"WhydoyouthinkJacksondoesn'twantmetomeethismom?" Stephanie asks abruptly as she runs into the elevator just before it closes, it comes out super-fast and doesn't sound like a coherent sentence, but Jo thinks she gets the drift of it. Because there has been only one thing, and one thing only, that Stephanie has been talking about lately – and that is Jackson.

"Huh?" She still asks, because whilst she knows it has something to do with Jackson, she wasn't sure what it had to do with him. And she's not really focused, or well she this focused, just not on Stephanie and her current relationship problems.

Which she figures sounds harsh, but they were in the middle of their shift and Jo was working with Grey who had her running around the entire hospital questioning nurses regarding a patient's heparin dosage.

Sure, if Stephanie had brought this up whilst they were in the locker room or on a slow day then she would be all ears but Stephanie was never around when they were in the locker room or during a slow day – she was with Jackson.

Stephanie took a deep breath, composing herself, "why do you think Jackson doesn't want me to meet his mom?" She asks again, clearly. "We were just talking … we were talking and walking, and he told me to run in the other direction when he saw her approaching us." She shakes her head; a slight red embarrassed tinge appears on her cheeks. "He told me to run so she wouldn't see me." She adds, defeated.

Jo's eyebrows raise, her focus on the patient breaking, and she squeals excitedly. "Catherine Avery is at the hospital right now!?" She smiles and turns to look at Stephanie who stands beside her in the elevator, at the sight of the scowl on her friends face Jo's smile quickly fades. "Well, you know, she's got a reputation for being relentless … maybe he was doing you a favour?"

"No," she quickly disagrees, "it's more than that, it's so much more than that."

"Your over-reacting." Jo scoffs, "just ask him."

Stephanie throws her hands in the air, letting out a huge huff of air – once again, defeated. "I would if I could get him away from his mom," Jo sniggers slightly but she tries to hide it, it was hard to be compassionate for Stephanie when she was jealous of how much time Jackson was spending with his own mother. "What was it like when you met Stadler's parents?"

"What?" The question shocks Jo, it wasn't one she was expecting. She and Stephanie didn't speak all that much about her marriage – sure, there were times it inevitably came up but most of the time they spoke about work or themselves and they laughed and they joked but they didn't get all that personal with relationships. Well, they didn't speak all that much about relationships until Stephanie found herself in one.

If she was being honest, she never dreaded meeting Paul's parents. It was only a few months after they first started dating when they were introduced and Paul was the picture perfect boyfriend back then; he treated her well and spoke of her kindly, he gifted hr surprise gifts randomly and he always arrived early to pick her up from her college dorm when they had a date.

So, there was no reason to be worried because she's sure that such a wonderful man was raised by exceptional parents. And she hadn't been entirely wrong – they were nice, if not a little judgemental but a lot of older people tended to have strong views that they felt needed to be spoken. She isn't really sure what went wrong with Paul a long the lines, she knows he wasn't raised to be the way he was … she knows that.

"You know," Stephanie murmurs, "was it scary … do they like you?"

"They did." Jo confirms before pausing for a moment, "… I think they did." She's not one hundred percent sure, if she doesn't count the snide comments thrown around regarding her upbringing then they were mostly exceedingly kind to her. Well, to her face – she'd heard Paul and his mom on the phone was discussing her and it didn't sound like all good things.

She didn't overthink it, though. If she cared what middle aged women thought of her then she wouldn't have had time to finish top of her class in both high school and college and she wouldn't have had time to work two jobs during med school.

"Did?" Stephanie asks, concerned.

"Oh," Jo giggles a little, it's not the best moment but she gets a little nervous talking anything Paul and considering the life she lived talking about the dead didn't really faze her; she'd been through worse. "His father passed about a year and a half after we first started dating and his mom a few months before we moved here from Boston." Stephanie places a comforting hand on Jo's shoulder and offers her a small smile, "it was hard on Paul, but you know … old age." Jo laughs a little once again and Stephanie frowns.

She's about to speak again, try and make the conversation a little less awkward, but then the elevator doors open, and Jo remembers the reason why she got in there in the first place. She rushes out but not before shouting to Stephanie, "just ask him! I'm sure everything is fine!"

Jo isn't looking where she's going; she has a one-track mind that is focused on getting to the nurse's station and sorting out the mess that has been caused for her and Grey's patient downstairs.

So, she's not paying attention when she glides into a hard and slightly muscular arm. Not until said arm reaches out to catch her own as she tries to pass them. It's not a tight grip, the fingers dance a long her skin and fall as she get's further away until they are clutching softly at her small hand in an attempt to get her to stop.

"Slow down." Alex's deep yet, surprisingly, pleasant tells her. It grabs her attention, and she turns on her heel, eyes locking with the hand that is now entwined with hers. "Where you headed so fast?" He doesn't drop her hand at first but she's stumbling over her words and her eyes are flickering between their hands and his face and he must have sensed her awkwardness because all of a sudden, he does.

