After the afterparty

It's only natural

I went home devastated, yet I couldn't understand how someone could get so sad about a rejection. As if it had been a marriage proposal rejection or something like that! It was just an invitation to go to a bar that I had rejected. But somehow that had been a touchy subject for him, and I wanted to know why.

On the other hand... Me, Meredith Grey, caring about strangers? That was weird, but I really cared about him. He was always joking and laughing and I'd never seen him without a smile on his face.

Thinking about all of this, I fell asleep and the next morning a loud noise woke me up. It was Zola playing with her toys.

-Zola, sweetie, hurry up!- I said
-Yes momma- she said

When we were all ready to go, I grabbed the car keys and dropped them at school, except for little Ellis, who still went to daycare at the hospital. So we drove there, dropped her off and went to the attendings lounge. Surprisingly, he wasn't there. Had he called in sick maybe? That was strange, since I met him he never ever skipped a day. He always went to work. Maybe I should call him, but will that look too desperate? Yes, definitely desperate.
So I decided to continue with my day and hope I'd bump into him throughout the day.

I went from OR one to OR four to OR two, I had surgery after surgery after surgery that day. When I finished everything, it was around 2 pm, yet there were no news about him. It was really weird, because he looked like a happy person all the time, and all of a sudden he was sad and missing. So I decided to call him. Voicemail. Dammit. Well, maybe he was alright after all.
I went to the pit because I got paged 911. Looks like someone over drank today sir- I said approaching him. When I realized he wasn't no John Doe, and I recognized who he was, I almost died...