Chapter Three

"I'm going to say again that I really don't think this is a good idea." Derek sighed as they walked into work the next morning.

Meredith rolled her eyes at him. "You might've mentioned it about a thousand times." She jabbed the elevator button quickly, hoping to get upstairs and into her scrubs before he could change his mind and take her home again.

"I'm just saying, you won't be able to do any surgery with your hand anyway. Why not just take the day off and get some rest?"

"Because I don't want to sit at home and rest. There's plenty of things I can be doing here that don't involve doing surgery." She countered, breathing a sigh of relief as the elevator doors opened and she stepped inside.

Derek was quiet for a moment, watching her press the button to close the doors. She did at least seem a bit more like herself this morning. He'd been watching her closely, waiting for her to drop something, or lose her balance- he wasn't really sure what he was waiting for if he was honest, something out of the ordinary. But so far nothing. Maybe he'd panicked too soon yesterday, but he still couldn't quite shake off the feeling that something was wrong.

"You know, he thinks you can't do it. That's why he's trying to get you to go home." Ellis commented.

Meredith didn't dare turn around to look at her mother, knowing Derek would spot something was up. He'd been watching her like a hawk all morning. So instead she stared straight ahead for what felt like the longest elevator ride of her life, studiously ignoring Ellis Grey, because after all the woman wasn't really there anyway.

"Meredith." Derek grabbed her as the elevator doors opened and she went to walk off. "Just promise me you'll take it easy?" He pleaded.

"I will." She kissed him softly. "Now go, you have surgeries waiting."

He lingered there for just a second, watching her walk off in the direction of the residents' lounge.

"Hey Meredith, what happened to your hand?" Christina asked the second Meredith walked through the door and headed for her cubby.

"Cooking accident." Meredith shrugged.

Christina snorted with laughter. "Meredith Grey doesn't cook."

"And this is why." Meredith laughed, pointing at her hand. This felt good, normal even. The feeling of dread that had been hanging over her all night while she laid in bed pretending to be asleep so Derek would stop asking questions was finally starting to dissipate.

"More surgeries for the rest of us then." Christina laughed. "Maybe I can get in on something cool with McDreamy while you're out of action."

"Thanks for your concern." Meredith laughed, quickly changing into her scrubs and following the others out of the door to start rounds.

"Doctor Grey." She was stopped in her tracks by the sound of Bailey's voice behind her.

Christina hesitated, unsure of whether to wait for her. "It's okay, I'll catch you up." Meredith nodded, and Christina disappeared off down the hallway.

"Why is there a chart in my ER with your name on it?" Bailey questioned, looking at Meredith's bandaged hand.

"Cooking accident, nothing major." Meredith shrugged. "It'll be fine."

"Well, you're not going near an OR until that's healed," Bailey said sternly. "And don't even try and argue with me on that."

"I know." Meredith sighed.

"I will be checking with Dr Sloan that he's happy with how it has healed before you set foot back in an OR." Bailey reiterated. "And since you're going to have some free time on your hands for a while, you can do some teaching with the interns."

Meredith couldn't suppress the groan that left her lips. She didn't have the patience required for teaching the interns. "But Izzy loves the interns." She protested.

"Stevens gets extra surgeries to cover for you and your hand. So you get to cover the teaching. Those are the rules, Grey."

Meredith muttered under her breath.

"Now you'd better get a move on, Sloan requested you for the day," Bailey told her. "Go!" She ordered when Meredith still didn't move.

Of course, she was with Mark Sloan today, why was she even surprised. Derek would have put him up to it, getting his friend to keep an eye on her because she'd all but threatened to kill Derek if he kept her on his service. She hadn't quite thought through the fact that he'd got plenty of other people who could keep an eye on her for him.

"Plastic surgery," Ellis said in a horrified voice, shuddering. "What a complete and utter waste of time and talent."

"Shut up," Meredith muttered, walking towards the nurses' station where she could see Mark waiting for her. She forced a smile on her face as she approached him. "Good morning, Dr Sloan."

"Grey." He grinned back at her. "It's good to see you. Excited to spend the day on Plastics?"

"Ecstatic." She answered dryly.

"Okay, task number one… we're going to redress that hand of yours and then we have rounds." He pointed to a treatment room. "In, now."

"My hand is fine." She held it to her chest as if to protect it from him.

"I'll be the judge of that when I look at it, right now, in there." He gave her a nudge towards the room. "Don't argue with me Grey, you won't win."

