Days
Wednesday, April 1st
She'd been staring at the murky bruise on the back of her hand for an inordinate amount of time. The blood-blistered skin where the needle from the drip that had punctured her vein stood out like a sore thumb, a testament to the living nightmare that was slowly stripping away at her resolve day by day. Whoever had dealt with her while she was unconscious had been in a hurry, or a panic, of which she was unsure.
Her eyes never faltered from the discolored patch of skin, never daring to glimpse at the sea of black that wove around her living-room in meandering and tentative steps. Meredith had already been subjected to a myriad of pitying hand-shakes and shoulder-grabs, suffered the weight of a hundred "I'm sorry for your losses" and had cringed at the tears of those who offered condolences without being able to keep their own composure.
She was exhausted.
Her back remained stiff against the couch, her mile-long stare unfaltering, but her calm and unaffected demeanor was a well-practiced cover for the carousel of delirium that was dragging her in endless circles underneath the surface.
Derek…Derek.
There she remained silently drowning, and it felt worse than ever having fallen under the current in Elliott Bay. She'd felt the panic as sea-water entered her lungs, she'd thrashed and kicked against the tide, but that was nothing in comparison to the tsunami that had engulfed her and washed away the main reason for her existence; Elliot Bay was merely a gentle ripple in her life in the face of this tragedy.
It had taken every ounce of energy in her bones to be able to drag herself from underneath the afghan that Amelia had thrown on her the night before, to crawl from the couch and wander idly through her morning until it was time to ready for the funeral - time to dress her gorgeous, undeserving children in black.
The carousel never stops turning.
Life continued without Derek, but her life felt paused - as though someone had torn fifty chapters from her story and handed her the pen to rewrite all of the hopes and dreams she had for the future.
You should understand better than anybody else. You wrote the book on quitting. Running, hiding, you've written a lot of books, Meredith.
She spent her waking moments in a gyral haze, everything happening at breakneck speed. The funeral was merely a blur of hymnal recompense and churchy consolation that never felt quite right. They were not, and never had been churchy people. It all felt disingenuous.
The carousel never stops turning.
Wave, after wave, after wave…guilt, loss, stomach-sickening pain.
Lull and crash. Lull and crash.
"Ma!"
The tearful cry from her son shook her from her wandering mind, urging her to take back to her feet and pull the little boy from his namesake's arms.
"Mmmma!" Bailey hiccuped in murmur as he pressed his tear-stained face into her neck. She shushed him gently and cupped the back of his head before pressing a soothing kiss to his temple, assuring him that he was okay, that she was there and present for him.
"I'm here, Bub, I know."
It was late and Bailey and Zola should've been in bed, but she hadn't the heart to tear them from their friends that had been invited as a distraction from the day's events. Bailey laid limply against her shoulder, his tears stemming as his breaths evened out against the skin of her neck, a gentle reminder that her kids needed their routine.
She kicked off her heels with a slight, pitying smile from older Bailey, and carefully wound through the thinning crowd to the doll's house where Zola and Sofia were still playing.
Her daughter was waning, evident by the way that she was sprawled on the floor, head resting on her forearm as she dragged the daddy doll to and fro in his car without story nor reason. The little girl fought a shuddering yawn and rubbed her tired eyes with weary effort.
"C'mon, Sweetie," Meredith urged, holding her hand out to her oldest, "let's go and get ready for bed."
Zola would have usually put up a fight and caused a scene, but her little soul seemed to have noticed that everything was a bit off-kilter lately and she drowsily complied by pushing herself to her feet and grabbing her mother's hand, daddy doll still tightly clenched in her right fist.
She caught Callie's eye for a moment, nodding her head to an also waning Sofia to make sure that she also made it home before calling the wooden flooring bed. Once Callie was scooping up her own daughter, Meredith led her children past the throng of onlookers who all took sneaking glimpses at the newly single-mother, eyeing her piteously as she guided them to bed.
They saw Baby Bailey, the little boy who would be too young to remember his father, who would live life listening to snippets of memory and stories, fabricating an image of somebody he would never know. They saw Zola, the first apple of Derek's eye, old enough to remember the man they mourned, old enough to realise the loss and pine for the days when Derek would blow her raspberry kisses and don princess crowns for high-tea.
