Ah I was so proud of myself on the updates but I was busy yesterday ;D Thanks so much for the reviews I've gotten, I love reading them so much! And I try to respond to them because I appreciate it so much!
They arrived at the hospital all three of them together along with Andrew. Of course the boys were smitten with Addison. Both were children christened even though Meredith wasn't remotely religious and Derek never practiced but nevertheless a christening had taken place and Addison was godmother to Michael. They had all lived so close together in New York and the boys had noticed her absence. Now it was just like old times.
Meredith spotted a crowd in the lobby and said goodbye to Derek outside. She handed Andrew to him and kissed him just a few seconds too long to be entirely decent. 'Same old, some old,' Addison sighed, averting her eyes. Meredith pulled away and hugged her kids before darting through the doors to make it in time for rounds.
She arrived in the locker room with comfortable time to change. She was barely there for a minute when Alex came in. He slumped on a bench and she noticed he was sporting a black eye. George had punched him and people were laughing about it. She decided not to comment. If Izzie hadn't spread the news already then it was only a matter of time and she needed all the friends she could get.
'Hey did you see that total babe Shepherd was with this morning?' Alex said nonchalantly, toying with the strings on his scrubs.
'The neonatal attending from New York?' Izzie said. She had appeared suddenly beside Meredith, giving her a fright.
'Dunno I thought it was his wife. They had a kid with them.'
Meredith could see Izzie yearning to spill; to scream No it's not because Meredith is his wife! but she gave her friend a light smack on the shoulder and Izzie held her tongue. Thank God.
'She could be both,' Izzie shrugged. She was enjoying this.
'I'm surprised you're not bummed. I thought you had a thing for McDreamy.'
Now it was Izzie's turn to squirm. For the first time she thought about how many jokes had been made about McDreamy's ass in all the time they had been interns. It hadn't occurred to her before but Meredith had never been as involved in those conversations. It must have been horrible holding her breath while they discussed and dissected and gossiped like regular little slutty interns.
Joe, the bartender, had been brought into the hospital that day. Everybody seemed to care so much. All the other interns practically lived in the bar when they weren't at the hospital and they all lined up with their well wishes. Meredith had never realised people liked that bar so much. She had only been there once. The night of the intern mixer. Derek had dropped her off at the hospital and gone across the road to the bar and she had barely put up with fifteen minutes of George rambling before she had sprinted across to join him.
She was initially put on the case. The one person in the hospital who barely knew Joe and she was put on the case. She was just getting patient history and she had to remember Bailey's words – Be nice and smile so they will tell you things.
'Hey I remember you,' Joe said when he saw her.
'Really? I was only at the bar one time,' Meredith said guiltily. She was already singling herself as the person on the outside. He must have thought she was strange already but she was too busy to care much.
'Yeah you were with the guy with the Russell-Crowe hair,' he smirked. 'Boyfriend?'
'No. Husband.' She sighed.
'Isn't that him over there?' Joe sat up further in bed and pointed.
'Oh. Shit. Don't let on to the other interns, okay? None of them know.'
He let out a short laugh and mimed zipping his mouth shut.
'My lips are sealed Dr Grey.' She could see why people liked him, with his little non-judgemental laughs and smiles.
Addison had requested Meredith as an intern on the case she had flown out to help with. 'This is such unfair favouritism,' Meredith pointed out.
'C'mon Mer, I'm bored. And I want to see you work. Don't you want to see me working? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,' she pouted.
'Addi I've seen you perform a million times,' Meredith said. When she was in college Meredith used to borrow scrubs and sneak into the OR gallery. She saw Derek's first solo surgery, not to mention Addison and Mark's.
Mark Sloan was the fourth member of their group and Meredith was a bit nervous to ask how he was. Addison and Mark had an angry relationship if you could even call it that. He only seemed to show interest in Addi when she made him chase her and while she wanted marriage and babies he was still immature and just enjoyed women and surgery.
So Meredith kept her mouth shut.
Meredith managed to catch Addison in the stairwell. 'The scans show what I think is beginning heart failure in the twins,' Meredith said.
'Hmm. We'll have to go into surgery right away,' Addison said.
'Okay will I book the OR?' Meredith asked.
Addison looked at her strangely for a second. 'Oh, of course. I keep forgetting you're an intern!' she said. 'This is so weird. I forget you're not just a little Shepherd, you're actually still practically a high school student.' She let out a loud laugh that Meredith did not join in on.
'Addison, this is work. You have got to start being more professional.'
'Oh yeah because I'm sure you're so professional when Derek is around. How many times has he requested you for his services? How many times have you been almost caught in an on-call room?'
'I mean professional like stop doing that whole chatting thing and don't expect me to go eating lunch with you guys or anything.'
Addison looked taken aback. 'You're really into this intern thing?'
'Well, I can't just hang around with Derek all the time.'
'That's all you did before! You had me and you had Derek and you just ignored everybody in college.'
'Well I guess I'm different now!' Meredith yelled. Before she stormed out of the stairwell Addison called after her – 'Don't yell at an attending Grey!' before departing the scene herself.
There were two amazing procedures going on that day. One was where Addison Montgomery was separating twins still in the womb and the other was Derek operating on Joe as he lay technically dead on the table. They were going to stop Joe's pulse and then slowly bring him back to life.
Many people had gathered to watch Derek but Meredith was unable to because she was with Addison. It annoyed her. When she had been in medical school and he was doing his residency and she had Michael and school was busy but there was more free time. She always had the chance to watch his surgeries, especially if he was scrubbing in on something interesting. Now he was doing a stand-still operation on a guy Meredith actually knew and she couldn't watch.
She met Derek outside the OR. There was nobody around and they had a moment to catch up and share a kiss. 'I fought with Addison,' she whispered. Saying it in a whisper made it seem less bad.
'You two fight all the time,' Derek said.
'Yeah about clothes and stupid things. This was…nastier.'
He was starting to reassure her, with his little words and coaxing tone when they heard footsteps. Instantly they sprang apart. Then she sighed.
It was just Christina, the intern who had been working with Joe, with a pile of paper work in her hands, and Izzie, who had a granola bar. Christina raised her eyebrows and kept walking but Izzie sent her a kind of death-glare.
'Looks like you've been arguing with everybody today,' Derek commented. 'What did you do to her?'
'It's not what I did. It's what I didn't do…Well it's what I didn't tell her that I didn't do.' She was rambling and not making sense and she knew it but he let her go on. 'But I'm angry at her too. She knows that she's been making jokes about my husband since we started being interns, not-funny jokes and she hasn't said anything or apologised or….ugh!' She had been in his arms but now he spun her around to look properly into her eyes.
'You told her?'
'No, Addison told her! Keep up Derek!' She wriggled free from his arms, reached up to peck him on the forehead and started walking.
