work, but I'm fine." She pushes her hair back out of her face as if she's really annoyed by it. "Where are we at first?" I can tell that she's trying really hard to sound cheerful and I appreciate the effort because I know how hard it is to put aside your personal issues so you can sound happy and cheerful for the kids you're about to work with.
"NICU." I stop at the doors to the NICU before I go inside so I can talk to her for a second. "It looks like it's going to be a slow day in Peds today so once we're done with rounds, if there's nothing else for us to do, you can go find an empty on call room and rest up. I had a rough night too so I know where you're coming from." She doesn't even say anything back to me. She nods her head and stifles a big, wide yawn. I open the doors to the NICU and she follows closely behind me. Since we were late for rounds, Robbins already rounded on the babies in the north and south wings. Jo and I have to round on the ones in the east and west wings.
I go over to our first baby and open up the incubator. As if she's been doing this in her sleep, Jo reaches inside the incubator and unhooks the baby's IV so we can hang a fresh bag of fluid. I just stand back and watch her. She grabs a fresh bag of fluid and hands it on top of the line. She grabs the end of the tube and pushes it into the smaller side. She screws on the top and shakes it to make sure it's on secure enough that it won't fall out. "…What did you do wrong? Your technique was flawless, but what did you do wrong here?"
"…I…" She properly disposes of the old fluid bag and looks up at the new bag she hung. "…I don't know. I… I detached the old bag, attached the new one, checked it to make sure it wouldn't fall just like you taught me how to…" She looks up at me. "Did I do something wrong?"
"…You forgot a glove, that's all. Can't deal with needles without gloves…you know that though." I help her clean up and re-sterilize the area. "You get an A minus for the day. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that if you had a good night's rest, you would've gotten an A plus." I wink at her to let her know I'm joking and though she's visibly tired, she gives me a smile to let me know she took it all in good fun. "Why'd you have a bad night? Just couldn't sleep?"
"…You first." She closes the incubator back up and moves along with me to the next patient. "You said you had a bad night too, didn't you?" I nod my head, looking down inside the incubator. "Well, why'd you have your bad night? You tell me and I'll tell you." Before she opens up the incubator, she leans against it and looks at me. I really need an excuse to touch her because I'm starting to doubt that she's even real again. "Oh and when I tell you, you don't have to act like you care. We don't… we don't have to act like we actually care about each other outside of work. I get that you're not really that kind of friend to me."
"Who said I didn't care about you outside of this hospital?" I unhinge the locks on the side of the incubator and prepare to open it up. She takes my hint and stops leaning against it. "Is this just a fancy way of you telling me that you don't want to be my friend outside of work? Because if it is, it sucks. You could've let me down easier than that. Harsh, Wilson. Harsh."
She laughs briefly before she starts talking again. "No Alex… I was just saying." Her laugh matches her perfectly. She sounds like a cartoon character when she laughs—very animated and cheeky. "I could totally understand if you don't want to be friends with a nothing little intern, especially when we haven't a thing in common with one another. I wouldn't be offended if you admitted that we're work friends because I guess that's better than not being friends at all." When she's looking at me, she has a permanent smile on her face. It never fades away. "You're not exactly gonna call me up and ask me to come over and drink a beer and watch the Seahawks game. So there's no obligation for you to care about my shitty night."
"I wouldn't ask about it if I didn't care, Jo." I open up the incubator and start changing the IV this time. "And you never know." I shrug my shoulders. "Maybe when you move up in the world and become a nothing little resident instead of a nothing little intern, I will invite you over for a beer. We have more in common than you think."
"Oh, that sounds promising." She rolls her eyes at me and even that is the prettiest thing I've ever seen. Everything that this girl does is effortlessly flawless. She blinks her eyes and it's like the world stops to admire the way her eyelashes flutter when she blinks. Everything she does is just perfect. "What do you and I possibly have in common? Unless you're…you know…hiding the fact that you went to Princeton as well." She leans against the incubator again once I close it back up and does that thing with her mouth where her jaw switches from side to side.
"You don't think I'm smart enough to have gotten into Princeton or Harvard?" We really do have more in common than she thinks though. If only she knew that talking to her is like talking to myself. I have a feeling that she'll feel differently once I tell her about the shitty upbringing I had as well. She'd probably be surprised to know that about me. "Actually, I—"
She interrupts me but she does it in a way that's hard to find it offensive. She did it politely. "I had a hard time sleeping last night because I spent most of the night crying….because I'm one of those girls where once I start crying I can't really stop…so it was just bad last night. I'm okay now but I'm really tired since I didn't get sleep." She swats her hair out of her face again. "There. That's my story…what's yours?"
