Grapevines: Part 1

At first Rachel thought the shrill ring that floated through the foggy atmosphere of her dream was merely a part of the landscape her subconscious had decided to throw in. It wasn't until it grew louder and the fog began to give away to darkness did she realize that the piercing screech was the phone on her bedside table pulling her out of her sleep. Her blurred vision made out the glowing red of 3:38 as she noticed the empty space on the bed behind her and whipped the phone off the table, images of Makena lying motionless in a pool of blood on the side of the road somewhere flashing through her still slightly sleep-riddled mind.

"Oh my god, Rach, you will never guess what just happened," a high-pitched voice squeeled through the phone before Rachel could say 'hello'.

She didn't realize she was holding her breath until it came tumbling out of her mouth in a heavy sigh. She forgot Makena was on call at the hospital tonight. She shook her head violently, trying to shake the image of a dead girlfriend out of her panicked head.

"Jeez, Mack, what the hell are you doing calling me at this hour?" Her scolding voice escaped, Makena's least favorite. "I didn't even hear your pager go off. I was positive you were dead somewhere."

"Ugh, sorry," Makena's voice was fast, bouncing up and down the scale of notes, her voice wavering the way it did when she was excited. "But you will never guess what just happened, Rach. Like, never guess."

Rachel let her tired head fall into her hand as she sat up in the bed. Makena did this a lot while she was on call. Just the day before, she called Rachel, who was elbows deep in a bowl of flour preparing cookies for a bake sale at work, giddy with excitement stumbling over her words to explain to Rachel how she held a seven year old girls appendix in her hand. A real life appendix, Rach. Like all gross and swollen and totally about to burst all over the OR. Rachel had to step away from the baking for a couple minutes to get the image of her girlfriend clutching a bloody, bodily organ with a crazed smile on her face out of her mind.

"What did you do this time, babe?" She racked her brain for something she remembered from last week's Grey's Anatomy. "Did the chief let you observe a revascularization?"

"A what? No, no. But I did see Tyler Johnson totally die on the table. Like straight up die, Rach. Like flat line and everything. Dead."

The name sounded familiar but nothing seemed to stand out in Rachel's arsenal of townspeople. Garner, North Carolina was a small town but Rachel had only lived there for a couple months. She still didn't understand why Makena wanted her to move from Raleigh to live with her when she had a perfectly good apartment downtown. Makena had to commute into the city to go to the hospital anyway. Something about the house being in her family for 30 years or something. Rachel thought she was being a bit ridiculous but that was Makena and she got herself in the mess six years ago. She met the girl when they were both Pre-Med at Carolina. Rachel was a senior filling out applications for Pharmacy school in the library when a paper airplane landed in her lap. Upon opening it she found "you're cute, lets go to dinner. love, the super hot chick behind you. ps. hope you're a lesbo or this just got weird."

And it all went up from there. Rachel ran through the names of people she had met in the town. It wasn't anyone that worked at the pharmacy or any of the close neighbors. It might have been one of Makena's friends from high school but she met most of them and the name, Tyler, didn't seem familiar at all. She figured going along with the story would be her best bet; she wasn't in the mood for some Makena meltdown. Oh my god, Rach, why don't you ever remember when I tell you stuff. Tyler is that guy you met that one time for like one second, duh!

"Oh my god, babe, that's horrible. What happened?"

"I know, he just like totally died right there in front of me. Dr. Connor was gonna let me in on the surgery, I just know it, but he just died right there in the Emergency Room."

"Well, are you ok?"

"Um, no! I was totally gonna get to scrub in but the bastard had to get internal bleeding and just croak right there. Typical Tyler."

"Right. Well, um, how do we know Tyler again?"

"I lost my virginity to him."

Just like that. Cards all out. As if he was the guy who checked them out at the grocery store every Thursday. Which reminded Rachel, she needed to make a grocery list for tomorrow. Rachel ran through the history of Makena in her head and...nope, no memory of the boy who took her girlfriend's virginity. Come to think of it, Rachel didn't even know Makena had ever been with a man. She always pictured Makena as one of those forever lesbians, like out of the womb with a flannel shirt and combat boots. Then again, Makena always got hit on out in public. Her long blonde hair and bright blue eyes tended to distract from the fact she consistently wore button-downs and bowties.

"Oh, right. That guy I didn't know existed." Her tone was too sarcastic for the situation, Rachel knew that, but something about the image of a dude feeling up her girlfriend wasn't sitting very well in her sleepy mind. "Well, shame, really. I would have liked to meet the one guy that broke through the woman-loving brick wall that is Makena."

"One guy? Anyway, that's beside the point. I need you to call my mom. She's like, friends with Ty's mom or something, and she'll probably wanna get started on a casserole."

The phone was dead before Rachel could ask Makena why she couldn't call her. She'd woken up Rachel for a story that could have waited until morning. Nonetheless, she tapped over to Mrs. Alton's number in her contact list and waited for the panicked voice of another worried woman who was being woken up by a phone call in the middle of the night.