Callie, George, Evi, Meredith and Izzie are walking from the parking lot to the hospital. "So I was thinking, since you shift ends after mine and I don't want to have to wait around, maybe I should get a copy of the house key." Callie says.
"No. I like leaving together. You don't need a key." George denies.
They arrive at the hospital entrance. Izzie stops walking. "Izzie?" Evi asks.
"I'll see you guys in there." Izzie says.
"Everything's gonna be fine. Bailey is on your side. And the Chief is... He is gonna put on his angry face, but he's on your side too." Meredith says.
"Everybody wants you back in that building." Evi says.
"I know. I know. You guys go ahead, I'll be fine. I'm just gonna take a minute, practice my speech." Izzie says.
"Okay." Meredith says. Evi, Callie, George and Meredith walk into the hospital.
•.•
Cristina, Meredith and Evi are walking through the hospital hallways.
"I'm on my knees in a puddle of coffee, and he's lying on the couch playing with himself, you know? And not in a good way." Cristina tells the two of them.
"But he's recovering from surgery, and you've read the studies on recovery and depression in surgical patients." Meredith says.
"Yeah well he's not a patient, he's Preston Burke. He's just milking it. Now he's got me fetching his food and the paper and his slippers like I'm a dog." Cristina says.
The trio reach the elevator. Derek steps out of it, carrying two cups of coffee. "Hey!" He greets Meredith.
"Hi! I had a dream about you last night." Meredith says.
"You did? What was I doing? Bringing you coffee?"
"You were definitely not bringing me coffee. But coffee's good."
"I'm told dating starts with a casual invitation over a cup of coffee."
"Does it?" Evi asks.
"So Meredith, would you like to go out to dinner with me tonight? How was that? Was that casual enough? That was good right?"
"So we're dating."
"We're dating. Pick you up at eight." Derek walks off. The elevator opens again and Finn steps out of it, carrying a paper bag.
"Hey!" Meredith greets.
"I was in the neighbourhood. Actually I wasn't but I decided you were worth the detour." Finn says.
"I had a dream about you last night." Meredith tells making Evi raise her eyebrows.
"Was it a good dream?" Finn asks.
"It was."
"And what was I doing?"
"Yes Mer, what was he doing?" Evi asks.
"What's that?" Finn asks.
"It's for you. It's a coffee cake. Best in the North-West. Figured I'd better soften you up so that when I ask you to dinner tonight you have to say yes."
"Uh, dinner tonight? How about that? Are you free tonight, Meredith?" Cristina asks sharing amused looks with Evi.
"Actually, uh, I'm not free tonight." Meredith says.
"Well how about lunch? I could come here."
"You're volunteering to eat hospital food?"
"I love crappy food."
"One o'clock?"
"I'll be here."
"Okay." Finn walks away.
"You had a dream about the both of them? Threesome?" Cristina asks.
Meredith smiles. "Nice. Just when I think you're boring, you rise." Evi says.
"I'm dating." Meredith looks at her cup of coffee and her paper bag. "And it comes with snacks."
•.•
Alex walks over to the nurses station, where Meredith, Evi, Cristina and George are eating the coffee cake. "Izzie's back, that's good. Ooh, coffee cake." Alex says.
"I'm dating." Meredith says. Alex reaches for the cake. Cristina grabs his arm. "Touch that piece, lose a hand." Cristina threatens.
Bailey walks up to them. "Morning people. Grey, we're clearing the decks. I need you writing discharge forms. Yang, you're with Doctor Shepherd. Karev, as usual, you're with Doctor Montgomery Shepherd in OBGYN. O'Malley, Doctor Torres has requested you today in Ortho, Jensen to the pit." Bailey assigns then walks away.
"Was she smiling?" Evi asks.
"Izzie's back!" Alex exclaims. Cristina, Evi and Alex walk off.
Evi walks into the pit. A nurse hands her a patient's file.
"Fourth visit in three months." The nurse tells her. Evi walks over to a young patient lying on a hospital bed, her parents on either side of her. "I'm Doctor Jensen, and you are..."
"Megan Clover, and it is not as bad as it looks." Megan says.
"She fell in the playground, and there was a lot of blood and it looked deep." Mrs. Clover says.
"We know how this looks. Just so you know, we know how this looks, and it's not that. She just plays rough, you know. This is her file, and it goes back since way before we got her." Mr. Clover says.
"Before you got her?" Alex asks walking in.
"We're her foster parents. She's such a great kid, but she plays really rough."
"She plays rough."
