You saw my pain washed out in the rain
Broken glass, saw the blood run from my veins
But you saw no fault, no cracks in my heart
And you knelt beside my hope torn apart
But the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
We'll live a long life
The checks come when Meredith doesn't expect them.
They are going into work late because they've got Meredith's sixteen-week doctor's appointment at 10:00, and so Derek is cooking breakfast and they are having a leisurely morning. Zola, sitting at the kitchen counter next to her mother, has eaten her own scrambled eggs, and has started on Meredith's. Meredith coaches Zola to eat with her fork instead of picking the eggs off her plate with her hands, but Zola eats with so much gusto that it's kind of a lost cause. Derek laughs because, as he says, this is just another in a long series of moments that proves that biology only counts for so much; Zola reminds him so much of Meredith.
"Just let her go, Meredith," Derek says as he whisks more eggs into the frying pan.
"She's a big girl, Derek. Right, Zo?" she asks. "You're a big girl and big girls eat with forks."
"I'm hungry, Mama," Zola says. Zola is kneeling on the chair, elbows on the counter as she picks at Meredith's food. "I eat this too?"
"Slow down, Lovebug. Your belly's going to hurt if you eat too much."
"I'm making more for you, Meredith."
"I don't care about that; I just don't want her to puke," Meredith says, remembering a similar incident with take-out French fries last week that ended with vomit all over the backseat of her car. "The fork will slow her down. And it's good for her to start practicing. Surgical dexterity."
"She's two," Derek laughs.
Meredith is about to respond that it's never too early when the doorbell rings. Derek raises an eyebrow. "Who could that be?" he asks.
"Who could that be?" Zola mimics, her eyes wide.
Meredith laughs a little at Zola and shrugs. "Sit down, Zo. On your butt," she says before she gets up to get the door.
She signs for two FedEx envelopes at the door and by the time she sits back down at the counter, Zola has crouched over the plates again and juice is dribbling down her cheeks as she munches on a strawberry. Meredith opens the first envelope and is shocked into speechlessness.
"What is it?" Derek asks as he slides some eggs from the pan onto her plate.
"It's a check," she says, "For fifteen million dollars."
"Oh," Derek says. He holds the pan there and just stares at her.
"So I guess the other one is in this envelope," she says, holding up the unopened one.
He places the pan back on the stove and takes the empty chair on the other side of Zola. "Thirty million dollars."
It's a staggering amount of money, even for someone who was raised by someone who won the Harper Avery twice. "I know."
"Should we go to the bank?" he asks.
"I guess we should. Or hire a financial advisor or something."
She stares at the check in her hand for awhile and wonders if a lifetime is even enough time to spend this money. Ellis's estate paid her medical school tuition, and Derek's world renown as a neurosurgeon has long since paid off his student loans. They have a house already and they work too much to take a vacation and neither of them cares that much about buying stuff anyway. It's a shameful amount of money, much too much. But there's no other way that anyone can attempt to pay them back for what they have lost.
Suddenly, though, there's no time to think about the checks because Zola throws up her breakfast all over the counter and just like that, they go from running early to running late. Zola barely even cries, and when Meredith presses her lips to Zola's forehead and her hands lightly on Zola's neck, she can tell there's no fever. She just got too full too fast.
"She's gotta use the fork, Derek," Meredith says as she strips off Zola's pajama top and bottoms.
"I throwed up, Mama," Zola says, staring at the vomit on the counter as Derek starts to clean it up.
"I know. I think you ate too much, ZoZo. Do you feel better now?"
"Yeah."
"Next time, we have to slow down when we eat, ok? Come on, let's go brush your teeth and find you some clothes." She lifts Zola down from her chair, careful to avoid the mess. "Go in the bathroom and put some water on your toothbrush."
Zola heads into the bathroom alone, and Meredith turns to Derek. "So apparently she was hungry. I think I'm done with eggs for awhile," she says.
"Yeah, that did it for me too," he agrees. "But apparently my scrambled eggs are so good that they literally make people burst."
"Yes, but maybe not four eggs for one kid next time," she says with an eye roll, and picks up Zola's soiled clothes to put in the wash. "I better go make sure she doesn't get into the toothpaste. Ready to go at 9:15?"
Zola is as good as new by the time they get to the hospital at 9:45. They drop her off at daycare, and she runs to Sofia like they've been separated for weeks instead of just overnight.
