The Luckiest

37

Meredith tapped her highlighter against the pages of her medical textbook in front of her, reading again about the delicate surgery required to remove spinal tumors. The surgery was tomorrow and she was definitely not prepared. Definitely and entirely not prepared. But she had to get prepared. And that meant the grin on her face had to go away for a couple of hours while she stared at diagrams.

She had time before the rush started again. So while the Shepherd women talked around her she studied, so she could rock this surgery and impress the neuro guy and hopefully get in on more surgeries. Because surgeries, even big ones that included far too much studying beat scut or the pit any day. So studying instead of talking to everyone like she painfully wanted to. Talking was a lot more fun.

They were chatting about kids and restaurant remodeling and Sophie's book and all the stuff families talked about, and she was dying to jump in. Actually she was dying to go back to the kitchen and talk to Derek, but he was probably busy planning the evening's specials or whatever it was he did during down time. So she wanted to talk. But impressing neuro guy to get surgeries was more important, even if it was incredibly boring.

She stifled a yawn and tried her best to keep her mind on the pages in front of her and not look around as she heard someone move in a chair and someone else laugh. She had to concentrate and if she couldn't she had to leave and she definitely didn't want to leave so she figured concentrating was the best option. This surgery was going to be amazing. It shouldn't be this hard to concentrate on an amazing surgery.

She highlighted something and bit her lip, staring at the words she had just highlighted. She loved being a doctor, really, really loved it. And being a surgeon...it was amazing. But sometimes she wondered why the words had to be so damn complicated. Or maybe they wouldn't be this damn complicated if she could concentrate. If she could stop grinning.

She had kind of assumed the grinning thing would stop by now. It had to stop eventually. He was just Derek. Derek who she had liked for months and who had kissed her and now they were something. Something entirely amazing and perfect and she had no idea what the something was but it was making concentrating hard and her cheeks very sore. She was too damn happy.

She giggled slightly at that and moved to rub the back of her neck before stretching our her arms, suddenly craving some chocolate cake. Chocolateyness. He still called it chocolateyness. She sighed as she closed her eyes and picked up the highlighter, getting the strangest feeling someone was staring at her. She opened her eyes, blushing when she saw Derek next to her. He definitely hadn't been there a second ago. "Oh...hey," she breathed, the blush creeping onto her cheeks.

"Hi," he grinned, his own cheeks tinged pink.

"When...you weren't...you're here," she murmured.

"I'm here," he nodded, smiling. "I sat down a couple of minutes ago."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously," he shrugged.

"Oh," she breathed, looking back down at her book. It was impossible to study now.

"What...umm...what are you studying for?" he asked quietly.

"Surgery tomorrow," she replied. "Tumor on the spine, on the C2 vertebrae."

"That sounds complicated," he nodded. "It is complicated, right?"

"Yeah," she giggled slightly, blushing. "I keep forgetting...I mean, yeah, it's complicated. The spine is...it's complicated. Really complicated. If you make a mistake you paralyze a guy and that's...you don't want that. So very complicated."

"Paralyzing would be bad," he laughed softly.

"Very," she nodded.

"So...you're studying. I could...I should...leave you to study, studying is good," Derek sighed.