I'm so glad you guys are actually liking this story! Also I'm glad so many of you agree with me about the way the show is going. Here's chapter 4- Meredith finally makes an appearance!
Meredith Grey had just gotten out of a seven hour surgery. A seven hour surgery that had all surmounted to nothing because the patient had stroked out anyway. So to say she was not in a good mood would have been an understatement.
"Meredith!" a rushed voice called out behind her. Meredith let out a sharp sigh before turning around.
"Hello Dr. Robbins," she sarcastically answered the blonde surgeon.
Arizona blinked choosing not to acknowledge Meredith's obvious tone of annoyance.
"I need you to talk to Alex. He's not listening to me. And he's doing that thing where he pretends he's fine when he's not. He's taking his third patient this morning up for surgery. And I need you to help him because I can't get him to listen or talk, but you've known him longer and you two have that person thing and you need to help him" she rushed, the concern seeping through her voice.
"Arizona, Alex is a doctor he's paid to treat patients" Meredith rolled her eyes, unamused, before continuing "Now if you're done, I have my own patients to treat"
Arizona's eyes widened with realization,
"Oh god, you don't know."
"Alex!" Meredith's voice echoed through the peds floor. Alex stopped pushing the patient bed and turned around to see an angry looking Meredith and a slightly frightened Arizona behind her.
"Alex, hand over the patient" Meredith ordered, her voice unwavering.
"Mere, I'm fine. I swear. You don't need to be here" he attempted to reassure her before turning around and continuing to push the bed towards the elevator, hoping she wouldn't follow.
No such luck.
"I'm not asking you as a friend anymore Alex, I'm telling you as a hospital board member. Dr. Karev. Hand over the patient to Dr. Robbins."
Alex gritted his teeth in frustration, wanting to protest, but lacking the energy to do so, he handed the patient over. He glared at Meredith before turning to walking away.
Meredith followed, "Alex! Wait!"
Alex turned around visibly angry, "Are you telling me as a friend. Or ordering me as a board member Dr. Grey?" He retorted before glancing at his phone..
"Alex…" Meredith starts her voice softer now.
"Save it Mere, and I really don't need your help. I'm fine." He tell her before looking down at his still quiet phone again.
"Is that why you keep glancing down at you phone, Alex? Because you're fine?" she asked as she timidly stepped towards him "Alex, you're allowed to break, you don't need to always hold it together. You're allowed to let people help you." Meredith tells him as she closes the gap between them with a hug. Alex objected at first but eventually fell into it, his resolve breaking.
"Come on" she tells him leading him away.
Jo was terrified. And not the "I just botched my first solo surgery." terrified or the "I'm about to take my boards." terrified or the "Oh my god Alex, what are you doing?!" terrified. Right now Jo was terrified in the purest sense of the word.
After Josh had died, Jo was led out of her room, her hands risen. And a gun pointed at her head with the promise to shoot if she didn't do what she was told. He led her to a conference room where others were being held.
She'd been there for nearly two hours now. She saw them lead in others, people who looked just as terrified as her. She squeezed her eyes shut at the sound of gunshots, counting them in her head, thirty-two. Thirty-two gunshots, thirty-two people dead. Thirty-three counting Josh. There were probably more, more shots she hadn't heard, more people dead. There were only eighty-seven people in the conference room. And even though she figured a lot of people may have left in the morning like Stephanie and Ben and everyone else from Grey Sloan, or had gotten out when the shooting began. She wasn't naive, she knew if they weren't here, there was a good chance that they were probably dead.
She caught some details from the whispers around her. They'd begun shooting at 7. They were clearing out people a floor at a time, which was probably why it took them so long to get to her. They were killing whoever they wanted, taking only a few hostage. No one knew why they had taken them hostage instead of just killing them. But they weren't complaining.
She didn't get much else, The people who'd been whispering found themselves with a bullet in their head. No one whispered after that.
Meredith lead Alex down to the tunnels, where they'd spent so much of their residency together, where she knew no one else would come bother them.
For a couple of minutes they just sat in silence on the abandoned hospital bed. Alex staring down at his phone wishing it to light up and Meredith staring at Alex staring at his phone.
Alex looked up at Meredith before breaking out in humorless laughter. Tears rolling down his eyes, tears, Meredith figured weren't from laughing too hard.
"I look pathetic, I'm waiting for a phone call that's never gonna come. I should've expected this, I was happy for way too long, and I got too comfortable. And now the universe is going to take that away from me, like it always does." He laughed, his eyes red with tears.
Meredith didn't respond, allowing him let out all the emotion he'd been holding in all morning.
"I keep scrolling through news stories, and all anyone talks about is numbers, estimated casualties, fatalities, rising death tolls. I don't know if Jo's just another number in their statistic. I have no idea what's going on. I can't help her. I can't do anything" Alex kept going, no longer laughing, tears still streaming down his face.
Meredith spoke up this time, "Well, did you try seeing if you could go down there? I'm sure Bailey would let you go. " she asked trying to find a way to help him.
Alex wiped off his face with the back of his hand, "I tried, the only flight leaving from Seattle to San Francisco doesn't leave for another five hours."
"And driv-" Meredith started to ask
"And driving would take thirteen hours to get there." Alex finished, sounding defeated.
"Okay so take the plane." Meredith told him rubbing her hand over his back trying to console him.
"And do what for the next five hours?" He asked, his voice laced with desperation and frustration.
"Hope "
Alex's eyebrows furrowed at the very unMeredith answer.
"Also I've got a liver transplant, scrub in with me."
And that's chapter 4!- I'm actually not sure how I feel about this chapter- It's a lot of just exposition to move the plot along but I'm excited for the coming chapters.
Also this is the last you see from Alex in the near future. Next couple chapters focus on Jo and the action.
Also sidebar, for those of you who write, is it hard to write for Meredith? Because the show is writing her to be just plain mean and I've personally been feeling like if I write her to be even remotely nice that I'm writing her out of character.