A/N: Thanks to everyone that has been reading and reviewing so far! I'm having a lot of fun with this story. Just so you know, I've pretty much mapped out the rest of the story and my goal is to have it entirely completed and up before season 4 actually starts. If I'm really productive, I'll finish before the season 3 dvds come out, but that might be pushing it. Anyways, thanks again for the feedback. It really makes my day to see that people have read this stuff:-)

Great, Meredith. Just great. You babble about wanting to be it for him and he decides he can't even wait for you to go to therapy before lining up another woman. Impressive, really. Really…fucking…awesome… Meredith paced throughout the empty elevator as she made her way up to the floor with psychological services. She had managed to get an afternoon appointment with someone due to a cancellation, and she wanted to get things started as quickly as possible to show Derek she was serious about her plan. But now she wondered if she was just wasting her time.

The elevator bell finally announced her arrival on the sixth floor, and she walked into the lobby area. She was always surprised to see how different the floor layouts could seem depending on what services occurred there. Her momentary disorientation was probably one reason she didn't notice George coming up to her.

"Meredith?" he asked, seeming a little startled to see her there. "What are you doing up here?"

"I…um…I need to check on a patient that was, um…referred for a psych consult…" Meredith bit her lip nervously, hoping that George would buy her excuse. She was a bad liar, and she knew it.

"Oh…Don't you normally need to have some paperwork with you to do that?" George asked, noticing that Meredith wasn't carrying anything with her.

"Oh, yeah, I must have…um…what are you doing up here, George? I'm surprised to see you here. In fact, I haven't seen you at all these last couple days. Are you doing okay?" Meredith deployed another tactic: when caught in one of her bad lies, try to change the subject. Divert! Divert!

"Yeah…I'm not doing so well, actually. I…I failed the intern exam," George confessed, moving his eyes down to stare at Meredith's dingy blue tennis shoes as he said it.

"Oh, George," Meredith sighed. For a moment she was able to forget how much her own life seemed to suck at the moment. She couldn't imagine not passing the intern exam, and she felt awful knowing that it had happened to George.

"So, um, I've been deciding whether or not I should repeat my internship or not. Callie thinks I should, and…I guess I'm leaning in that direction now, too, but I just needed someone else to talk to about this. Someone who can anonymously help me sort my life out. So I came up here." Now that the initial news of his failure had been relayed, George felt a little more comfortable sharing with Meredith. The worst was over.

"I totally get it, George. Really. And if you need anything…"

"Thanks," he said, cutting her off. "And don't worry, I won't tell anyone that I saw you up here," he said, offering his own conspiratorial smile that was still a little sad around the edges.

"Thanks," Meredith whispered, shrugging a little as she said it.

He gently squeezed her arm, and walked by her, mumbling something along the lines of "See you around" before getting on the elevator.

As soon as he was gone, the momentary distraction dissipated from Meredith's mind.

Derek. My fucking McDreamy…My "you're the love of my life, can I bang your sister?" sorta boyfriend. Damnit.

She found the office she was looking for and pouted over to the receptionist's desk to sign in before slumping into a waiting area chair that was not terribly comfortable. She surveyed the reading material available before settling on a glossy celebrity gossip rag that featured Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsey Lohan on the cover with some caption about glamorizing rehab. For a moment, she fantasized about partying with that crowd and wondered if they liked tequila too.

"Are you Meredith?" a woman in her thirties asked quietly, interrupting Meredith's daydreaming.

Meredith looked up and nodded, noticing the woman's well polished ensemble with a black and white patterned blouse and crisp white pants. The shoes were clearly a designer brand and her jewelry glistened against her pale skin and rich, dark brown hair. The woman was stunning. An older Wynonna Ryder maybe, and it was a look that Addison would probably endorse.

"I'm Dr. Evans," she continued, extending her hand to Meredith politely. "Would you like to follow me to my office?" Her voice was gentle and soothing, yet friendly and inviting. Meredith suspected she was the type of person who would make friends easily if they could get past the idea of being psychoanalyzed by her.

