I stand in the middle of a large crowd of most of my friends. We've been talking for a while now, and I'm honestly a little surprised that no one has patients to check on. Mark left with Jackson a while ago, so I've been here on my own. I began to feel nauseous a few minutes ago, and I'm getting dizzy. The large crowd is starting to overwhelm me. I grab Derek's arm and pull him to the side.
"Hey what-" Derek begins, but I interrupt him.
"I'm on your service, right?" I ask.
"Uh, yeah, if you want," he says.
"Don't we have a patient to check on?" I ask.
"No," Derek replies.
"I think we do," I say, desperately trying to get him to understand what I'm hinting at.
Derek looks at me with a puzzled look for a few more moments before the realization comes over him. "Oh, I see. Um, yes, we have a patient who needs immediate assistance," Derek says, winking at me.
I flash him a quick smile. "Oh no. Well, it was great catching up, I'll see you all later," I say as I hurry away from the crowd with Derek. I hear a few people muttering that I wasn't paged and neither was Derek, but I ignore them and follow Derek.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"I figured you could at least meet some of the patients who you will be helping me take care of," Derek replies, leading me to a patient room. He hands me the patient's chart as we enter the room. A young man is in the bed, probably around my age.
"Connor Holt, 27 years old. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor a few weeks back. If we don't operate soon, the tumor could spread to more parts of his brain, so his surgery is tomorrow," Derek explains.
I look over the chart, reading over the information Derek tells me.
"Hi, I'm Doctor Grey, I'm going to help Doctor Shepherd treat your tumor," I say to Connor.
"Nice to meet you Doctor Grey. Hey, Derek, is this your wife? Meredith? Or are you Meredith's sister Lexie?" Connor asks.
I laugh at his questions. "Hold on a minute. You call him Derek? And you know about his wife?" I ask.
"Connor has already been here for a few weeks, since he was diagnosed. The tumor was actually discovered after he was in a car crash. He had to have surgery on his stomach, but he's okay now. We took a CT of his brain to make sure there was no brain bleed, and there wasn't one, but we did discover a tumor. Since Connor has been here for so long, we've learned a lot about each other. For example, I know Connor is engaged," Derek explains.
"I am indeed. Her name is Rachel. Not that you were wondering or anything," Connor says and laughs.
"No no, I'm happy to hear about your life. And, to answer your question, I'm Lexie, not Meredith," I reply.
"So you're Mark's girlfriend?" Connor asks.
I turn to Derek, giving him a look that hopefully says 'we need to talk about this later.' I nod in response to Connor's question.
I continue to talk to Connor, learning details about his life. Apparently he and Rachel had been together since college, and she's a college professor. A few minutes later, Derek's and my pagers go off at the same time.
"We have to go, but it was nice to meet you," I say to Connor.
"You too," he replies.
Derek and I exit the room and head to the ER.
