DINNER & DIATRIBES. . . JACKSON AVERY!

chapter thirty-six: dark was the night/suddenly

"That was pathetic." Cristina states with disappointment. Briar and Meredith agree, with Briar booing Alex as he does the walk of shame back to their table, hitting Briar in the shoulder as he retakes his seat next to her.

"Oh, shut up."

"I bet I could get her number." Briar teases him, grinning when he nearly knocks her off her stool.

"She told you to go screw yourself." Meredith giggles. "We could hear it all the way over here."

"It's not 'cause she wasn't into me." Alex tries.

"Oh, does 'go screw yourself' have some secret meaning we're not aware of?" Cristina shoots back, and Briar is quick to tap her glass to hers in pride.

"I kinda already knew her. I just didn't remember." Alex confesses quietly, causing all three girls to whip their heads around to each other.

"You slept with her before and forgot about it and then tried to pick her up all over again?" Meredith asks, and Briar smiles when she sees the way Alex tries to hide his amusement by sipping his water, a smile slipping through anyway.

"You're not even drinking."

"I have a history of Alzheimer's in my family. What's your excuse?" Meredith jokes, and Briar can't resist high fiving her for that one.

"It's O'Malley's fault. I mean, talking about dead people, it throws me off my game, that's all."

"Hmm, and yet you have a tendency to pick people up at work." Briar teases with a wink, taking another sip of her pop. Meredith's phone rings, and she perks up, rushing to stand up.

"It's Janet! Can you, uh, pay for my thing?" She asks, and Cristina and Briar assure her, waving for her to answer it.

"God, I hope that's good news." Briar sighs, watching her move for a second before Alex and Briar's pagers both go off.

"We gotta run." Alex sighs, before turning to Cristina. "Would you pay for mine?"

"No. I'm leaving. I'm going to the skills lab." Cristina answers, setting money down to cover her and Meredith.

"Oh, come on."

"She had the social worker on the phone. You can fish 20 bucks out of your pocket." Cristina scoffs, leaving. Briar takes a few seconds to amusedly watch Alex pull change out of his pocket before she sets $40 on the table, covering the bill and the tip.

"Now, come on." Briar urges him, leading them out of the bar and into the hospital that they left behind mere hours ago.

✦

"The baby was born a couple hours ago and it looks like a tracheoesophageal fistula." Arizona reports, walking with Alex and Briar right behind her. Briar pulls on her dark blue Seattle Grace Hospital coat–the one designed for when they're transporting patients–while listening to her and Alex. Alex is the main doctor on this case, with Briar going along as backup. "Do you know what that is?"

"Yes. It's the connection between, uh, the trachea and esophagus. Fills the lungs with secretions. The baby can have a hard time breathing and feeding." Alex answers.

"Exactly. Bentley Hospital is tiny. They can't handle it." Arizona tells them. "So you need to go pick up the baby, bring her back, and then hopefully I'm done with the kid that's on his way in by the time you're back. You need to reconfigure the ambulance for intensive neonatal transport."

"I can run and do that." Briar says, rushing off so that Arizona can continue talking with Alex uninterrupted.

"Get some nurses to help you!" Arizona calls after her, and she nods, planning on doing just that.