Five times

3

"Kate, Lucy, Charlotte, Julie and Emily. All born early and all staying in the NICU" I announce to the interns who were all looking at me patiently, ready to hear what I was about to say. We were having our first birth of quintuplets at Seattle Grace, and it was every doctor's first experience with quintuplets, including mine. I'd witnessed twins and triplets, but never quints. They were rare, and even these quints weren't conceived naturally; they were the product of IVF fertility treatments.

"Each one of you will be assigned a quint, you won't leave the NICU your entire shift, unless it's to trade off with the second person assigned to your quint. You will stay at night with your quint, watch their every move, every breath and every beep on that monitor. One of them so much as looks like they might have something wrong and you page me, I don't care if it turns out to be a false alarm. If anything, anything at all, looks wrong, I want a page immediately. These babies won't be dying on my watch" I announce "now, O'Malley you'll be monitoring Lucy, Stevens you're with Emily, Yang you've got Julie, Kate will be with Karen and Grey you get little Charlotte to look out for. Any questions?" I ask after reading their names off the clip board. "No? Okay, then lets go deliver some babies"

~

Day two, and all the babies seemed to be doing okay, minus Emily. Her heart, the poor little thing, was giving us more trouble than anticipated. Besides that, there were only minor issues. Julie needed a second surgery, but she'd be okay, Charlotte was having some trouble breathing but managed to stay stable, Lucy's shunt surgery for Her hydrocephalus had gone very well and she was stable, and Kate was doing by far the best with no surgeries and no need for any. She was stable from the moment she was born.

About halfway through the night, I entered the NICU room where the quints and interns were (and had been all day) to give them an hour before the rest of the night.

"Alright, you all can go for an hour. Sleep, eat, shower, I don't care. Be back here, and if you are paged I want a dead sprint back to this room, are we clear?" Watching all five alone would be tricky, but I knew that not much could happen in one hour. I'd be fine to look over them.

Everyone filed out, grateful to go and get some sleep. Everyone, that is, except for Meredith Grey.

"Meredith? Why don't you go, eat and rest up, Charlotte will be fine here for an hour" I assured her, as I walked over to check Charlottes stats, feeling troubled at what I saw. Her breathing wasn't doing very well.

"Her lung collapsed; I got a tube in there and managed to fix the lung before any real damage was done, but I can't seem to figure out how to keep her from bottoming out every hour" Meredith told me, as she gently ran her hand down the little baby's head.

I watched in awe as Meredith sat there and gently caressed the baby's little head, speaking to her as if she could understand what was going on. I pretended to be checking up on Kate, so I didn't embarrass her, but hearing her talk to Charlotte really made me smile.

"You're a tough cookie, that's for sure" she told Charlotte, still running her fingertips on her bald little head "you keep trucking through it, and you'll be just fine. I know you will be" she sat there for about twenty minutes, when she stood up.

"Addison, I have an idea" Meredith announced "I'd like your go ahead, just because I don't want to do anything you believe will be risky, but Kate has been stable this entire time, right?" She enquires.

I nod, raising an eyebrow and walking towards her from my spot on the other side of the room. "Yes, she has been. She's been showing no signs of distress and seems to just keep getting better" I inform her, curious of what her idea is.

"I read an article once in Med school about co-bedding between preemies, I'd really like to see if Charlotte would improve from that. She's stable enough to move, and Kate is stable enough to have a friend in her incubator"

It was a stroke of pure genius; if nothing else, it was the best idea and most creative I had heard so far in terms of the babies recovery plans. Co-bedding between newborns, while mostly used on twins and triplets, was a good idea and it proved to be helpful in most situations. After months of being in the womb smashed up against four other humans, it wouldn't be odd if Charlotte was just feeling lonely.

"That's an amazing idea" I tell Meredith, and watch as her face lights up. "Kate seems like she'd need a buddy, and Charlotte might just be feeling a little lonely. It's definitely worth a shot, good thinking Meredith" I go over to Kate and wheel her incubator over to Charlotte's and wait while Meredith gently and slowly picks up Charlotte, who was showing some signs of respiratory distress, and places her next to Kate. Despite their eyes being covered over, Kate could still sense Charlotte was there, and in no time she had reached one tiny hand out to touch Charlotte. I was wary of the touching, but I was amazed to see that the numbers Charlotte's monitor went up drastically.

The two tiny little babies were curled up together, and it seemed to be saving their lives.

"It's working!" I exclaim, in shock and awe.

"She was just a little lonely" Meredith turns to face me "everyone needs to feel loved; even if they're just a little preemie. Nobody wants to feel alone" her gaze was piercing into me, and in that moment, I wanted to lean in and kiss her like it would save my life. Her grey eyes held mine, and damn, if I didn't feel giddy in that moment.

"Don't you ever feel lonely?" Meredith asked, still holding my gaze while she gently caressed the baby. Her ministrations were not paused by the intense eye contact.
"Being with the babies, holding them, I can tell it makes you feel happier than anything else" she was right; being with babies, despite them being just infants, it made me feel less alone. I had someone who was there and relied solely on me for the time being, and it made me feel less alone. It made me happy.

"I suppose my answer would be the same as yours" I tell her. We were both with Derek, and now we both were alone. While Derek and I were trying to work it out, I knew his heart wasn't in it. I felt more alone than ever, even when he was sleeping right next to me.

Suddenly, she reached over and grabbed my hand. Gently, she put my hand on top of hers, the one that was resting lightly on Charlotte's little back. She was so close to me now, both our hands were touching.

"It sucks, doesn't it?" Meredith murmured, before looking me in the eye again. It was intense, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't hot. Everything about this made me heat up in places that shouldn't have been heating up. The contact, physical and mental, it made me feel like I was on fire.

"What does?" I ask, getting lost in her, everything about her. Her face and her eyes and just her. She was beautiful.

"Feeling lonely"

Just as she spoke, the door swung open and all the interns piled in, chatting casually. I jumped away from her like I'd been burned; but nobody seemed to take notice.

"Hey guys, what'd we miss?" Stevens said happily, as she went to check up on Emily.

Meredith's eyes met mine and there was a certain look in them, as if no one knew anything but us. Which was true, something happened with us, something neither of us could explain. And it was our little secret.

"You missed something big" Stevens thought she meant Charlotte and Kate moving into the same incubator, but the way she looked at me....I knew she meant us. There was nor a doubt in my mind.

I had feelings for Meredith Grey.