Notes: Thanks for all the reviews (and cough keep em coming cough)! Here's the next chapter...

Chapter Four

In Which the Heroine Has a Very Uncomfortable Conversation

"What are you -,"

I cut Cristina off and sit at the foot of Burke's hospital bed. He's looking at me like he wants me to leave, but is too polite to say anything. Cristina doesn't have that problem.

"Get out," she says.

"No."

She spits out her coffee. Thankfully, it lands in the cup.

"Meredith, we have exactly nineteen minutes left of lunch before I have to go back to Dr. Bitch. I do not have time for you. Go eat with George, or something."

"I slept with McDreamy and he just told me he left Addison," I say.

She puts her fork down.

"Okay, so, lunch, then?"

"Yeah."

She turns to Burke, about to tell him something, but he cuts her off.

"Go. Please, go. Talk about this somewhere that isn't here," he says.

She looks amused.

"Can't take the icky sex talk?" she smirks. "I thought you're a surgeon."

"Is it wrong that I don't want to hear about my friend and colleague having sex?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

How he can manage to look arrogant and superior from a hospital bed I will probably never know. Sadly, I actually like him, when I should hate him, because it isn't fair that anyone can pull that off.

"Yes," she answers, but she smiles.

I roll my eyes at both of them, but make sure to hide my own smile. It's still sort of weird to see them together, even though they've been a couple for almost a year now. Well, officially been a couple, as opposed to the "casual" sex they were involved in before. I guess it's because they're them, you know. Cristina and Burke, the least emotional (publicly, anyway) people in the hospital. So even though everyone knows about them, there is a strict "no comment" policy in effect. So I can't smile at them being all dysfunctional couple-y. Which brings us back to me, and my not-married-anymore ex-boyfriend.

"Come on," Cristina tells me, grabbing her salad and water bottle from Burke's tray (where the cafeteria is involved, salad or a sandwich is always the way to go).

We head downstairs to the cafeteria and spot George, Callie, and strangely, Alex, sitting together at a table. Well, maybe "together" isn't the right word for it, since George and Callie are sitting together, but Alex is eating like there's no tomorrow on the other side.

We sit down in the chairs between them, and George hands me a muffin, pointedly eyeing the place where my tray should be. But, seriously, he expects me to eat when Derek just announced he left his wife? Okay, so he doesn't know yet. He should still know that something is up.

"So you slept with McDreamy," Cristina says without preamble.

I cringe. Could she have been any blunter? Well, yeah, actually, she can, since this is Cristina we're talking about, but still.

George chokes on his sandwich, and Callie calmly thumps him on the back until he can breathe again.

"Thanks," he tells Callie, before rounding on me. "You slept with Dr. Shepherd?"

"You already know the answer to that," I say.

"When? Where? How?" he sputters.

I really don't want to answer that. Especially the "how" part of it. But even Alex has looked up and is waiting for my answer, which means there is no way I can get out of it.

"Last night, at the prom, and you know how," I reply quickly.

"At the prom?" is probably repeated about six times between the three of them. I say "three" because Callie already…well, Callie knows, and we'll leave it at that.

"Geez, why don't you just wear a sign?" Alex asks. " "Pet me, I'm a whore.""

"Shut up," I snap. Cristina throws a tomato at him, but that might just be because she doesn't like raw tomatoes.

She shakes her head at me.

"Only in the miserable train wreck you call your life could something like this happen," she tells me.

"Thanks," I say.

"What are you going to do?" George asks me.

I hesitate. Cristina pins me with a shrewd look.

"Are you going to take him back?" she asks, ignoring everyone else's reactions.

We, and just about everyone else at this hospital, know that I'm still in love with him, and it seems like he still loves me, but is that enough? He's never even said "I love you", not to me, anyway. He chose Addison. I offered him everything I could, and he still chose Addison, the wife he lied to me about.

What I want, more than anything, is for the two of us to have a fairy tale ending. You know, a riding off into the sunset, eternal devotion, happily ever after sort of deal. But the chances of that happening to me are about negative 7. Seriously. Relationships are supposed to be built on trust (according to Oprah, anyway), and Derek and I – we have none. I cheated on my boyfriend, and he lied to me and cheated on his wife. There really is no getting around that. I can't have happily ever after with him, I know, but he makes me…he makes me want too much. There never is enough with him, and…

Fear can be a powerful motivator, but sometimes, there are other feelings that can balance it out.

"I don't know," I say softly.

"What do you mean by "take him back"? He's married," George says.

"No, he's not," I reply.

"Not anymore," Cristina agrees.

George looks between the two of us and finally gets it.

"He signed the papers, then?"

"Yeah."

"We all know you're gonna end up together eventually," Alex tells me, looking unusually serious. "Why are you even bothering to pretend you won't?"

"It's not that easy," I try to explain. "He- We- There's no trust." I finally say.

Alex rolls his eyes.

"That's the best you've got? Seriously?" he asks.

Cristina and George are surprisingly silent, and I can tell they think he has a point. I sort of think he has a point, too, but he's trying to make it simpler than it is, and do I really want to take relationship advice from Alex?

I am about to say something, but he continues before I can.

"Yeah, yeah, I get that he was an ass, and he screwed up and chose his wife, and left you so messed up that even I felt sorry for you, but you guys want each other so much it's sickening, so just go with it. Everyone deserves a second chance, because it sucks like hell when you realize that you just wrecked the best thing that ever happened to you."

His voice gets kind of bitter towards the end, and we all know why: Izzie. But even if Alex wasn't…himself, we wouldn't really have a response to that, because he deserves what he's got. He cheated on Izzie; made her sad, depressed, and way too Christmas happy; and then she fell in love with someone else, who died and left her so broken that he doesn't stand a chance right now. While it's sad, since Alex isn't all that bad, it's true, and if he feels regret, it's nothing more than can be expected.

But if Derek feels like Alex says he does, does he deserve it? And even if he does deserve it, do I really care?

Eventually, Callie breaks the silence with a comment about something or the other, and we manage to have a fairly normal lunch. Except Derek is constantly in the back of my mind, just waiting until I'm alone so that the thoughts can spring out and overwhelm me again.

I'm stuck doing sutures while Mrs. Collins rests, since there's nothing else I can do for her right now. Just like I predicted, Derek is the only thing I can think about. Of all the times to be right, why does this have to be one of them?

Should I take him back? Should I stay with Finn and try to make things work?

Ugh. Even when he's not here, he's here.

You know what, I'm just going to "go with it", for now, and see what he does. It seems like everything I do turns out to be wrong, so he can try and fix things for once.

Hmm, even I am surprised at how mellow I suddenly feel about this. Still, it's a good surprise (which is rare enough), so I guess I won't be too worried.

Of course, my mellow mood lasts about ten seconds. That, in case you're wondering, is the amount of time it took me to get on the elevator with the charts I had to deliver. And no, Derek wasn't the person I was trapped in the elevator with. It wasn't Addison, either.

It was Mark.