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lexie grey

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The last few days have consisted of a lot of construction work. Steve realizes he might be tackling more than he can handle by himself, but he doesn't want to approach anyone too early and give the secret away, especially anyone who he considers a mutual friend of his and Danny's. Especially when the secret directly involves the wedding, and making repairs to Danny's shack of a former hut in order to create the perfect honeymoon getaway. It's his way of doing something special, since they won't have anywhere to go when the wedding is all over. But in order to make sure it's ready by Christmas, there's a lot that needs to be done before it can even be considered habitable again.

In his spare time, he's been working on solidifying the foundation, making sure the roof doesn't cave in and taking care of any leaky areas in case one of those fleeting island rainstorms manages to hit. It's there, perched on the edge of the roof and wielding a hammer, that he accidentally hurts himself. The hammer misses the wood and comes down right on his thumb, and at first, Steve's willing to push through the pain, to work through it.

But when the pain starts to get even harder to ignore, he knows he's got to find a way to deal with it without alerting Danny and potentially arousing suspicion. He packs up his borrowed tools for the rest of the day and heads inland, to the clinic, just to get himself checked out. If nothing else, he's probably given himself little more than a swollen thumb, but it's better to be safe than sorry at this point, especially since his inner Danny-voice is telling him he'll lose a finger if he ignores it much longer.

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It's easily the place she spends most of her time. Lexie isn't quite sure when or how that got to be the case, when her circle of friends wore down and she somehow became the council rep for the clinic, but it's true even so. The way she sees it, it could be worse; at least she has someplace to go at all, to throw herself into when all else fails, even if it isn't remotely the same as a ten-hour shift at Seattle Grace. (The lack of patients probably has a lot to do with that.)

She's at the desk with some paperwork when she hears someone come in, instinctively setting down her pen and lifting her chin, smile warm rather than overly professional. "Hi, I'm Dr. Grey," she says. "What can I do for you?"

Steve's been trying to develop an explanation on the way over, but he inevitably figures that the best way to go about this is to state everything as simply as possible, before he digs himself into too deep of a hole. Besides, he's also trying to keep the entire project secret from Danny, and he still doesn't know the half of who Danny talks to on a regular basis, or who he can trust enough to not let the details slip out.

"Construction work," he answers, holding up his injured hand, palm facing before he turns his wrist to flip it around and show the doctor his thumb. "Caught my hand with the hammer. It doesn't look too serious, and I would've taken care of it myself, but I didn't want to risk it. You know."

Lexie winces sympathetically at the sight of his thumb, the sort of instinct she's not sure any amount of time spent in the medical profession could rid her of. There are worse injuries to be had, at least, and frankly, she's a little surprised that they don't get building crew members in here more often. (Not that she would complain, people not getting hurt is a good thing, but still, it's weird, and she can't pretend that she doesn't occasionally wish for more patients.)

Rising from her seat, she crosses to the other side of the desk so she can move closer, paperwork left ignored for the time being. "Here, come sit and I'll have a look at that," she says. "It's good you came in. Did you just do this, or has it been bothering you a while?"

Steve frowns in thought at the sight of her wince. It's bad, he realizes, but it isn't that bad, is it? He can't help but think of those who have suffered much worse than he has, the majority of them serving overseas, and in comparison, a little bruised thumbnail is really nothing to sweat over.

"Couple hours or so?" he admits, with a small shrug. He takes a seat after her suggestion - no slouching, back straight against the chair, but his overall posture is relaxed. "Didn't think much of it, but if it's hurting for this long, I wasn't sure if I'd actually done any serious damage."

That it hasn't been that long is, at least, promising. More than a day, Lexie thinks, and there'd be a lot more cause for worry. As it is, she'd guess that it's a surface injury, no real damage done, though she doesn't want to say so until she's certain. "Alright," she says, examining his thumb and the way it's swollen a little more closely. "And can you bend it at all? I know it'll probably hurt, but."

"A little. I can tell I don't have full range, though," Steve admits, and starts bending his thumb to demonstrate, albeit with a tiny wince that he tries to mostly disguise by clearing his throat. It doesn't feel broken, but he knows that the tiny hairline fractures can always be deceiving, and he looks up to Dr. Grey's face, his own expression expectant - hoping for the best diagnosis, but also dreading the worst.