"Sure," Meredith replied, suddenly nervous. She had never seen a therapist for anything despite probably needing it her entire life. She wasn't really sure what to expect.

The office was only a short walk down the hall, and it served as a stark contrast to the rest of the hospital. It had several windows that let the natural light shine in brightly, eliminating any need for glaring fluorescents overhead. A brown leather couch angled away from ivory colored walls, and a tastefully designed rug covered the floor. The room looked like a scene from a Pottery Barn catalog with its precise decorative details and absence of clutter.

"Go ahead and make yourself comfortable," Dr. Evans said, directing Meredith toward the couch while she sat in a leather chair. She reached over to her desk and grabbed a steno pad and an expensive looking pen.

Meredith stared awkwardly at the couch, biting her lip as she tried to decide what she should do. Do I sit? Do I lie down? Do I run? What am I doing here? After what had to seem like much too long, Meredith sat down and pulled her legs up in front of her to hug them protectively, much like a little girl. She hoped she wouldn't get in trouble for putting her shoes on the furniture.

"So, tell me about yourself, Meredith," Dr. Evans instructed, leaning back in her chair casually. She smiled broadly in an effort to reassure her new patient.

"Well…" Meredith sighed nervously, trying to gather her thoughts. She hated questions like these. Did the doctor want the glossy shiny interview/first-date version, or the dark, twisty, this-is-why-I'm-in-therapy version? Meredith decided to go with the latter to make their time together more productive. "I'm a second-year surgical resident who descends from a mother who was a legendary surgeon but got Alzheimer's and thought I was pretty ordinary when she was lucid and a dad who abandoned us when I was five. The last time I saw him, he accused me of killing his wife. Not my mom, but his other wife who I was starting to get to know. My mom died recently, and I think I saw her in my near death experience when I let myself drown in the bay. I've spent the last year dating a neurosurgeon who happens to be an attending, except I didn't know he was my boss when I started sleeping with him. Just like I didn't know he was married until a little while ago, and I didn't know he was flirting with my half-sister that I met yesterday until about a half-hour ago. He divorced his wife and he says that I'm the love of his life, but he doesn't like breathing for me and we're over, at least temporarily."

Meredith paused, thinking that she had maybe covered everything. Her eyes darted around the office as she tried to think if she had left out anything. She noticed a picture of what she assumed was Dr. Evans' dog, a tri-colored beagle.

"Oh, and my dog died the day of the prom when I had adulterous make-up sex with my sorta ex-boyfriend-slash-boss. That sucked, too…Doc dying, not the sex…although adultery is wrong."

Yep, she had covered it all now. Maybe her rambling was well suited for therapy. She certainly was efficient.

She released her legs down to the floor and started fidgeting with her hands in her lap, looking down at them patiently as she waited for some sort of reaction.

Dr. Evans' eyes grew larger than their naturally round, perfect size, and her brown irises glistened with surprise. "It sounds like you've had a challenging year," she commented delicately. "I guess I don't need to ask you why you decided to come see me." She smiled again. "Tell me more about this half-sister that your boyfriend was flirting with. You said you found out about that a half hour ago. What happened?"

Meredith felt her skin begin to flush again as she thought about Lexie and Derek together.

"Last week, I invited Derek over – Derek, that's my sorta boyfriend – and he told me that he met a girl at the bar. He said nothing happened, she was pretty, they talked, blah, blah, blah. I told him he could see other people if he wanted to, and he said that he didn't want to. In fact, when I broke up with him yesterday so I could sort things out, he assured me that he had no interest in seeing anyone else – that he would wait for me. Then, today, the McBastard has the nerve to ask my sister…my half-sister, Lexie, to scrub in on some surgery with him. And she's the girl he met in the bar last week!"

"So your sister, Lexie, is a doctor here too?"

"Yeah, she's an intern. A totally beautiful, perfect, bright and shiny little intern."

"And you met her yesterday?"

Meredith nodded. "I only recently started to have any contact with my dad and Susan, his wife. I didn't really know their kids."

