Disclaimer: I don't own them. I wish I did, but I don't think I'd do as good of a job.

A/N: Please read and review. Pleeeeeaasssseeee. And thanks to the person (I deleted your email so I don't know who you and and I'm really sorry) who told me about the small correction I had to make in chapters 3-4. Oh, and since today is a good day, I'm giving you guys a treat: 3 new chapters!

Chapter 5: Coincidence, Not

Meredith stood beside Addison, struggling to hold a squirming baby in her arms. She carefully placed her into the plastic box, then watched as two nurses stabilized her and wheeled her up to the ICU. Meredith sighed, and turned around. Addison was sewing up the mother, a Mrs. Schlieffer.
"Good work, Dr. Grey."

Meredith smiled. "Thank you."

"Would you just hold this?" Meredith grabbed the end of the thread.

"What was her name?"

"The baby's name?"

"Yeah."

"Actually, she named her Meredith."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Cool," Meredith said. Addison gently pulled on the thread, and Meredith let go.

"She's done. Let's bring her up to the ICU." Three nurses wheeled her away as Meredith and Addison went to clean up. Right on cue, Brianna burst through the door.

"Here's your new pager battery, Addison. Meredith, your friends are looking for you. They say to meet them at lunch and update them. Oh, and look at my pager." Brianna proudly showed them the little black rectangle on her belt loop. "Dr. Bailey gave me one. She said that I'd be really busy and I'd need one to keep from screwing up.

Addison nodded and Brianna sprinted out the door.

Addison and Meredith smiled at each other. Wow, that's never happened before,

Addison was thinking the same thing.

Ch.

"So, what time do you leave?" asked Meredith.

"In an hour," answered Brianna. There was a pause. "I really like it here." Another pause. "You know how sometimes, everything clicks, and you know you've found exactly what you're looking for?"

Meredith looked up without moving her head. "Yes, I do."

"When did you know? That you wanted to be a surgeon, I mean."

Meredith continued the chart she was filling out. "My senior year of high school. I'd always taken the biology courses. I liked to cut open things, attack them. They were vulnerable, subject to me and my scalpel and tweezers. I was an angry teenager," she explained. "Wore black, my hair was pink most of the time. I did some red, some blue, and a little of everything, I guess."

Brianna nodded. "Bitter, angry. 'I hate the world.' I know that type. Go on."

Of course she knew, thought Meredith, but she continued. "But after a while, I realized that I loved it. It came easy to me, unlike life." She paused. "I hated myself for it of course. It was like dancing with the devil. The devil that destroyed my family. That my mother loved more than me and my dad. I was in life for myself. And I made it here. It was definitely a dirty, rocky road, but I made it, despite all that."

Brianna stared at her intently, then stopped.

"What?" asked Meredith.

"Nothing," said Brianna. Both their beepers went off.

"I probably won't see you anymore today," said Meredith, "so bye. I'll see you tomorrow."

Brianna smiled at her. "Yeah. I hope so."

Christina and Izzie came running up to Dr. Bailey.

"We got your page," they both gasped.

"Where's Karev and O'Malley?"

"Alex...Alex was with Ivy," said Izzie, fighting to keep a straight face. "George is um, helping Ivy too," she said. Her lip was starting to bleed, she was biting it so hard.

"Helping with what?" asked Bailey. "She's supposed to be a running lab rat right now."

"Rectal exams," coughed Christina.

"Oh," said Bailey, a smile creeping onto her face. "Good. Well, it's almost 5:00, so you two need to make sure these kids get home. Their parents sign them out unless there is a note by their name. Be nice to their parents. Look happy, not like the crappy, 4-hour-of-sleep corpses you look like now. Got it?"

"Yes, Dr. Bailey,"

"Good. I hear there were two people with tumors here today. Their surgeries are tomorrow," she said casually, then left.

Christina and Izzie looked at each other and high-fived. "Come on," Izzie laughed, and they ran down the stairs.

Alex and George were busy torturing Ivy when their beepers went off.

"Oh, Ivy," said Alex. "Looks like it's time to go home."
Ivy sat in the corner, looking very green.

"Pity you couldn't stay longer," grinned George. "We were just getting to the best part."

Ivy clamped her hand over her mouth and ran out of the room.

"Think we were too hard on her?" asked Gorge.

Alex looked thoughtful. "She was a snotty, snobby, know-it-all suck-up who thought she was better than us."

Both guys looked at each other. "Nah." They laughed as the pulled off their gloves.

"I hate rectal exams," laughed Alex. "Dude, but that was so worth it."

"I can see why the Nazi loves her job," wheezed George. "It's fun!"

"And that there? That's the spleen," Meredith whispered to Scott.

"Whoa, dude. This observation room's like awesome. Surgery's awesome."

"Where ya from?" asked Meredith. His surfer physique and clothes were definitely not Seattle at all.

"LA," he said. "Visiting my cousin. She's a nurse here. Olivia. Do you know her?"

Meredith nodded slowly. She appeared to be twisting her face away from an expression. Scott couldn't tell whether it was disgust or laughter. "Yes. I know her well. She taking you home?" she asked.

"Yeah."

Meredith's beeper went off. "Time to go, Scott," she said.

"Can we at least wait for the–oh!" Scott yelled. Meredith joined in. Something had exploded, causing nasty liquid to pop out of–whatever it was.

"Okay, now we really gotta go," said Meredith, and yanked him out the door.

"Your lipstick, Addison," said Brianna, handing her the cherry-red stick, "and your gloss." She handed Addison a sheer, roll-on pink tube.

Addison's glittering ocean eyes stared into Brianna's. A matching pair, she thought. Addison felt an urge to be kind to the girl. After all, she was the best volunteer she'd ever seen. And she reminded her a lot about herself. Except she's not socially inept, Addison's brain told her. Come on, do it. She's not a patient. You're not getting involved. Do it.