All they saw was a living tragedy.
"When can these people go home, Mommy?" Zola croaked from her right hip as they rounded the corner to the bedrooms, "they keep crying and talking about Daddy. I don't want to talk about Daddy."
"I'll get Uncle Alex to tell them all goodbye soon," Meredith offered, her heart sinking.
She settled a snoozing Bailey on Zola's bed for the moment and helped her daughter pick out PJ's. Zola rubbed her eyes as she leaned against Meredith and carefully stepped into her giraffe pants that Derek had bought in DC. They hadn't been washed since last week when she'd put the kids to bed as a single-parent for the first time. Zola refused to have them put in the laundry hamper and she'd been avoiding meltdowns left, right, and centre to try and keep the kids' trauma to a minimum.
Did it make her a bad mother? Was Derek looking down on her in disappointment because she couldn't get her kids' laundry done?
She knew it was a foolish thought, but she berated herself over it anyway.
"Mama?"
"Yes, Zo?" Meredith replied, slightly taken aback by Zola's switching of her name. She'd been "Mommy" for a few months now and "Mama" had been left to the wind one afternoon back in November.
"Can you tell me the story of how Daddy knew I was your baby?"
"I thought you didn't want to talk about, Daddy?" Meredith bit her lip, fingers deftly teasing Zola's messy buns into braids so that she could sleep easier.
"I don't want to talk about Daddy with those people," she huffed with crossed arms.
Meredith wanted to smile at the little bit of sass that her daughter had begun to adopt into her personality, but the reason it was there at all was because she felt uncomfortable in her own home. The house her father had built. The home that was overrun with well-wishers who were constantly questioning her sanity, her well-being and competency.
She didn't want to speak to those people either.
"Alright, Lovebug, grab your globe and I'll tell you how you became our baby."
Zola hurried over to her desk, bare feet slapping the floor as she crossed the room. Meredith gently reached for Bailey again and laid him on her chest as she settled herself against the headboard on Zola's bed.
Zola tripped back over with a renewed excitement and clumsily ambled over Meredith's legs in order to settle in the space between her mother and the bedroom wall.
"Okay, you comfy?" Meredith checked.
"Snug as a bug in a rug!" Zola confirmed.
The memory of Derek's voice teaching their oldest the little rhyme she'd just spoken flashed across Meredith's mind.
"Can you find Malawi?"
Zola spun the globe idly for a while, until something sparked a memory and she flipped to the African continent on her globe. Her little finger traced over borders and provincial lines before landing on the country of Malawi that she and Derek had taught her not too long ago.
"Good girl, Zo," Meredith encouraged, a sense of pride burning gently underneath the heavy grief that settled upon her breastbone, "once upon a time, just over five years ago, a little princess named Zola was born in a hot, sandy village right by the side of Lake Malawi."
"Which is why my skin is like chocolate," Zola interrupted, raising an arm to show Meredith.
"It is," Meredith confirmed, "she was born with beautiful, big brown eyes and smooth chocolate skin, lots of fuzzy, curly hair and tiny, tiny fingers and toes."
"Smaller than Bailey's?" Zola asked, gently poking one of Bailey's unsocked feet.
"Much smaller," Meredith nodded, "she was a beautiful little baby who lived in a kingdom where people worked very hard all day long, people who were proud of their castles and princes and princesses."
"But there were no doctors, right Mama?"
"There were doctors, Zozo, but not enough. People got sick and needed a lot of help, and the Mommy who carried you in her belly had to leave to live in heaven so she could live a healthier life. So Princess Zola went to live in a castle with lots of other princes and princesses waiting for their forever Mommy and Daddy."
"Uncle Alex flied me on a plane to here, Mama!"
"That's right," Meredith couldn't help but to force a smile as her daughter tucked herself further into her side, big brown eyes beaming up at her, urging her for more of her story, "Uncle Alex decided to help people in Princess Zola's kingdom, and he flew a lot of princes and princesses on a plane to Seattle, and to a hospital where Mommy and Daddy worked."
"Daddy fixed my brain!"