"Same as yours, actually." I admit because she seems like she was being brutally honest with me and I think she deserves that same respect. I guess I'll tell her about the fact that I was a foster child as well some other time. "But it was a double whammy with me because I had to sleep alone…that kind of thing. I guess it was just one of those nights for both of us." I properly close up the incubator and lock it up so we can move on in our rounds.
"…Why were you crying?" She's just as nosy as I am because I was half a second away from asking her the same thing. "You just don't strike me as the type of guy that cries a lot… it must've been a pretty bad situation for you to cry…"
"Ehh… you know… fiancé troubles are enough to make any decent man cry." I motion with my hand for her to follow me.
"…Oh. Yeah, I get that."
"How about you? What were you crying for?"
"I…" She starts to smile but it's out of discomfort rather than amusement. Again, I don't know much about her, but the more time I spend with her, the more I learn about her. And if she's as much like me as I think she is, it's easy to tell what reason she's smiling for when she does smile. "I had a…. bad… sexual….encounter last night, okay?" She's embarrassed and that's what I'm collecting from the type of smile she has on her face. Plus her cheeks are rosy and she can't even look me in my eye.
"With the jerk from OB?" Did I just call him a jerk? Whoops. That slipped out… but whatever. She ought to know that he's a jerk if she doesn't know already.
"…He's not a jerk." Yeah, the way she said that…I'm not totally buying the fact that she really believes that. It's almost like she's trying to convince herself that he's not a jerk more than she's trying to convince me. "But yeah…." She still can't look me in my eye so she looks away from me.
"Whatever." I mutter. I don't even want to continue this conversation. It's just not something I'm interested in hearing about. The guy's a tool and it only makes sense if he's not good in bed. He must really suck in order to make her cry over it though. Unless he hurt her, and that's why she was crying. Nope. I force that thought out of my mind. Regardless, I'm not interested in hearing anything she has to say about whatever went on in bed with him last night. "Come on… we have to finish rounds." On the plus side… I get to spend the whole day with her and the day just started.
Jo's Point of View.
"Alex…" I shove my hand in the bag of potato chips I'm eating for lunch and take one out so I can eat it. I tried to show him the place outside that Steph, Leah, Heather, Shane and I sit at when we get a free minute. He said it smelled like old rotten nasty fish and that he wasn't sitting out there. So he took me to the tunnels…where he and his buddies sit and chill when they have a free minute. I must admit that the tunnels beat sitting outside smelling all the gross smells from the cafeteria. Sometimes it smells good out there but most of the time it stinks. "What did you mean earlier when you said that we have a lot more in common than I think? Should I be worried?" I shove the chip in my mouth. We both agreed that if we went to on call rooms to sleep during our lunch hours that we both just wouldn't wake up because we're both exhausted so that's why we just came down here instead. He's actually a really good friend. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy but I swear other than Steph, he's my bestie.
"You've spent more than six hours with me today and you're really gonna tell me that throughout our conversations, there's NOTHING that we talked about that made you say 'hey… we have that in common'? I know we talked about a lot of things but I also know that your brain can retain at least 75% of the conversations." He opted to eat a sandwich from the cafeteria as opposed to my bag of Sour Cream and Onion chips. I think it's a turkey sandwich. At least that's what it smells like.
"Well yeah… but when you said it, you kind of sounded like you meant we share more than just a mutual hatred for the Washington Redskins and a love for Green Day in common." I start filing through my brain for something that might've slipped my mind. So far today, I've learned that his birthday is January 5th, he went to Iowa State on a wrestling scholarship, he played football in high school, he likes to go running in the mornings, his favorite band is Green Day, his favorite song at the moment is "Black Widow" but he'd never willingly admit that, and he has a celebrity crush on Iggy Azalea. I've been teasing him by randomly singing bits and pieces of Black Widow all day, by the way.
"I'm pretty familiar with the streets too." He takes another bite of his sandwich and says that like it's not that big of a deal.
"…Don't make fun of me for being a street kid." I softly throw a punch his way. "Just when I think you're done being a douchebag you start up again."
"Only I'm not makin' fun of you."
I wrinkle my eyebrows and look at him. "…Really?" I put my bag of chips down and fold my arms across my chest. "How many foster homes did you get kicked out of before you had to live in your car, Ace?"
