The Race
Chapter 3: Run For It
The night was black and chilly. At a quarter to four in the morning on Tuesday, it was raining in a slow, nasty drizzle. The street lights cast a strange, sickly yellow glow over the wet pavement. Puddles looked deep and dark even if they were only an inch deep. Not good.
Karev grinned at the unease he saw on Meredith's face. He had his battle rap ready, "You can still concede, 'cause no matter how much you plead and bleed you still won't have enough speed. Don't worry out in this slurry, I have pity for the itty-bitty, even as I rap my ditty. I won't be too hard on the growth retard, discard, when I win before we begin. Take it on the chin, it's not a mortal sin," he rhymed smugly, in a mocking inaccurate imitation of the great Ali. He stretched out his hamstrings and then his quads. Dancing up and down on the balls of his feet he punched the air.
"As if, Dr. Doom, I have no room for your petty gloom!" Meredith spat back following his battle rap style. She was really over her snit but his continued arrogant ass routine grated, so she had to keep her end up. How did she get herself into these fixes? Oh yeah, annoyance and pride. Let's see how fast they made her run.
Both she and Alex were dressed in warm sweat pants and hoodies. He was in light grey and dingy white, she was in a darker charcoal grey, the color of the pavement. She'd chosen the color instinctively as good camouflage. You never knew when you might need good camo.
They'd agreed to use Izzie as a starter, knowing they couldn't talk her into not showing up. Alex waited at the bridge and then Izzie drove Meredith a quarter mile up the road to a pre-set drop point. Meredith climbed out, gut churning, checking her gear one last time. She drew in deep breaths. The streets were deserted and eerily quiet.
She could do this. She was stronger than she looked. She was clever and wily. It was a relatively short race. She'd done her homework and had covered the race terrain eleven times since the bet, often between midnight and four thirty, scoping it out, working it out, timing it out. She was a problem solver and the problem here was to smash Alex (aka Lex Luther) to smithereens. When in doubt, keep your eye on the smithereens, she paraphrased badly to herself, her competitive blood up.
Izzie, rubbing it in with morning person glee, while disregarding Meredith's sick look, said, "Good luck, Mer. Remember, every woman at Grace wants you to kick his butt. We're all pulling for you." She cheerily extracted her cell phone out of her pocket and called Alex, while looking down the road at him. "You ready?... What?... Don't yell at me!..." They went into a Lexie verbal tailspin on the phone. Meredith waited until her synchronized watch said four o'clock exactly and then sprinted down the road. "We'll start at four and not a minute before... Listen... just because you think you're the king of the universe, doesn't mean... what?... oh, yeah, Meredith just left, it must be after four... oh yeah, it is, go."
Meredith paced herself, checking her time repeatedly on her watch, going over her plan in her mind, looking for snags one more time. Don't Panic. Bring your Towel. The instructions from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy floated through her otherwise numb brain. She had calculated the rough area where she could expect Alex to overtake her. So she stayed sharp, regulated her breathing, and kept to her pre-calculated race pace. Alex may end up the winner, but he was going to have to work for it.
Meredith ran down the dark street through a rather run down section of town, avoiding bottomless puddles. She ran past the house with the Schnauzer that always barked, past the broken street light, and around the first corner. Right on time she heard Alex pounding down the street after her.
She started having second thoughts about her plan until he called out without even sounding breathless, "This is a slaughter. We're not even a fourth of the way there, Mighty Mouse, and I'm already passing you up, even with the head start! Double X's just can't dominate the Y," he was gleeful. That did it. Her plan concretized. It was all or nothing from this point forward!
She waited, trying to time it just right. She knew, like all arch-nemeses that he wouldn't be able to resist the urge to gloat and he'd dart in too close to her. She gripped the knife she usually kept in her purse firmly in her right hand and crowded the curb to the right forcing Alex to pass her on the left. He wasn't really paying attention to her. He was chanting some inane battle rap at her. She closed her ears and focused. Closer... closer... he passed her, deliberately bumping into her and making her slow down to avoid tripping. It was just what she knew he'd do. She struck out lightening fast with her left hand and pulled his elastic waistband back a foot exposing his more than passable ass clad in blue cotton briefs. Darn, she'd hoped to get both pants and underpants. With a practiced click and flip her scalpel sharp blade was out and Surgeon Grey sliced his pants straight down as far as she could reach in the second she had. Alex swore in surprised shock and grabbed for his pants, rap forgotten.
Meredith jerked her knife back, flipped it closed, and put on a burst of speed, darting to the right, away from Alex, through a lady's front yard and into her neighbor's yard. The neighbor and the lady stood at the open gate of a back fence, under bright house lights, laughing and waving Meredith through.
"Free physicals for your families next week, ladies, thank yoooou." Meredith breathlessly yodeled to them as she raced through the gate.
The two old birds cackled with glee as they watched the handsome young doctor stumble into the grass with his pants falling down and wadded between his knees. He hiked them up angrily and started to follow Meredith through the yards but the old women slammed the gate closed and shook their fingers at him in the universal 'no, no, bad boy' hand sign. Alex swore again in frustration as he was forced to go the long way around by the street rather than short cut through the yards. The two old ladies confirmed genially in loud laughing voices that he did have a very nice posterior view. Alex couldn't help laughing at himself under his breath at that. Meredith had surprised him. He hadn't seen her be this feisty in a while. If this was how she wanted to play, he'd play. She wouldn't get the drop on him again, and damn it, these stupid pants were slowing him down. He was having to hold the back closed as best he could. Forget it. He stopped and pulled his sweat pants off, losing time as he struggled getting the tight cuffs off over his shoes. He'd just wrap the pants back around when he got to the hospital. First he had to win. He took off running again at a mile eating pace.
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