Ironing out Wrinkles

When Meredith left Derek and Mark at the OR board, the two men were silent for a few moment.

"Well, that could have gone better." Mark turned to Derek, whose stricken face told him that humor was not the appropriate response here. "Come on, Derek. It's Grey. She's crazy about you. You're just both plain crazy, and that complicates things."

"Mark, we're not. . .this is not a good time for us. And I'm not sure we're going to make it out. She keeps pulling away from me, and I need her to. . ." Derek paused, trying to put into words how much Meredith meant to him.

"You need her to need you."

And this time, when Mark looked at Derek, he saw anger instead of pain.

"She never lets me in, Mark. I want to be there for her. She lets her friends in, and I guess since you know so much about how she feels, she lets you in. But if it's me, she walks away. And I don't know how to deal with that."

"Derek, you're an asshole. She doesn't let anyone in. The only way someone gets in with her is by kicking and clawing their way in. I don't know much about those friends of hers, but I can guarantee that they stick by her, even when it hurts. And you don't."

"I don't?" Both of them were trying to keep their voices down, but the frustration and intensity in their voices was noticed by those walking up and down the stairs.

"You do what you've done all your life. You walk away."

Derek's eyes flared with anger. "I walk away?"

Mark felt trapped. But he'd started this, he needed to finish it, because Derek needed to hear the truth. And he was the only one who was close enough to tell it.

That's all you get, Meredith. Just moments with the people you love. Meredith couldn't recall having that conversation with Denny, yet his was the voice saying those words in her memory. Maybe when I tried to warn him off of Izzie? In any case, she knew she needed more of Derek than a moment, more than the misery they had been through between the time Addison showed up and the Prom, more than their current misery. Even their friendship had been so painfully not enough for her. I can't see it end again. We just need to figure out a way around this. Or through this. Whatever this is.

The stairwell door slammed on the floor above. She heard an angry voice—Callie's voice, rising in intensity and pain. She craned her neck around the banister to see who was on the receiving end. She identified Izzie's blonde hair just as Callie shrieked her insult. Meredith couldn't make out Izzie's response, but she could see Callie's coming a mile away. Crap. She started running up the stairs to separate the two, but Izzie left the stairwell.

Meredith stood, looking at Callie. The new Chief Resident wasn't a friend, not really, but she'd been one of Cristina's bridesmaids. Or tried to. Whatever. And Izzie. . .Izzie had been acting oddly recently, to say the least.

"What do you want?" Callie's tone was bitter, and she stared at Meredith with a challenge in her eye.

"Um, I was down on the surgery floor and I heard the yelling. Are you okay?"

"Sure, Grey, I'm fine. After all, I should have known with your group of interns that married men are fair game."

"Callie, I don't think that. . ."

"Save it, Grey. You knew about Izzie and George, didn't you?"

Meredith found herself at a loss for words again. Izzie? And George? That was. . .just wrong. Wasn't it? They were like. . .Greg and Marsha Brady. Or Joey and Rachel.

"Callie, I swear, I knew nothing about it." Meredith took another step closer to her. "I suspected, but. . .are you okay?"

Callie shook her head and sat down. "Oh, God, I slapped her. I just screwed the pooch on my career."

Meredith couldn't argue, not really. She had no idea what Richard would say when Izzie flounced into his office and told him what happened. She just shook her head and sat next to Callie.

"So what happens with you and George? Do you think you'll be able to make it through?"

Callie's laugh was an ugly bitter sound. "Seriously? He's screwing Izzie, and you think he's going to come back to me? She's a model. I'm curvy."

Meredith sat in silence as she thought about those words. "It's a girl thing, isn't it? I mean, we all hate Izzie for the Bethany Whisper thing. I hate Addison because she never has a bad hair day and her grubby clothes look like the best thing in my closet. You throw out the word curves like it's a bad thing, when most guys drool over your boobs and butt. So we all see each other as prettier than ourselves."

Callie blinked. "What are you talking about Grey?"

"Sorry." And Meredith was, she was really sorry. She'd forgotten that most people didn't deal like she and Cristina did. Most people actually liked sympathy and talking about feelings. "I just was, it seemed like you didn't think like, and it's not true, because you are." Crap, there's no way she could have followed that, was there?

"I am? Seriously?" Callie seemed genuinely surprised.

Maybe she did follow that.