"Seventeen… and I didn't really live in my car, I went straight to juvi. You couldn't handle juvi… punk." Is he serious? He was a street kid too? What? But he is wrong about me not being able to handle juvi. I've been to jail… I think I can handle juvi. "Those kids in juvi would chew you up and spit you out."
"Mhm." I roll my eyes. "Well did you ever have to deal with junkies beating on your bedroom windshield? Ever catch yourself praying at that they'd get tired before they put a brick through the window?"
"…Nah." He finishes the last bite of his sandwich. "But that's only 'cause my dad was the junkie and he didn't break windows…he went straight to breaking fingers. You didn't have to watch your crazy mom go after your baby brother with a steak knife."
"…Touché." I put my head against the wall and sigh. "So maybe we do have more in common than I thought." I look over at him. "It's nice to have someone that understands what it's like to be homeless… I try to talk to Steph about it but she doesn't quite understand that I'm not used to… big cozy beds, hot showers whenever I please and food that doesn't come from a trashcan."
"Whoa… speak for yourself, Hobo Jo. I wasn't a garbage-eater like you."
Should I do this to him? I don't know… should I? I don't know if I want to do this to him right now. Ehh whatever, I'm going for it. I put my head down and hold my face in my hands. I don't even try to be quiet about it, I just go for the full out wailing. "Mmmm…." My tears are dripping down my arms.
"…Shit… Shit, Jo… Jo don't cry. I'm sorry." He grabs my arm and tries to pull my hands away from my face but I just shake my head and keep crying. "Hey… hey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're not… you're not a garbage-eater. I didn't mean that." He keeps trying to comfort me but I'm still wailing so loud that I probably sound like a seven year old. "You called yourself homeless, so I just thought… I thought it was okay. I'm sorry. Which one was it? Was it the Hobo Jo thing or was it the garbage-eater thing? I'm sorry, alright?"
I take my hands away from my face and look at him, smiling. "Look at your face. I got you. I got you. You're so gullible, my god. I got you." I pull my sleeve down and tilt my head so I can wipe my fake tears away. "Oh, I so got you. I got you good."
"…You're faking?"
"Uh huh." I nod and keep wiping my face off until I'm sure that I've gotten every tear. "I got you…"
"You can just cry like that?"
"Tears, baby. I got myself out of a lot of shit like this." I tilt my head back so my nose doesn't run. "Turn on the waterworks and you can get yourself out of almost anything… number one tool of a street kid is tears. It's a gift, really. I can't believe you didn't know." I put the palm of my hand to my nose for extra insurance that it won't run.
"Oh yeah right… That crap would never work for me. That crap would never work on a guy."
"You're wrong." I push my hair out of my face and clear my throat. "A girl crying is one thing, but when a guy cries… that freaks EVERYONE out. Want me to teach you?"
"…You're crazy. You're a frickin' con artist." He's looking at me with a wide smile on his face but he's shaking his head like I just told him the secret to life.
"You want me to teach you or not?" I sit up against the wall and shift my position so that I'm facing him. I cross my legs and look at him. "Seriously come on…I'll teach you. Look at me." He puts his garbage from his lunch behind himself and turns to face me. This gurney that we're sitting on is pretty uncomfortable and it's making my ass hurt but I'll deal with it. "Okay, you just gotta…feel it. Like… think back. What's the nastiest thing someone's ever said to you?"
"…My first girlfriend told me that she was a squirter and that was pretty gross at the time to sixteen year old me…"
I put my head down, hold my stomach and laugh HARD. "Eww my god, that's totally not what I meant by nasty… you weirdo. That's not what I meant." I can't stop laughing. Oh god this is the hardest I've ever laughed in my life. "That is NOT what I meant, Alex…"
"…Oh. Well shit, oops." He laughs too. "You meant nasty as in mean, didn't you?"
"Yeah… that kind of nasty." I shake my head and just stare into his eyes. I've never felt like this before. I've never felt so naturally myself in front of a guy before. I'm bursting out in gut-busting laughter with him and I'm not even trying. I kind of like this feeling… "And I'm glad that you clarified that you were sixteen when she told you that, because most guys consider that a blessing not gross."
"Yeah I totally appreciate that these days." He shakes his head and keeps smiling. "You don't find many girls that can do that. It really is a blessing now that I think about it."
"It's actually a curse." I mumble but I can tell by the look on his face that he caught that. "…New subject." I tuck my hair behind my ear.
"…Why's it a curse?" He puts his hands on his knees and leans forward to get all up in my face like he's purposely, blatantly being nosy.
