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Meredith turned over in bed, trying to calm her thoughts.
Her post-it husband, finally home, lay beside her snoring softly. The sound was comforting, but it triggered too many other thoughts, none of them remotely peaceful.
She couldn't get the sight of it out of her mind; the sound of the gunshot that felled her love in an instant as she looked on, helpless. And helpless again, offering her life for his as the shooter threatened Derek's life on the OR table. Helpless even to protect Cristina, to tell her friend to save herself, to stop operating. Ultimately helpless to keep her baby alive. The sights and sounds flashed through her mind, relentless.
She hadn't seen Alex after he was shot, not until he was patched up. She had seen Lexie, keeping near him, trying to be calm and not succeeding well. And later, just a few days ago, Lexie had lost it in the pit. She hadn't been able to protect her own sister. And there seemed little she could do for her now. She wasn't good with that sort of thing. She didn't always understand Lexie, much as she had come to care for her.
She understood Cristina. Or she usually did. Now Cristina was acting so strange, acting like the happy bride. So unlike her. Meredith didn't know what was going on inside her friend's mind, but she knew it couldn't be good. This wasn't Cristina, this wasn't right. But she wouldn't be dissuaded: she had decided that she wanted to marry Owen. Now. So she would support her, but sometimes there was something in Cristina's eyes that Meredith wasn't sure of, something that made her worry. Cristina hadn't been cleared for surgery, but wasn't rampaging about in an effort to rectify that situation. Warning bells went off in Meredith's mind whenever she realized how long it had been since Cristina had cut. Especially considering the conditions of that last surgery. She was beginning to worry quite a lot about Cristina, now that she thought about it. Things just weren't right with her.
Alex; he could generally take care of himself, and he seemed to be okay since his recovery. But he was alone again. Not in the physical sense, since he'd seemingly hooked up with half the nurses in the hospital, but Alex had come too far from the closed off person he had once been to be truly happy in that sort of state. At least for any substantial period of time. He'd opened his heart to Izzie, and although she'd broken it in the end, Meredith judged that he would likely return to seeking that in the end. It was like she'd heard Callie say of him: he was, in the end, the guy who married, settled down, and threw a football with his kids at a backyard barbecue. But how he would get there now seemed to be a tough road.
Even Dr. Bailey seemed very affected by the incident. Unflappable as she usually was, Meredith had heard rumors of Dr. Bailey's encounter with the shooter, and everyone knew how Charles had died in her arms. That had to change a person. To be helpless like that. Meredith understood feeling helpless. She hoped that Bailey would find her way back from that place.
Meredith flipped her pillow over, trying to focus on its softness and the nearness of her love. If only she could operate; but that had been denied her. Just because she hadn't crushed Derek's dreams of a baby by telling him of the miscarriage that he couldn't have prevented anyways. At least that's what she assumed the weirdo shrink had been picking up on, unless he was even more off the wall than he appeared to be. Making out with Teddy...so inappropriate. (though perhaps she shouldn't judge, considering her own past history with workplace romance.) But even if she could operate, she didn't know if the OR would be to her what it had been. The hospital had been her safe place, and it was that no longer. She could go walk to the spot where she saw Derek shot, where she saw Owen shot. Where Derek had almost died. The spot where her baby had died.
No, she wasn't sure if anything could help her now.