"Seriously, yeah. Yeah, you are. Go ask Sloane, he'd give you an honest assessment."

"Sloane." And from Callie's lips, the word just oozed disdain. "Been there, done that."

"Oh yeah. I forgot." And then Meredith remembered. "Crap, Sloane. Crap crap crap. I'm supposed to be—and you! You're supposed to be working too!"

As they stood up, a question came to Meredith.

"When George comes back, should I tell him there's no room in the house? Because Alex lives there, and seriously, even if Derek is gone, there's only so many people that can live there at once."

Callie grinned, and then asked, "Do you think Derek is gone?"

Meredith shrugged, her back to Callie as she went downstairs. "Who the hell knows? Not me!"

Callie shook her head and left the stairwell to try to finish out the rest of her first day in a dream job.

After Meredith punched open the door from the stairwell , she barrelled onto the surgical floor still reeling from the added information about her roommate and former roommate. She was only a few feet away from the two men in front of the OR board before she realized their conversation had probably been as personal and angry as hers with Callie. And the subject was probably her, as they turned, focusing two intense gazes on her.

"Dr. Sloane," she said, as matter-of-factly as she could. "I'm going to be assigned to your service for two weeks. Would you care to brief me on your upcoming surgeries? That way I'll be in on the patient care from beginning to end." She flicked her eyes over at Derek, felt her lips move in an almost-smile, then quickly looked back to Mark. "Knowing what you expect from me would help our working relationship, don't you think?"

Mark sighed. "Grey, already I can tell. This is going to be a long two weeks. Give me a minute to wrap up here, and I'll meet you in my office."

Meredith nodded, and looked back to Derek. The residual anger from his conversation with Mark was draining from his eyes, and he smiled at her.

"Hey, Mark, let's finish this at Joe's after work." Derek's smile pushed the anger the rest of the way from his eyes, and Meredith was able to smile back at him before she left to make her way up to Mark's cubby of an office.

When George got back to the chief's office, Patricia waved him in with a smile on her face. But when he got inside the office, Richard Webber had no such smile.

"Have a seat, George."

George sat down in the same chair he'd occupied just over a year ago, when he had begged the chief to give him a shot to let him proved himself. Some proof. And there it was again, the mocking voice that he'd had to listen to when he didn't have a date for his high school prom, when he hadn't gotten into the undergrad school he wanted, when he. . .well, let's fast forward, when I didn't match and when I failed the intern exam.

George was growing pretty tired of hearing that voice.

But not tired enough to give up. If listening to that voice was part of the price of this meeting, fine.

"Sir?" The chief had been looking at him. Not staring in a disconcerting way, just looking at him, as if he were waiting for George to speak first.

"Yes, George?"

"Um. Well, I talked to Dr. Burson, and he helped me figure some things out. But as far as what my next professional step is, I don't even really know what my options are."

"George, a year ago, you sat in that chair and asked me to give you a chance. I did that. I need for you to tell me what you want next. What is it that you want?"

George nodded, understanding. His move. He took a deep breath, and then dove in.

"I want another chance. I want for you to tell me that there's a place in the current year of interns. I want to keep my focus this year. I could sit here and tell you all of the things that happened this year to distract me. I could talk to you about my roommates. About my father, about getting married, about the possibility of getting divorced. And it could be that. It could be any of those things, it could be all of them.

"But it's not really them. It's me. It's that after a year, after spending this year as an intern, I think that Dr. Collins may have been right. I may have been immature, I may have been distracted."

Richard's eyes were intent on the young man before him. He nodded, gesturing for George to continue.

"I think this year, I've changed. Of course I've changed, we've all changed. But I've had some really hard lessons come my way this year. And I wasn't paying attention, not at first. But this past week, and particularly last night, I figured it out.

"It's supposed to be hard. No one ever promised it would be easy, that it would be a walk in the park. Any of it—getting what you want, either in love or in a career. Not to mention having it all. It's hard. I wanted it to be easy. And it wasn't. Everything else has always seemed hard, in the details, but for the most part? Things were easy. And this year, they were so hard. But just because things are hard doesn't mean they are impossible. And it doesn't mean they aren't worth it."

I am making absolutely no sense. But for whatever reason, Chief Webber seems to understand. And so George kept talking, kept giving voice to the understanding that was just now floating his way.

"I'm not sure if saying this means I'm immature or what. But I want to repeat my intern year here at Seattle Grace. Not run away from any problems, but face them."

