A/N: Sorry this is so delayed :) I have so many ideas about future chapters, so I get so distracted writing them all down! This chapter is super short, and not much happens, I know, but I promise that what's coming up is going to be awesome. Happy reading!
"Izzie?" a voice spoke from outside the stall.
Once Izzie felt that she was able to stand up again, she flushed the toilet and walked out of the stall. Cristina was standing outside, wiping her hands with a paper towel.
"Food poisoning. That's what I get for trying to be carefree and ordering the tacos in the cafeteria for lunch yesterday" Izzie told her, adding in a fake little laugh.
"Oh, okay. Well, uh, I guess…try to take it easy." Cristina was always bad at showing sympathy for people who weren't her patients. Izzie had gotten used to that.
"Of course. Thank-". Before she could finish responding, another wave of morning sickness hit her, and she ran back into the stall. She was already exhausted and disgusted by all of it. She didn't know how she was going to handle this when it got worse.
"Food poisoning this bad means that you have to go home. You can't risk treating any patients if you're like this" Cristina told her. But the last thing Izzie wanted to do was to go home. She had tried to make everything as normal as possible, and this was only day one.
"Right. Absolutely..." Izzie flushed the toilet and walked over to the sink, as reality started to sink in. This wasn't just food poisoning. This wasn't just something she'd be able to cover up for long, either. Soon, everyone would know, because nothing spread faster in that hospital than gossip. She wasn't sixteen anymore; she had responsibilities now. This baby wasn't going to be like Hannah, she couldn't let it. Giving her up was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, and it was harder to know that Hannah wasn't ready to see her when she came to the hospital.
She needed to tell someone. She needed to tell someone before she told Alex. And there was Cristina, who she didn't really even know that well. She had always gotten the vibe that Cristina didn't really like her all that much. But Cristina was a robot; she'd know how to handle this calmly without getting her feelings involved. She'd been pregnant without meaning to be. And she wouldn't tell Alex, or anyone else, except for maybe Meredith. She was the perfect person to tell.
"Okay…what is it? Why are you looking at me like that?" Cristina asked, wearily.
It was funny how just that sentence was all it took to set her off. She told her everything, starting from the first night she had stayed with Alex when he was upset over Ava. How he had begged her to stay with just his eyes, and how that was all it really took to suck her in. She was so weak, especially when it came to him. She told her how she had convinced herself that she was doing it for Alex's sake, and how idiotic she'd been for believing it. She knew that crossing that line was going to be messy, and yet she did it anyways, believing that maybe he'd want her back. Maybe he would realize that Izzie was actually the person he was meant to be with. Or maybe he was just placating her so that she'd sleep with him. Whatever the reason was, it had landed her puking in a bathroom stall at 9 A.M.
Cristina stood at one of the nurses' stations, filling out a chart of a patient she'd recently checked up on. The worst part of her job, in her opinion, was charting. She knew it was necessary, but so tedious. She was scribbling something about a Gastrectomy, when she noticed two people sneaking into an on-call room. She expected it to be one of the usual; Sloan with some nurse from the fourth floor, or an intern who didn't know any better. But she noticed it wasn't any of them; it was Alex with another girl.
Cristina knew it wasn't her place to interfere, but Izzie was sort of her friend now. Alex didn't even know what Izzie was dealing with at that moment, and he didn't care enough to keep his pants on. And when she imagined going through what she went through, knowing that Burke was sleeping around with other women, she knew she had to do something. She had to make a diversion.
"Can you please page Doctor Alex Karev to the first floor nurses' station? Let him know it's urgent" she told the nurse behind the desk. She finished her chart, placed it in the bin for the fourth-floor hospital patients, and walked away.