"He did, Lovebug. Daddy was specially picked to help you and he helped to mend an owie in your head. While Daddy helped you, your big smile and cuddles made him fall in love. He looked at Princess Zola and he knew she was his forever baby. He was so happy and so in love that he ran to grab Mommy and he told her that Princess Zola was so beautiful and smart, that no one else in the world could be Princess Zola's Mommy and Daddy than us."
"And you sing to me?" Zola yawned.
"I did," Meredith sighed, "Mommy never sang because she didn't think she was very good. But, when Daddy told Mommy about Princess Zola, she went to go and visit her and she knew that Princess Zola was her forever baby too. Mommy sang to you, cuddled you, tickled you…and Daddy took you with him on rounds to check on patients. Mommy and Daddy loved Zola more than anything in the world and they decided to build their own castle so Princess Zola could come and live with them forever."
"Is Daddy my forever Daddy still?" Zola's words were now slurring, her eyes closed.
"Your Daddy will always be your forever Daddy, Zo. Daddy loved you and Bailey more than anything in the world."
"And Mama."
"Yes," Meredith felt a lump in her throat, "and Mama too."
Zola's lashes finally fluttered still and Meredith released a shuddering sigh, careful not to let the heartache overflow the banks of her heart in fear of accidentally allowing the children to see her break. She'd been so careful to keep her own state of grief and misery out of their sights, wanting nothing more than to keep her kids just kids - flashes of her own childhood cemented that belief.
She couldn't think of anything more tragic than her five year old daughter having to become her crutch.
You're anything but ordinary, Meredith.
That damned carousel.
Even as she lay in bed with her kids, one draped across her chest, the other curled delicately into her side, she still couldn't get off. The sigh hadn't relieved any of the pain. It just continued to build and build.
"Don't," she begged herself, the trickle of impatient tears gracing her cheeks unceremoniously, "you can do this."
All she wanted to do was to curl up in Zola's safari-print sheets and cuddle her babies close, but there were a whole host of people she hadn't thanked, nor engaged back in the main living-room. She had to thank Bailey for her beautiful poem, Arizona for catering for the wake, Callie for babysitting…there was this whole village she owed so much to, but she could barely breathe to let them know how much she appreciated their efforts.
Bailey fidgeted mutely in his sleep and grasped the lapel of her dress, snuggling his sleep-warmed cheek further into her breast. She traced a fingertip over the little boy's ear, noting that it had the same curve as Derek's, a reminder that her husband would live on in more than a figurative sense.
Derek Bailey Shepherd would carry his name, his eyes and smile…Derek would live on.
Knock.
"Mer?"
Zola's door cracked open slightly and Alex popped his head through.
"I'm coming," she assured, attempting to sit up straight.
"Don't be stupid. Stay," Alex prompted, taking a seat on Zola's bean-bag.
"There are people out there," she replied, blankly.
"So? Stuff 'em."
"You don't need to check on me," Meredith warned him, frustrated by the amount of people that had been eyeing her on the sly. She couldn't even tuck her children into bed without being tracked.
"I know," Alex shrugged, pausing for a moment as she oscillated soothing strokes over her son's back, "just…you need anything?"
"No," she replied, her tone a little less hostile, "you?"
"No," he shrugged her off, sitting back into the beanbag a little further, "do your thing, I'll just sit here."
"Okay."
They sat in mutual silence, punctuated only by Bailey's snores and Zola's shifting, reminiscent of the times when she would knit away frustrations with Alex silently musing by her side. She would never admit it out loud, but his presence gave her comfort - the nights were the worst.
Fifteen minutes after Alex's arrival, the door cracked open again and Cristina followed suit, silently recognising the quiet reflection and escape that they were building around one another. She dropped onto the floor near Alex and rested her back against Zola's chest of drawers with a tired sigh.
It was all so jarring.
Just a few years ago she was embarking on her career, desperately trying to fight off her dreamy attending's flirty advances, mourning the fast degeneration of her mother's mind…and now, here she was.
Her husband was dead.
Two of her five intern group were dead.
Her mother was dead.
Her sister was dead.
Her brother-in-law, her dog, her first baby…
She was too young to have so many ghosts.
Maybe Cristina was right, she thought, glancing over to her best friend who had her eyes closed, head resting against Zola's PJ drawer - maybe Seattle was the place where things came to die.
