Chapter 34 Back to Life

It had been almost three weeks since the wedding when Meredith stepped into the hospital as a 2nd year resident. A lot had happened since she had been to work the last time: a honeymoon with her best friends, lots of reconciliation sex with her husband, Burke had left Seattle after handing in his resignation, George had transferred to Mercy West in order to save his marriage, Callie and he had moved out of the house, the Chief had announced to step down in order to save his marriage and there was going to be a new group of interns. When she entered the hospital she could sense that people were looking at her. The news of the break up had traveled around the hospital quickly. Most people thought he had cheated on her so most of the nurses looked at her with pity, but not as much pity as they expressed towards Cristina.

Meredith and Cristina decided to hide out in the deserted hallway to sort out all necessary paper work before contacting their interns. "I'm going to assign numbers. There's not too much point in learning their names. Most of them will be gone by the end of the year anyway and what's the point of wasting my genius o them" Cristina told Meredith as she looked over the list of interns that had been assigned to her.
"Cristina, they might be idiots, but you still have to teach them." Meredith told her friend as they sat on a bench in the resident locker room. "And Lexie is one of your interns."
"Alexandra Grey, yeah, that makes sense." Cristina said "Want me to assign her to Sloan? Cappuccino duty?"
"Whatever you do, keep her away from Sloan. Even though he's dating Montgomery now, he's still a pig" Meredith laughed "You are alright, are you?" Cristina still seemed fragile even though she tried to make people believe she was tough and didn't care about what had happened, Meredith knew that the worst was yet to come. Burke had asked Derek to break the news to Cristina and Derek still had to tell her. Burke wouldn't return to Seattle Grace.
"Don't worry about me, I'm fine." Cristina insisted as she got up "We better go and make sure our interns don't kill anyone."

Meredith wanted to be confident, but being a boss of someone was something she had never experienced. She felt a little insecure about how to handle them. Bailey's introduction last year had impressed her and she wanted to be respected, so she decided to take a similar approach. "I have five rules. Memorize them. Rule number one, don't bother sucking up, I already hate you. That's not gonna change." Meredith told them as they ran towards her once they saw her. She hoped that her interns would respect her, after all Alex had called her a nurse on her first day. She gave them a blank stare and nobody dared to speak up.
They were supposed to give their interns a tour through the entire hospital so she decided to start at the patient rooms and the nurse's station as her interns would spend a considerable amount of time doing scut work and charts around here. As they reached the nurse's station she introduced them to rule number two. "Trauma protocols, phone lists, pagers. The nurses will page you. You answer every page at a run...a run. That's rule number two." Meredith started and the interns followed her immediately. The interns looked terrified and most of them probably didn't have a clue where they were after Meredith went to the CT and MRI rooms with them. "Your first shift starts now and lasts 36 hours. You're grunts, nobodies, the bottom of the surgical food chain. You run labs, you write orders, you work every second night until you drop, and you don't complain."

Rule number three was trickier. Her interns would soon find out about her supposedly failed marriage and Cristina's wedding, or they already knew about all of it. "On call rooms. Sleep when you can, where you can. You know, but not with anybody. Not attendings...especially not attendings. Sleeping with attendings...not a good idea. Where was I?" Meredith wondered.
"Um, rule number three. If I'm sleeping, do not wake me unless a patient's actually dying." Cristina came approached her group. "The dying patient better not be dead when I get there, because not only will you have killed someone, you will have woken me for no good reason. Are we clear?"
All interns looked around and saw Lexie's hand raised up "That was four rules. You said five." This had been the moment Bailey's pager had went off last year, Meredith and Cristina weren't so lucky. "Rule number five...when I move, you move." Cristina said staring at her pager. As it didn't go off they just stood there as she started to walk away "Go!" she ordered her interns.