She can think a little straighter without the contact, although she's be lying if she said she didn't miss it. It was strange but it oddly hadn't felt strange; it felt normal but she needed to shake those thoughts out of her head … she didn't have time to stand and think about how she liked the feeling of her hand in Alex's.

"Nurses station." She tells him, stuffing her hands into her lab coat. He raises his eyebrows, and she huffs, "have you seen nurse Frankie?"

He shakes his head to answer his question. "Careful," he mumbles as his eyes scan hers, "your kind of clumsy and if you don't slow down then terminal illness isn't going to be the only thing patients have to worry about." It's a little dark but he smirks and actually laughs slightly when she frowns; her mouth opening to protest but instead she ends up smiling and shaking her head herself.

"Grey has me running around after nurses," she begins but suddenly stops herself; she didn't want to sound like she was complaining. He seemed more relaxed then usual, she thinks. "Are you going home?" She asks, assuming his relaxed demeanour meant he was done for the day and had no patients to worry about.

"I wish," he mutters, "Grey is having this thing with all the attendings at her place but she's working late and she's managed to rope me into helping Shepherd set the place up."

This makes her smile, "do you always rush to do Meredith Grey's dirty work?"

"I'm not rushing."

"Could have fooled me."

"Now she owes me a favour." He emphasizes the 'me' with a poke to his own chest, but this only makes her giggle harder. She was only teasing but she thought it was sweet of him, despite his reputation he managed to constantly surprise her with his thoughtfulness for the ones he cared about. Even if he did disguise it with pretending it was for his own personal gain.

"Sure thing," she sways to hit her shoulder against his. He huffs and rolls his eyes. "I best get going," she lifts her hand from her coat and points her thumb in the direction she was headed, "it's a matter of life and death here." Jo shrugs dramatically causing Alex to smirk, watching her as she turns on her feet and walks away from him.

Again.

Jo finds Nurse Frankie in a patients room minutes later, she waits outside until Frankie exits and it's not long before she's bombarding the confused nurse with question after question after question so they can confirm what they need to know. She runs back to Grey as soon as she hears the information, ignoring Alex's advice to slow down, to give her the good news.

Working with Grey wasn't easy, that was something they realised during their intern orientation, which said a lot. She was snappy and she was impatient, and Jo thought she was a little mean – but, on the flipside she was good, like really good. Which is why she both loved and hated being on the older woman's service.

Today, though … today was different. A heavily pregnant Grey was not the same as normal non-pregnant Grey. Because normal non-pregnant Grey would not have thanked her for running around the hospital – she would have scolded her for taking so long. And normal Grey would not have asked her to scrub in on her next surgery – she would have asked her to check on her post-ops and then she would have also added a comment about how slow she was.

And normal Grey most definitely would NOT be engaging in small talk with her whilst they were in the OR and there was an unconscious patient lying in between them. Nope, this was not how she expected her day to go … was she dreaming?

"Will I be seeing you tonight, Wilson?" Meredith asks out of the blue, her hands steadily working on the patient, but her eyes flick up to the woman across from her for just a millisecond who looks rather confused.

"Erm," Jo begins, unsure of what she was talking about. "I'm – I – do you … do you want to see me?" She stumbles over her words; and now she's made it weird. Did this mean that Grey wanted her to stay past her shift to monitor her patients because she's sure Alex told her earlier that Grey was having people over to her place. Or it could be … nope, she did not have any other suggestions.

Jo looks up as Meredith sniggers a little, "it wouldn't make or break my evening, Wilson."

"Ohhh," Jo trails; still confused. "OK."

"Did your husband not tell you?"

"I'm going to go with no," she answers. She's trying her hardest to focus on what her hands are doing and following Meredith's lead but now she was thinking about what Paul was supposed to tell her. "I'm sorry, Doctor Grey. I have no idea what you're talking about."

She holds her hand out towards the nurse beside her, "scalpel." The medical tool is placed in her hand instantly. "Doctor Shepherds and my party," she states matter of fact, like it was completely obvious. "Well it's not a party, just a small celebration with the attendings and fellows now that half of us own the hospital."

"I'm not an attending or a fellow."

"I know that, Wilson." Grey's good mood was quickly dwindling, she had thought Wilson was smart – smart for an intern, at least. And Alex vouched for her; he said she was quick on her feet and she was witty, and she was able to think rationally and carefully in tough situations. But she didn't see it.

If you asked her, she'd say Alex had a little thing for the married intern. She's never heard him speak so highly of someone, especially an intern. "But" she moves her hands around carefully, ready to start closing up, "your husband is. And we're doing a plus one thing, it was no-light-blue-scrubs-allowed but Bailey wanted Warren to come and my husband asked Ross." Her voice is full of a little disdain when she speaks of Jo's fellow intern, "so you can come too."