He was right, she was never going to win. She'd learned a while back that Mark Sloan nearly always got what he wanted. Including her little sister, much to Derek's horror. "You literally looked at it like twelve hours ago Mark, what's the problem."

"Well if you're going to insist on coming to work instead of staying at home and resting then we're going to have to make sure this stays clean and doesn't get infected… so you and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other, Grey."

"Yay, I can't wait." Meredith sighed, sitting down on the bed and holding out her hand to him. She winced out loud as he undid the bandage and started cleaning it.

"You know, this is quite impressive." He commented. "You must've held it on there for quite a while."

"I didn't feel it." She admitted. "I thought I put my hand on the counter."

"Derek thought maybe you'd been drinking… or taken something else," Mark said carefully, still looking down at her hand.

"No, this was all me." She sighed.

"And how long have your hands been going numb for?" He asked.

"I- What?" She stuttered. "How did you know about that?"

"Because I'm touching them now and you can't feel it, can you?" He asked.

She looked down at her hand where Mark was pinching the skin on her finger between a pair of forceps. "No." She admitted.

"How long has it been like that?" He asked calmly.

"I don't know." She admitted. "I um… I hadn't really noticed it until yesterday."

"Does Derek know?" Mark asked although he suspected he already knew the answer.

Meredith shook her head. "Please don't tell him."

Mark sighed. "He can help you, you just need to talk to him."

Meredith shook her head frantically as Mark started to reapply a clean bandage to her hand. "Please, you can't tell him."

Mark was quiet for a moment, focusing on what he was doing. "If I promise to keep my mouth shut for now, will you at least let me run some labs? I'm worried about you and Lexie would never forgive me if I let something happen to you."

Meredith considered what he was saying for a second. The logical part of her brain knew running labs and getting answers was a sensible plan, but she wasn't sure if she actually wanted to know the answers. "Okay." She nodded. "But you can't tell anyone, okay? Not even Lexie."

He nodded in agreement. "My lips are sealed, but you're not to go near a patient until we've got to the bottom of this- deal?"

"Deal." She nodded

"Now is there anything else you want to tell me about while I'm keeping secrets, other than the numbness?" He asked.

She looked at him for a moment, then over his left shoulder to where the ever-present Ellis Grey was standing, watching, then back to Mark again. "No," she said slowly, "that's all."

"Now roll up your sleeve then." He ordered.


It was lunchtime before she saw Derek again. Mark had buried her under a pile of scut that really he could've found an intern to do, but she knew it was his way of making sure she didn't have to go near any patients. Weirdly, she was actually thankful to him for taking the situation out of her control. She should probably be thankful to him for making her look for some answers too, but she was too busy feeling sick to her stomach waiting for the blood results to come back.

"You know, maybe he would've been better for you than Derek." Ellis mused. "I mean it's a shame he's decided to waste all that skill and talent on boob jobs and liposuction but still…"

Meredith stared at her lunch, willing herself to eat it. Somehow the addition of a running commentary from Ellis made the food a lot less appealing.

"Hey." Derek greeted her, sitting down opposite her with his own tray of food. "How's your day been?"

"Mark has buried me in scut if that's what you're asking. I'm sure you had something to do with it."

"He's worried about you too." Derek shrugged. "Can't say I took a lot of persuading to go along with it though."

Meredith sighed, changing the subject. They did both have a point and she wasn't about to get into an argument with him in the middle of the cafeteria either. "How's your day been?"

"Clipped an aneurism this morning and resected a pretty cool tumour with Yang." He smiled. "You'll be back in the OR before you know it."

"Yeah." She smiled weakly. "Maybe."

They sat and ate in silence for a while before her pager went off and interrupted them. Her stomach dropped as she realised whose results it was that Mark was paging her with. "I um… I have to go." She said quickly, kissing his head and running off before he had a chance to say anything.

"Don't look so worried, Grey." Mark smiled as she reached the nurses' station. "Nothing to worry about."

She snatched the envelope from his hands and tore it open. The relief was immense as she read it. "Anaemic? That's it?"

"That's it." He nodded, giving her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. "Now, you get to come with me to tell my favourite patient that not only is she not going home today, but she also has cancer."

"Wait, what?" She looked at him blankly.

He handed her the other set of labs he'd been holding. "I only ran the blood to see if she was ready to go home. It's really sad actually, she's got two young kids at home."

"This is awful." Meredith sighed, looking at the results.

Mark nodded. "I've already spoken to Oncology. They'll be down as soon as we've spoken to her. Now we just have to go and ruin her life." He sighed.