Hello again my loyal readers!
Here we are at chapter five! I really hope you all enjoy this one :) So let's just get on with it!

Italics indicate a flashback.

Enjoy!

Chapter 5

"Damn, Webber. Someone run over your puppy?"

Labs, scans, charts, textbooks, and case files were strewn all around Meredith as she balanced a pen between her lips to free her hands to sift through a nearby book. She had holed herself up in a small conference room in what she assumed was hours ago and had lost all track of time in the process.

Now Cristina Yang was standing in front of her, dressed in street clothes and looking ready to go home. Until that moment she had totally forgotten about their plans for a drink.

"Damn it," Meredith cursed under her breath. "What time is it?"

"Sometime after nine," Cristina answered, collapsing into an empty chair. "What in God's name are you doing?"

"It's nine already?" she asked, temporarily ignoring Cristina's question. Grabbing at her waistband, she unclipped her pager to make sure she hadn't missed a page about Katie in her researching haze. To be honest she was surprised she hadn't been interrupted recently.

It took her being paged three times to Katie's room because her patient was "bored" or had some other complaint about the food or television reception before she hijacked an intern to deal with her instead. Said intern was under strict orders to only page Meredith if Katie Bryce was having an actual medical emergency.

Unfortunately for Katie, her intern did have to get Meredith about an hour after she had left the intern to deal with the young pageant queen. Katie had started seizing again for the third time that day and, this time, started coding in the process.

"Dr. Webber, what do I do?" asked the shaky voice of her intern beside her. Nurses were rushing to administer drugs to Katie's flailing body while Meredith wracked her brain for what to do next. Nothing they were trying was stopping the seizure.

"Did you page Dr. Shepherd?" she demanded.

"Yes. Same time I paged you."

"Well page him again," she fired back.

Just as the young doctor scampered out of the room, Katie's vitals dropped and her monitors started sounding in alarm.

"Code blue!" screamed one of the nurses.

"I need a crash cart in here!" Meredith yelled into the hall, rushing to Katie's side. As soon as the cart arrived, Meredith was handed the prepped paddles.

"Charge to 200….Clear!"

No change.

"Okay, charge again to 300…Clear!"

Still nothing.

"Charge again to 360…"

The monitors were still sounding in protest and Katie showed no sign of change.

"Come on, Katie," pleaded Meredith under her breath. "Charge again."

"After 60 seconds, aren't you supposed to administer another drug?" questioned the timid intern. Meredith wasn't quite sure when he had returned, but right now she was less than thrilled by his presence. With a final glare to the intern, Meredith craned her neck to address the nurse running the crash cart behind her.

"Charge. Again."

At that final shock, the heart monitor filled the room with the steady beeping they had all been waiting for.

"Blood pressure's coming back up," a nurse breathed in relief.

Handing the paddles off, Meredith finally let out the breath she didn't even realize she had been holding in.

Almost simultaneously, Derek Shepherd came whipping around the corner and into the hospital room.

"What the hell happened?" he demanded.

"She had a seizure and her heart stopped," Meredith explained, coming around the bed to allow Derek room to check her vitals for himself.

"You were supposed to be monitoring her," he accused harshly. Meredith's mind immediately wondered who this guy was and where the Derek that flirted with her in the stairwell had gone.

"I checked on her and sh-"

"I got her," Derek interrupted severely, "Just…Just go." He wouldn't even make eye contact with her and busied himself with examining the patient.

Dejectedly, Meredith backed out of the patient room and into the hall.

Where the hell did her new Derek go?

That last thought was enough to mentally kick Meredith out of the memory.

Where in the world did that come from? Her Derek?

New? Yes. The Derek she experienced last night and encountered multiple times this morning was definitely a change (and a welcome change at that) from the Derek Shepherd she had come to know over the last five years.

But where in hell did she get off mentally referring to him as hers? For God's sake, the man was still technically married!

"Okay, so, you've been silent for a concerning amount of time now. And seeing as we haven't really been friends for that long, if you're having a psychotic break or something, I'm so not obligated to deal with it. At least not without a few drinks in me first." Cristina quipped from her chair.

"Sorry," Meredith replied, shaking herself from her thoughts. "I'm…I just…"

She was starting to sound as scattered as she felt.

"I kissed Derek."

Cristina raised her eyebrow. "You kissed Derek?"

"In the elevator." She honestly didn't know why she blurted out that piece of information. But she didn't really see a way to back pedal on the situation so there was nothing left to do but roll with it.

"You kissed Shepherd in the elevator?"

"I was having a bad day. I am having a bad day," she amended.

"This is what you do on your bad days? Make out with Doctor McDreary?"

