chapter fifty eight

i will follow you into the dark.season five, episodes seventeen and eighteen.

. She turned to Cristina with a concerned frown, prompting the woman in question to roll her eyes and repeat Meredith's movements.

"Cassie, open the door," Cristina demanded, still wearing her pajamas despite her shift starting in less than twenty minutes.

"!" Cassie shouted from the other side of the door, her voice muffled and nasally from the small cast she was forced to wear on her broken nose for another day. "!"

"Seriously," Meredith sighed, resting her forehead on the doorframe. "It's been days, and we're going to be late!"

"!"

Cristina scoffed, pounding on the door multiple times in a row in the hopes of annoying her out of bed.

"Cassandra Harper, open the door right this second! Or I swear to god, I'll... um..."

"?"

"I—" Cristina looked to Meredith for help, who simply shrugged, not having anything to threaten her with. "I'll... I'll call Bailey!"

It was silent for a moment.

Five seconds later, the door made a clicking noise, swinging open to reveal Cassie in baggy sweatpants and a stained tank top, eating crunchy peanut butter straight out of the jar with a spoon. Pumpkin was seated on her right shoulder, sleeping soundly with his head tucked into the crook of her neck.

"You wouldn't dare."

Cristina cocked a brow. "Try me."

Cassie groaned, dramatically throwing her arms up in the air. Pumpkin meowed in discontent at the movement, clawing at her skin so he wouldn't be thrown off.

"I look ridiculous." She gestured to the cast on her face, which was surrounded by a dark purple bruise forming in a circle around her nose and fading out on the apples of her cheeks.

"Just get dressed, you'll be fine," Meredith said. "No one will even notice."

Cristina scrunched up her nose. "No, she's right. She looks ridiculous." Meredith glared at her. "What? I'm just being honest."

Cassie shook her head, scowling. "I'm not going to work, until my face no longer looks like I was trampled by a freaking horse! Go away!"

She took an exaggerated step backwards, clutching her peanut butter in one hand and Pumpkin in the other as she slammed the door in their faces.

"I'm dialing Bailey's number as we speak!" Cristina shouted, in a last ditch effort to get her to leave her room. Cassie responded by throwing the jar of peanut butter at the wall, causing a loud to echo throughout the apartment.

"Huh," Meredith pursed her lips. "That did go as well as I'd hoped."

☆

Callie observed Mark's hand, raising a singular brow at the swelling around his knuckles. "It's still swollen. I'd give it another day of rest."

"I haven't operated in three days," Mark argued, earning a deadpan look from Callie as she let go of his hand and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Don't hit people with your scalpel hand," she suggested. "Have you talked to him yet?"

"No," Mark scoffed, rubbing the part of his hand that hurt the most. "And I'm not going to. He threw the first punch—"

"Well, you did catch him at a bad time—"

"—he punched "

"True, but we all know he was aiming for y—"

"I don't give a damn who he was aiming for!" Mark exclaimed, giving his best friend a stern look. "He hurt her, and now she won't so much as get out of bed, or to meBesides, he lost a patient. Boo-hoo. We're surgeons, we're men, we lose patients. It doesn't give him the right to go around behaving like a drunk frat boy."

Callie frowned, ignoring the last part of his rant. "Wait, Cassie still hasn't come to work?"

"No," he shook his head. "I mean, Grey told me that she says it's because of the bruising, but we all know Cass would never skip work over something like that."

"Maybe she feels embarrassed?" Callie suggested. "You know, the punched-in-front-of-a-crowd type of embarrassment?"

"It's Cassie," Mark raised a brow. "She doesn't get embarrassed. She once dressed up like Willy Wonka on the first day of college classes because she thought it would be funny to see people's reactions."

"Just give her some time, Mark," Callie smiled supportively. "I'm sure she just needs some time."

He sighed. "I hope so."

☆

Cassie woke up from her midday nap, to once again hear a fist pounding against her door. Rolling her eyes at Meredith and Cristina's antics, she rolled over and buried herself underneath the covers, curling up next to her sleeping cat.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of the lock turning, as George and Lily entered her room without saying a word.

Cassie turned back over, sitting up straight in confusion. "Um, how the hell did you get into my house?"