Before We Turn to Stone

Season 16, Episode 11: I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

"I'd always thought that if I held you tightly

You'd always love me like you did back then

Then I fell asleep and the city kept blinking

What was I thinking when I let you back in?

I am trying to break your heart.

I am trying to break your heart.

But still I'd be lying if I said it wasn't easy,

I am trying to break your heart."

***

Somewhere around 4 AM, Alex gives up trying to sleep.

He usually doesn't have any trouble sleeping, but it's been like this for the past week and a half: he hits the sheets exhausted, passes out hard for three or four hours, then jolts out of sleep before the birds even start singing. He's too tired to even be pissed off about it anymore.

He skips a shower – he's got an appy on a fourteen-year-old at 8 AM, so he'll just shower at the hospital afterwards. He rummages through their pantry and unearths a protein bar he's fairly certain is less than six months old, then pulls the covers up around Jo before he leaves.

He gets to his office in record time and starts going through the mountain of paperwork that never seems to shrink. And he starts on it with good intentions, he really does – but before he knows it, he finds himself staring out the window into the cloudy predawn, his mind a million miles away.

Or, more accurately, a few miles away at Grey Sloan.

Izzie's leaving; when they talked a few weeks ago, she told him about her plans. Today she'll transfer post-op care of her last patient over to the team at Grey Sloan and then go to visit her mother in Chehalis. She'll stay for a few days, then drive back to Seattle and fly home to Kansas.

She'll disappear again. And he's not a texter. He's not a "video chat once a month" kind of guy... if you can even be that kind of guy with your ex-wife. He doesn't think he can – he's never been friends, real friends, with an ex. He hasn't even seen her or talked to her since she's been in Seattle. So to think that they'd talk after she leaves... 

As far as he knows, Jo hasn't met her or talked to her or ran into her, and as much as he's wanted to, he hasn't asked Meredith anything about her. It's beginning to feel like she was never there to begin with, like her voice on the phone in his ear was his imagination and nothing more.

It sucks. 

For the first time in a couple months, he resents being at Pac North again. If he wasn't here, if he was back at Grey Sloan, back home where he was supposed to be, he could have at least seen her.

In the quiet, alone in his office, he can admit to himself how much he wanted that. And it's not going to happen.

He pushes back from his desk so fast his chair tips precariously on its back wheels and stalks out of his office. His appy is waiting.

***

"Mer! Wait up!"

Meredith turns to see Jo jogging down the hall towards her. "How's it going?" Meredith asks when Jo reaches her. "I feel like I haven't seen you since I got back."

"I've had more surgeries this week than I have in the past month," Jo says with a grin. "I should've become an attending years ago. And now I'm starving. What're you up to right now? Do you want to grab some lunch? Or have you got plans?" she asks, gesturing to Meredith's blazer and jeans.