Illicit Affairs

Chapter 20

Saturday, 5th June 2021

Meredith had eventually pulled herself out of bed early that morning after giving up on getting any sleep that night. She hadn't responded to Derek, but his words had run through her mind early into the next morning. If she had to hazard a guess, she'd only slept about four hours and it definitely wasn't enough to get her through her upcoming shift.

After parting ways with Cristina in the residents' lounge, she met with her group of interns who looked far too awake for this time of morning and she knew they were going to piss her off somehow. And none of them had even brought her a coffee to bribe her with. Not that the bribes ever worked, she just really wanted a coffee. She resisted the temptation to get one of them to fetch one for her and brought them to attention.

"No time for chit chat, grab the charts and follow me," as tired as she was, she was sure to make sure she had their attention and respect otherwise they'd get nothing done.

Derek finally graced them with his presence as they arrived at the first patient's room, sadly without any coffee in hand for her. On a normal day, he'd have met up with her before she'd gathered the interns and have a caramel macchiato waiting for her, but today wasn't a normal day and she'd asked for space, right? Space didn't include meeting before rounds for coffee. Meredith hadn't factored this into her morning, however, and was yet to taste any coffee. He nodded to her in acknowledgment before going into the patient's room ahead of the small group.

She allowed Derek to speak with the patient a moment, scanning her eyes over her interns to decide who she would call on to present. She could see Morris already reading over the chart and decided to make sure they were all on the ball. One particular intern caught her eye, not paying attention to the conversation in the room, well not paying any attention to the task at hand either. He would be her target.

Derek looked at her, the look that indicated they were ready for presentation, one they'd shared many times before without having to speak to one another, which she was thankful for. She looked to her interns, "Morris."

"Yes, uhm..." the intern started, flipping back to the first page of the chart, but Meredith cut her off.

"No, Morris, you won't be presenting. Pass the chart to DeLuca," she watched as the intern's eyes widened slightly in panic, taking the chart from his colleague. She noticed Derek raise an eyebrow out the corner of her eye, but he didn't question her tactics.

"Erm, Daniel Thomas, 36, in for frontal lobe tumour resection this afternoon..." the intern stumbled over the words, reading them directly off the page and still stumbling over a couple of the lab results. When he was finished, he ended it as more of a question, and Meredith raised an eyebrow at him, becoming slightly frustrated with the intern's lack of confidence in simply reading a chart.

"Are you finished, DeLuca?" she asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"I think so..." he murmured.

"You think so or you know so, DeLuca?"

"I'm finished. That's everything," he said, closing the chart and looking back up. She noticed his gaze flicker to Derek who just shook his head.

"Who can tell me possible complications of the tumour resection being performed today?" Derek asked the group of interns as Meredith took the chart from the stumbling intern, flipping it open to read through herself before writing in a note of the up-to-date stats as she heard Morris, who definitely had an affinity for neurosurgery, reeling off the known possible complications of the surgery.

"Thank you, Morris, you can scrub in this afternoon, and you're responsible for arranging pre-op for Mr Thomas."

They all filed out of the room, ready to move on to the next patient. Derek and Meredith fell into step beside one another, a few steps ahead of the interns following behind.