She accepts but she's relieved to know that there is no way that Paul would want to go; he's moan about Shepherd's arrogance and he'd complain about how young Avery was and he'd bitch about the way Jo spoke with one of his co-workers. Parties weren't his cup of tea unless they were parties where he was the centre of attention, it would be a battle of the egos if he were to attend this gathering at Doctor Grey's.

Not to mention, Jo didn't really fancy the idea of being in her boss's house surrounded by her other bosses and also Paul. There would be questions which means there would be lies and there would be excuses and if she were to say anything that Paul didn't like the sound of then she knows that is something she'd be paying for once they got home.

Shane and Stephanie are discussing the party when she joins them in the locker room. Jackson had asked Stephanie to join him and ever since Stephanie seems to have forgotten all about the problem with his mother – which she was glad about, Stephanie wasn't a worrier so seeing her beat herself up over Jackson seemed out of character.

They were both extremely excited. Shane tripped on Heather's foot as he ran from his locker and towards the showers whilst Stephanie accidentally hit her head against the locker as she clumsily got changed out of her scrubs. And whilst those two were excited, Leah and Heather were sulking.

Jo snickers when Leah mocks Stephanie and Shane, imitating the way they gushed over their bosses. Leah wasn't her favourite, but she won't deny that she had her moments where she was genuinely funny – it was usually when she was making fun of one of them. Heather grunts and mumbles curse words under her breath as she packs up her things and stomps out of the room without so much as a goodbye.

Jo listens as Stephanie raves about how exciting this was, how they'd be able to chat with the attendings in a relaxed environment and how they'd be able to chat about innovative procedures and surgeries. She could barely keep up with the excited curly-haired woman who was bouncing on her feet.

Jo grinned; it was nice seeing Stephanie so happy.

"What about you, Jo?" Leah speaks up, taking a break from muttering annoyances under her breath. Jo snaps her head in Leah's direction, furrowing her eyebrows in question. She see's this and elaborates with a laugh, "why don't you have a boner over this party?"

She shrugs, moving to grab her bag from her locker and flop down on the bench. "I don't think we'll go." She fishes her mobile phone from her bag and holds the power button to turn the thing back on. She usually kept the thing in her coat pocket but Heather was having a slow day on Yang's service and when Heather had a slow service she bombarded the group chat with constant meaningless messages and Jo got annoyed quick with the incessant buzzing.

Stephanie stills what she's doing, stares down at Jo and places a hand on top of Jo's head; yanking it back so the small brunette is forced to look up at her. "What do you mean you are not going?" Jo's eyes meet Stephanie's, hers were wild and her mouth was gaped open in shock.

Jo ignores the sound of Leah scoffing that comes from behind Stephanie. "It's not – I mean … it's just – parties aren't Paul's thing." She stumbles, Stephanie's hand is still pressed against the top of her head and she thinks she hears Shane mumble something along the lines of, 'it still sounds so weird when you call him Paul instead of Doctor Stadler'. She ignores it.

"Oh! Hell no." Stephanie practically shouts, finally moving her hand and sitting down opposite Jo. "You have to go; this is a great opportunity for you!" She seems pretty enthusiastic about the subject, and Jo appreciates that. She and Stephanie had a good friendly competition going on and she knows Stephanie liked having her to compete with. Jo did too. "Tell your husband that he does not have a choice, this is your career."

Jo almost laughs out loud. She wants to, but she knows no one will understand why that statement was just so funny to her. She couldn't even begin to imagine what would go down if she tried to tell Paul that he had no choice about attending this party – it would probably start with him spitting in or maybe slapping her face. Something along those lines, for sure.

Instead she smiles and sits up a little straighter, "I'll ask him." Jo tells Stephanie who frowns with confusion and Jo knows what she's thinking – why do you need to check with your husband? "I mean, I'm only invited because of him so …" Jo adds for good measure. Her friend seems to understand because she nods and turns back towards her locker.

Happy to move on from that conversation, Jo turns her attention back to her phone which begins to light up with notifications. Mostly from Heather, that was expected. But there's one that catches her by surprise.

Paul x

iMessage

Today 17:23

Why aren't you answering? Don't be late. Shepherd is having a party.

She silently groans, "I'll be there."

Stephanie squeals, "Yes!" She jumps over and worms her arms around Jo's shoulders and squeezes her in a tight embrace, it takes Jo by surprise, but she giggles and reaches an arm up to squeeze one of Stephanie's arm. Stephanie wasn't usually all touchy/feely, but she guesses it's the excitement.

Jo's not sure how she feels about spending the night with Paul and Alex and Grey and Yang and everyone else. She just hopes no one does anything to put her husband in a bad mood – including herself.