On Call | Grey's Anatomy // Book 3 // COMPLETED

50 | In The Dark

Walking through the halls of the hospital that night, I heard someone calling for help. I was a little confused at where it was coming from, though, because there was no one in sight. Finally, I got to an on-call room where I could hear mumbled from inside.

Pushing the door open, I saw Owen facing away from me and mumbling to himself in the dark room. "I can find her." he breathed.

"Owen?" I approached him slowly before touching his shoulder, "Owen, are you okay?"

As soon as I touched him, he spun around and grabbed me hard by the shoulders. It felt like he would have even done more if he hadn't have snapped out of it when he did. "E-Ellie?" he looked to me, his expressions confused, angry, and a little upset.

"Owen, what happened?" I asked him.

"Just...get out," he told me.

I looked up at him but he just turned away. "Owen-" I started.

"Get out!"

Stepping back, I exited the room. I walked back down the hall a little bit before I just stopped and leaned against the wall. I was trying now to take this whole thing personally, but he...he was yelling at me now. Rubbing my face with my hands, I took a few deep breaths before I pulled myself together and went to watch a surgery that Meredith and Amelia were performing. 

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"Looks like both of Mr. Jaffee's transplants were successful." Amelia walked up with Meredith as I stood near the O.R. board with Bailey.

Bailey smiled as Maggie and Nathan joined us. "Oh, great news! Oh, Dr. Riggs. How you settling in?"

"Well, you'd have to ask Dr. Pierce that, I think." Nathan looked at Maggie.

"Well, have you met everybody?" Bailey started looking around as I saw Owen start to sneak off. "Um, Dr. Nathan Riggs, this is Grey, Shepherd, Forrest, this is Hunt. Hunt!"

Nathan turned around to look at Owen. "Yeah, we, um Dr. Hunt and I go back a bit."

"Oh!" Bailey nodded, "Oh, I didn't realize."

"No. No, you didn't." Owen huffed, "Maybe you should've asked around before you decided to bring a complete stranger into the hospital."

"All right, Owen, why don't you and I just-" Nathan tried to calm things down a little.

Owen, however, just ignored him. "Did you think this was how it was done? Didn't you think for one second that, as Chief of this Hospital, it is your responsibility to vet your people? 'Cause this...this is a bad call, Bailey. This is a really bad call. It was thoughtless, and it was reckless."

"Hunt." Bailey stopped him, "Why don't we go to my office and talk about this?"

Owen just turned and stood right in front of Nathan. "What's done is done, right?"

After that Owen just stormed off. As much as I didn't want to go after him and just give him some space, I still thought it was important that he had someone there...just in case. So, I followed him outside to the ambulance bay where he just leaned against one of the ambulances.

"Owen..." I sighed, "You...you have to talk to me. Please, all I am asking is for you to talk."

Owen continued to stay silent until Meredith came outside and pushed him as well. "We made a promise to Cristina that we wouldn't let you go dark and twisty, that we'd be your people if you needed some." Meredith stood beside us.

"I don't want to talk," Owen told her like he had been telling me all day.

"Okay. You don't have to." Meredith said, "But just tell me...do we hate him?"

Owen nodded. "We hate him."

"Okay, then. We hate him."

Meredith stood around with us for a while before she finally went back inside. Once she was gone, I turned to Owen and just hugged him. He wrapped his arms around me and let out a big sigh. "I'm here." I mumbled to him, "I won't try and make you talk any more, but...I'm here if you want to. I'll always be here."

"Okay," he whispered.

The two of us just stood there, in each other's arms, for a while yet. It was already dark outside and neither of us had anything left to do, so we went back to my place...or at this point, it was kind of our place.

As soon as we got home Bear started jumping around, happy that we were back and probably needing to go outside. Owen, who hadn't really said anything on the ride there, opened the back door and walked outside with Bear.

He sat down in the middle of the grass and started wrestling with the dog, which was a pretty cute thing to watch.

I just hoped that he wouldn't keep me in the dark about this Nathan Riggs thing forever.

It's hard to fight against certain biases. It's important to keep an open mind. It's how we learn. It's how we grow. It's how we move forward. Until we don't. Until we let our bias take over. Until we succumb to what feels right or good or satisfying in that moment. Because even then, deep down inside, we usually know we're going to regret it.