Trapped in my head

Chapter 41

"So? Where are we going tonight?" Andrew asked as he met Meredith at the nurse's station the next day. As Meredith looked at him a little confused, he frowned. "Date night, remember?" he said, chuckling softly at her cute expression. "Oh- right." Meredith now said, turning her focus back to the charts she was going through. "You forgot about date night? Is everything okay?" he asked, receiving nothing but a nod from her. "Not in the mood for date night?" he then asked, carefully placing his hand on the small of her back. "No, I am." She replied, still not looking at him. "What's going on Mer?" he asked a little concerned. "Nothing." Meredith said, still fixing her gaze on the files. Very carefully he pulled her a little closer so that she was in his half-embrace. He knew that there was something bothering her. "Mer, please."

"Do you- do you think that our relationship is inappropriate?" she asked, not daring to look at him. "No- why? Do you?" he asked, confused. "Uhm- no. I don't." she replied, stressing the "I".

"Who thinks that our relationship is inappropriate?" he asked her, still not letting go off her. "My sisters. And I don't understand it. I really couldn't come up with one reason why our relationship would be inappropriate. I mean, yes, I am your boss but why would that matter?" she rambled, finally taking a look at him for a few seconds. "Do you think that you being my boss could be a problem?" he asked, now letting go off her. He didn't really know what was going on inside of her but- what if she really thought that it could matter now that she had started to think about it. "No. Do you?" Meredith said, looking at him again. "No." he gave back hesitantly.

All of the sudden a group of interns rushed past them, soon followed by Bailey. "There's been a gas-line explosion at a hotel and there are too many injured people and not enough ambulances to bring them here. We need every helping hand we can get." She yelled while running past them, making Meredith and Andrew follow her quickly. Arriving in the ER there was already a lot going on. The few patients that had been brought here were being treated in the trauma rooms while literally every free attending, resident and intern was getting their ambulant kits ready and loading the transporters that would bring them to the hotel with all kinds of supplies they would need to treat the injured people at the scene.

Since the residents had the interns to supervise Meredith and Andrew got separated in the crowd. Andrew tried to get his intern-group together, giving them instructions on what to do when they would arrive while Meredith had hurried over to the rest of the attendings, getting ready and already jumping onto the leaving and arriving transporters.

Meredith didn't even notice that she had been shaking and trembling until she was forced to sit still in the transporter where no one said a single word, the only sound they could hear being the sirens of the nearby fire trucks making their way through the crowded city. Everyone in the transporter was trying to prepare themselves for what they were going to see at the scene and with what kind of injuries they would have to deal with. Usually, Meredith tried to stay away from the ER as good as possible. It wasn't exactly easy for her to deal with stressful situations, unless in the OR. But right now with no one knowing what they had to expect, only knowing that there were many injured people, needing help, probably half of them needing surgery, she had no choice.

Sitting in the transporter with her eyes closed she tried to count to five and back like she usually did to calm herself down but with the sirens getting louder she couldn't concentrate on hearing her thoughts that well so that she started to scratch her fingers in order to find some kind of relief.
And then, they were there. The transporter suddenly stood still and as the door opened and everyone hurried out the noises just got ten times louder. But she had to pull herself together. There were injured and scared people that needed her help.

So, she followed her colleges out, finding herself on a huge parking lot. While loading out the supplies and starting to set up gurneys and preparing infusion bags and installing them in the supply tents that had already been sat up by the previous group. While everyone of them had been occupied preparing everything for the patients, none of them had really turned around to take a look at the hotel. But as it was now time to receive patients, they finally saw how bad the explosion had been. As Meredith's eye was caught by huge flames coming out of the upper windows of the high building, she froze. She was terrified of fire. But she had no choice. There were people who needed her help. She tried to repeat that very same phrase in her head over and over again to keep herself focused on the patients that were now brough into the tents.

It was awful. Many people being brought out of the house already died on their way out. Many people had lost limbs or had broken glass shattered all over them from the forceful explosion. With her hands shaking and her legs trembling, barely holding her up, Meredith tried to help as good as she could. She had trouble inserting the needles of infusion bags so that she now concentrated on stopping bleeds with compressions and stabilizing the patients in general so that they could be treated properly.

And somehow, she managed to get through it. She kept telling herself that all those hurt and scared people needed her full concentration and focus and in some way it worked. At some point she had gotten herself noise-cancelling earmuffs from one of the fire trucks to block out any kind of noise that would disturb her and like that she was able to hold up for a pretty long time. Until all of the sudden they heard a very loud noise that even her earmuffs couldn't block out. And as she turned around, she saw how a part of the building collapsed, falling down, imploding on itself. Loud screams suddenly filled the air and at that point Meredith could no longer keep herself together anymore.

It was so loud, too loud. Tears filled her eyes and her trembling got worse with every second passing. She had just finished treating an elderly woman with a huge piece of broken glass in her chest. Meredith had managed to stabilize the piece, stopped the bleeding, and had inserted a chest tube to make sure the woman's lung wouldn't collapse while she was now loaded into an ambulance to be transported to Seattle Presbyterian Hospital which was closer than Grey-Sloan. Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm herself down again but it didn't really help. Everywhere she looked she saw blood, people running, dead people being stored on a giant foil that had been laid down at the edge of the scene, she saw people crying over their losses, surgeons running around, the bright lights of the fire trucks and the flames that still weren't under control.

And although she was still wearing the noise-cancelling headphones it seemed as if they weren't cancelling anything at all anymore and soon the screams became unbearable. By now Meredith was also only breathing through her mouth because the smell of fire and burned skin was too much to take. Turning around she took a few steps, climbing into one of the transporters and shutting the door before collapsing onto the ground. Silence.