For the first time in a long time, Seattle no longer felt like home.
It made her feel sick to her stomach.
Her eyes passed between Alex and Cristina inconspicuously, her memories of them flashing in random succession over the years. They'd seen everything. They'd seen her fall sickeningly in love with her attending, Cristina had washed blood and debris from her face after an exploding bomb, Alex had carried her unconscious body to a gurney when she'd collapsed after breaking the news of Derek's death.
Everyone here knew everything about her. Their eyes followed and pitied. They'd watched the legend of Meredith and Derek unfold, and now they had watched it all fall apart.
You guys are a freaking romance novel.
She would never walk the halls of the hospital without somebody feeling sorry for her again.
Seattle was now her prison.
The weight of Bailey on her chest was all that held her from fleeing in that very moment.
The three stayed in Zola's room for a little while longer, before Meredith finally felt guilty enough to go and make small, menial conversation about her dead husband's funeral service, about how beautiful it was, how the sun shone, and the rest of the positive crap that most of the mourners tried to coddle her with.
She placed her son in his crib and gently placed two kisses on his forehead as she had done with Zola.
"Sweet dreams, Baby Boy."
Right in that moment, she envied her infant son's blissful ignorance. She would give anything - anything - to be able to lay her head down and succumb to tender dream.
Not so tender were the gut-wrenching, soul-shattering nightmares that plagued her unconscious.
Not so tender was the prospect of playing the coping, stoic widow to a room full of people looking for a weakness in her performance.
She was the wilted star in a show that was all her own.
"He's still going to be dead tomorrow, people."
True to her word, Meredith had finally caved and entrusted the shepherding duties to Alex and Cristina who were more than willing to kick people out of the door without preamble. It was rude and selfish, but she couldn't stand another hour of having her home invaded.
She had nothing left to give.
Alex tossed dishes and glasses into the dishwasher as Cristina swiped plates into a garbage sack, while she resumed her muted position on the couch. She eventually drowned out their distant bickering and returned to staring at the bloody blister on her hand, thankful for the modicum of peace she now had to whirl in delirious pain.
Alex and Cristina would allow that.
They never coddled her or told her that she would be okay, they had no curative answers or words of healing comfort, just an unbending presence who knew how she dealt with tragedy, who knew not to try and reason with the powerlessness of her situation. They were the people who had seen her drown before.
They were merely lifeguards who knew when to drag her back to the surface, and they'd let her struggle a little first, to battle the depths. They weren't looking to be her heroes. Just her people.
"Mer?"
"Hmm?"
"I've got to go, Switzerland can only stay neutral for a day and then the surgical floor descends into chaos. I'm talking HR discrepancies, unexpected pregnancies and fraternisation…I just got the intern spawn to stop sniffing each other long enough to get through routine appendectomies."
"Go," Meredith encouraged, gently clasping her best friend's hand in hers, "thank-you for coming."
"Mer…" Cristina trailed off.
"Don't," Meredith squeezed her hand, "just you being here. It's enough. It was enough."
Alex snatched his coat and keys from the kitchen counter with promises to return from dropping Cristina at the airport.
And then all was silent.
It wasn't the same as before. Surrounded by people she never had time to reflect, just time to distract herself, but alone and in the silence she found it difficult to stay in the bubble. Her fingers twisted the watch on her left wrist in painful circularity, the metal clasp catching her skin every few revolutions.
Derek…Derek.
The silence was deadening but she could barely think straight.
It hurt to breathe.
In one swift motion she was back onto her feet and marching in the direction of their bedroom - her bedroom. Several times a day she envisioned it all a fantastical nightmare, a delusion brought on by early-onset Alzheimer's…but the facts remained the same, as soon as she would open her bedroom door, Derek's shirt and tie would still be laid on their unmade bed, his shoes sprawled across the wooden floor, waiting as a reminder that he never returned home to put them away.
She tortured herself by checking, but the instinct to believe that the worst moment of her life was anything but reality was entirely too overwhelming.
She stood in the doorway, arms cradled around herself as the bedroom light flickered on. In brutal confirmation, Derek shirt and tie were exactly where he'd left them a week before, his medical journals still bookmarked at the same pages, shoes still messily strewn across the floor.
