A/N: Been rewatching and getting wrecked by the early seasons of Grey's and one thing that struck me this time was Ellis and Meredith's complicated relationship, or tbh, lack thereof. So much of who Meredith is was shaped by her childhood and her relationship with her mother, and I have always felt that Grey's left too many loose threads between them. In my opinion, not enough of their relationship when Mer was a child was highlighted or even worked through to the depth that it deserved when she was an adult, so this is my fix-it/take on their story.
This'll be pretty AU but I will be incorporating elements from canon. For the sake of this story, the following is true: Thatcher and Ellis were married and she did have an affair with Richard. They got divorced when Mer was five and Ellis left to go to Boston after Richard refused to leave Adele. Thatcher was the one that got custody of Meredith in the divorce. He is only about to get remarried to Susan, and now wants to give custody of their daughter back to Ellis, who's a general surgeon at Mass Gen in Boston.
Rubbing her temples to alleviate the pressure headache she felt coming on, Ellis Grey sighed heavily as she sat all alone in the locker room of Massachusetts General Hospital, the early morning sunlight creeping in and illuminating the cramped and musty storage space.
She rotated her head slightly to glance at the clock on the wall, her stomach clenching at the realization that she had less than ten minutes to get changed, walk over to the parking lot, and be on the road to get to the airport. She didn't want to be late. She couldn't be late.
Inhaling a deep, centering breath, she rose to stand on her weary feet that had just survived an 18-hour shift, eight of which she spent in the operating room, saving a man's life.
She shed her uniform and slipped on a pair of dark wash jeans and a black sweater, already feeling that slight discomfort she always did when she put on street clothes. She would much rather be in her navy scrubs and white lab coat. At least she looked like herself in them.
Bounding her hair into a loose, messy ponytail, she inspected her reflection in the mirror hanging on the back of the door and cringed when she noticed the prominent, dark shadows under her eye, the deep crease in her forehead, and the fatigue marked all over her face, briefly wondering if she would still recognize her. She gathered her belongings and closed her locker without another thought, there was no time to dwell on them now.
She made it to the end of the row before running into Marie Cerone, a fellow attending. They weren't necessarily friends but they weren't just coworkers either, they teetered somewhere in between. They had a sort of understanding of one another and a shared level of respect. At the moment, apart from her patients, the Spanish doctor was the only person that Ellis seemed to have in her life.
But that would all change in a matter of hours.
"Jake's about to cut someone open who swallowed not one, but ten Judy doll heads," Marie said in fascination. "Want to come check it out before—wait, are you leaving?" The woman balked, scanning the blonde from head to toe. "It's not your day off?
"Yes," Ellis nodded imperceptibly. "And I'll be out the rest of the weekend. I'm actually running late, so I'll see you Monday morning."
She moved to go around her, but Marie was milliseconds faster and cut her off before she could take another step.
"Wait, Ellis. You're off for three days?" Marie questioned, a mixture of confusion and worry coloring her expression. In the almost five years that she's known her, Ellis Grey has never taken the day off, let alone three. At least not willingly. "Why? What's going on? Are you okay?"
Ellis took her fingers and brushed her forehead diffidently, mulling over how to explain herself. This is why she didn't have friends. The questions. She flicked her eyes up to meet Marie's, brown ones that were piercing into her with such a rapt attention. She dropped her gaze, unable to take the concern in them.
"I—" Ellis sighed. With the exception of apprising Dr. Henry Cooper, Mass Gen's Chief of Surgery, for absence purposes, she didn't feel it necessary to share the news she received almost two months ago now with anyone else. It's not that she was denial, or ignoring it either. She thought about what's to come constantly, at least every second that she's not in surgery, for seven weeks now. It was all she could think about.
She was all that she could think about.
"I have to go to the airport to pick up my daughter," she heard herself say, not missing how Marie's eyes went comically wide or how her jaw dropped to the floor.
"You—what?" The doctor asked in complete disbelief. "You have a daughter?"
The faintest ghost of a smile formed on her lips and Ellis shook her head in confirmation, her heart twisting painfully in the process. "I have a daughter."
April, Seven Weeks Ago
Ellis groaned as the jarring sound of the phone ringing cut into her sleep. Flipping over, she grabbed the offending object off the bedside table and examined the screen, her brows automatically crinkling in pure confusion.
As a doctor, she was used to receiving phone calls throughout all hours of the night, but what she wasn't used to was seeing a call from a number with a Seattle area code. Thinking immediately of one person in particular, she didn't waste a second picking it up.
