Keep The Faith

16.

The front door shut and Derek was gone. Callie and George looked at each from their position by the stairs. "I wonder what that was about." Callie muttered. George took her hand, shaking his head.

"We probably don't want to know." He said sadly, hurting for his friend. He moved towards the kitchen to finish scouring the pizza menu, and decide exactly which toppings would make the perfect pizza. Callie paused and shot him an incredulous look.

"Do you think they did something up there?"

George shook his head. "Trust me, you would have heard."

It was almost an hour later when Izzie came back from the hospital. She heard George and Callie in the kitchen arguing over pizza toppings. Izzie rolled her eyes; they acted like they were ancient and married, and possibly house ridden. "Pepperoni!" She shouted towards the kitchen before climbing the stairs. She was hungry and exhausted and it made for an interesting combination.

She passed Meredith's room, door shut, and no light flooding from under it. She paused, just in case she had caved and Derek was in there, and for a moment, she thought he was, based on what she heard. She started to hurry away, but realized it wasn't the usual moans coming from Meredith's room. It was laughter. She turned on her heel and made her way downstairs, to find George on the phone with the pizza place. She waited patiently while he ordered and gave their address. "George!" she snapped as he hung up.

"Relax, Iz. I got pepperoni."

She shook her head quickly. "We have a Meredith problem." She said, causing George's head to snap up.

"What code is it?" he asked. Izzie's brow furrowed as she seemed to be seriously considering this. She frowned.

"Code blue is excessive tears, code red is borderline alcohol poisoning, code green is lapsing back into sad sex with McDreamy, code black is attempted suicide..." She muttered this to herself, tacking them off on her fingers as she went along. She looked up at George. "Do we have a code for unadulterated laughter?"

George stared at her. "She's laughing? An hour ago she was locked up there with Shepherd and now she's laughing?"

"Shepherd was here?" Izzie asked, looking at Callie. Callie nodded politely, knowing that even though she didn't like Izzie, she couldn't be rude to the girl with the dead fiancée.

"Shepherd was here. Not for long. Five, ten minutes, maybe?" She looked at George and then back at Izzie. "So even if there's no weird, overly dramatic code, should we go see if something is actually wrong?" They both looked at her like she'd just cracked the code to their problems and nodded.

Huddled outside of Meredith's door, they could indeed hear shocked laughter coming through the wood. Izzie opened the door and the three of them just stared at her, her tiny body on her bed, her legs crossed as she stared down at what seemed to be a piece of paper in her hands, laughing. Her eyes were red and her face was tear stained, but she was laughing. "It is a code blue." George hissed at Izzie. "She's crying."

"And laughing!" Izzie protested. Meredith looked up, wiped her eyes and smiled at them.

"Both. Crying and laughing. Both are um, happening." She said. They stared at her in bewilderment as she looked down at the document in her hands, scanned it and started laughing again. Izzie came into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. George followed her, and finally Callie, too, and the four of them just sat there.

"Mer?" Izzie prodded. "Why are you laughing? And crying?" Meredith brought the paper clipped sheets to her chest and the motioned to them, like they were supposed to decipher the reason for her odd behavior from a few sheets of paper. "Okay, what are those?" Izzie asked, trying to keep her tone calm. Meredith looked at the three of them, grinning. With a trembling hand, she held the papers out to them.