Derek has noticed a change in Zola's relationship with Sofia after they both turned two. They are starting to play with each other now, instead of just next to each other, and they genuinely enjoy each other's company. Of course, they hit some snags when they get tired or cranky or refuse to share with one another, and they haven't yet worked out all of the finer points of wholly non-violent conflict resolution—but they are toddlers, and even then, just barely. And in any case, Derek loves that his daughter already has a friend.
Meredith is talking to one of the scrub nurses, who has a little boy in the three-year-old class, about a birthday party Zola is invited to next weekend and while they iron out the details of Zola's social life, Derek just watches her play.
Zola helps Sofia build a tower of blocks, and when they knock it down together, they both scream with laughter. And suddenly, he can't stop staring at Sofia. She is Callie over again; she looks exactly like her mother. But when she roars when she knocks the next tower down, he sees Mark in her. He supposes Sofia has a check for fifteen million dollars waiting for her too. Mark would have wanted her to have it, would have given anything to this baby, but the stupid thing is that Sofia is two years old and isn't even conscious of what money is. The stupid thing is that what she really needs is her father.
He needs to do a better job. It's been difficult with his hand, and the pregnancy, to find the time. He knows that Sofia has two incredible moms who won't let her grow up without knowing her father, but he also knows that he is the keeper of Mark's life before Seattle. When Sofia gets older, maybe she will want to know what Mark was like when he was in kindergarten, or in seventh grade, or as a senior in high school. And he is the only one who can tell her. Maybe she will just want to talk to someone who has a dead dad too.
Mark would do these things for Zola, if the situation were reversed.
There is no good reason why things turned out the way they did.
Every day, it gets a little bit easier to believe that she really is pregnant. Granted, she hasn't been able to button her jeans for two weeks, and she cries out of nowhere, so it's undeniable at this point.
But still. She feels the pressure of the transducer on her abdomen and it's easier to accept the joy she feels when the sound of the baby's heartbeat fills the room. It's easier still to squeeze back on Derek's hand and to watch her OB use her finger to trace the baby's head and spine on the screen.
"Everything looks normal," the doctor says. Her OB is remarkably upbeat, and Meredith can't tell if it's just her personality, or if it's part of her approach to dealing with patients like her, who are nervous wrecks. Either way, with every appointment and with every reassurance, it's easier to believe it.
"Looks normal or is normal?" Meredith asks.
The doctor smiles and corrects herself. "Is normal," she assures her. She takes a towel and wipes the gel off Meredith's stomach. "You're measuring right at sixteen weeks. Your progesterone level is good. All your labs are normal. You look great. You're pregnant."
Meredith nods, and fixes her shirt as Derek helps her sit up. If he has been worried that anything was less than normal, he hasn't shown it. Which, she supposes, is a good thing, since she isn't sure she would be able to handle both of them flipping out. But now his confidence isn't another source of worry for her; she is less sure now that this will ultimately break his heart.
"Before you leave, you need to schedule your twenty-week ultrasound for next month," the doctor says. "And you guys should think about whether you want to find out the sex of the baby because we'll be able to do it then if you want."
Meredith looks at Derek, and he grins and raises an eyebrow, but his feelings on the issue beyond that are unreadable.
"Do we have to decide now?" Meredith asks.
She never thought it would get this far, and so she has tried to catch herself every time she has visualized a little boy or a little girl. She's tried to keep it abstract, just for her own sanity, and so they've never talked about this. She's not sure whether she wants to know or not.
"No, no, of course not," the doctor quickly replies. "We don't even have to do it at the twenty-week appointment, but we can if you want to. We can also wait. Totally up to you guys, but talk it over and let us know when we see you next month."
"We'll think about it," Derek says.
They make their appointment for next month, and then they leave. Bailey's covering for her, so she should get on the floor soon, if only because even though Bailey is Bailey, it would still be a lot for her alone to keep all of those interns from royally screwing up all day.
Before she leaves Derek to change into her scrubs, he asks her, "Do you think we should find out?"
She sighs. There's something to be said for being surprised, but there's also some truth in the idea that their entire relationship, for better or for worse, has been one surprise after another. She hasn't made up her mind yet. "I'm not sure. What do you think?"
"I'm not sure either."
"What would you want?" Meredith asks.
"A baby," he replies. "Just a baby."
Meredith smiles, and a sort of inexplicable warmth fills her up from the inside. "We're having one of those."
After they put Zola to bed that evening, Meredith folds three loads of laundry, stacking the clothes in piles on the coffee table, while Derek unloads the dishwasher so he can put more dishes in it.