"So how do you know that…" Dr. Evans paused, looking back down at her notes. "…Derek…How do you know that Derek is interested in pursuing Lexie romantically?"

"Because she's freaking gorgeous and I know him!" Meredith fumed.

"So you don't trust him."

Meredith hesitated. The comment struck a nerve with her as she recalled her earlier conversation with Cristina and thought she noticed a trend. "I guess not."

"Why?"

"Wow, you ask a lot of questions," Meredith replied.

Dr. Evans smiled again. "It's kind of the way this tends to work. I ask you questions and help you figure out what's bothering you."

"Oh…" Meredith whispered.

"So why don't you trust Derek?"

"When I first met Derek," Meredith started, "he was sweet and funny and everything was perfect. I thought he was it for me and I was done. And then his wife showed up and he chose her."

"And you didn't already know that he was married? That had to be very difficult for you," Dr. Evans empathized.

"You have no idea…" Meredith agreed.

"But you said earlier that he divorced his wife," Dr. Evans continued, again surveying her notes. Ordinarily she could manage these conversations without needing to refer to her notes so much, but Meredith had said so much so quickly, she could barely keep up.

"Yeah, after we had sex at the prom…" Meredith paused, realizing how ridiculous this must sound out of context. "Dr. Webber, the chief…chief of surgery…he had a prom for his niece and made all of us go."

"I think I remember hearing about that when it happened. It was quite the hospital event from what I've heard," Dr. Evans commented.

"Yeah, well, anyways, after we had sex at the prom, he told his wife that it was over between them and got a divorce. And then we got back together. Eventually. But that's a different story."

"So are you worried that he'll leave you the way that he left her?"

"Oh no, she cheated on him first. Their marriage was already pretty much over when he met me," Meredith quickly replied.

"So why don't you trust him?"

"Um…" that was a good question. Why didn't she trust him? "I guess because he hurt me. I don't want to go through that again." Her mind continued to jog from place to place. "And Lexie. Why would he flirt with her if he didn't intend to make something of it?"

"Have you asked him that?" Dr. Evans asked, a concerned look registering across her face.

"No," Meredith admitted, leaning back against the couch as if all energy had been sucked out of her to leave her a lifeless shell of herself.

"What do you think will happen if you talk to him about it?"

"He'll deny it and get all perfect and McDreamy and I'll feel guilty for even suggesting the idea." Meredith imagined the conversation in her head. When it came right down to it, she could rehearse conversations mentally a bazillion times where she would angrily confront him about something, only to have herself melt in the moment where she actually faced him. He had that effect on her.

"Do you think he'll be lying to you when he denies it?"

"I don't know. Probably not. But what if he doesn't deny it? What if he admits that he actually is flirting with Lexie?" Meredith seemed urgent…frantic, even, with this new idea.

"Well, if that's the case, at least you'll know how things stand. You won't just be left speculating about it. Communication is good, Meredith."

Dr. Evans was making far too much sense for Meredith's liking.

"Why don't you try to talk to him about this before our next meeting, and then we'll revisit this topic next week."

Meredith looked down at her watch in disbelief as she realized that their time was up already. "Okay, I'll try that…communication…thing. I don't do that very well. I have a tendency to ramble and get off track and mess things up when I…communicate."

Dr. Evans laughed. "You do a better job than you give yourself credit for. You just have lots to say."

Meredith smiled. She appreciated the positive spin that Dr. Evans put on her rambling. "Thanks," she murmured.

"No problem. Take care and I'll see you next week." Dr. Evans said politely while escorting Meredith back to the corridor.

Meredith walked slowly toward the elevator, replaying the session in her mind. Communicate more…with Derek…I guess I can try that… she thought. But I'll need to have a drink first. Definitely one drink. And then communicate. That will be good…communicating…

She punched the down button on the elevator as she devised her plan. She only hoped that the remaining hours on her shift would go by quickly so she could recruit Cristina to go with her to Joe's. She suspected they both could use that.