(no subject)
Eleven.
Sharp.
"He hates me," Meredith said for the millionth time that day, this time at her kitchen table as she shared a late-night pint of convenience store-brand Rocky Road ice cream with Cristina.
"McDreamy does not hate you. Just stop it," Cristina said. "If you want to know about hate, you should hear what Burke is saying in my head right now."
"Burke doesn't hate you, either," Meredith said. "His mother, maybe, but him, no."
Cristina shrugged. "Yeah, but I don't do well with moms. I just don't." She took a last spoonful. "I think I might be too powerful for them. They may fear me."
"We all fear you, Cristina," Meredith said. "Especially now. What happened today? You were all closed down, and now..."
"Now I'm - " Cristina stopped, catching the flippant response before it escaped. "Now I'm sad. I'm sad and I'm lonely. And I miss him. I miss him so much." She bit her lower lip. "But I wasn't ready to get married to him. To anybody. And I should have been honest with him. With myself." She shook her head. "I thought if I could just hold on, then it'd be okay. But it would have been a disaster. And somewhere down the road, maybe tonight or tomorrow night, we would have looked at each other, and thought, 'I just made a huge mistake...and now, I'm stuck.' I think it would be awful to be stuck." And in the back of her mind, she thought about what George had told her.
"Yeah," Meredith said softly, thinking about Izzie's words. "I think so too."
Sloan parked himself next to a solitary Derek at the Emerald City Bar's worst table - the one next to the dartboard. "So, what are you drinking tonight? Not that turpentine you were downing last night, I hope."
Derek turned his head. "Did I ask you to sit? Invite you over? Want to even share a conversation with you?"
Sloan stared at Derek for a moment. "No. So?"
Derek chuckled humorlessly. "You're amazing. A living, breathing miracle."
A massive grin spread across the other man's face. "You've finally come around."
"Yes, Mark," Derek said. "I have. I have finally come around to appreciate that, not unlike our noble friend, the common roach, you are an indestructible creep."
"That's not a nice thing to say to your cabbie," Sloan said.
"I don't need a cabbie tonight, thank you." Derek held up his glass. "Drinking Coke. One, maybe two. Then I'm going home. Alone."
"Oh," Sloan said. "But why are you drinking it here?"
Derek squinted at Sloan. "Why not here? It's close to the hospital, it's on my way..."
"...Grey might come in..." Sloan said.
"No," Derek groaned. "Definitely not."
"Really."
"Really." He looked up at Sloan, and for the first time in a long time, didn't see the face of the man who'd helped wreck his marriage. Instead, he saw the concerned friend that he'd thought lost long ago. "I'm...I'm tired of her running from me, to me, from me, to me...I can't do it anymore. I don't want to do it anymore." He shook his head sadly. "I thought she was it. The person. And now..."
Sloan huffed. "How do you think I feel about Addison leaving? I chase her from one ocean to another, and I'm this close to getting her back..." His face fell. "Who am I kidding? I wasn't getting her back. I never really had her."
The duo sat in relative silence, hearing the occasional jangle of the front door bell and clink of glasses.
Then, finally Derek said, "So. What are you drinkin'?"
Sloan had to smile at that. And it was the kind of expression that didn't make Derek want to beat him senseless.
As she lay in their bed, alone again tonight, Callie knew where George was. On-Call Room Three. Grabbing as much sleep as he could between Pit duties and emergency surgeries. She knew because the resident she'd assigned George to was telling her.
George had done it, apparently. Made it through an entire day without Izzie Stevens.
Well, except for that moment in the entrance. That was something.
But it had ended there. She hadn't pursued him all over the hospital. She had given up. Whatever it was that she believed was there, it was over.
It was confirmation. Confirmation that George O'Malley belonged to one person and one person only...
...no, it wasn't.
Because...
Because George had avoided Callie too.
He hadn't tracked her down during the day. He always seemed to be on the opposite end of the hospital when she was looking for him. He...
He came looking for Izzie. He came to the hospital, and he was looking for Izzie.
Callie found herself looking at her wedding ring. It was still bright with promise.
That was the only part of her marriage that had that sheen.
Izzie was ready for bed, but sleep was the furthest thing from her mind. She kept thinking about George's face. That kind face of his. His eyes. His smile.
