what i'm here for

Chapter 33: Time to Celebrate

Meredith stepped out of the resident locker room, feeling fresh and ready for her shift for the first time in days, and briskly headed for the nurse's station. After finally getting a good night's sleep, she had spent the previous afternoon and most of the evening out with Derek and his family. And surprisingly, it had gone rather well. It wasn't that they weren't nice to her during their first outing, but they had seemed more...neutral towards her and her relationship with Derek. However, the previous day they had seemed more...in favour. Happy, even. Upon prompting, Derek had admitted to a discussion he had had with them when they had headed out to see his land. Apparently they had been updated quite accurately on the goings on of the previous year and informed that she was going to be a permanent fixture in his life. A permanent fixture. Permanent. It made her smile. It meant he was going to be a permanent fixture in her life. And that was something she had never had before.

"Hey, Mer," George called out as he met up with her at the nurse's station, suppressing a yawn.

"Hey, George. Tired?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I was on call last night."

She scrunched her nose. "Did you get any sleep?"

He shrugged. "A few little bits, but it was a busy night, I got a lot of pages."

"Well, you're off early today, right? That's something."

He nodded. "Oh, I'm counting the hours."

She laughed.

"So, how's it going with Shepherd's family in town?"

She shrugged. "It's going okay, I think. A couple awkward parts and all, but I think I'm gaining ground, with his younger sister at least. Anna. She's just finishing her residency, so we have a lot in common. And Natalie is really nice, but more protective of Derek. It must be an older sister thing."

"And his mom?"

Meredith hesitated briefly. "I'm not too sure where I stand with her. I think that she doesn't hate me, but is maybe a little untrusting of our relationship? Derek hates it, but I kind of get it, you know? Our history is kind of working against us, so if she needs some time to realize I'm in this, then I think that's okay. I'm not going anywhere." She rambled, but was pretty sure she was getting her point across.

George smiled broadly at her, his eyes crinkling despite his tiredness.

She narrowed her eyes at her favourite intern. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just...you're all grown up," he told her, with only a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

She rolled her eyes and took a playful swipe at him. "Shut up."

"Hey," Their former resident's voice seemingly came out of nowhere. "Don't hit you interns." Bailey paused at the desk beside them as she jotted down some notes on the chart in her hands.

"He was asking for it," Meredith joked.

Bailey glanced away from her chart. Her eyes darted towards her and to a smirking George, and then back to her. "I'm sure he was, but no matter how many times he asked for it last year, I never hit him."

George scoffed at her accusation, but Meredith laughed, finding Miranda Bailey to have a sense of humour now that she was no longer the woman's intern. "Good point. I guess I just haven't developed your patience yet, Dr. Bailey."

The short surgeon rolled her eyes. "Don't even try to butter me up, Grey. And no more hitting your intern here. As newly appointed Chief Resident, it's my new rule. No hitting interns, and no hitting on interns, something far too many of the residents and Attendings in this hospital have been doing on too regularly of a basis for my liking." And with that, she passed her chart across the desk to a nurse and was gone, disappearing down the hallway into the mass of people before Meredith could even begin to think up a retort. It wasn't like Derek obviously breaking that rule the previous year had been her fault... And it especially wasn't as if they were the only ones.