Chapter 11 – Stay alive

A/N: Oh my god. I was worried I'd get more hate (because some comments were very explicit personal attacks that I removed directly) after that last update, but you have been so incredibly lovely. People still suck, but now at least I know there are nice ones out there as well. Thanks a bunch! Now, let's just leave all that behind and actually proceed with the story. It's about darn time.

There's a rhythm in rush these days

Where the lights don't move and the colors don't fade

Leaves you empty with nothing but dreams

In a world gone shallow

In a world gone lean

(Stay alive - José Gonzales)

This wasn't happening.

Meredith Grey didn't want to cry. Not again.

Fate seemed to continuously throw these kinds of things her way, be it awful parents, unfaithful spouses or miscarriages… And now it had given her Derek Shepherd. Mc-fucking-Dreamy. The man that had helped her take Seattle by storm. That dominated the OR and made all the nurses swoon with his charm. The complete ass who had comforted her in her despair, had made her open up her heart once again only to later put it in the mixer and drink it as a smoothie for his health-nutty breakfast.

She didn't want to cry again.

Yet, here she sat. She could practically hear the gossip network booting up and spreading its news like wildfire amongst the employees of Seattle Grace Mercy West.

This was it. Meredith was sure of it.

She had hit rock bottom and had no idea of how to get up again. She was sitting on the floor in the corner of a stairwell somewhere. She had no idea of how she'd gotten there, much less in what part if the hospital she was. About five hours had passed since her very closed off feelings had been displayed like a billboard sign for the whole world to see. Or was it just a couple of minutes? She couldn't tell.

He had actually gone back to his wife. On the day she had told him she loved him to his face for the first time, he had left her and gone back to his cheating, lying, bitch of a spouse.

Meredith would have laughed at the irony if she'd actually had anything inside her. She was so empty right now, she couldn't even feel the humiliation of Addison hearing it all. She knew she should, but all she felt was coldness. Coldness and emptiness.

Wow… didn't that sound like a Coldplay song. Without knowing it Meredith started humming "Yellow" silently to herself. My god, she must be going mad. She had almost come to the chorus when she heard someone sitting down next to her.

"You know your life is crap when Coldplay lyrics are starting to make sense," the voice said. Meredith almost jerked in surprise. She hadn't yet come to the point where she could form coherent sentences. Still, the fact that Alex Karev had sat down next to her shivering wreck of a person did require some kind of reaction. So, she blinked and directed her gaze at him. He kind of looked as he always did, smug and cocky as the day he was born. Still, he looked sad somehow. It was obvious that he hadn't heard about it, or he wouldn't be sitting here. She sighed slightly in relief and relaxed a bit.

"You should put that on a T-shirt," she croaked silently. Her smile was pathetic but there nonetheless. Alex smiled back a bit, suddenly not as cocky as before. He seemed to have some kind of own problem on his mind, because he didn't react when she wiped her tears away from her cheeks, trying and failing to act normal.

They both sat silently for a while, pondering and taking some weird kind of comfort from each other's presence. The fact that another human soul that didn't know about the catastrophe yet, made Meredith calm somehow. Suddenly Alex disrupted the quiet.

Damn.

"All right. I tell you something and you tell me something, okay?" he said quietly and Meredith sighed. So much for ignorance. Still, he was bound to find out sooner rather than later anyway.

"Fine," she stated quietly. "You first."
Alex nodded. He took a deep breath, gathering his courage before speaking.

"My dad... the one I haven't met since he left when I was a kid... is in the ER. He's on drugs as always and wrapped his car around a pole." Alex' voice was sincere and absolutely defeated. If Meredith hadn't seen this side of him she would never have believed it existed. She didn't respond to his statement, as he didn't seem like a person that needed a lot of comforting words. He just needed someone to listen, and she was a great candidate (Being dark and twisty and all that.) Perhaps they weren't so different after all.

He seemed to be waiting for her to say something, so she found her courage and just blurted it out before thinking too much.

"I told Derek I loved him for the first time today, not knowing he had already left me for his wife." She swallowed. "I just rambled like some maniac about how happy I was… And then… I found out. And then…" she sniffed. "Then I realized Addison and George and a bunch of nurses were listening to it all through the intercom." She put her forehead in her palm and breathed deeply, trying to keep down the river of tears that were threatening to spill once again. The rush of sadness that she had thought she would never feel again was breaking her walls. She needed to keep them together unless she wanted to break.

Suddenly she felt it. Alex's hand was uncertainly rubbing her shoulder and before she knew it she was leaning into his side with his warm arm around her.

