AN: Thank you all so much for your reviews.

Coming up, a phone call to one of our favourite characters. And maybe, just maybe some MerDer.

I don't own any of GA.

It's a common belief that positive thinking leads to a happier, healthier life. As children we're told to smile and be cheerful and put on a happy face. As adults we're told to look on he bright side. To make lemonade and see glasses as half full. Sometimes reality can get in the way of our ability to act the happy part, though. Your health can fail, boyfriends can cheat. Friends can disappoint. It's in the moments when you just to get real. To drop the act and be your true, scared, unhappy self.

"I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy."

"It's okay, Haley. The doctors are gonna help you." The parents words travelled as Alex walked to the the counter of the ER receptionist. Meredith smiled as he approached, finishing signing the last few release forms she had at the moment.

"Karev, Lucas missed your presence at game night this weekend. In the two months Meredith had lived in Seattle, Alex had made a spot in their lives. Well, mostly Lucas' but Meredith had warmed up with him as well.

"Tell him I'm sorry. And that he can come over this weekend for a superhero weekend." Alex smiled and shook his head, but glad that the kid missed him. Alex felt a tap on his should and turned to see a resident from psych. "You paged surgery, so?"

"Hayley May, sixteen, diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. Tried to claw her eyes out. I need you to clear her before I can take her up to Psych-."

"She tried to claw her eyes out?" Meredith blurted out, eyes wide as she turned to Alex. Alex gave her the same look back before mumbling a goodbye as he headed to the patient. Trauma room one was quite the scene when he arrived. Two parental figures were talking to the girl in a bed with bloody cuts vertically down her face. The parents turned to face him as they heard him, beginning to talk instantly.

"We try to keep her safe. She's on every med in the book. But she doesn't eat, doesn't sleep. The slightest thing sets her off. Talking even. So we're having her committed. We explained to her that they were coming to get her, to try and help. We turned our back for a minute, just for one minute-."

"Hayley - That's lorazepam." Alex spoke sternly, silencing the blubbering parents.

"I swear to God, I'll do it. You don't believe me. Nobody does. So no. I swear to God I'll stab myself."

"Hayley, I'm Dr. Karev. I need you to put that down." His hands were in front of him, showing he meant no harm.

"It will kill me, right? If I stuck this in my heart, it would kill me?There's drugs in here. I'd die, right?" The girl was looking between him and the needle in her hand.

"I can help you."

"I'm not crazy." Hayley muttered.

"I know. I believe you. Everyone outside thinks you're crazy, but something's going on inside and none of us understand, so we need to figure out what that is. The only way we can do that is if you put that down and let me run some tests." Alex was spitting words out, trying his best to just get her to listen to him.

"You promise?"

"Yes. Just put it down. It's gonna be OK." Hayley placed it on the tray. And Alex was quick to move it out of her reach. "Good. That's good."

"I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy."

"Page Shepherd."

Meredith had quickly finished her paperwork before heading to eat lunch in her office. Today was one of the rare times she left Lucas in daycare during lunch, wanting to take the hour for herself. She was about a quarter way through her salad when her phone rang. She picked it up quickly, not bothering to look at the caller ID. To

"Dr. Meredith Grey."

"That's quite the formal way to answer the phone for your best friend."

"Cristina!" Meredith jumped out of her desk, her excitement getting to her before she sat back down, taking a big bite of salad before smiling more. "If you're calling me, that means there is no good gossip back home. So, I'm just going to say it now. There isn't nothing new or exciting happening right now."

"Nothing!" The shock and surprise was evident in Cristina's outburst. "Nothing even with McDreamy?"

"What is with you and McNames?" The question Mer asked almost daily.

"They are McFun."

"And you are McAnnoying." The close friends laughed with each other as if they were standing in front of one another.

"How is my favourite godson?"

"He's your only godson and he's doing quite well. He enjoys being close to Sofia and Callie. Still not completely happy with the move and occasionally still asks heartbreaking questions about Mark, but being here is helping. Not being in the same house that Mark was in is helping. And he seems to like his uncle so, that's also cheering him up, much to my disappointment."

"Derek can't be that bad, Mer."