"Well, the good news is," Lexie says, reaching out to touch gingerly, just to confirm her own belief, "it doesn't seem to be broken. I think you probably just gave it a really hard hit. Keep an eye on it over the next couple days anyway — if the swelling doesn't go down, if it doesn't start to feel better, or if anything gets worse, definitely come back in — but it should be fine." Her mouth pulls to one side, expression rueful. "The bad news is, there's not really anything we can do for that other than giving you ice and some painkillers."

"Hey, I'm just glad you didn't have to go crazy with the scalpel or anything," Steve jokes, cracking a small smile in her direction. He realizes it probably wouldn't have come to that, but there wouldn't have been much he could've done if it had, other than to grimace and bear it. "I don't think we've officially met yet," he adds, offering her his non-injured hand to shake. "Steve McGarrett." It's almost a reflex to add the Five-O afterwards, but he refrains. It's not a title that means much here, not to anyone aside from Danny.

"It's nice to meet you, Steve," Lexie says, placing her hand in his to shake. She means it, too, and not just because it's nice to have a patient, if only for a few minutes. (She wouldn't have minded having to do anything with a scalpel, but this is still the ideal outcome.) Given how small her social circle seems to be these days, she'll never complain about meeting people. "I'm Lexie, I wouldn't... actually ask anyone to call me Dr. Grey." Mostly it's just instinct, a shred of professionalism she hasn't rid herself of even after the better part of a year.

"Dr. Grey." Steve frowns in thought, but it's not directly at her words as it is his own memory as he wracks his brain for that detail, that one piece of information that seems to escape him for a minute before he finally catches onto it and his expression floods with realization. "There's another Dr. Grey who works here, isn't there? Any relation?" He releases her hand after a beat, keeping his injured one steady should she need to look at it further.

"Yeah, Meredith," Lexie says, nodding. It's a question she's fairly accustomed to, both from the time she's spent here and the time before, coming to Seattle Grace so soon after Mere did, practically coming with the territory now that Meredith runs the clinic. There are times it's still weird, she can't pretend that there aren't, but she'd only be setting herself up for frustration to mind it. "She's my half-sister." Not sister, never sister, the Meredith who's here having made clear in the past that they aren't that. Things are better between them than they were, but she isn't going to push her luck. "Showed up... a couple years, I think, before I did."

Steve nods thoughtfully, but he doesn't dwell on the subject for very long, especially since it seems as though Lexie has mixed feelings on it. "I've got a sister too," he admits, watching her quietly as she moves around the clinic. "Younger. I actually just saw her a couple months ago, back when I was at home. She'd come for a visit." His smile turns soft, momentarily reflective. "It'd definitely been a while since we'd seen each other, and the circumstances before that weren't exactly ideal."

"That's good that you got to see her again," Lexie says, smile small and sympathetic. With as busy as she was at the hospital, it had been ages since she'd seen her own younger sister even before she showed up here; now, she's not even sure she'll ever see Molly and the baby again. Not having any idea what happened with Steve and his sister, and not thinking it her place to ask, she just finishes fetching ice, a painkiller and a little cup of water, just in case any of them are wanted. "I bet it would've sucked to show up here before you could."

Steve shrugs, not really giving himself the opportunity to dwell on the subject for very long. He doesn't know Lexie well enough to completely vent, but he accepts what she hands him with a grateful smile before moving on to explain slightly. "Well, we hadn't seen each other in a couple of years," he admits, though that's something of an understatement. "I was serving, and she was living all over the place. It was the first time either of us had been home, since - well, since our mother passed away." John McGarrett had sent both his children away after that, on separate planes back to the mainland, and Steve had carried resentment over that decision for a while before he realized his father had only done it to protect them from the obvious corruption that had permeated the HPD - and, in turn, the island.

"I'm sorry," Lexie says, eyes going just a little wide at that. It's not an uncommon thing to happen, she's sure of it, but she feels for him anyway, the same way she's always done even for people she barely knows. In this case, it's also because she gets it, on some surface level that doesn't require any details. "I, uh, I lost my mom about a year and a half before I showed up here, so..." There are days that still takes her by surprise, too, days it hurts more than others. She just doesn't really have anything to do about that. "That must have been hard, leaving home so soon after."