"Right. Well why don't you guys go up to the nurses station and let them make a copy of her file for you, and we'll take a look at Megan's leg." Evi says.
"OK. We'll be right back honey. You alright?" Mrs. Clover asks.
"Yeah." Megan says. "Okay." Mr and Mrs Clover walk over to the nurses station.
"I thought you were with Montgomery-Shepard?" Evi asks Alex.
"Sent me to the pit." Alex says. He turns his attention to Megan. "You've got some mean looking bruises, you know that?" He says.
Alex notices a plaster on Megan's arm. "What, you hurt your arm too?"
Megan speaks defensively. "Nothing big, I fell off my bike." Alex rips of the plaster. Beneath it is a large wound which has been stapled together.
"Are those staples?" Evi asks.
"What the hell? Did they do this to you?" Alex asks.
"No! No!" Megan exclaims.
"Who did this to you?" Evi asks softly.
"I did. I didn't want to go to the doctor again so I just stapled it. It's no biggie." Megan says.
"You stapled your own arm?" Evi asks.
"Can you please just stitch up my leg so we can get out of here?" Megan says.
"You're not going anywhere with those people Megan. They're never gonna lay a hand on you again." Alex says.
"Alex!" Evi hisses. She didn't believe that Megan was being abused.
"They didn't do anything. Please, they're my best parents I've ever had." Megan pleads.
"Megan..." Evi says.
"They don't hurt me. I can't be hurt. You don't believe me? Punch me in the stomach, right now." Megan says making Evi widen her eyes.
"The staples are in there pretty deep. I'm gonna have to give you a shot to numb the pain." Evi says changing the subject.
Alex prepares the needle. "I don't need a shot!" Megan protests.
"Trust me, you want a shot. It's swollen, it's gonna hurt like a..." Alex trails off as Evi elbows him.
Megan pulls the staples out of her arm. "There. Can I go now?" She asks.
"That didn't even hurt?" Alex asks.
Megan motions for them to come closer. They lean in towards her.
Megan whispers. "I have superpowers, OK?"
•.•
Evi walks back into Megan's room to find Megan and Alex with their hands in ice water. She gives Alex a questioning look.
"And they think it's weird that the can do all this stuff, but don't tell anybody because people would freak out like you did." Megan rants. Alex's face indicates that he is in pain. "What's wrong with you?"
"Son of a..." Alex pulls his hand out of the bucket. "Ow! Ah! Take your handout of there before it falls off!" Alex pulls Megan's hand out of the bucket.
"You need to relax." Megan says.
"You didn't feel anything? Nothing?" Evi asks.
"No. Nobody ever believes me. Like yesterday in school this kid said I was full of it. I had to let him punch me in the stomach twenty five times before he believed me. And once with a baseball bat." Megan says.
"What?" Evi asks.
•.•
"CPS Alex really?" Evi scolds as they walk to find Bailey.
"Look- she had hell of a lot of bruises. It looks like she's being abused." Alex brushes her off.
"No it looks like she's being a kid. I had way more bruises then her when I was little," Evi says.
"Well she's not you." Alex says.
"I'm just saying. You don't have to jump to conclusions so quickly." Evi says before approaching Bailey.
"Dr. Bailey I think we need to run a CT on this kid's abdomen." Evi says.
"This superhero stuff's way out of hand." Alex says.
"It's alright if she thinks she's a superhero. I believed in Santa Claus 'til I was eleven." Bailey says.
"Really? Did Santa ever hit you in the gut with a baseball bat?" Alex says.
•.•
Alex and Evi were getting Megan ready for a CT scan. "How much is this gonna cost my parents?" She asks.
"That's not something you have to be worrying about." Evi assures.
Alex lifts Megan onto the scanner. "But this is so stupid. I'm fine." She looks at a nurse. "Hey! Punch me in the stomach, right here."
"Stop telling people to punch you in the stomach. You need to lie down and not move. Which of your superfriends can do that?" Alex says.
"She came in for sutures, but she's a walking accident and has got an off the charts pain threshold. I'm thinking..." Bailey says as Evi walks into the scan room.
"Chronic insensitivity to pain, yeah. I've seen it in babies. It's often diagnosed young. But if she's been bounced around in the foster care system..." Addison says.
An image appears on the computer monitors. "Doctor Bailey, what is that?" Evi asks tilting her head.
•.•
Bailey and Addison are talking to Megan's parents. Evi was standing beside Bailey.
"Megan's bleeding internally." Bailey says.
"What?" Mr. Clover asks.
"It appears there' some severe trauma to her abdomen." Bailey clarifies.