If the carousel felt like it was whirling at breakneck speed, the vicious barrage of memory that assaulted her as she glanced over the post-it and tumor drawing flashed at light-speed.
No running, ever - that we'll take care of each other even when we're old and smelly - the tumor is here - now you've completely lost your mind - you're like coming up for fresh air - it's you, it's always been you - they offered me the job, again - take it - someone doesn't want to put her shoes on - she's just so happy, you have no idea what's going to happen, do you? - Derek….Derek - Richard! You can't leave me here! - I was swimming…and then I let go…I stopped fighting.
She stopped fighting.
She had died.
Here she was again, alone. Drowning. There was no Derek Shepherd to drag her from the current this time around. If she stopped fighting, there would be no one to save her, no one but her five year old who would live with the crippling memories of her tortured mother.
It was all too eerily familiar.
She and Ellis had intersected.
You are not your mother.
Derek was dead like his father and he'd left his own children far too soon. She was Ellis, crushed by the loss of losing the one she loved the most, facing the prospect of raising both of her children alone. They were both tragically, exactly where they never, ever wanted to be.
Meredith, it's just blood.
Bile rose in her throat.
She would never allow Zola to scrub her agony from the kitchen floor.
And in that very moment, she knew she had to keep fighting.
Everything that led her to Elliot Bay was tinged by the choices her mother made. Ellis neglected her and channeled her anger and pain towards her, she unloaded the burden onto her five year old shoulders and she'd almost drowned as a result.
Her kids were just kids.
You are not your mother.
In one fell swoop, the decision was made.
Meredith bypassed the remnants of the wake in the kitchen and quickly hurried down the hall to the kids' bedrooms. Bailey grumbled as she plucked him from his crib, whimpering against her shoulder as she snatched his diaper bag and shoved a few of his sleepers, socks, t-shirts and pants into the main pocket.
"I'm sorry, Bub," she apologised, as his hiccuped cries continued into the crux of her neck, "Mama's terrible, I know."
Alex was due back at any moment and she feared Amelia catching her in the act of leaving. If this was it, if she was to overturn her destiny and be a stable figure to her kids, she had to seize the moment.
She blindly grabbed Bailey's blankets from his crib and dumped them on top of his diaper bag in the hall before pulling his door shut and crossing the hall to Zola's room.
Zola was still curled into her comforter, slumbering peacefully with Daddy doll clasped in her fist as Meredith pushed her door open. Without hesitancy, Meredith hitched Bailey higher onto her hip and gently rocked Zola's shoulder, careful to be calm in her ministrations.
"Zozo, honey, wake up."
Zola blearily complied, confusion knitting her brow when she realised her room was still dark and that nighttime hadn't changed.
"Mommy, I was sleepin'!"
"I know, Honey," Meredith soothed, "Mommy's sorry," she offered, as she yanked Zola's drawers open and grabbed as many clothes as she could fit into the small holdall she'd grabbed from the closet.
"Here, put these on," Meredith passed her some pink bootie slippers.
Zola took them hesitantly and perched back onto her bed so she could slip them onto her feet, watching Meredith with caution as she hurriedly stuffed another few sweaters and pairs of leggings into the holdall.
Meredith drew one final sweater from Zola's drawer and handed it to her, ordering her to put it on as she bent to zip up the holdall. Bailey wriggled in her hold, oscillating between sleep and frustrated wakefulness, his cries still muffling into her skin.
"Okay, you ready?" Meredith checked with Zola, holding out her hand for her daughter to take.
Zola nodded and slipped her hand into hers, quietly accepting whatever order Meredith gave.
"Where are we going?" Zola finally asked, once she'd returned from tucking Bailey into his carseat.
All those years ago, faced with the same situation, Meredith had never questioned Ellis. One minute Seattle was there and the next she was a Bostonian first-grader. Five year old Meredith was used to the upheaval - but five year old Zola had known nothing more than the stability that she and Derek had given her. Suddenly, being torn from bed in the middle of the night was a foreign landscape.
"Away, we're going away."
And that was all Meredith could give, because not even she had any idea where this moment would take her.
