OKIE DOKIE: Here is my amazing first one-shot. I got the idea from 5x05 (Life During Wartime). The whole thing with Anatomy Jane got me wondering about what Meredith's early childhood was like. Yay!
Ps. If you like this one, read my other fanfic, One Thing, which is tons better than this.
"Kid!" Ellis Grey shouted to her 6-year-old daughter upstairs, who was taking forever to get dressed. "Hurry up! My shift starts in twenty minutes!"
"Are you doing a a-or-tic valve re-place-ment today, mommy?" the little girl asked as she walked down the stairs, showing off the long word she had learned the previous day.
"No! I did that yesterday. I don't know what surgeries I'll do today until I get there. And I have to be there in fifteen minutes! We're late!" Ellis shouted at her daughter like this all the time, and Meredith had learned to deal with it.
GAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGA
Meredith walked behind her mother, as she always did, watching her greet Richard, a man who Meredith didn't like because he never acknowledged her existence. Ellis and Richard always gazed at each other in a way Meredith couldn't comprehend. Meredith just ignored it and focused her attention on her favorite toy, the Anatomy Jane doll.
This was the only toy Ellis permitted her child to own and play with. Even then, she always got angry when Meredith used her silly gibberish names for the organs or when she put the little plastic organs in the wrong place. If Meredith put the heart behind the intestines, Ellis would snatch the doll away and exclaim, "The heart is in the chest cavity, between the lungs, stupid!"
GAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGA
When Ellis reached the lobby, she and Richard went their separate ways, and Meredith began her day of following her mother around the hospital dutifully. Sometimes, Ellis instructed Meredith to stay in a hallway or locker room, but today, she was plopped in the gallery above an OR.
Meredith glanced down at the operating table, and when she saw the open brain during a neuro-surgery, she shuddered and began playing with Anatomy Jane again.
Ellis soon walked in and yanked the doll away. "Watch the surgery," she said coldly. "You'll learn more. You will never amount to anything if you spend your time playing with a doll."
Meredith bowed her head and looked into the OR, preparing for a long, boring day.
GAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGA
An hour later, the 6-year-old had had enough. Meredith stood up and began wandering around the hospital, taking special care to avoid her mom.
Soon, she came to the nurses' station and spotted Ellis and Richard walking towards her. She dashed behind the counter, despite the staring nurses. Meredith peeked out and saw Richard going into the on-call room with Ellis. Meredith then witnessed a miracle: Ellis Grey, cold, hard, mother of a girl who she believed was worthless, laughed!
It was more of a giggle, and an odd one at that, but Meredith couldn't tell the difference. All she knew was that her malicious, sour mother had laughed because of Dr. Richard Webber. Meredith suddenly liked her mother's colleague a whole lot more.