The Race
Chapter 2: Back Fence Chatter
"So, Dr. Grey," ventured Tolliver, a tall, tired ER nurse from the Pit, "Been hearing some interesting things."
They were resetting and restocking a trauma room together since the Pit was short staffed.
"Oh, yeah? Like what?" Meredith didn't really want to know. Gossip sucked. And she was still in a pissy mood from Alex talking trash this morning. She counted supplies and listed the inventory they were using on one of the innumerable forms she had to fill out each day. Forms sucked too! In fact what didn't suck, today?
She pulled out a health bar and stuffed some of it in her mouth. She handed Tolliver a chunk. He stuffed his and together they chewed... and chewed... and chewed. He made a face. She mirrored it.
"Cardboard!" they said together in complete agreement. It took half a bottle of water each to wash it down. They gave each other a high five.
"We need to find something else to snack on."
"I know, let me know if you find anything."
"I heard Karev's been challenged to a grudge race. Know anything about that?" Tolliver asked gingerly. The normally easy going, pretty, young doctor was very prickly today, but this was too good to pass up. A Karev-Grey match up for personal scut rights! Yeah! Tolliver had it from Tyler, who had it from Olivia, who had it from Debbie, who had it from overhearing Cristina Yang telling her boyfriend, Dr. Burke, that Grey had challenged Karev to a duel. Pistols at dawn! What was better than that? The nurses all knew that Meredith liked Tolliver so he was the one they sent in to gather intel. Olivia, the ex-squeeze, was assigned Alex.
"Who told you that?" Grey demanded angrily, her delicate features flushed. And then, when he mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key, she said, "Oh never mind! I know who blabbed! I'll kill all three blatherskites! There's bound to be a case of Bubonic Plague here sooner or later! And when it shows up, they're goners, the rats! I'll make sure of it!"
"So no holds barred, huh? What exactly does that mean?" Tolliver fished.
"It means I'll win, 'cause he won't expect me to grab his nuts and squeeze!" she fumed, "I'll show him who's little. Calling me teeny weenie meanie! I'm sick of it! What are you smirking at!?"
Tolliver, who stood six foot two and weighed two hundred pounds, made the mistake of smiling at her problem of being called little, when he thought he could probably wrap one hand around her waist and touch his thumb and forefinger together. He wiped the smirk off his face and tried to look seriously offended for her sake.
"Nothing, nothing at all." Tolliver said, controlling his amusement, recognizing that Dr. Grey was a surgeon who was getting better with her scalpel on a daily basis. Best to err on the side of caution. Besides, he was smarter than Karev. The teeny ones were often the most ferocious. Especially if they didn't know they were teeny.
"Say, who do you think the nurses will back? Is Alex still being a horse's rump to the nursing staff? Let's talk," Meredith dragged a stool over and plunked herself down ready to dig for some intel of her own before she headed to the cafeteria for lunch.
ooo
"No, Olivia, I'm going to beat Grey back to the stone age. She's toast," Alex said, annoyed. Olivia had latched on to him when he was headed for the dining mall. He paused in the hallway. How had everyone already found out about the stupid bet? No, he didn't even need to guess. Those three loud mouthed magpies couldn't wait to spread it around. He was going to kill them. One day a giant pillar would fall on them, yeah, maybe at the ferry dock, all three, and he wouldn't be there to pull it off of them. Just wait.
"Alex, why do you think it's going to be so easy? She could win, right? And then you'd be stuck... how? What's the bet for anyway?" Olivia fished.
"When I win, she'll do all my rectals, vaginals, and enemas for a month, plus all my post-op write ups." Alex grinned in anticipation of winning.
"And if Meredith wins, what then?" Olivia asked, a concerned look on her cute little freckled face.
"She won't win," he sneered, crossing his arms, all He-man.
"If she does?" Olivia persisted, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear.
"I'm her slave for a month, etc., etc., etc." Alex rolled his eyes, bored.
"Alex, what makes you think she has no hope at all?" Olivia wondered cautiously.
"Are you kidding? A.) She's a cute chick! 2.) She's itty-bitty! And.) She's a weakling! Totally.) No one with boobs can beat me! Plus.) She's a girly girl. How's she going to run me down? By crying and begging me to give her the win? Believe me, I won't. She's nothin' but a nurse! You need to be hardcore to be a surgeon and you need to be hardcore to even get near me! I'm going to shove her girly face in the ground!" He grinned cockily, "It's no contest."
"Oh," Olivia, the cute, girly girl, itty-bitty, beboobed, nurse, chick said slowly, "I see."
ooo
Dr. Shepherd watched Stevens and O'Malley peering over the balcony railing at the dining area below. They excitedly raced from one vantage point to another, clearly keeping track of a moving target. He walked up behind them and looked over their shoulders. All he saw was Dr. Karev eating lunch at one table while Dr. Grey bought lunch at the salad bar.
"Fifty on Grey. She'll wipe the floor with him," Izzie said positively.
"There's no way! Alex is going to kill her," George protested, "She's my friend too, and I'd love to see Karev brought down, but what the heck does Meredith think she's doing?" They watched Meredith take a seat at Alex's table as if nothing were going on.
"She's meaner than she looks, plus – her mother...," Izzie raised her brows, tilted her head, and pursed her lips meaningfully. George still looked doubtful.
"Doctors," Izzie and George jumped guiltily at Derek's voice, "What's going on between Meredith and Karev?"
"Nothing," they said in unison, then looked at each other, their expressions as easy to read as a twenty point font.