Thursday, April 2nd
She'd been driving south on the I5 for hours. The sun had risen hours before and she'd been blearily rolling past signs for cities in California since two am.
Bailey and Zola were still passed out in their carseats, the interruption to their sleep earning them a couple of extra hours past their usual rising times. Hunger rolled through her stomach and she knew that the kids would be awake within the hour, hungry and confused.
Her foot was cramping on the accelerator and she was beyond exhausted. If there was one rule she would forever live by, it was never, ever to allow anything to endanger her driving.
One, stupid mistake had cost her family everything.
Realising her limit, Meredith veered off from the I5 and slipped into Sacramento before it was too late.
She was barely functioning as she pulled into the nearest Whole Foods store, silently praying that Bailey would sit in the cart without having a meltdown. He was already whining into his blanket and unless she had cheerios in a bowl stat, she'd have a screaming toddler on her hands in less than five minutes.
She felt like a sore thumb as she raced down the aisles, throwing snack food items and dry foods into the cart. Zola was still in her nightgown and curled in the cart bed, clinging both Daddy Doll and her Doctor doll, Bailey was clad in his romper and she was still wearing her funeral dress and slippers.
People would look at her and judge her for being a terrible mother who couldn't get her lazy kids to dress. No one knew that she'd buried her husband - their father - the day before. No one else knew that her kids had been ripped from their beds just before midnight, and that they'd slept in a car for eleven hours before their selfish mother brought them to Whole Foods because they hadn't eaten since their father's wake.
"I don't like these, Mommy," Zola snapped as she raised the box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch from the cart.
"They're your favourite, Sweetie," Meredith explained, smoothing a hand over Bailey's hair as he dropped his head into her breast, still whining pitifully.
"No," Zola reiterated, "I don't like them," before throwing them out of the cart.
"Zola Shepherd!" Meredith hissed, reaching for the box on the aisle floor, "if you don't want something, you tell Mommy nicely. We don't throw things."
"I want that one," Zola ignored her, pointing to a brand of muesli - Derek's brand of muesli.
"Mmma!" Bailey sobbed.
In one hurried decision, Meredith threw both the muesli and the cinnamon crunch into the cart, deciding that arguing with Zola would be fruitless - the little girl had the same temper as her father and she had no time for the meltdown refusing her would lead to.
The cashier eyed her pitifully as she rolled up with Bailey now on her hip, snot streaking across her shoulder as he wiped his face across her dress. Zola helpfully - or not so helpfully - tossed the items in the cart onto the conveyor belt and the girl bagged the items haphazardly, squashing the bread under the tins that Zola saved for last.
Meredith couldn't find a moment to truly care and swiped her card before hightailing it from the store.
"Alright, alright," Meredith soothed, strapping Bailey back into his seat and rummaging through the bags for the reusable bowls she'd bought. She tossed one onto Bailey's lap and quickly poured some Cheerios into his bowl, finding absolute peace in the ceasing of his cries as he greedily shoved the dry cereal into his mouth.
"Mommy, I want my moo-sly!"
"Hey, what did I say?" Meredith warned her daughter as she raised a brow at her from the other side of the car, "I said nicely, Zola."
"Please," Zola finally relented with a sigh.
"Good girl," Meredith encouraged, rubbing her brow. She could feel a migraine settling in her temple and the painful ache was already pulsating behind her eye. She pushed through and got Zola settled with her muesli, somewhat surprised by the fact that she ate it without complaint.
"You like muesli, ZoZo?" she asked her daughter, eyeing her from the rearview mirror as she settled back into the driver's seat.
"Uh-huh," Zola murmured, spooning another bite into her mouth, "when I waked up with Daddy, I eat moo-sly. When I waked with Mommy I eat crunch."
She had no idea.
Derek had always been a bit of a health-nut, even if both of them were completely helpless in the kitchen. He'd been pressing her to eat healthier for years and she'd been somewhat obliging, adding salads to her grilled cheese and ordering veggie pizza. He never let it slip that he'd been working on the kids as well.
Bailey reached over blindly and attempted to grab for some of Zola's cereal, which she kindly made easier for him to dip his hand into. Bailey scrunched some soggy muesli flakes into his fist and mashed them into his mouth with a satisfied "numm".
