𝙸𝙻𝙻𝙸𝙲𝙸𝚃 𝙰𝙵𝙵𝙰𝙸𝚁𝚂 - 𝙶𝚁𝙴𝚈'𝚂 𝙰𝙽𝙰𝚃𝙾𝙼𝚈

8

S1 E6

It was always fascinating to Angie how the same places that drove you insane could be the place that heals you the fastest.

After Liz's death, Richard had assigned Angie a week of time off so she could cope with the loss. Angie was too out of it to even consider putting up a fight. She had just nodded numbly and asked if it was OK if she spent that week at home with Richard and Adele. She didn't even have to finish the question before Richard was calling Adele to let her know.

Meredith had agreed to ward off any questions from Izzie or George regarding Angie's whereabouts, and then Angie had tucked herself away in her father's house for a week, where she spent a lot of time on the phone with her mom.

Liz's funeral had come and gone, and Angie had cried and grieved and chatted with Liz's daughter, Kira, who was a nurse across town, at Mercy West Medical Center, and was apparently dealing with her fair share of interesting interns. Then Angie went home and cried a lot more as she watched Tyler Perry movies with Adele and cleared out nearly all the ice cream in the freezer.

If she wasn't checking in with her mom, she was curled in her bed, with the lights off, barely responding to anyone besides her parents and Adele whenever she stopped in to deliver food. Meredith occasionally texted, but Angie could never find it in herself to respond.

It wasn't until the end of her week off, when she had to return to work that she saw a face and heard a voice other than her father, mother, or stepmother. Her alarm had just barely gone off, and Angie groaned in complaint, desperate to pull the covers back over her head and shut the world out for another day.

Through bleary eyes, she reached her arm out, fumbling for her alarm clock so she could hit the snooze button. Before she could locate the button, her bedroom door flew open, and someone was clapping obnoxiously.

"Up and at 'em, Ang!" The aggravatingly energetic voice of Derek Shepherd penetrated the early morning silence, catching Angie by surprise as her bedroom lights were suddenly flicked on with no warning. "We've got a breakfast date to make!"

Angie whined in complaint as someone else turned off her alarm, laughing softly. Sitting up, Angie tried to squint through the combination of sudden light and her horrendous eyesight. Sure enough, the blurry figure of Derek stood in front of her bed, and Angie supposed the amorphous dark blob above him was his hair. Behind him stood a lankier, just-as-blurry figure with dark skin, and Angie was 80% sure it was supposed to be Preston.

"What date?" Angie asked sleepily, still squint-glaring at the two men before her. Derek's blurry form approached her and he seemed to reach out for a second to swipe something from her nightstand. Slowly, the world began to come into focus as Derek pushed Angie's glasses onto her face, allowing her to see both men clearly.

"You, my dear, blind friend, need to get out of bed and rejoin humanity," Derek sighed, folding his arms across his chest as Angie remained in bed.

She blinked dryly at both men for a moment before flopping back into bed, pulling her covers up once more. "I'm grieving," she grumbled curtly.

"You can grieve over waffles," Preston called out.

"And you have a job to get back to," Derek added.

"My job doesn't start until 7. I got time."

"And that 'time' needs to be spent assimilating back into society," Derek sighed.

"I have assimilated just fine," Angie huffed. "Now, get out of my room and let me–"

Her blankets were ripped off of her before she could finish her command. Angie yelped at the sudden rush of cold, curling into a ball as a large hand wrapped around her ankle, dragging her back to the edge of the bed. Angie yelped again, trying to squirm away as Derek tried to avoid her kicking feet.