Where You Belong

38

"George!" Meredith called after her retreating roommate, her attention already having left that of her cut-off conversation with Derek's mother. "Bring ice chips when you come back!"

George didn't respond as he hastily left her sight, Derek's cell phone pressed up to his ear.

Meredith sighed and laid her head back against the thin hospital pillow. She had never before realized how boring it was to be a patient. The few times she had been treated as a child, she had been much more interested in the medical treatment than the injury, in an attempt to find something to talk about with her mother, some common knowledge so that she could find a topic of conversation. There had been more than one time that she had made more of a small injury in an attempt to be taken into her mother's hospital even. But now that she was a doctor herself, and her mother was a black hole who she still couldn't talk to about anything, Meredith wasn't awed by the treatment, medication, plan, follow up... She knew how x-rays worked; she even knew how to read them. She knew how to stitch separated skin together, what type and number of stitches to use, and how the analgesic worked. She knew what antibiotics were. Antipuiretics. NSAIDs. Anti-histamines. Immunosuppressants...

Meredith Grey was a doctor. She knew how the human body worked, and she knew how to treat and fix problems within it. So, really, as a grown up and a as doctor, the whole patient thing? Not nearly as interesting as it had once been.

The only other time in her adult life that she had found herself to be a patient outside the yearly check up, blood work, pap smear, prescription kind had been the brief stint of 'we need to make sure your internal organs are still intact' after she had been caught in the bomb blast several months earlier. And even then the poking, prodding and laying still for scans had been a big, numb blur of shock; one of which her memory was still foggy.

Now, she wasn't numb. She wasn't in shock. She wasn't vying for attention.

Meredith had all of her faculties. She had been left alone. And her final ability to communicate with the outside world – Derek's cell phone – had been taken away from her.

With an irritated huff, Meredith crossed her arms over her chest, her trigger finger pushing the magic button beneath its tip. The cool, smooth knob gave under her pressure with a slight click, and a welcome calm washed over her.

She could no longer hear George's nervous voice wafting in through her open door. She was still optimistic that he would return with ice chips, but wasn't putting all of her hopes and dreams into the thought. After all, ice chips were only ice chips. Cold, hard, tiny pieces of water.

She bit her lip thoughtfully. She was thirsty, but not allowed to drink before her surgery. It was bad for her recovery, she knew, but she did wonder why ice chips were okay. What made the small chips of solid water so special, so magical like her button? And, seriously, how does one make water, which is a liquid, into ice, which is a solid?

Ice was cold. But water could be cold too. Just not as cold. And there was something that changed...something about the placement of the molecules...something... She scrunched up her face, willing herself to remember. She knew the answer, she did. She was a doctor, and doctors should know things like how water turned into ice.

Water was very special, very different. It was the only compound that's volume increased with cold. Something about the molecules. Oxygen. Hydrogen. Another oxygen; two for every hydrogen, in fact. It was a stable molecule, so then how does it- the bonds. The bonds between the molecules did something...changed...at a certain point. Zero degrees centigrade. Thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit.

"Seriously." Meredith muttered to herself as she wondered why she knew when water did something, but not what it was that water did when it did it, or...something. Whatever. What was she thinking about again?