It had been two weeks since I had broken off my engagement with Jack and so far I had only had three emotional breakdowns, so I guess you could say I was doing pretty well. I moved in with Meredith and George and was almost done unpacking and Cristina forced me to cut all ties with Jack. I lay on my bed in my wedding dress, sighing repeatedly. There was a knock at the door and Meredith walked in and sat at the end of my bed.
"I have to take my wedding dress back today," I say, initiating the conversation. "If I don't take it back today then I can't get a full refund and it's almost two thousand dollars. I can't believe I spent two thousand dollars on a wedding dress."
"Oh, Alexis... Do you want me to come with you?" She questions, lying down next to me. I nod and soon George walks in and sits at the end of the bed, too.
"What's going on in here?" George asks.
"I don't want to go anywhere... I just want to stay here and drink and cry. I need to do some drinking and some more crying." I reply, rolling over and closing my eyes.
"No, no, come on, Alexis. You can get through this." George assures and Meredith begins stroking my hair.
"You have to go to work, it'll help take your mind off of everything that's going on. You need to get a refund on your wedding dress... You could buy yourself something really special with the money. Doesn't that sound good?" Meredith suggests and I sigh. As much as it sounds good, I can't help the emptiness I feel inside.
"I just want to stay at home, I'll call in sick or something." I shrug.
"Alright...we need to call Cristina."
"George... Please can you give us some space?" Cristina asks as she walks into the room. George nods and leaves, closing the door behind him. Cristina pulls up a chair by the bed and sighs, reclining. "Alright... You have thirty seconds to give me a decent explanation for this or I'm literally going to force you out of bed and in to that hospital."
"I don't want to do anything, Cristina, I just want to grieve. My entire body hurts and I just feel an emptiness. I know that he's not good for me and I'm relieved that it's over but I love him, I love him and everything hurts and I just want the pain to go away. Tell me you understand, tell me that you understand what I'm saying." I explain and begin to cry. Meredith sits up and sighs.
"I understand how you're feeling, Alexis, but I can tell you first hand that staying at home and crying and drinking doesn't take away the pain. The pain lets you know that you're feeling, it means that what happened meant something to you. It's okay to feel the pain but you have to teach yourself when you have to power through the pain and be strong. You can be strong." Meredith assures.
"I refuse to let you sit here and cry for hours and drink to fill the emptiness. I refuse to let you behave like this because of somebody who doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve this from you because he's not worth it. One day you're going to realise that leaving him is the best thing that you've ever done and something so, so much better is going to come along." Cristina states. "So you're going to get out of bed, put on some clean clothes and go to work."
"Okay." I sigh and Cristina helps me up and I stare into the mirror. "God, I love this dress so much. It makes me feel so pretty."
"It's beautiful, you look stunning." Meredith says. There was a knock at the door and Meredith answered it and mumbled something, before closing it to. "It's just George making sure you're okay. Are you ready to go?"
I spent my morning in the OR with Burke who asked me to scrub in on a lobectomy and then I did charts and prepared somebody for an operation. Bailey told me that after lunch I'd be with her in the ER with Karev doing sutures and taking on any available cases that came up, so at least I wasn't properly working with him. I had been avoiding him since we kissed after he got in to a fight with Jack; I didn't know if it meant anything to him or me, but I know that it was wrong because I had quite literally just broken up with my fiancee.
"My sister called me earlier and left me a voicemail," I say to Cristina and George as we sit down to eat. "She's almost nine months pregnant and she's having a c section here in a few weeks. Anyway, she called me to tell me that she's in town with my Mom and they want to see me."
"That sounds nice." George smiles, taking a bite out of his sandwich.
"No it's not. I have issues with my Mother, as much as I love her. She wants to talk to me about Jack, I know it." I assure, wrapping my hands around my coffee.
"Tell me about it." Cristina says with raised eyebrows.
"My Mom is...unconventional, to say the least. She's going to try and convince me to get back together with Jack; for some reason she really approves of him and I know I'm going to be in a lot of trouble when I tell her no." I laugh a little, because it sounds so ridiculous. You'd assume that your parents would accept most of your decisions, but...I guess not.
I stand outside with Doctor Bailey at seven at night, waiting for an ambulance to come with a patient inside. We don't know anything about them or what happened, just that it's an emergency and is literally a matter of life and death. As the ambulance pulls up, I crack my neck and the doors fly open, rushing a bed out immediately.
"Fifteen year old caucasian female, name is Jessica Steven, suspected attempted suicide; she swallowed a lot of pills and was found unconscious by her parents." The paramedic explains as we begin wheeling her inside. "She's unconscious but she's breathing."
"Alright Green, wheel her to any available room right now, I'm going to page Karev and deal with the parents, you need to pump her stomach immediately." She orders.
"You're not going to be there?" I question and begin to panic.
"You have this, Green, trust me. You've done this before, you can do it again. Alex is going to be there to help you. This is your case." She reassures. "Now go."
I carefully rush Jessica down the hallway while attempting not to have a panic attack and trying to find an available room. The second I find one, I secure her bed and begin hooking her up to a machine and mentally preparing for what I'm about to do. Her levels are low but she is breathing and she's not quite stable, and Alex rushes in a few seconds later with the equipment we need to pump her stomach. Alex gives her the medicine to numb her throat and I prepare to carefully slide the tube down her oesophagus, being careful not to make a hole.
"Alright, are you ready?" Alex asks and I nod and the contents of her stomach begin being sucked out through the tube and the only thing we can do is watch her levels and wait.
"We need to wash out her stomach with saline, she's only fifteen." I say and Alex nods, doing as I say. I stand on her right side and stare at her stats and let Alex continue. "Her stats are dropping, we're losing her, why are we losing her?" I use my stethoscope to check for a heartbeat and I don't hear anything. I pull Jessica on to her back while Alex pulls up the defibrillator and hands me the paddles.
"Charge to two hundred." I say and press the metal against her chest, closing my eyes and waiting for the shock. No change. "Okay, do it again."
"Higher?"
"Two fifty." We shock her again and she still doesn't come back. "Come on, Jessica, come on... You can do this for me, just pull through for me... Okay, two fifty again." We try it again and we wait and wait for her to come back, but she flatlines.
"Should I call it?" Alex questions and I shake my head.
"No. I'm not giving up, do it again." I reply, pressing the metal against her chest again. He doesn't charge the machine and I stare at him. "Alex, do it again."
"Alexis, we've lost her, we need to call it." He states.
"No! We've spent the last ten minutes pumping out her stomach of drugs and I'm not prepared to give up now. We haven't lost her yet, we haven't done everything that we can. Charge to two fifty." He shakes his head but charges the defibrillator and I wait for the shock. Her body jolts and the machine portrays her heartbeat again and I rest my head on the metal of her bed, sighing with relief. Alex takes the defibrillator paddles off me and I squeeze my eyes shut and try to control my erratic heartbeat.
"We did it, we actually did it..." I say, looking at Alex. I can tell that he regrets telling me to stop and he doesn't have to apologise for it for me to know that he regrets it. "I'm going to go and get her a chart, I'll be right back."