Genesis ► GREY'S ANATOMY [1]

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

IT WAS ALMOST dark outside. The sunlight was slowly creeping away and making place for the very little light the moon provided. People were turning on the lights of their cars. The streets were starting to get lit up by lanterns. Most people were either on their way home or already in their homes. Some were out partying, while others were on their way to work the night shift. Nobody was even thinking of running in this darkness, well except for Courtney that is. With her blonde hair in a tight ponytail which swung from left to right, she was passing by every house on her way.

Ever since she had seen her father again after more than 20 years, Courtney had decided to pick up her habit of going for a run again. It never ceased to make her feel better. After every run, she felt rejuvenated, fresh and happy. She felt like the old Courtney again, who had no problems that made her head hurt. Normally, she ran before work in the mornings, but that day she didn't have the time. She had needed to get up at the most ungodly hour. Courtney didn't want to disrupt her daily routine, so she figured that she would go for a run after work.

As her feet brought her further into the darkness, Courtney tried to regulate her breathing. In and out. Her eyes glanced to the side, where she was able to look inside the living room of a house. The light was on and they hadn't closed their curtains yet. She saw a happy family, laughing at something on television. In and out. She never had that. Even when she was little and her parents were still together, she never had that. Her mother never made time for them. Had she ever even loved them? In and out. Her father had though. But why did he leave them then? Why did he leave them fending for themselves? Why did he never contact them again? Why. Why. Why.

In and out.

Courtney hadn't even realized that she had started crying. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her feet stopped moving. She wiped them away with her sleeves. Her heart started beating faster and her breathing become more and more unregulated. At that point, Courtney was full on sobbing on the streets, in the dark. Luckily there was hardly anyone around, but even if there were people around, Courtney wouldn't have cared that they would have seen her having a mental breakdown.

"Stop crying. Stop crying." Courtney kept repeating to herself as she looked for support with a lantern pole. The tears didn't stop though. No matter what she tried to tell herself: it didn't stop. The more tears she wiped away, the angrier she became. She started becoming angry with herself because of her constant crying. Why couldn't she stop? Courtney took a couple of minutes before she sprinted away from that neighborhood. She kept running – like somebody was trying to murder her – until she was back at the hospital.

Taking some deep breaths and wiping her sleeves against her cheeks one last time, she went inside with her head down hoping that nobody started talking to her. She made her way to the locker rooms where she had left her stuff. It was quite quiet in the room, since most of the interns were either wandering around the hospital or gone. That was a relief to her. She wasn't in the mood to have gossip spread about her or to talk to someone that weren't her best friend or sister.