Back To Seattle

Chapter 8

He'd left. She's told him and he'd left, just as she'd expected he would. She shouldn't have been so surprised really; it shouldn't have felt like her heart was being ripped out of her chest. But it did.

She'd cried until she'd fallen asleep, and then she'd woke from a nightmare and cried some more. Then she'd got it in her head that Jordan might show up outside her door any minute and she had to leave. She'd loaded all her things into her car, and she'd even checked out of the hotel. She'd find a new hotel later. Instead, she'd gone into work. The hospital... it was safe. He wouldn't guess she was here. Hopefully.

She'd busied herself in the ER until an emergent case had come in, getting her in the OR until just now, eight in the morning. Monday. It was Monday. She needed to keep track of her days... she needed, she had to keep on top of things and not just work and lose track of time or anything. The patient has just about made it and had a long recovery ahead of them and her whole body ached, and really, she shouldn't have been back in work yet, she should've taken a few more days off to recover but she couldn't sit around and do nothing. Wait for him to find her.

She pulled off her scrub cap as she walked through the double doors, leaning forward against the wall beside the OR board, taking a moment. She needed to move, and eat something, try and sleep maybe. Take some painkillers. She groaned inwardly as she pushed herself off the wall, heading down the hallway to get to the cafeteria.

She felt alone. She'd been alone before, but now that she'd had a taste of not being totally alone, she hated it. The only person she'd felt like she could turn to, she had ruined things with. She'd told him the truth and before she could continue, he'd left. She didn't blame him. She'd put him in an awful situation, and she never should have slept with him in the first place. He was her boss for crying out loud, not that she'd known at the time.

Just as she reached the cafeteria, her pager started beeping on her hip to go see Richard. She frowned slightly as she turned on her heel to make her way there. She had no idea why he would want to see her, and she hoped he hadn't heard about her head injury that had been made obvious by the bruising and try to send her home.

She knocked on the open door and glanced in to see him sat at his desk, beckoning for her to come inside. Her hands stuffed into the pockets of her lab coat as she moved inside.

"You paged, Chief?"

"Close the door, Meredith, and take a seat," he nodded to her.

"Okay," she nodded back, turning to close the door before sitting in one of the chairs opposite his desk.

"I heard you were wandering around with a head injury," he commented, sitting back in his chair and studying her, "Have you had it checked out?"

"Oh, it's fine and I have stitches, it's just bruised, looks worse than it is," she explained, her mouth going a little dry. Omitting the truth to Richard was one thing, but if she had to explicitly lie to him, she didn't know how she would handle that.

"Are you sure you're okay to work? I'm sure if you need a day or two, we can arrange that with Shepherd..."

"No, no, I'm good to work, it was Saturday and I rested yesterday, I'm good," she gave him a small smile and a nod, hoping she was being convincing enough.

"Okay, if you're sure. How is your mother doing?"

"She's okay, I think, I was in Boston over the weekend so I'm going to go and see her later on this afternoon."

"I didn't realise you had gone back, is everything okay?"

"Yeah, just a few things and Jordan had this event for the practice he wanted me to go to," she shrugged slightly.