"I don't want to talk about this with you! This is weird!" I cover my face with my hands and giggle. "You totally weren't even supposed to hear that…"
"Well we're friends, aren't we? Isn't this kind of what friends talk about? I mean… me and Avery talk about this kind of crap all the time but it is kind of weird talking about it with a girl…I'll give you that."
"…Okay, we can be gross for…" I glance up at the clock hanging on the wall. "Five minutes." Because I know that he is EXACTLY like me and he's NOT going to let this subject go, I'm going to have to explain what I meant by "it's a curse" to him. "…It kinda just like…" I put my tongue in my cheek. "It goes everywhere and it's messy." That's the most PG-rated way I can put that.
"I've heard someone say that before." He nods like it's not even in the least bit gross to him. "I actually had a girlfriend in college that would never orgasm because she didn't want to do that because it was messy. I thought she was nuts, but hey…"
"It IS messy though… that's why I do it the other way…because it's less of a hassle to deal with and I don't feel guilty for like… getting it everywhere."
"You can do BOTH?"
"…Yeah? I thought all girls did the clean way and then a select few did it the messy way. I thought… is it not normal to do both?" I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to him about this. I can't believe this… this is so awkward but at the same time, it's so easy. It's easy to talk to him. "I mean I tend to do the other way because doing it the one way is really stressful… and…" I just shake my head.
"….You're a freak, aren't you?" He looks at me through squinted eyes. "You are a fuh-reak."
"…I guess." I shrug my shoulders and giggle. "I just like sex. And I don't feel like it should be okay for a guy to like sex but the second a girl says that she likes to have sex, she's a whore. That's not fair."
"I don't think you're a whore for liking sex." He wipes the palms of his hands on his scrub pants. "I think Chest Peckwell is lucky, that's what I think."
Jason is the LAST thing I want to talk about. I was having such a good time without talking about him. I'm not talking about him…I refuse. "So, five minutes is up…" I move my hair out of my way again. "…Back to teaching you how to cry…" I clap my hands enthusiastically and look at him some more. "So yeah… think about the MEANEST thing someone's ever said to you. You have to feel it… feel it in your… feelings. And think about it."
"I don't have feelings."
"You have feelings, Alex… I've seen them." I reach over and grab ahold of his hand. He flinches away from me like I burned him when I touched him which makes me loosen up a little bit. "When you deal with those little babies… you have feelings." I have feelings too…and they're getting stronger just by sitting here with him. "…Think about when your fiancé kisses you…" My heart drops when I say the word "fiancé." I bite my lip and scoot closer to him. "Think about when she kisses you…and think about when she eases in…" I don't even notice that I'm easing in as I'm coaching him through it until our noses are almost touching. "…Think about that moment just before your lips touch…and how you'd feel if you never felt that again…"
Our faces are so close to one another's that my nose is touching his. I can feel his breath against my upper lip as we're breathing. And I don't know, but my eyes close and so do his.
"KAREV AND WILSON! THERE YOU TWO ARE!" I pull away from him so fast when I hear somebody interrupt the moment. Like I'm going to get caught doing something I'm not supposed to be doing. He pulls away from me with the same urgency and it's not until I see and feel him pulling away from me that I realize his fingers were interlocked inside mine. "WHY AREN'T YOU TWO ANSWERING YOUR PAGERS?!" Dr. Robbins is fuming mad.
I was about to kiss him. I was about to kiss him and I was about to fall into a trance and I was about to die and go to heaven for a minute there. I was about to do the only thing that's ever felt right in my life. It felt so right to kiss him even though I know that I would've made a mistake that would've inevitably lead to me crying about it later by just kissing him. But it felt so right to do… I gotta get off Peds. I have to get off his services. I'm celibate for one and for two, I'm not going to fall for a married or soon-to-be-married man. I'm not gonna allow myself to do that. I'm not setting myself up for that kind of rejection…I can't do that to myself. I have to get off Pediatrics.
"…I'm… I'm gonna go down to the pit and see if anybody needs me down there." I hop down off the gurney quickly before I start to get all mixed up. I can feel the tears coming on and the tears that I'm close to crying aren't fake tears that I use to get myself out of shit. These tears that are forming behind my eyes are real as hell and I don't want him to see them fall. I even leave my half-eaten bag of chips behind as I start lightly jogging down the hall.
"Jo!" I hear him calling after me and even though I'm telling myself not to slow down, my common sense and good judgment problem takes over and I stop running and turn around to look at him. "You don't have to go down to the pit…" He says. I shake my head and turn back around.
Pull it together, Josephine. Pull. It. Together. You're NOT falling for him… you're not allowed. Get your shit together.
