Chapter Forty-Nine: Something More Important

"Holy shit!" Cristina said her eyes almost popping out of her head.

"What do we do?" George asked nervously watching Meredith breathe deeply clearly freaking out over the fact that she was going to become a mother sooner than she had thought.

"Everyone stay calm" Izzie said taking control over the situation. "Mer can you stand up?" she asked turning her attention to their main focus – Meredith.

"I don't know" Meredith replied nervously.

"Alex go get a wheel chair, George go tell Dr Bailey what's going on, Cristina find Mark and tell him Meredith is in labour, I'm going to stay here with Mer" Izzie said continuing to reign control over the situation.

"How far apart do you think the contractions are Mer?" Izzie asked trying to get an idea of how far along her labour could be.

"I don't know" Meredith replied uncertain of how long she had been having the pains. She had thought for sure they had just been Braxton Hicks she had been getting them a fair bit over the last couple of months.

"Okay" Izzie replied just as Alex reappeared with a wheelchair. They helped Meredith into the chair and made their way toward the OB floor hoping that Cristina had had luck in locating Mark.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

"Dr Bailey" George called out to his superior as he ran to catch up to her. Usually he wouldn't interrupt when she was having an conversation with the chief like she was but he figured this was too important.

"O'Malley what?" Bailey snapped at him, usually he knew better than to run up to her like that.

"Meredith is in labour" he breathed.

"Damn that girl, I knew she didn't look right this morning but she insisted she work, damn girl should have been up in OB the second she walked in the door" Bailey ranted.

"Alex and Izzie have taken her up there now and Cristina is looking for Dr Sloan" George continued to fill Bailey in.

"Okay well I expect you all back to work once she is settle and Sloan is up there with her, there is no point you all crowding the waiting room" she told him sternly.

"Yes Dr Bailey" he replied before hurrying off to let the others know.

xxxxxxxxxxx

Mark continued his surgery as he heard his pager for the fourth time in the last 10 minutes. "Can someone check that damn pager" he snapped at one of the nurses in the OR.

"Dr Sloan it's a 911 from Dr Yang" the nurse replied.

"Well she will have to wait these skin grafts can't" he said gruffly wondering what Yang would want with him anyway.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Cristina frustratingly clipped her pager back on to the waistband of her scrubs pants and went in search of where they had taken Meredith. Sloan wasn't answering his pager so there wasn't much else she could do. She was sure they didn't expect her to barge into a surgery and tell him his wife was in labour. She could hear Meredith screaming the moment she reached the OB floor.

"Where the hell is Mark?" she snapped at Cristina as she saw her enter the room.

"I don't know Mer, he isn't answering his pager, I think he is in surgery, I left a message with one of the nurses" Cristina informed her friend.

"This is so typical, I go into labour and he is nowhere to be found" Meredith groaned. "My doctor isn't even here" Meredith continued.

"What?" Cristina asked.

"Dr Clarke, it's her day off. They've tried paging her" Meredith explained.

"Well that's just great" Cristina said sliding into the chair beside Meredith's bed. Alex and Izzie had already had to have taken off both being paged. George had done as he was told and returned to work.

"I'm already 6cm dilated Cris, I need Mark to be here" Meredith cried as another contraction took control of her body.

Seeing her friend so worked up over the fact that her husband wasn't there pulled at a part of Cristina and she found herself actually caring.

"I'm going to go see if I can find him" Cristina told her before making her way toward the OR board trying to work out where Sloan was. She analysed the board smiling when she saw his name. He was performing a skin graft in OR 2. She quickly made her way toward the OR. She quickly scrubbed her hands and put a mask over her face.

Everyone looked up as she burst into the room.

"Dr Yang, what in the hell are you doing?" Mark bellowed at her as she stood there breathing heavily from running around looking for him.

"Well if you would read your damn pager you would know" Cristina snapped back not in the mood to put up with superiority crap.

"Excuse me?" he asked confused.

"I paged you 4 times, 911 Meredith" she breathed at him.

"Why what's wrong with Meredith?" he asked immediately concerned about what could be wrong with his wife. "I got 911 pages but nothing about Meredith" he said glaring at the nurse realising she hadn't read the whole page to him.

"You need to get someone up here to take over right now" Cristina told him seriously thinking he would have clicked on to what was happening by now.

"What's wrong with Meredith?" Mark said repeating his previous question still concerned about what could be wrong. She had seemed fine this morning when they had arrived at work.

"Your not so bright this afternoon" Cristina teased him. "Meredith is in labour, so you better get someone to finish this surgery so that you can get up there and hold her hand and listen to her scream, I don't know how much more of it I can take" Cristina ranted at him.

Mark's face immediately changed to shock. Meredith was in labour. He was about to be a father. They were about to be parents. He didn't care who was going to finish the surgery he had to get out of there. He left instructions with one of the scrub nurses to get another surgeon in there to finish up; he had somewhere more important to be.