Sorry for the delay guys, my sister and I are competing for computer time since we go back to school Monday and wouldn't let me on here long enough to write a decent chapter and post it. However she did leave me a good review for chapter seven and was upset I didn't update yesterday. So basically she loves my fic as much as some of you do and is, therefore, allowing me substantial time to get another chapter up. Oh, and for you Harry Potter fic fans, she'll be posting a story for that in the next day or so and has quite a few chapters written. I haven't read it yet, so I can't give you a review, but her author id is hphglejplvr. If you're interested in Harry Potter, you might check it out.

Anyway, my story. It seems most of you agree with me, so unless I get some pleading reviews requesting otherwise, I know what is going to happen now. For the first time since I started writing this I know where I'm going. It's kinda weird and I'm not sure if I like it. Until now, I've kinda just said "Okay, I'm gonna type a chapter now. Wow, okay this is what happened last chapter", and let my creative juices go from there. Now I have an ultimate place I need to be at the end of the chapter and I don't like it. Oh well, here goes nothing. Hope you enjoy!

Meredith was on her second week of maternity leave and was starting to feel the effects of all her free time. She was going stir crazy.

The first two days, she had finished the process of ordering the furniture she and Derek had previously picked out together on their days off. The new house was ready for them to move into once the third of their party showed up.

That was good. That kept her busy. Then she decided to spend the rest of the week cleaning every inch of her mother's old house, from garage to the attic.

Once that project was done, she decided to organize both of theirs things to be packed for the move.

Then, she washed all of the baby's things, so they would be ready to go whenever they were needed.

That was three days ago. She had run out of projects, and Derek had started coming home for lunch to keep her from going to the hospital to "visit" him on his lunch break.

Izzie had started purposely making messes (and had stopped compulsively cleaning) in order to give Mer something to do. Not that Meredith didn't appreciate everyone's efforts, because she knew it had to be killing Izzie to not be taking care of the house, but she wanted to do something that mattered. Something that affected others. She was used to saving lives all day for god's sake, she needed to be around people.

But, instead, she was sitting on her living room couch, watching rain blur the foggy windows, while the television flickered in the background. She had been like this for about an hour when a sharp pain rain rippled through the top of her abdomen. She wrote it off as a hunger pang, because as of recently, her stomach felt like it was cramping when BabyShep was hungry.

Twenty minutes later, she was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, finishing her turkey sandwich, when another pain hit her. She started to worry a little, but decided to give her sandwich some time to digest, before she panicked and called someone to come home and drive her to the hospital. She read the paper for a while, and when another twenty minutes went by without another pain, she breathed a sigh of relief and stood to return to the living room.

She made it as far as the hallway before she swore loudly.

"Shit", she breathed as she tried to side step the puddle now forming at her feet.

She made it back into the kitchen and dialed the hospital.

"Seattle Grace Hospital."

"Hey, Tyler, its Meredith Grey."

"Meredith, who do you need, honey?"

"Ah, well Derek would be nice, but whoever you can find the fastest is who I need."

"Okay, hold on a sec…Dr. Stevens is right here, do you want to talk to her while I go find Derek?"

"Yeah, that'd be great, thanks."

"Mer?"

"Yeah, Iz, thank god. Is Derek in surgery?" Meredith sighed into the receiver.

"Just went into a cranioplasty with Christina, why?"

"My water just broke Iz."

"Oh, shit."

"That was my first response, but now I'm panicking a little here and I need someone to come get me."

"Okay… umm… just hold on a sec."

"Izzie, please, I don't have a sec."

"Iz?"

"IZZIE!"

"What, Meredith, seriously. You'll probably be in labor for hours. Chill for a second."

"Thanks, for that little morsel of comfort, I feel so much better now that I know I'm going to be having agonizing flashes of pain for hours! Izzie? What the hell?!"

"Okay Mer, here's what's going on. George and Christina are scrubbed in, so I'm gonna send Alex to the house to get you, and then I'm gonna go find Derek and let him know, so he can find someone to replace him in his surgery before you get here. Okay? I'm gonna prep your room and we'll all be ready for you when you get here, okay?"

"Alex is coming? He's on his way?"

"Left two minutes ago Mer, he's on his way, I promise."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay. Thanks Iz."

"No problem hun. Do you want to talk to someone until Alex gets there?"

"Is there someone who isn't busy?"

"Here's the chief, want to talk to the chief?"

"Okay", Meredith whimpered as another contraction hit.

"Meredith, you doing okay?", came the deep, familiar voice from the other end of the line.

"Yeah, I'm okay Chief. I just can't be left to my own devices right now, or I might get panicky", she responded.

"Might get panicky?", he said with a laugh. "You were scaring Dr. Stevens there for a moment, what with the bellowing into the phone and everything."

"I did not bellow, I just wanted to get her attention", Mer said sheepishly. She rested her hand on her abdomen again. "Oooohhh…I wish Alex would hurry up."

"Just breathe through it, Meredith. Breathe…in…and out. Good…in…and out."

"Thanks, I…just thanks."

"No problem."

After a long pause she heard him say, "You know, I was there the day you were born. Worked a 48-hour shift so as to be there through the whole thing. Wanted to see you at the end of it. Adele and I, we never had kids, so it was the closest thing I'd experienced to expecting a child."

"Oh", was all she could respond with.

"Your father never left your mother's side. He was a good father. Before…everything happened. I know you can't remember, but he was a good father."

"I had figured that…seeing him with Molly. He's a good father to her, and I figured he would have been the same with me, had he stuck around."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

The two sat in silence, until Alex burst through her front door.

"MER?"

"IN THE KITCHEN", Meredith shouted into the foyer, muffling the phone with her hand.

"Okay, well I'll see you all in a bit."

"Yeah, thanks Chief", she said as she hung up the phone.

Alex came into the kitchen, carrying the bag she had packed two weeks earlier and stashed in the hall closet for quick access.

"You okay, you ready?" he said with a smile.

"Yeah, let's go", she said, surprised at how calm he was. If, and when, he and Izzie figured it out for good, he would make a good husband. Would be a good father to his children. If it couldn't be Derek here with her now, Alex was a good second.

The two locked up the house, and made their way back to Seattle Grace to bring BabyShep into the world.

Okay, despite my hesitation, I like this chapter. Really and truly. I know some like to think of Richard as kind of a substitute father to Mer, but really, the way I see it is that he was the reason her real father wasn't around. So they won't be having father-daughter moments in my fics. But he is her boss, and Derek's mentor, and kind of a friend to them both, so he's excited about seeing the next generation coming into the world. And please don't kill me for having Derek not be there. He will be there for the actual event, and I wanted to show the friendship between Mer and Alex, because we haven't seen a lot of it in the show lately, and I wanted you to remember that for reasons that will be revealed later on. So, yeah. I think I've rambled enough. Hope you enjoyed and I should, hopefully have another chapter up tomorrow, maybe tonight, but definitely by the end of the weekend. We'll see. Oh and this fic is going to be about 10 chapters. This was the eighth. That means there's two left, but I will definitely leave room for a sequel, because you guys seem to really like it. Let me know what you think. Thanks!