Chapter Four
"Hey!" Derek smiled, sliding into line beside Meredith at the coffee cart. "You okay?" He felt like he'd barely seen her the last week or so, she wasn't operating because of her hand still and his schedule had been jam-packed. He'd been coming home so late she was often asleep by the time he got home and she was gone again when he woke in the mornings. With all the teaching she was doing with the interns she was a hard woman to track down at all.
"Hey." She kissed him on the cheek. "I missed you last night."
He stifled a yawn. "Yeah, it's been a busy week. You seem happier though?"
"It's a weight off my mind, I'm glad Mark was there to help." She smiled.
Derek nodded. "His heart is in the right place really, I know I complain about him a lot but he does mean well."
She opened her mouth to say something to him but got distracted by her coffee being handed to her.
"Derek…" She said slowly, as they walked away from the coffee cart. "I…"
"What?" He looked at her, concerned. "Is everything okay?"
"I um…" She took a deep breath. "You know when you asked me if everything was okay the other day? In the on-call room?" This probably wasn't the best place to tell him this but she needed to get it off her chest and given that she didn't seem to be able to see him outside of the hospital, this was going to have to do.
"Yeah?" Derek frowned.
"I've um… I've been seeing Ellis." She mumbled under her breath. "There's… I don't know there's anything about this place. It's like she's right there with me. I know it sounds stupid and I'm not insane I promise."
Derek smiled reassuringly. "Well, this place holds a lot of memories of your mother for you." He said, wondering why she was choosing this moment in time to tell him this. It had been two weeks since the incident where she'd run out of the OR and things finally seemed to be getting back to normal.
"I know, but I mean I'm seeing her, Derek. Like she's here." She struggled to find the words to explain it to him in a way that he would understand what she was trying to say.
He looked at her blankly for a minute, and then his pager went off. "I uh... I'm so sorry Meredith, I have to take this." He sighed.
She nodded. "It's okay, go."
"We can talk about this later." He called back over his shoulder, already jogging up the corridor.
"Yeah." She muttered, watching him disappear around the corner.
"You're really going to tell him about this?" Ellis chimed in as she turned away from the coffee cart to head back upstairs. "He's going to think you're crazy."
"I think I'm crazy." She muttered, trying harder to ignore her mother.
"You freaking out about missing out on surgery yet?" Christina asked, falling into step beside her as she reached the surgical floor.
"It's been a long couple of weeks." Meredith sighed. "Mark still won't let me into the OR."
"I mean more surgeries for the rest of us." Christina joked.
"Thanks." Meredith rolled her eyes at her. "Anyway, tell me about surgery. I've forgotten what it feels like." She sighed dramatically.
"Oh, I wonder what's going on over there." Christina pointed to a crowd by the nurse's station. "I love drama."
Meredith started to pay more attention once she heard Dr Sloan being mention repeatedly. "That's my patient." She sighed, realising why she knew the voice. She tossed her coffee into the trash. "Wish me luck."
She'd barely made it across to the nurse's station when the angry patient spotted her. "You!" The woman shrieked, stabbing her finger angrily in Meredith's direction. "You ruined my life. You told me I was going to die and you didn't even stop to get your facts straight first!"
"Mrs…." Meredith hesitated. Why could she not remember the woman's name? This wasn't going to help the situation.
"Burgess!" The woman shook her head angrily. "First you do this and now you can't even remember my name? Wow, doesn't that say a lot about how much you care for your patients?"
"Why don't we go in here and talk?" Meredith suggested, pointing towards the empty conference room. She was aware that they were attracting quite a large crowd with all the shouting. "Thank you." She sighed when the patient headed for the door.
"I was going to wait to see Dr Sloan but I've been here for hours and he can't even be bothered to show his face it seems, so you'll do." The woman shouted angrily.
"He's probably in surgery. I can go and find out how long he's going to be if you'd like?" Meredith offered.
"No, you're going to listen to what I have to say." Mrs Burgess pointed at her angrily. "You two came into my room and told me I'd got cancer and I was probably going to die… and you know what, I've spent the last couple of weeks convinced this is it. That I wasn't going to get to see my children have another birthday. I've spent weeks being prodded and poked every which way in hospitals and do you know what they've come back with… the absolute worst thing they can find wrong with me? I'm a little bit anaemic! I mean you told me I was dying. How on earth do you make that kind of mistake? Did no one even think to check that you had the right patient's results before you came in and told me I was dying?"
"Mrs Burgess… I am so, so sorry." Meredith choked out. How on earth did something like that even happen? The patient was right, it was terrible.
"I don't want to hear your empty apologies. I get to go home to my kids, knowing that I'm going to be there for all of those birthdays and Christmases I thought I was going to miss out on. And meanwhile, some poor person is walking out there that you told they were completely fine, that they just needed to take some iron tablets and they'd be right as rain… that person has no idea that they're on borrowed time, and I think you should be more worried about that than trying to cover your ass with me… I trust you'll tell Dr Sloan to call me?"
"I uh… Yeah." Meredith answered weakly. "I will."
Mrs Burgess stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her so hard the room seemed to vibrate. Meredith slumped down in one of the chairs, resting her head in her hands for a moment as the room seemed to spin.
"Meredith? What was that all about?" Christina asked, rushing in. "Come on, fill me in. I've only got ten minutes before my next surgery."
"I uh… She…" Meredith stuttered.
"Come on, I'm on the clock." Christina prompted.
"She was misdiagnosed. One of Sloan's patients." Meredith choked out. "I uh... I should go find him."
"Oh… McSteamy fucked up." Christina laughed. "He's gonna love that, good luck!"
"Yeah, thanks," Meredith muttered, bolting for the door.
Meredith made a beeline for an empty storage closet rather than going to find Mark. She needed a minute to digest the information. If two sets of labs had been swapped that day by accident… that meant that the results they'd incorrectly given to Mrs Burgess were potentially…. She stopped. She didn't even want to think about it. She was fine… wasn't she? Sure she'd been a bit clumsy and forgetful recently, maybe a bit more tired than usual but… she wasn't dying. She'd know if she was dying.
It had to be a mistake, right? Those labs had to be wrong. That was the only explanation. She was a doctor. She'd know if she was dying. She was fine.
She sat on the floor for a moment, contemplating what to do. She should go and speak to Derek, but he was likely to go for a full-on freak out about it and run every test in the book. Mark was a no go because he would just go straight to tell Derek. Christina would also want to run every test the hospital had to offer. She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answers that those tests might bring.
She sat on the floor for what felt like an eternity, trying to decide what her next move was going to be. "Of course now you'd go quiet on me." She muttered, suddenly becoming aware of the lack of judgement from her mother. "Of course."
The first step was to repeat the labs she decided, trying to force herself to think logically and like a doctor rather than just starting in full-blown panic mode. Calm and rational she reminded herself. She could panic once she knew that there was something to panic about.
So, after several attempts, she rather clumsily managed to draw enough of her own blood to send to the lab for them to run again. Labelling them as Jane Doe she made a beeline for the lab, requesting them to be run asap, before heading back to the pit in the hope of occupying her brain for a little while until the results came in.