"Cristina, think Adam from med school."

"Oh, honey I feel bad for you." The line goes quiet for a few moments. "I miss our tequila nights. I miss them so much, that I might even buy a plane ticket to come visit for a tequila night."

"You're always welcomed to make a visit." The dynamic duo talked for the remainder of her lunch before Meredith got paged to the ER, making their goodbye quick.

"You think she's schizophrenic?" Alex asked, disbelief evident on his face.

"I think she threatened to stab a syringe into her own heart. - So I'm leaning toward crazy, yeah. The scans are up. Nothing in the frontal lobe. Or temporo-parietal region. - Occipital lobe's clean too. We tried, Karev. All the tests are negative. Let's go inform the parents and turf her up to Psych-."

" This isn't right. I know crazy. I grew up with crazy, I dated crazy, and I don't think this girl is crazy. Just give me some time-."

"Do you have a diagnosis in mind? She's suicidal, Alex. What you did in that ER, you saved her life. But those parents have been through hell." Alex knew Derek had a point but was too strong headed to just believe that was all that was wrong.

"You say it's our job to advocate for the patient."

"The patient, not the parents. So, whatever hell they've gone through, hers is worse. I do say that. Advocate for the patient. You've got until my board meeting's over. Four hours. Go dig." Derek watched Alex run off, shaking his head at the other attendings antics.

"Oh! Here! Uh, Page 162. The June 2004 issue of a journal with a mint green cover. It's Sound or pressure induced vertigo." Meredith spoke out into the dark room that was lit by two lamps as Alex and her poured through books. Alex was quick to move to her, reading over her shoulder before sharing a glance at her. Karev and her jumped up, running to the patients to room to confirm that they had found what was wrong.

"Hayley, we're gonna start now. When I say now, I want you to pinch your nose and blow. Make sure you keep your eyes open, OK? Now." Meredith went over the instructions as Alex sat in front of Hayley to catch what was about to happen. Suddenly, as the pressured passed through the head cavity, Hayley's eyes fluttered side to side.

"What's happening to her eyes? What's going on?" Her parents finally asked.

"No No! No No! No!" Hayley yelled out, before her mother ran over to her.

"Hayley, honey, it's Mommy. I'm right here. What the hell did you do to her?" The mother's accusing eyes turned to Meredith and Alex who both had a somewhat satisfied smirk on their faces.

"We just diagnosed her." Alex responded, paging Derek Shepard before the two doctors left to wait for the third doctors arrival.

"It's called superior canal dehiscence syndrome. It's a result of a small hole that developed in her inner ear. It's rare and it's hard to diagnose. The condition wasn't even written up until 1998. The noise sensitivity, the sandpaper, it's because Hayley can hear everything going on inside her body and every sound outside was magnified. It's why she couldn't sleep or eat. She's not schizophrenic." Derek explained to the parents before Meredith chose to leave the room. It wasn't her case, she had merely just helped diagnose the problem. She headed to get Lucas, her shift practically over before heading to the observation room of OR 3. The mother and son choosing to watch over the surgery as Meredith Grey told her son what was happening and answered all his questions.

Three hours later and a sleeping Lucas draped across Mer's body was how she ran into Derek, both about to leave the hospital into the cold, damp night.

"You cover a hole with a bone graft and this girl gets her whole life back. Wouldn't it be nice if everything in life were that simple?" She asked, stalling the darker hair man, who turned his curious eyes towards her.

"From what I gathered, life for you was simple." Derek responded casually.

"It was. But life can never go the way you want it to. So as soon as it seemed good and promising, the lemons I had been given turned mouldy." Meredith grimaced before walking to the exit, exiting into the cold leaving Derek looking at where the questionable woman was standing.

Ask most people what they want out of life, and the answer's simple: To be happy. Maybe it's this expectation though, the wanting to be happy, that just keeps us from ever getting there. Maybe the more we try and will ourselves to states of bliss, the more confused we get. To the point where we don't recognize ourselves. Instead, we just keep smiling. Trying like hell to be the happy people we wish we were. Until eventually it hits us. It's been there all along. Not in our dreams or hopes, but in the known, the comfortable the familiar.