George waited now for the chief to say something. Anything. And, in a cruel moment of dejá vu, the chief pulled a single sheet of paper from a file on his desk.

"George. As you know, failing the intern exam is a critical matter. However, the consensus of your superiors in the surgical program is that you be given another opportunity to succeed if you so choose. I can't let you take the exam again, like I did Grey, because your scores have been turned in to the boards. But I can let you do your intern year again."

George nodded, but waited. Just because the chief could didn't mean he would.

"Based on these unsolicited recommendations that stress your personal growth in the last year, your maturity, your ability to think under pressure, your kindness to patients. . .I'd like to welcome you to your intern year at Seattle Grace Hospital. Well. You've heard my speech before. Go find Dr. Bailey before she decides to put you to work performing rectals. Let an intern with less experience do that. My gut tells me that you won't fail this year, and that you will be an outstanding doctor."

George blinked. He thought that of all the hard things, this would be the hardest. But all he had done was decide, had spoken from his heart, not letting his Georgieness get in the way. Suddenly he realized. . .I'm not Georgie any more.

It was true. Since his father's death, no one had called him Georgie.

He was George.

Callie's intention was to go straight to the chief. She didn't deal in secrets or hidden truths very well, never had. That's why she had called George on sleeping with Izzie, pretended to know as fact what her gut had been telling her had happened. And his reaction had confirmed it. Ass.

So now, she wanted to go to the chief, before he sent for her, tell him what and why and how sorry she was. Even tell Izzie she was sorry—which wouldn't be a complete lie, not really. She was sorry for the slap, because it was a stupid thing to do. It made her look and feel like she was about 12 years old, having a face slapping/hair pulling girl fight over a stupid gawky guy.

That was her intention. Straight to the chief.

But she got an ortho admit through the pit, one that Yang handled like a pro. She was actually starting to feel comfortable around those two, Grey and Yang. Some of it was making it through the fiasco that was yesterday, but she hadn't realized that if you could get past Meredith's whining (and she did have to admit to herself that was one hell of a big if) and past Cristina's single-minded Lady Macbeth of Medicine act (also pretty huge), the two of them could be fun. It was just Stevens and her poison that made her feel like she had food on her face or betweeen her teeth. She was planning for Yang to bring the guy into the OR and work on setting the bone. Callie needed to oversee the pre-op, then she had a couple of other things to do, which was typical seeing as how she was at work. So it was about an hour down the road before she got up there.

And came toe to toe with George.

"George. You're still here." If I can play this out by being Ice Woman, I might not feel like the butt of a joke. Her hand went up to touch her cheek, brushing off imagined breakfast crumbs.

"Yeah. And you'll see me around. Callie, I need to tell you. . ."

"George, save it. No need to transfer now."

And she neatly stepped around him and poked her head into the chief's office.

"Dr. Webber, do you have a second?"

"Dr. O'Malley, sit down. I just finished up with George. As you probably know, he's decided to repeat the year here."

Probably know. . .repeat. . .what?

"Repeat the year here?" And now Callie was trying to remember what she'd eaten for breakfast, because surely it wasn't her imagination that it was on her face.

"Well, he couldn't go to Mercy West as a surgical resident after failing the exam. But he's got so much potential, and the attendings expressed confidence in him. Sometimes it takes longer for the water to boil."

"Yes." Callie, you are an idiot. He's been trying to tell you all morning. "Dr. Webber, thanks. Um. Has Dr. Stevens been in to see you?"

Richards brows drew together as he saw the troubled face on his chief resident.

"She hasn't been in here today, no. Is there a problem?"

Callie shook her head. "No." And then she changed her mind. "Yes. But I don't know if it needs to be your problem. Let me try to handle it."

Richard's eyes narrowed as he nodded.

"Callie, I know that you are taking on a huge responsibility. And I know that other things haven't been going well, with George's test results, and whatever else is going on I don't know about. If you can't do this job, if you don't need the extra pressure right now, just let me know. I'lAl hold no grudges."

Callie stood up a little straighter. "No sir. No problems here, none. Nothing I can't handle."

She gave him a confident nod and said goodbye, then went to check on Yang. She needed to get into the OR and heal some bone. Or maybe smash it. Good thing Yang was in the driver's seat for this one.

A/N: George's scene with Webber will make more sense if you've read the most recent update to The Match. (That story is set before the intern year begins.)