He certainly was no Derek, but it still felt nice to know someone cared.

After a moment Alex made a small chuckle. He let out a puff of air and smiled ironically out at nothing.

"Well, fuck," he stated, amused at the ridiculousness. "You win."
Meredith just snorted.

They sat silently for another couple of minutes before Alex stood up and brought her with him. He stalked determinately down the stairs and Meredith followed hesitantly.

"Where are we going?" she asked uncertainly, holding her arms around her abdomen as if to keep herself from turning into a puddle on the floor. Alex looked at her with a smirk.

"We're gonna get drunk."

"… And Derek was all: 'I'm sorry, Meredith. She's my wife.' Hah! Like I didn't already know that!" a totally wasted Meredith Grey slurred to an equally drunk Alex Karev inside of Joe's a couple of hours later. They sat at the bar heaving shots as if they were water, leaning into each other and laughing at their fucked up lives.

Alex chuckled at her words. "Schepperd. Stupid Schepperd. Of course you did," he murmured supportively into his glass.

"Yeah." She stated and waved for Joe for the umpteenth time. "Because his w-wife slept…" she hiccupped "…with my huzzband!" she said, pouting at Joe's shaking head across the bar.

"Mhhm…" Alex concurred.

"I saw it," she said.

"Mm."

"We both did." She nodded to herself. "And now he's back with that… Sl-slut!" she exclaimed drunkenly into the bar table. She really loved tequila. It was an amazing drink. Suddenly she stiffened as another realization hit.

"And now I can't go home," she whined. Alex looked dangerously close to falling asleep but he managed to grunt something similar to "why", which Meredith seemed to find sufficient.

"Because he'll be THERE!" she wailed, not noticing the heads turning towards the pair. "He lives there," she whispered, horrified. "What if he wants her to move in?"

When she didn't get a reply from Alex she tried to shake his shoulder slightly. The only response she gained was a loud snore. Right at that moment Joe reached them and took their glasses. Meredith tried to protest, but couldn't find the words.

"All right, you two. You've had enough for tonight. A cab is waiting outside to take you home."
When Meredith pouted at him he simply shook his head.

"Wake Karev up and go out that door right now…" he pointed at the entrance. "…Or I'm calling for Derek to come get you."

The horrified look on Meredith's face almost broke Joe's heart. He'd heard her sad tale explained in detail tonight, and suffered with her. Silently, he vowed that next time Derek Shepherd came through these doors to drink, he would find some spit in his glass of scotch.

"Alex...!" Meredith whispered loudly. He hardly stirred.

"Alex! We're here," she said, and finally he opened his sleepy eyes where he lied in the back of the cab. With a slight groan he sat up properly and looked around. His eyebrows rose when he realized where they were.

"We're at my place," he stated, confused. Meredith giggled at him.
"How do you know where I live?" he asked and yawned.

"I woke you up and asked you. Then you fell asleep again," she sighed. The Cab driver coughed slightly, causing Meredith to giggle again, excuse herself, search her handbag and start throwing change from it at the floor in disoriented movements. The pair in the back laughed delightedly as the coins fell everywhere, while the driver sighed in exasperation before shooing them out the door.

Well out in the night, Meredith shivered from the cold while watching Alex search his pockets for the house key. When he found it they both took turns trying to fit it into the lock.

After many failed attempts, where Alex's curses were followed by Meredith's giggles, they finally made it inside of his apartment. She leaned heavily on her equally drunk partner, who seemed to have problems standing upright himself. Unsteadily, they made their way towards the bed where they proceeded to collapse in a pile before breaking out in snores.

The next morning was a mess. First, Meredith didn't know where she was, and somehow thought she was back in collage where she had found some guy at a party and drunkenly fallen asleep in his bed. She instantly changed to one-night-stand mode, looking for exits and possible weapons around her. The only thing she saw from her laying position was an empty room with a bureau in the corner. On top of it stood a large box of condoms and she sighed heavily. Oh god. A frat guy.

When she started to move though, the headache hit her like a sledgehammer in the frontal lobe, and she hurried towards what she hoped was a bathroom before vomiting copiously and paying great respect to the porcelain god.

With a hand on her forehead, she tried to remember what she could from the night before. She obviously wasn't at collage, since she now could recall her entire life up until the point where her and Alex had taken body shots from each other's belly-buttons.

Then the reason for her depressing behavior hit her and she leaned forward to puke once again at the recollection. The taste of bile in her throat matched her mood perfectly.

Right. Derek. The asshole… that I still love. That's what started all this.

She sat down heavily on the floor, staring into nothing for a very long time. This wasn't happening. This. Wasn't. Her life.