"I think part of it was a good decision," Steve admits, shrugging once. He's not even sure why he's choosing to get into the painful details of the past with someone he barely knows, but he's not about to get into the whole backstory of his father's investigation and why he'd tried to spare his children from that. He manages a polite smile, nodding briefly, and presses some of the ice against his thumb, releasing a small sigh at some of the relief it provides. "And after that was when I joined up, so I wouldn't have been spending much time at home, either way, not after I was deployed."

Having already talked about two deaths and now his mention of joining up, it's hard for Lexie not to think of George and his plans to join the army that preceded the accident that killed him. There are days that still hits her, too, more frequent since he disappeared from the island (she never told him, she never told him and she should have, could maybe have prevented it from ever happening, if not in her own timeline than in some other. If being here has proven her anything, it's that these things can be varied, and she might well have sent her best friend to a death sentence). She takes a deep breath, though, smiles and pushes it down like she's been doing for so long. "Who'd you join up with?"

"The Navy, first," Steve explains. It's all too easy for him to rattle off his history of service like it's some kind of list that he has to mentally check off, so he does his best to put it in terms a civilian would easily understand. "I was over in Afghanistan, for a couple years, and then spent some time with the SEALs before they stuck me in Intelligence, which is where I was working before I had to come back home to Hawaii, to attend my father's funeral." He shifts the ice against his thumb. "While I was there, the governor asked if I'd start up a task force to deal with the increased level of crime on the islands, which is what I was doing before showing up here."

"Wow." The look on Lexie's face isn't quite an impressed one — she doesn't know enough about any of it to consider herself impressed, per se — but it comes something close to that anyway, her eyebrows raised. "That's... a lot." At least, it is to her. Comparatively speaking, college and med school and an internship must be practically nothing. Even if George had lived, she thinks, he wouldn't have done that much. Imagining him in the military at all has always been difficult enough, regardless of what he felt he needed to do. She wants to apologize about Steve's father, but on the heels of everything else, doesn't really know how. "Sounds like they kept you pretty busy."

"I joined up right out of high school," Steve admits. It might have not necessarily been the path his father would have chosen for him, but it was where he'd wanted to be, especially after everything that had happened at home, what had happened to his mother. And back then, he realizes, he didn't even know the whole story. He hadn't known that the car accident had really been a bomb, or that the bomb had really been meant for his father. All the pieces had started to come into play before he'd showed up here, and now there's no means for him to continue connecting the dots. Every now and then, the reality of that hits him, and it's hard not to feel some level of frustration. "But believe me, I'll never underestimate the value of more doctors in the world," he adds, smiling in Lexie's direction.

"Well, we're kind of overflowing with them here," Lexie says, a little sheepish. Being overstaffed rather than understaffed is definitely the better of the two, but in terms of sheer numbers, there really is a high population of medical professionals. "Which, don't get me wrong, it's great in a crisis, but this —" She gestures to his thumb. "— is more than anyone usually gets in a shift." At least becoming the Council rep has given her a little more to do, though that isn't solely why she offered to do it. It's just nice to have a purpose, when it's so easy to feel aimless here most of the time. "Not that I'm complaining, just, you know. Even after being here almost a year, it's weird going from that to this."

"I guess there are worse problems to have," Steve admits, with a brief shrug, before he holds up his thumb with something between a grimace and a grin. "Like smashing in your thumb, for example. It's less embarrassing when you consider the fact that it happened because I'm trying to pull off a good surprise." He gives her a look that implies he's more than ready to be secretive, at least for the time being. "Well, I'm glad I could give you something to occupy your time."

"I'm sorry it took you smashing in your thumb," Lexie says, apologetic and amused both, and closer to the latter. He's easy to talk to, easy not to feel too self-conscious around, and she likes that, especially when the subject is such that she could easily look ridiculous. "I am glad you came in, though. I'd ask about that surprise, but I'm — I am really terrible at secrets, I'd probably run into whoever it's for and give it all away and that would be bad, so. You'll just have to tell me when it's not a surprise anymore."

"Well, if it wasn't this, it would've been something else with me, probably," Steve confesses, looking rather sheepish at that particular admission as he shifts the ice around on his thumb a little. "Thanks for this, by the way. I'll let you know if it gets beyond the normal swelling or pain level. And it'll be less of a surprise around Christmas time, when hopefully these long hours of construction work will pay off somehow. In the meantime - " He reaches out to clasp Lexie's hand with his good one, smiling gratefully. "Thanks again."

Edited 2011-09-27 23:18 (UTC)

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