"Nothing, nothing at all, gotta go," said Izzie trying to inch her way out of Shepherd's shadow.
"Doctors," Shepherd said smoothly, "Sometimes interns run afoul of attendings. When they do, it's not a pretty sight – the interns can end up looking like road-kill."
Stevens and O'Malley tried to squeeze further away from the attending in front of them but their backs were against the rail and there was no way out. Shepherd smiled at them.
O, grandma, what big teeth you have!
The better to eat interns with!
"Okay, okay, but you didn't hear it from us," Izzie, the gossipmonger, caved first. Not because she was scared of McDreamy, she was just dying to spill the news to someone and she'd been so good all day! She'd have the excuse that McDreamy threatened her with fire ants now. It was too good an opportunity to waste.
"Izzie, I don't think...," George was silenced by the combined might of both Izzie and Shepherd staring him down.
"Well," Izzie motioned Derek closer, leaning her bright blond head in near his black locks, and speaking in Rita Skeeter's poison pen voice, "confidentially, you know Bailey's interns have had seminars all week. Alex went nuts with boredom, of course. He's such a thirteen year old, you know? Well anyway, Meredith was sitting in front of him. He started in on her a week ago. It was like watching an arsonist build a fire. He kept piling on the kindling, then the accelerent, over and over, more and more. By this morning she burst into flame! I think he thought it was going to be a campfire, instead he got a bonfire... that's what they say, isn't it... arsonists get burned by their own fires." she finished chattily and far too brightly. Maybe she could start using a dulling toothpaste to dim her teeth. That would probably help. And have you ever noticed there seems to be a strange empty bubble forming in Izzie's head where common sense should reside? Like the opposite of a tumor. What's up with that?
"Yeah, well, Meredith may end up getting really burned instead, Izzie," George inserted with squishy Georgeness.
"What do you mean? So she's mad at Karev. He'll live," Shepherd shrugged, unconcerned. He'd lived and Lord knew she'd been mad enough at him to spit nails before.
"No, you don't get it," George looked over the rail longingly at Meredith, "She challenged him to a no hold's barred race. They're racing from the Hancock Street Bridge. He's going to make mincemeat out of her. He'll rub her face in it for years. She's making a huge mistake, but she won't listen to anybody."
Shepherd looked over the rail too, suddenly worried for her. She was so small next to Karev. He fought the protective instincts that wanted to go muscle Karev away from his woman. Meredith was not his woman, he sternly told himself. He didn't have any rights where she was concerned.
"George! You tried to talk her out of it, didn't you?" Izzie was scandalized, "What were you thinking? Everyone knows you can't back down once you throw down the surgical glove! She really would be a wimp and a coward! If she races and loses, then at least she followed through. She's not a coward. Don't you get it? What did she say to you anyway?"
"She said, 'Buzz off, George, before I take you down with him.'" George looked shame-faced as Izzie laughed.
"That doesn't sound like Meredith." McDreamy said looking longingly at Meredith too.
"It was! Believe me Alex has started something bad – very bad!" George warned.
"When's the race?" Derek asked, "And what are the stakes?"
"Tuesday, at four in the morning, can you believe it?" Izzie was disgusted at the inconvenience of it, completely forgetting she wasn't invited. Neither was anyone else.
George spilled the stakes to Shepherd in detail, seeing no need for discretion since Izzie had revealed so much already. Tommy, from the lab, and two guys from psych finished eavesdropping and headed back to their departments to spread the news.
ooo
"May I join you, Ajax?" asked Meredith.
"Sure," Alex indicated the chair across from him.
"The carrion birds are circling," she said, putting salad dressing on her salad, "not to mention the jackals and the hyenas."
"I noticed. Want to back out?" Alex inquired politely.
"No! You?"
"No... but, those three irritate me. This was a private battle rap," he commented.
"I know, maybe a toxic patient will come in and the minute the surgeon starts to cut her open toxic gas is released that kills all three of them." Meredith said hopefully.
"Yeah, that'd be cool. The whole surgical team all dead on the floor and the patient all open on the table. It could happen. I can totally see it." Alex and Meredith grinned at each other in dark evil accord.
ooo
"She's going to do what?" Mr. Sandage said to Bernice, the coffee cart lady and quidnunc, feeling slightly stunned as they watched Karev and Grey leave the dining area forty five minutes later.
"It's true! I got it from the peds intern Michelle, who got it from her husband in the lab, Mickey, who got it from Tommy,his assistant, who overheard Stevens and O'Malley telling Shepherd all about it. The nurses got all the details except time and place earlier. Now we've even got that, thanks to O'Malley and Stevens." Bernice was positive of her sources.
"But, what are they thinking? She'll be hurt." He felt disquieted. These interns were always getting into something, like two year olds, he thought.
"I don't think so," said Bernice, she'd seen a lot of interns like Karev come and go over the years, "He's cocky and a jackass, and he shouldn't underestimate Dr. Grey. She's tough and a survivor. Dr. Karev is confused by what she looks like on the outside. You'll see."
ooo
"Don't get me wrong," said Alex, as Meredith and he left the dining mall, "I'm still going to give you a spankin' on Tuesday and put you to bed!"
Meredith's face turned all Mistress of the Damned, "You don't look nearly as good as I do in black vinyl boots and whip, Achilles. We'll see who gives whom a spanking. Who knows," she said, nostrils flaring, "you may even like it."
They smiled menacingly at each other.
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