Alice ✧ [a. karev]

17. no rest for the self-destructive

Jade had been at work when she got the first call. Eating lunch with a few of the other residents, not really weighing in on the conversation because she didn't really like them and they didn't really like her but they were polite enough not to show it.

She was grateful for the call, whatever it was, giving her a reason to excuse herself. It had been Izzie and only a few minutes in Jade took back everything about being grateful for the call.

Izzie Stevens had cancer.

Jade visited when she could. It wasn't nearly enough as she would've liked but Seattle Presbyterian wasn't close enough to Settle Grace where she could just stop by for lunch. She'd  go maybe twice a week, stay with Izzie for a few hours, talk to Mark and George, sometimes Bailey, and then split. It seemed to work.

It had been her day off and she was at home when she got the second call.

George O'Malley was dead.

She couldn't remember the last time she cried that hard and then she couldn't remember the last time she even saw George and it made her sob even harder.

Sweet, kind, better than the rest of them George had been hit by a bus.

Jade hadn't had a wake-up call like that in a long time. The kind that screamed at her that she was not immortal and the people she loved weren't either and she couldn't even remember the  last time she spoke to Derek and Meredith or the last time she saw Addison so why was she wasting her time at a job where the surgeons were average and the education meager.

Now it was over a month after George's death and Jade sat in the backseat of Mark's car on her way to her first day back at Seattle Grace. It had been easy to get her job back, her old spot still needed to be filled and who better than Jade herself.

Music played lowly from the radio, windows cracked just slightly and Jade leaned forward, placing her head in between the two front seats as she began to talk.

"Do you think anyone will be happy to see me?" Jade asked inquisitively.

"They'll be thrilled" Mark answered monotonously and Lexie, now a resident, turned her head to smile at Jade from the passenger seat.

"I think they really will be. After everything it'll be nice to have you back," she said softly and Jade smiled at her.

The news that Mark and Lexie were a thing came as a shock to Jade but the more she saw Lexie around his apartment the more she got used to it. She was good for him.

"I hope so," Jade sighed, slumping back into her seat.

She went over her agenda for the day in her head. Sit with Izzie while she gets her treatment done, congratulate Meredith and Derek on the marriage, and avoid Alex.

Mark had been her spy in the hospital while she was gone. Feeding her all the hospital gossip that Seattle Pres sorely lacked. Word was that Alex had mainly been on pediatrics with the new peds surgeon Arizona Robbins, so considering she was on ortho she figured she'd have no problem steering clear.

She was alone when she got changed in the resident's lounge. Her old cubby was still empty, right next to George's painfully full one. She shoved her bag and clothes in there quickly before leaving.

Mark just added her on to one of his cases considering she had no patients of her own and it had started out a very slow day. So she figured she'd cross off number two on her agenda when she spotted Meredith and Derek.

She put a bright smile on, straightening the collar of her lab coat as she approached.

Derek saw her first, smiling happily at her and going in for a hug.