She'd had no idea at all.
She supposed there were always things they were learning about each other as husband and wife, especially in the way they raised their kids. They spent a lot of time passing each other in fractured moments, trading the kids at the start and ends of shifts, taking it in turns to be on-call so that someone could stay home with them as much as possible. Obviously, the past few months had really only been her and the kids and she'd settled them into an easy routine, but not even a couple of days home and the kids had completely latched on to their father's habits.
Meredith could feel her heart constricting.
It hadn't even been twenty four hours since her husband was in the ground and the prospect of guiding her two children through life as a single-mother was already tearing her apart.
Her cell lit up from the front passenger seat, in a silent gesture that meant Alex was still trying to get her to pick up. She'd put it on silent once the kids had fallen back to sleep, but despite the lack of sound, the phone had illuminated her car several times throughout the night. Her screen read thirteen missed calls. All from Alex.
He'll get the note, she told herself.
She ignored the fourteenth call and put the car into reverse as the kids finished their on-the-road breakfast, hoping to find a hotel close by. The kids needed to be changed - Bailey was already halfway to stinking the car out by the pressured look on his face - and she needed a nap. More than anything she wanted to be able to close her eyes, even if for a few minutes.
She ended up pulling into the first big-name hotel chain she could find and threw her credit card down for the authorisation for a suite. A bell-hop helped her with the little luggage she'd dared to bring as she cradled Bailey on her hip, Zola happily skipping alongside her, swinging her hand to and fro.
The suite was perfect for their stop-over, and Zola rushed over to the TV to flip on morning cartoons. Enthralled by Dora, Meredith took Bailey to the bathroom and stripped him down to his diaper.
"I'm sorry about all of this, Bub," she apologised with a gentle rub to his belly, "Mama has no idea what she's doing."
She bathed the kids one by one, settling Bailey down with a few blocks and cars while she watched Zola in the tub. Usually they'd bathe together, but she wanted to spend a few minutes alone with each of them, and shower them with some individual love before the next grueling leg of their trip.
She had no final destination in mind, but she knew that she would settle on something once she passed it by. All she needed was a spark of inspiration. Sacramento definitely wasn't it.
It was hard to discern whether the foot pressed into her thigh was her son's or her daughter's, or who's fingers were curled ever so slightly under the hem of her t-shirt so she could feel little fingertips against her naval. All three of them had curled up for a midday nap together and the bed that usually felt so lonely to her now, was suddenly abuzz with breathy snores and muted twitching.
Meredith breathed in slowly.
It was all she could do not to close her eyes and pretend that Derek was in DC and she was cuddling his children because she was lonely waiting for his return.
Her breathing hitched a little, as silent tears dampened the corners of her eyes, a combination of fear and grief coursing through her veins. It was like she had always said - losing love was like organ damage. It was like dying.
How would she cope?
She would endure this pain for the rest of her life, and that seemed absolutely terrifying to her.
How did it all come to this?
How did her husband's brain bleed go under the radar? How did he end up in some Podunk hospital with Podunk doctors who had no idea what they were doing? Was he conscious? Did he know?
These were the questions that kept her up at night.
She waited until the kids' bedtime before she shuffled them into the car again, settling them down in their seats so she could drive while they slept the day off. She was eleven hours south of where she started and she had no idea how much further she was willing to go before settling.
She had no real desire to go further than California, one state's distance from her husband's fresh grave was enough. All she wanted was a change of scenery - something other than the perpetual rain and damp of Seattle. It was once something that soothed her, but now only reminded her of the times she and Derek were in the tin trailer, falling asleep to the soothing lull of raindrops against the roof.
She'd taken some Advil to settle her migraine, but the pain still throbbed in her brow.
The nap had settled some of her exhaustion but her eyes remained itchy from her lack of sleep, the coffee in her travel mug barely strong enough to fight the lack of sleep she'd endured since her flight.
She was waning.
Friday, April 3rd
It was seven am when Bailey smacked his lips together and roused from his deep sleep. He'd been a nightmare to put to bed as a newborn - both she and Derek had spent countless nights trying to get Bailey to sleep, suffering hours on end without naps themselves, forcing them to fall asleep on bathroom floors and in parking lots. It wasn't until one evening when Derek offered to take him on a trip to the store that they figured out Bailey's secret.