She grimaced, trying to push him out of her mind. She had to. The future was stretching out in front of her. George was in the past. Her attending would have been Burke, but now it was Fredericks, himself a top-notch cardiologist, plus a genuinely kind person.
Sure, Callie O'Malley was her boss, but only for the next year.
The whole year.
It made her shudder. Thinking about what Callie could do to her. Reassign her to the worst attending, maybe. Have her do grunt work in the morgue. Push her out of the hospital completely.
And for what? A mistake?
That's what she and George were, after all, Izzie decided. She and George...they had nothing. Less than nothing. It should have hit her when she sat alone in that church, but instead it had waited all day to become clear.
She had been wrong about him. Mistaken. But not any more.
She didn't love George. She didn't love him.
And he didn't love her. That was that.
She crawled into bed, and she turned off the light, and she kept denying that she loved him until her conscious mind finally dissolved enough to let her sleep.
Lexie Grey had hated quiet for as long as she could remember. And right now, as she lay in the top bunk, the on-call room was quiet. It was crushing her. Slowly. She was desperate to hear something. Anything So she spoke to the intern in the lower bunk. "Are you asleep, George?" Lexie asked.
"Yes," the man replied. "George is asleep. If you'd like to leave your name and number, he'll get back to you as soon as possible. BEEP."
Lexie smiled at that. "Stop screening your calls; I know you're there."
"Fine, fine." He groaned. "What's up?"
"I'm up. Can't sleep."
"Too juiced from the first day, huh? All jacked on adrenaline and caffeine and blood?"
"No," Lexie lied. "This mattress, it's..."
"Not yours, right?"
"Yeah. It's too lumpy in some places and too flat in others and - " She stopped at an unmistakable sound. "Are you laughing at me?"
A throat-clearing cough. "No." A snort.
"Oh, you're all heart," she said sourly. "I can't sleep and you're laughing at me."
"No. Hah. No. Not at you." George was chuckling deeply now. "Someone - hah - someone else."
"Who?"
George sighed. "No one you know."
"That's a long list around here," she said sourly.
"A friend of mine. Another doctor." He yawned. "Always complained that the mattresses weren't comfortable in here. Especially on the first night."
"Oh. So what happened?"
"By the second night, she was too tired to care."
Lexie's eyes flared. "She?"
"Yes," George replied. "She."
"Cristina?"
George chuckled again. "No. Not Cristina."
"The blonde, then. The one who sprinted past you. Uh, whats-er-name...Izzie."
"Yeah. Izzie."
Lexie stared at a spot on the ceiling. "So what's with her? You two have a history?"
She heard George's weight shift, and the frown in his voice. "Go to sleep, Lex."
The frown intrigued her. "Ooooh. Something bad, huh?"
He groaned. "It's late. And any second now, we're gonna get yanked outta here. So go to sleep."
"I can't now."
"Yes, you can," he replied. "Just stop talking or asking questions or whatever...just breathe in and out," he said with another yawn, "...sleep'll come."
So she tried. She closed her eyes. She breathed. But still... "Just tell me one thing," she said.
"No," George replied, his voice dusky.
"Pleeease?"
"Noooo."
"I'll keep talking," Lexie said. "Just ask my last college roommate. She'll tell you. I can't shut up about anything...all I do is talk and talk and talk - "
George exhaled. "She was my best friend, okay?"
"Was?"
"Yeah," he replied. His voice was exhausted. "Was."
"What happened?" Lexie asked.
He was quiet for the longest time. And just when she was going to see if he was still as awake as she was, she thought she heard him say one last word: "Bourbon." But it could have been just her imagination.
And with the sliver of light that came through the narrow window of the on-call room door, George gazed at the glinting ring on his left hand. The ring Callie had rushed onto his finger in that crass Vegas wedding chapel, surrounded by the trappings of hollow romance, which he hadn't started noticing until it was in the rearview mirror, and blurred by passionate clinches and mid-grade champagne.
But she wasn't the sole culprit. He'd done the same with her ring. They had laughed their way through the ceremony. It was a mere prelude to the stay in the Honeymoon Suite. Their "I do's" were jolly...breathless...unconsidered.
Unconsidered. Unstudied. Unpondered.
So he stared at that ring and considered and studied and pondered, not only the past, but also the present, and the looming future, until his eyelids were heavy enough that he could no longer stare.
-----Altered Anatomy-----Continues Next Week-----