Deep breaths.

Go to your happy place, Meredith. Ahh… serenity.

Green leaves... Freshly cut grass... Derek's arms around her as they made sweet love on the…

Stop it!

Suddenly her inner fight was interrupted by a large body crashing through the open bathroom doorway and the sound of heavy retching. After recovering from the shock, she awkwardly patted Alex' back while he released most of his insides into the toilet.

When he was done they both sat down looking at each others' pathetic forms. Alex looked like she was feeling. His hair stood out in all direction and the bags under his eyes could probably fill her entire shopping list of groceries. After a while Alex groaned in pain, clutching his head with his hands.

"Oh damn. How much did I drink last night?" he whined. Meredith grimaced as she herself rubbed her temples, while rising up in search for aspirins.

"Too much," she responded as she found them in the bathroom cabinet. She handed him a couple, and he quickly downed them dry, looking positively wretched.

"I'm never drinking again," he deadpanned, to which she laughed.

"That's what we always say. Yet, we never mean it," Meredith smiled before sighing and flushing the toilet. "Ugh. I need a shower," she continued, stretching her sore muscles. Alex raised an eyebrow but didn't move an inch.

"You want company?" he asked lewdly, gifting her with one of his smirks. It looked pathetic combined with his hangover, but at least he tried. Ugh. Apparently the sincerity from last night disappeared with the alcohol.

She sighed, irritated, and motioned towards the exit. "Out," she ordered and pulled him towards the door before closing and locking it firmly.

Coming to work that morning was like walking into a gay bar where she was a straight guy dressed in only his underwear. Her fears had been sound. The news about the evening before had spread like Gangnam Style throughout the hospital, and not a single pair of eyes was directed in another direction. The whispers reached her ears from every direction and her pounding head ached just a little bit more because of it.

"Chill, Grey," Alex whispered from beside her stiff form. "They are only staring at you because you look like you were just run over by a truck." His words were funny, but Meredith didn't smile.

Suddenly, her body was jerked away from the lobby towards an on-call room. She followed like a limp doll and didn't realize who had captured her before they were face to face. When her confused eyes locked with Christina's she sighed in relief and sat down heavily on a bed. She immediately put her head in her hands.

"Mer," Christina said. She pried Meredith's hands away from her head and tried to stop the way she was rocking back and forth like a mad person.

"Mer, It's not as bad as you think!" she said decidedly. Meredith stopped and stared straight into her friend's eyes. This was exactly as bad as she thought.

"What?" she snorted. "The entire hospital doesn't know that I'm the pathetic Head of General who couldn't keep her mouth shut about being in love with a married asshole of a man in front of an entire team of surgeons?" Her voice was seething. Christina grimaced and looked at her friend with as much sympathy as she was capable of showing.

"Yeah well… Not that part. That's still pretty bad," she started and Meredith began to rock again.

"Hey stop it!" Chris said, holding her still. "You have to pull yourself together, Meredith. I heard the gossip. All of it, actually, and it's quite interesting."

Meredith sighed and leaned heavily against the wall behind her, motioning to her friend that she was listening. Christina took her cue.

"So, basically…" She took a deep breath. "After you left that gallery last night McAss tried to follow. He couldn't find you, so instead the idiot went down to the OR where he started yelling at Addison that they 'needed to talk'. When she said she couldn't leave her patient, he basically mentioned the word divorce, and then she left the delivering to George and went after him," Christina explained seriously.
Hardly taking a breath, she continued; "A nurse heard yelling through the scrub room doors, and... and apparently he didn't know the intercom was on. He was royally pissed at Satan for not saying anything to cut you off. Then he stormed out of the room, leaving the witch crying after him." Christina's shook her head to herself. "Basically, the spin from the gossipers is that Addison is a horrid bitch and that Derek is a pathetic and ball-less loser." When she finished her speech she sat down next to her friend, leaning into her side without making too much body contact. She was Christina Yang, after all. She didn't cuddle. They sat silently for a moment.

"Oh! And you are an adulterous wreck who can't control her mouth diarrhea," Christina added nonchalantly, making her friend pull a small smile and shake her head. Then Meredith sighed and rubbed her face.

She was glad Christina had told her this. Still, the facts didn't really help right now. She was still alone, Derek still lived in her house and Addison Montgomery-Shepherd would hardly be leaving this city for a while if staying meant she could keep her husband. Meredith's eyes closed in horror as the fact that they all worked together started to sink in. She choked a sob and buried her head in Christina's shoulder as the tears started streaming.

It was going to be a long day.