Where You Belong

95

Meredith groaned when her pager went off for the eleventh time in the past six hours. With the ER quiet and her patients stable, she had first tried to crash in an on-call room at ten the night before, only to be paged the moment her head hit the pillow. After explaining to her panicking intern that the obviously breathing patient wasn't dead and simply had a disconnected lead, Meredith attempted sleep again at ten-thirty.

However, about fourteen minutes later she was paged again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

At a little after four in the morning, and Meredith had gotten less than an hour of sleep combined, and wouldn't be getting anymore.

"I'm sleeping!" She hissed into the dark as she wrenched her pager off of the waistband of her scrubs and stifled the urge to hurl it against the wall. "Stupid interns," she muttered, swinging her legs over the side of the small bed and jumping to her feet. Hopefully she could answer whichever ridiculous question her intern was asking, and get some sleep before rounds.

Unfortunately, she was very, very wrong.

She was paged by another intern before she even finished with the first. And by the time she finished with the second intern it was just about time for rounds. Almost twenty-four hours in, and she still had another twelve to go.

She'd reached a level of exhaustion she never wanted to experience again.

Callie paged her, and her fellow residents, with instructions to meet at the nurses' station on the surgical floor at 6:00AM for rounds.

Meredith groaned as she checked her watch. Eleven minutes until rounds. Just enough time to get a coffee. Reaching into her scrub pocket, she frowned, unable to find any money. She checked her other pocket, and then both lab coat pockets. And then she sighed heavily, remembering the espresso shot she had ordered at two-thirty in the morning when she had needed to supervise her intern doing sutures. In her exhaustion, she had forgotten to swing by her cubby to restock her pockets.

"Need some coffee money, Dr. Grey?" One of her interns, Dr. Green, asked, having obviously noticed her search. "I remembered what you said, and made sure to always have some with me."

Meredith shook her head, not able to bring herself to accept aid from her interns, regardless of how tired she was. Maybe she could sneak out of rounds for long enough to get to her cubby, or-

"Morning, Dr. Grey," Derek's familiar voice pulled her from her plans as he appeared in front of her, two large coffees in hand.

"Hey," she said in surprise, "You're early."

He kissed her on the cheek and passed one of the coffees into her waiting hand. "I have an early surgery."

"Thank you," she murmured, lifting her coffee to inhale the caffeine scented steam.

"Did you get any sleep last night?"

She sent him a look.

He chuckled. "Enough said. But you're two thirds of the way there."

"Says the man who got to go home last night."

"Hey, I brought you coffee."

"Just...go to your surgery."

He chuckled again. "I'll catch up with you afterwards."

Meredith smiled at him as he walked away, but her smile faded when her eyes flickered back to her interns and she realized she had their undivided attention.