"You're trying to ask us if we hit her. We've said ten times in ten different ways..." Mr. Clover trails off.
"Social services cleared you and I'm sorry that we suggested you were mistreating her. But she's hurt pretty badly so we're gonna need to operate." Bailey says.
"Oh my God..." Mrs. Clover says.
"Megan may have a chromosomal condition that causes her to not feel any pain when she's injured. It would explain why she gets hurt so often." Addison says.
"We need to do some genetic testing before we can be sure, but let's assume she'll need to be monitored very closely from now on." Bailey says.
Alex enters the room. "We got OR Three." He informs.
"So surgery is the only option?" Mrs. Clover asks.
"I think it is. I know you've been put through the wringer already today, but I need to ask you to trust me on this one." Bailey says.
"Where is she? Where's Megan?" Alex asks. They all look over to the wheelchair where Megan was sitting. It's empty.
•.•
"Megan!" Evi calls in a hallway.
"It's not easy. If you think you're a superhero, you're not gonna let someone come at you with a knife. There's no way to tell what it can do to your powers. I mean, you take away Green Lantern's ring, Hal Jordan is still a hero but it creates a crisis of confidence when..."George rants.
"Come on Megan!" Alex calls.
"...you've worked hard to hone your strengths. Look at, uh, Batman. Robin just marches into the Batcave and he says, you know, "Here I am. I'm gonna live here too. Give me some tights and I'm taking your towel." I mean Batman, he fought for his powers, you know? He honed his strength..." George continues.
"Dude, you don't stop this I'm gonna punch you in the face." Alex says.
Callie marches over to George and Alex, obviously angry. "O'Malley!" She yells.
"Good luck with that..." Evi says. She and Alex walk away.
•.•
"Megan? Come on, enough already." Alex says.
Evi spots something moving under a gurney. She looks under it and sees Megan. "We've got half the hospital looking for you." Evi says.
"Your powers of invisibility are well intact. Get up!" Alex lifts Megan to her feet.
"You're a hosebag, you know that?" Megan insults. "Yeah!" Evi agrees. "You're a hosebag."
"And you have a potty mouth." He tells Megan then glares at Evi.
"Nobody's cutting me open." Megan says.
"Hey! It's surgery, we do it all the time. In fact, it's all we do." Alex says. Evi face-palms.
"You can't keep telling my foster parents I'm defective. They can't afford surgery, it's too expensive." Megan says. Alex lifts Megan into a wheelchair.
"They can handle it." Alex says.
"They'll send me back."
"Dude, that's stupid. They've got their own personal superhero. Nobody sends back a superhero."
"I thought you said I didn't have superpowers."
"Yeah well you don't-" Alex starts.
"If you take away Green Lantern's ring, he's still a hero. Right?" Evi interrupts.
•.•
Bailey is operating on Megan. Alex and Evi are assisting her.
"Man, she wasn't kidding about the baseball bat." Alex comments.
"We need more lat pads. Just keep'em coming." Bailey says.
"Are your going to reset the liver?" Evi asks.
"We need to try and do a debrievement. Look at this. Everybody wants a life without pain. What does it get you? She needs to be on a poster somewhere. To remind people pain's there for a reason."
•.•~•.•
Megan is lying in her room, recovering from surgery, her parents standing over her.
Alex walks up to Bailey and Evi. "Megan's stable. I ordered a Repute H and H in two hours." He says.
Bailey is looking out of the window to the hospital entrance. "She been out there all day?" Bailey asks.
Evi turns to see Izzie standing in front of the hospital entrance. Bailey and Alex look at each other.
•.•.•.•
Meredith is sitting on her bed, eating her ice cream. Evi Izzie appears at the door with Izzie.
"Hey!" She greets.
"I didn't go in today." Izzie says.
"Maybe tomorrow." Izzie and Evi sits down next to Meredith. George appears at the door.
"Hey George." Meredith greets.
"Callie moved out, which is a relief. Oh, I'm so relieved." Izzie motions for George to eat ice cream with them. "It's strawberry.
George sits down on the bed and eats some ice cream. "It's good." He hands the tub and spoon back to Evi.
"You left spit on the spoon." She says.
"No I didn't." George denies.
"You did a little." Izzie says. George puts the spoon back into his mouth and pulls a face. They all laugh.
•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•
Lacuna is going on a bit of a hiatus. I like to have about 10-12 chapters pre-written and I've run out of ones to post 😅. I've fallen behind because I've started dance practice, and I had some mandatory summer classes I had to take for my school program. I should be back to uploading sometime this week.