"Hello?"
"Ellis? Ellis is that you?" Her ex-husband's voice said on the other line. "It's me, Thatch—Thatcher."
Ellis' heart sped up and her throat suddenly went dry, all she wanted to do was run downstairs and guzzle down an entire bottle of water. "Thatcher? What's going on? Is she—is she alright?" Ellis croaked out, thousands of scenarios, medical emergencies specifically, flashed through her mind at an alarming rate.
"Meredith is… she's fine," Thatcher said unconvincingly. "But she… she is the reason I called."
"What's going on, Thatcher?" Ellis prompted, now sitting up and turning on the lamp. "It's nearly four in the morning here, which means that it's almost one in Seattle. Is she okay?"
"She—Mer, she ran away tonight b-but we found her," Thatcher stammered. "Susan and I found her, she's back home, but I—we don't think she's okay, Ellis."
"What do you mean she ran away?" Ellis questioned while a sinking feeling in the pits of her stomach began to grow, concern for her daughter and irritation with the father overtaking her emotions. Leave it to Thatcher to lose a ten-year-old.
"Ellis, listen," Thatcher said, his voice noticeably shaky. "Susan, she's my fiancée. We're going to get married soon. And we've been talking, a lot. We've been talking about Meredith and what's going to be best for her. And it's not us. We… we can't give her what she needs."
Ellis forced herself to breathe as Thatcher began to explain.
"I tried, El. Meredith and I, we were okay in the beginning, but lately. I just… she's so smart you know, she's absolutely brilliant and curious. So curious. And also fearless, which you know—she doesn't get from me, and she's determined and stubborn, and that I think she gets from you. But…"
"But what, Thatcher?" Ellis demanded after the man's voice trailed off, ignoring how her heart filled with both pride and despair at his rambling description of their daughter.
"But she's getting older and a year ago, she began asking questions about us and about you," Thatcher said, a bit taken aback by how conditioned he still was to respond to the inflections in his ex-wife's voice. Inhaling a generous breath, he continued. "And she's so angry, for a little girl, she's so angry. And she doesn't talk to me and she—I think she's hurting and I just don't know how to help her. Susan and I—we tried everything. We've been trying for months but she just keeps acting up, getting in all sorts of trouble at school. We had to convince the principal to let her stay to finish the year, so she could at least stay with her friends through grade school. We don't know what to do anymore. She won't… I don't know what she's thinking. I don't know what she wants, but I know it's not me El and I know it's not Susan. I think—"
"What?" Ellis hissed incredulously, as if she was daring him not to finish that sentence. "You think what, Thatcher?" She asked, already knowing the answer.
"I think she needs you, Ellis. I think she needs her mother," Thatcher said quietly. "I-I just don't know what to do with her anymore."
"So you're just giving up, then?" Ellis accused, a scorching swell of anger thrumming through her veins. "You're just going to toss her aside and give her back to me? You—Thatcher, you're the one who fought for custody. You're the one who got the lawyers involved and decimated me and my ability to be mother. You're the one who convinced everyone that you would have the time to raise Meredith. You said you would take care of her. I haven't seen her in five years Thatcher because you promised, you—"
"I know, Ellis. I know… and I feel awful, believe me. But Meredith is… she's growing up and she's not that little anymore, not as forgiving. You and I, we both made our mistakes. But Meredith. She's… she is the one thing we did right, Ellis. I love her. I do. But we have to do better by her. We've got to do what's best."
"And you think the best is ripping her away from the only home she's ever known and forcing her to come live with me, a mother she barely knows," Ellis countered back, all semblance of calm, vanished. "I haven't seen her in five years, Thatcher. How do you even know that I'm what's best for her or I'm what she needs or wants. I have a career. I have—I work 100 hours at a minimum every week. Where do you suppose a ten-year-old fits in any of that? I… you were the one. You were the one who made the commitment. You said that I couldn't have both, that I couldn't have my career and my—" her breath hitched on the last word. "My baby."
A profound silence, thick enough to fill the space between Boston and Seattle, settled heavily in between them. The only thing Ellis could hear was the pounding in her chest, it was the one sign she had that she wasn't dreaming. "How do you know?" She practically whispered.
Not used to the raw vulnerability in the world-renowned surgeon's voice, Thatcher swallowed thickly before replying.
"Because when Susan and I found her earlier, she was at the train station, waiting for a bus, to go to Boston," he answered. "To see you, Ellis. To see her mom."
A/N: More soon, but would love to hear your thoughts so far!