Alex, Izzie, Cristina and Meredith met in the deserted hallway for lunch and all sat down on a gurney. "I hate them" Cristina mumbled while eating crisps.
"You don't hate them. You hate everything. And they most likely hate you too" Meredith told Cristina.
"That was hideous. I feel like a fraud." Izzie agreed.
"I rocked it." Alex said confidently "I think I'm the new nazi."
"You're not the new nazi." Cristina challenged him. Neither of them felt increasingly confident about their approach to handle the interns.
"How was your vacation, Alex?" Izzie asked Alex "Cause mine was... I didn't do much. I hung out alone...for 17 days. Which is the last time that I saw you, the day of Cristina's wedding, which was...well...then Mer and Cristina went on Cristina's honeymoon without me and when I came back from Tacoma I was alone at the house because Meredith was MIA."
"Girl-on-girl honeymoon." Alex said in a dirty voice.
"Oh, why is everyone so tingly and hurt? I mean, I'm the one who was left at the altar. I'm fine, by the way. I honeymooned in Hawaii and I snorkeled." Cristina told the group. Meredith had seen her once since the return from Hawaii and she was still unsure about the way she would react after finding out that Burke had left the city.
"I can't believe George is gone!" Izzie said in a sad tone. Even after the cheating episode they had been good friends and she missed George.
"He's at Mercy West, he isn't dead." Meredith tried to cheer her up.
While they were discussing what they were going to do after the lunch breaks all their interns entered the hallway. Meredith knew that they probably all came because she had told Lexie to come to their hide out during lunch break to talk, but the others didn't know about that. "Uh, hey, you want to know...hey, um, this is for residents only. No interns." Cristina told them and tried to order them around.
Meredith nodded and made a hand gesture to suggest them to leave and Izzie and Alex joined in shouting "Yeah, get outta here." And "Babies."
Lexie swallowed and told Meredith "I guess I should be going, too."
"No, Lexie. we didn't mean you." Meredith tried to calm her down.
"No, I'm an intern too." Lexie spat out and turned around.
Meredith looked up and said "Crap. I promised Susan I would look after her." She hated the way their relationship had started off because now it looked like Meredith had tried to set Lexie up in a way the popular kids did in high school.
"Mm-hmm. Have you seen Burke?" Cristina wondered.
Meredith was uncomfortable. She knew that Burke had left and she knew that Derek meant to tell her today. "Have you seen Derek?" Meredith asked pretending to haven't seen him since the wedding.
"No, why would I want to see your husband? Talk to someone who didn't leave his fiancée on her wedding day but waited until a while after the wedding to cheat?" Cristina said bitterly.
"Wait, you haven't seen either of them since the wedding?" Izzie wondered.
Cristina shook her head and said "Nope."
Izzie was surprised because she knew Meredith was way too happy and emotionally stable for that to be true "And you're all fine?"
"Yep. She's all fine" Meredith mumbled and rolled her eyes.
"Wow...You're either incredibly healthy or completely messed up." Izzie concluded.

Meredith hurried to the neurosurgical wing after Derek had paged her. "I have a patient for you. Prep him for surgery" he asked her. She knew he had paged her to be able to see her and she knew all nurses were watching them from afar.
"I'm pretty sure I just made my sister hate me" Meredith told Derek in a matter of fact tone. She kept her distance to make sure that nobody would find out before Cristina did. She wasn't wearing her wedding ring so as long as she didn't start to make out with Derek somewhere in the hospital she was going to be safe.
"You said you didn't like her anyway. So why do you care?" Derek eyed her.
"Susan asked me to look after her and I tried. I really wanted to talk to her, but then the interns showed up at our hideout and we told them to piss off because we needed a minute to ourselves and she disappeared too because she's an intern." Meredith started to ramble.
"Dr. Grey, relax" Derek told her putting his two out stretched arms on her shoulders in an attempt to calm her down.
"No Dr. Shepherd, Susan asked me to do this, I really have to do this for her" Meredith told him and turned around quickly.
"Dr. Grey, it's only her first day. I'm sure you get to talk to her later." Derek let go off her and sat down at the nurse's station.
Meredith followed him after preparing the patient. She leaned over the table. "Have you talked to Cristina yet?"
"No" he said and got up.
"Are you going to?" Meredith asked him. She needed to know because she thought Cristina deserved to find out from him instead of being told by a nurse. But the minute he wanted to say something, Meredith's pager went off and she raced to the ER, which was at the other side of the hospital.