"How would you like to come with me on my afternoon rounds?" Addison asked, in a very Addison-like way.

Brianna's eyes got wide. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. You'll have to wait in the doorway, though."

"Sure." The girl was positively glowing.

Watching Addison, in the hospital room, Brianna noticed how the light hit her hair and made it shimmer. Brianna pinched a little bit of her own hair, letting the light catch it. We really do look the same, she thought.

"You and your baby can go home today, Mrs. Schlieffer," she smiled.

Mrs. Schlieffer smiled at the baby in her arms, then at Addison. "Thank you, Dr. Shepherd."

"Just doing my job, Mrs. Schlieffer. I'm so glad you two will be okay."

"She's beautiful," Mrs. Schlieffer said.

"I know," Addison said, smiling at the baby.

"Isn't she? But I was actually talking about your daughter." She gestured toward Brianna at the door.

Addison looked surprised. "Oh no, Brianna's not my daughter. She a hospital volunteer, but I can see how you can think that. We look uncannily alike."

"Are you sure?" asked Mrs. Schlieffer.

Addison nodded as her beeper went off. "I have to take this. I'm sorry, Mrs. Schlieffer. Dr. Stevens is on discharge today, but it might take her a while to get here. Please call me when your husband gets here."

Outside, Brianna was getting the feeling that someone wasn't telling her something. I need to figure this out, she thought. She got a very Addison-like look on her face.

Addison came out of the room. "Time for you to go home," she said.

"Okay," said Brianna. She paused. "Um...could you show me where the lobby is? I just get so easily lost in this hospital.

"Sure," smiled Addison, and led her toward the lobby.

Izzie nudged Christina. "Here they come." Izzie looked at the huge lobby of Seattle Grace and realized just how many kids were in this program. The total volume of the room was 3 notches higher. She also saw that the people in the waiting room looked happier in general with all the kids around. They bring life to the hospital, where there is so much death, she thought suddenly.

Izzie zoned out. As she did, a woman came walking up to her. The best word to describe her would be thin. Her body was thin. Her hair was thin. Her clothes seemed to hang on her frame, as did her skin and hair. She looked tired, but when she saw Izzie and Christina, her smile lit up her entire person.

"Hi, I'm Mrs. Pat, Ivy's mother? Where do I sign?" She took the clipboard and signed it. As she did, Ivy practically staggered out of the group and made her way over to her mother, looking like a person traveling through the desert, who'd been quite out of water for some time.

"Did you have a good day? Who are your friends?" Mrs. Pat was oblivious to everything, and right then and there, the interns decided to like her, which was something, because they couldn't stand happy people.

Ivy looked like she was about to hurl.

"Drs. Yang, Stevens, Grey, and Montgomery-Shepherd," Ivy hissed in a voice that could boil water. "Brianna and Scott."

"My Ivy is so driven," Mrs. Pat said fondly. "Shooting for Harvard, Yale, Stanford (a loud snort was heard from Christina's direction), Princeton, all those schools. I always tell her, studying will only get you so far. You have to be a doer." She smiled, and everyone smiled back.

"Well, I'll see you all tomorrow. Nice meeting you." She turned and walked away. Everyone muttered or grunted in reply, then sighed with relief when she turned around. Despite the volume of the room, Ivy's voice carried over all the others

"They're horrible! I had to watch 3 rectal exams! They torture me and treat me like a...a...a..."

"Intern?" they heard her mother say. "All workplaces are like this. You're a slave, grunt, nobody. Get used to it." Ivy was still grumbling as they walked out the door.
The interns, volunteers, and attending made several non-successful attempts to stifle their laughter. Loud snorts were the result.

Olivia came up next, quickly looking to see that George and Alex weren't there. When she saw Izzie, her face fell. Both women quickly achieved a look of complete neutrality on their faces. Not here. Not now.

"Olivia," Izzie said, slightly cold.

"Dr. Stevens," Olivia said nervously. "And company." A small smile formed on her face.

"Sign right here," Christina said. She didn't have time for this.

Olivia obeyed. "Come on, Scott," she said.

As they were walking off, Scott's voice fell to a whisper, but the interns' gossip-hungry ears caught every word.

"I saw George and Alex today. Are you out of your mind? You have serious issues, you know that? And that Izzie chick, there is absolutely nothing wrong with her. And the little one, Meredith? Pretty cool. I don't know why you all say she's a wh-OW!" Olivia had smacked him upside the head.

"That Dr. Shepherd chick is hot," Scott went on, as they walked out the door. "That's McDreamy's wife? I can see why he can't make up his mind–OW!"

They didn't even have time to react, because at that moment a woman came walking up the hallway. The word to describe this one was fake, from her dyed and highlighted hair to her fake-tanned skin. Everything was done flawlessly, yet everything looked fake. Wrong, somehow.

"You must be Brianna's mother," Christina said, very professionally. "Sign here."

The woman signed for a minute, then looked up. Her eyes stopped on the retreating figure of Addison Shepherd. Without a word, she'd pushed past the interns, and was running after the redhead.

"Ma'am..." Izzie began, and ran after her. The others watched in confusion as the woman ran up to Addison and grabbed her shoulder. She yanked it around.

"Addison Montgomery I know you can see me. Turn around." She did.

Her eyes widened. "Lydia..."

"You horrible..." Lydia drew her hand back, but Addison caught it.

"Lydi, no. Not here. Get out of my face." She threw the woman's arm back at her.

"You're not worth it," Lydia snapped. "Brianna, we're going!" she roughly grabbed the girl's wrist and dragged her out of the hospital.

Addison looked defiant. The interns stared at each other. What was that? Meredith thought.

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