B for Babies

6

Meredith frowned as she stared at the screen, her best friend Cristina was busy laughing her ass off and Meredith wasn't finding this humorous at all. "It's not funny." She told her, but Cristina showed no mercy as she continued laughing. "I'm hanging up now." Meredith warned, knowing Cristina wouldn't hold it against her, but she would at least understand that Meredith wasn't playing.

"I'm hanging up and you're going to have to stop laughing." She continued, obviously stalling. She didn't want to end the phone call, she just wanted more control over the situation, she loved her best friend, her original sister, but Cristina wasn't making her feel any better about any of this. Not at all.

Cristina tried to contain herself the best she could. "I'm sorry, but you and Alex? Nobody is going to believe that." The very idea was so absurd she could barely hold herself together.

Meredith sighed, she knew she was right, but a part of her wanted her to be wrong. She wanted to know that people could believe it. If she just believed they could, then maybe it would happen. This wasn't her idea, but it was the idea they were sticking to. It was the idea they were going to have to suck up and deal with. Maggie was already falling hook line and sinker, and maybe it was wrong to lie to your sister, maybe she was going to hell for that, but she would rather go to hell for protecting her, than to have her sister go through hell knowing the truth.

The word had buzzed through the hospital and Meredith learnt to ignore it. She wouldn't let anybody ask about her personal life, and kept focusing on her cases instead. In surgery it was no different, her peers were looking for ways to dig around her business, but she would successfully deter their nosiness without fail. Jo was ignoring her, trying her hardest to keep away from the woman who stole her boyfriend, or whatever it was that she was gossiping to her friends about. Meredith was trying to keep away from their dramas, she wasn't going to bite when Jo baited her.

"Mer." Alex called out in the hallway one afternoon. She turned around towards him, and let out a small sigh. "I told you, we have to avoid this kind of attention on ourselves. This is not avoiding, this is causing attention. You're causing attention Alex." She said to him.

Alex looked at her as if he was trying to figure out if she was serious or not. He didn't ask, instead just kept talking as if she hadn't even spoken. "We need to talk about everything." He pointed out, reaching over to touch the tip of her elbow with his fingers. He knew things were tense, and a little awkward around the hospital now, but he was determined to make things right, even if it took a while. He wanted to look after her, for her to allow him. He was surprised that she was letting him get this far actually.

"We can talk later. This is a working environment, you're either here because you're sick or hurt or you work here." She told him, not giving him a reaction to the light feathery touches against her own skin. She looked up into his eyes, he looked like a puppy, a puppy who hasn't been cuddled in a while. She let out a sigh and smiled up at him. "I promise I'll talk to you about anything you want, when we go home." She assured him, and Alex seemed unconvinced, but he nodded his head, and gave her arm a squeeze regardless. "I'll see you at home." He told her, before they were parting ways.

Maybe it wasn't fair the way Alex had been treating Jo, but he didn't know what other way to go about it. When she spotted him leaving Meredith, she didn't know what to do about it. He was walking right by her and she couldn't pretend she hadn't seen him with her, it was too late for that. He looked at her with pain filled eyes, and for a moment Jo wondered if he regretted it, if he had second thoughts about cheating on her. She didn't say anything though, instead they locked eyes for a moment, before Alex was walking away. She turned back to where Meredith was slowly emerging from that same room. She didn't look like a woman who had just finished a quickie, although she wasn't even sure that Meredith would screw Alex right in the same building as her, even Dr Grey wasn't that horrible, surely.

"He cares about you a lot." Jo found herself speaking, and Meredith looked up at her in alarm, she hadn't expected Jo to acknowledge her at all, she hadn't expected the younger woman to want anything to do with her, especially not to talk about Alex.

"You don't know the half of it." Meredith responded, wondering if Jo would understand if she did know the whole story, she didn't want to find out though, she couldn't risk having a third party know about her secret, even if it did mean hurting someone like Jo, a mere casualty in her mess of twisted secrets and lies.
Jo didn't speak after that, instead she turned on her heel and walked away. She had patients to tend to, and honestly she didn't have time to waste on how much she wanted to yell at Dr Grey, how much she wanted to scream until her lungs hurt. This wasn't going to go away, the aching in her chest, but she was going to move on with her life, if Alex was the type to cheat on her, she didn't really need him now did she?