He was a car boy.
As soon as the hum of the engine was motoring in the background, Bailey was on the home-straight for a good night's sleep. He'd been the same ever since. Meredith could barely leave GSM's parking-lot before Bailey's snores filled the backseat, yet he would barely sleep for thirty minutes in a crib at daycare.
"Ma!" Bailey cooed from the back, smiling a toothy grin as she caught his eye in the rear-view.
"Morning, Sweet Boy," she cooed back, reaching a hand behind her to gently caress his socked foot.
He seemed to be in a good mood as she veered off the I5 and into downtown San Diego. It was Good Friday, a long weekend for some. She'd had the brainwave of taking the kids to the beach after having them cooped up in the car for so long. She had vague memories of Coronado beach from the one time she and Derek made it out of Seattle for a weekend vacation, but they had spent most of their time in the hotel room and they'd not seen much of the Californian beaches they'd been talking of since booking the hotel.
Zola was all smiles and full of childlike wonder when she woke in the parking-lot next to Coronado Beach. Meredith's heart warmed at the sight of he little girl's smile and she tried not to be too picky when Zola ran straight for the beach without asking.
Meredith settled a towel she'd borrowed from the last hotel onto the sand and settled Bailey down with his breakfast, before getting Zola's muesli ready. She kept a careful watch on Zola, glad that her daughter was finding joy in building sandcastles and digging for buried treasure in the sand.
She had been forced to face tragic circumstance far too young and Meredith would always resent that. She had really, really tried to shield them from the world's ills, but even her best efforts were not good enough - the universe always had a way of reminding you that human-will was not always enough to keep the balance and the joy.
"Mommy, look!" Zola cried cheerfully, pointing at the mound of sand she'd constructed into a castle.
"Well done, Lovebug," she responded, a smile stretched on her cheeks. She was trying. She was really trying.
"Come on now, your breakfast is ready."
Zola quickly ambled through the sand and collapsed to her knees, spooning a couple of mouthfuls of muesli into her mouth before rushing back to her sandcastle.
"Lala!" Bailey grumbled from Meredith's lap, unhappy that his sister had ventured away from his reach.
"You gotta come here, Bay," Zola responded, patting the sand next to her.
Bailey crawled over with purpose, pushing himself onto his feet mere steps away from Zola's castle. Meredith could foresee what was about to happen seconds before Bailey wobbled and tumbled into Zola's castle. She waited with baited breath as Zola watched her baby brother loll about in the sand, trying to crawl over the flattened castle.
Instead of falling to anger, Zola fell onto her own butt and giggled furiously as she watched Bailey attempt to climb over the mound, struggling with energetic grunts as his jean-clad thighs dug further into the pile of sand.
"M-Mommy!" Zola giggled hysterically, "B-Bailey's stuck!"
Bailey's indignant shriek only caused the girls to laugh harder, and Meredith found herself losing herself to some fleeting, unadulterated joy for the moment. She would question it later, once the kids were in bed, whether she was allowed to experience the joy while her husband was so fresh in the ground. She would cry in the bathroom silently, pouring her tears into her bathrobe over the thought of what Derek would miss, the laughter he would never be able to partake in again. She would vow that she would cherish these moments to the best of her ability, for the both of them - she would let her kids be kids and she'd laugh if they'd laugh.
But most importantly…she'd settle here.
No more driving. No more breakfasts in the car.
San Diego was the sunny, coastal city she'd been waiting for all this time. Those first few peals of laughter were the first she'd heard since Derek's death, and she needed more of that.
If only for a while, she'd found a home.
I started writing this in response to being angry that so much was glossed over when Derek died. I honestly thought that the show would never go there. Unfortunately, it did. This is my way of seeing things with a closer lens, a better dedication to Meredith's grief than what we were given in the short, 80 minutes of 11x22. I have a hard time believing that Meredith cried once in a closet and then had a dance-party a few hours later. It's disingenuous and not true to her character. She is strong and unyielding, but she's not a freaking robot who can turn off her emotions. Stay tuned for more!