SHE | alex karev

chapter nine

The only man in the room looked around worriedly. "Okay, what did I miss?"

"I came home to full-on vomit drama. Apparently, she dumped Derek. And her? She's been sleeping with Burke," Izzie explained with an accusing grimace, then looked at Billie. "And I don't really know what's wrong with her."

"Like I'd tell you." The brunette scoffed back, though her words sounding like a slurred-up mess.

"So... you broke up with Shepherd?" George asked Meredith, who now sat next to Billie, staring into the absolute nothingness pensively.

"Oh, George, get over it. We all know you're in love with Meredith." Billie rolled her eyes.

"I'm not- What? Please, I'm not in love with- I don't like Meredith," the boy quickly tried to explain himself with a nervous smile, but when he realized what he said, he was swift to add. "I mean, I do like Meredith, I just, um, I'm not- I don't- I'm not in love with her."

"I feel empty," Meredith said to no one in particular, to hungover to listen to what was happening around her.

"Two hours of vomiting will do that to you," Izzie replied as she headed to the sink in order to brush her teeth.

"No. I feel empty."

"You're lucky. I feel pissed off," Cristina said, shutting the shower screen closed aggressively.

Billie pursed her lips into a line.

"I don't feel anything. I'm all dark inside."

☆

"Male, forty-six, unrestrained driver of the car that jumped the lanes. BP eighty over palp, tachycardic, last pulse 138. Got two litters LR running wide open. Significant abdominal tenderness," the paramedic introduced as he rolled the gurney out of the ambulance.

"Any history?"

"Wife says he's got a bad liver. He's on the transplant list."

"Abdomen's rigid," Bailey said as she palpated the man's abdomen. "We need to page Burke and Domner. Prep this guy for the OR, who wants it?"

The remaining interns, aside from Meredith and George, who had been assigned to another case (DOA, in Billie's opinion), all lifted their arms with a chorus of I do's. Bailey instructed Izzie to take him, then assigned Billie and Alex to the oncoming child and Cristina to the mother. Billie mentally cursed herself for having to spend the day next to Evil Spawn, and since her person knew it, she sent her an apologetic look as she headed towards the following gurney.

"I wanna be looking at their films in fifteen minutes!" Bailey instructed to their interns.

☆

"My mom's okay, right?" the little boy who'd come in the second ambulance asked Billie and Alex as they slid him into the MRI machine.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so," Alex replied carelessly. Billie clicked her tongue.

"We'll check on her as soon as we can, but right now, we need to take care of you, little man," she said, trying to sound comforting. The boy nodded with a harsh swallow.

Alex looked at Billie as she spoke, and then looked back down with something that kind of resembled shame. He wanted to talk to her, to apologize, but he feared doing so yet again wouldn't have an effect on her this time. He found himself wondering why the fuck he felt this way about her, why he felt the need to explain himself to her, even though they didn't really know each other.

Much to his dismay, the girl didn't spare him any mind.

"They'd been fighting at breakfast. Dad gets ugly when he gets like that," the boy explained with a humorless laugh, catching Billie's attention. "Ran three spotlights before we even got on the freeway."