"He's not really McDreary anymore," Meredith defended. "He's….Well I don't know what he is but he's different…"

"Since when do you make out with Derek Shepherd? Trying to get back at Karev?" Cristina inquired, mildly intrigued.

"No. Derek's got nothing to do with Alex. Honestly, I don't know what the hell we're doing together, but I think I have to end it," Meredith muttered almost bitterly. "Whatever 'it' is."

"He's married, isn't he?"

Meredith shot Cristina her best 'Oh God, give me a break and please don't even go there' look. To be honest, she was surprised Cristina seemed to be taking all this new information in stride. Surely the married head of neuro making out with his resident in an elevator would be a more shocking scandal.

"I'm not judging," Cristina held her hands up in surrender. "I'm just asking a question. Seeing as you've been on the other side of cheating, I didn't take you for one to go after a married man."

"He's getting a divorce," Meredith said defensively. "I'm not sure who knows yet, so don't go spreading it, but the baby isn't his. His wife's been cheating on him."

"How do you know all this?"

"He told me," Meredith shrugged. "We started talking last night at Joe's after you left."

Meredith hesitated a moment, attempting to decide if she should continue and devalue more about what exactly happened that night. As Cristina already pointed out, they hadn't exactly been friends for very long, but it felt so good to actually talk to someone about this.

"Why is your face all weird?" Cristina asked bluntly. She was nothing if not straight forward.

"If I tell you something, you can't lecture me, make a face, or tell anybody."

"Okay," Cristina agreed, slightly confused.

"We had sex," Meredith confessed in one breath. Ducking her head slightly in apprehension, she waited for Cristina to react.

Not really knowing how to respond, Cristina pressed her lips together tightly and raised her eyebrows to open her eyes wide, effectively breaking Meredith's second rule.

"Stop making a face!" Meredith commanded. "We were both upset, got drunk, and the next thing I knew we were naked. It won't happen again."

"Mhm," she replied skeptically, her 'face' remaining in place.

"It won't!"

"Okay!"

"It was a onetime thing," she insisted. "I told you, I'm ending it…This…Whatever we're doing."

"What are you guys doing?"

"I don't know," Meredith sighed, throwing her pen down dismally. "Just when I really started to think that somehow he's different than the man we've called McDreary for the past 5 years, he turns around and yells at me for no reason. In front of everyone. Including my intern!"

"What'd he yell at you for?"

"We have this teen beauty pageant contestant who came into the pit for a twisted ankle she got during talent rehearsal. She ended up seizing for no reason when she went for x-rays. Dr. Shepherd and I have spent all day trying to figure out what's wrong with her, but her history's no help, her labs are clean, her scans are pure, but she keeps grand mal seizing. And the last time she seized, she coded. I had to shock her three times before we got her back. That's when Shepherd finally answered his page and then basically blames me for her coding. Like I have control over that. He all but kicked me out of the room!"

"Ass," Cristina agreed. "Want to complain more about the bastard over some shots?"

"I can't," Meredith moaned. "Katie's getting worse and Derek has no idea what to do for her. I've been sitting here for hours trying to think of something to help."

"Tumor?"

"CT's clean."

"What about infection?"

"No. No white count, no CT lesions, no fever, nothing in her spinal tap," Meredith rattled off dejectedly.

"What about an aneurysm?"

"No blood on the CT and no headaches," she answered again. "Also no drug use, no pregnancy, and no trauma," she listed as she indicated to the various labs and reports.

"I'm out of answers!" Meredith collapsed forward on the cluttered table. "What if we don't find anything?"

"You mean what if she dies?"

"Yeah."

"This is probably gunna sound really bad, but then you just wasted all day researching a case for no surgery."

"She's just never going to get to turn into a person. The sum total of her existence will be almost winning Miss Teen Whatever," Meredith mumbled. "You know what her pageant talent is?"

"They have talent?"

"Rhythmic gymnastics," she said with a mocking grin.

"Oh, come on," Cristina managed to groan and laugh at the same time.

"What is rhythmic gymnastics?" Meredith stumbled over the words while she laughed. "I don't know. I can't even say it. I don't know what it is."

Cristina was still laughing about the absurd activity. "Maybe it's something with a ball and a…What?" she stopped her laughing at the suddenly serious look that claimed Meredith's features. "Meredith? What?"

"I have to go," Meredith jumped up and started grabbing at papers. "I have to go find Derek."

"Mer, what is it?"

"I think I know what's wrong," she hurriedly explained. "So I need to go. Right now."

Before Cristina even had a chance to respond, Meredith was through the conference room door and sprinting down the hall in pursuit of Derek Shepherd.

Thanks for reading!
Reviews are greatly appreciated :D