"Did you think about what the doctor said this morning?" Derek asks.
"A little," she replies. With a late start that morning, plus dealing with Brooks as her intern, trying to round on her post-ops, and being called to the pit for a MVC right in the middle of it, she felt like she was playing catch up for most of the day. But in her free moments, she let herself wonder.
She isn't sure if she is supposed to have some sort of mother's instinct, if she's supposed to already know somehow what it is, because she has no idea. She has had to work so hard to let herself believe that there will be a baby at all, that thinking about the gender has felt for so long like a presumptuous activity.
But today she thought about what their lives will be like in a few months when there are four of them, and if it even matters at all whether Zola will have a baby brother or a baby sister. When she thinks about it that way, it doesn't seem to. Whenever she thinks that maybe Derek would like to have a son to do boy things with him, but she smiles to herself and remembers that Zola has a fishing pole and a Yankees hat and that she is big enough now to want to wrestle with her father as much as she wants to have tea parties with him. And when she thinks about it the other way, she knows that Zola brings them so much joy that how could another daughter do anything but the same?
She has learned from Zola that the baby you have is the baby you are meant to have. And in that sense, it doesn't matter at all.
Before she says anything more, she asks him, "Did you think about it?"
He stacks their dinner plates in one of the cabinets and replies, "I did."
"And?"
"I'm still considering it."
"I mean, like you said earlier: it doesn't matter."
"No, it doesn't," he agrees. "But logistically speaking."
"What do you mean?" she asks.
"Well, getting everything ready for the baby, it might be easier to know. Like if it was a girl, we have a lot of clothes and toys already."
Meredith frowns. "We don't have any newborn stuff though, either way. And I donated a lot of Zola's stuff that she had grown out of. So we'd kind of be starting at square one regardless."
"What about the nursery though? I mean we had Zola's room ready to go because we built the house when she was already here. But we've just got white walls in the other room."
Meredith stacks Zola's folded laundry in one basket and starts trying to match up all of her loose socks before she can tackle Derek's and her own stuff.
"But don't you think the baby will sleep in our room for awhile?" she asks. "We have some time. And we brought Zola home with basically nothing and we kind of threw everything together without that much of a problem."
Derek turns the sink on and starts rinsing off the stack of dishes in it. "So you don't want to find out?" he asks.
"I didn't say that," she says, tossing balled up pairs of tiny socks into the basket. "I just don't think we need to."
"Well, are you curious?" he grins.
"Kind of," she admits with a smile.
"So maybe we should find out."
"We're only going to have one chance though," she says quietly. "So maybe we should be surprised."
He frowns. "Meredith. You don't know that."
She doesn't mean for him to take it any sort of way, but he does, and his expression wilts a little as he looks at her from across the room. It's a truth that he has been all too happy to acknowledge when he can use words like 'miracle' and 'amazing' and 'unbelievable.' But the other side of a miracle, as joyous as they both can be about it, is that by definition it is a once in a lifetime thing. And with the acceptance that she really is pregnant, a tiny part of her worries that maybe they will both get greedy.
"I'm just saying we should enjoy this," she says. And even though she kind of does, she says, "I didn't mean anything by it."
He dries his hands and closes the dishwasher, and when he sits down next to her on the couch, he says, "I didn't mean…. I'm happy. I'm so happy, Mer."
She smiles, and slides the remaining laundry basket closer to the middle of them. "I'm happy too."
He pulls one of her shirts out of the basket and folds it. "So are we finding out?"
She rolls her eyes. "Ask me something easier."
He sighs. "We have to do something with those checks."
It's not a question, and it's not easier. She's not sure what they should do.
He slides into bed next to Meredith and turns out his lamp. He curls around her and kisses her shoulder and he thinks she's asleep until she whispers, "There's thirty million dollars in the kitchen right now."
"I know," he replies.
"It's freaking me out," she admits.
"Because of how much it is?"
She reaches behind her and rubs his thigh. "Yeah, and how we got it. And how the hell we're supposed to get rid of it."
He is a wealthy man. He has been for years, and though thirty million is certainly much more money than he's ever received at one time, it doesn't feel like an inconceivable sum to him. But he does feel something about it. Now that it's over, he has to keep reminding himself that there was a point to taking this to court. When they started litigation, it seemed obvious that the eventual outcome would be some sort of cash settlement, but he didn't do it for the money, and at the time, he didn't give this particular outcome much thought.
He did it to try to alleviate the sense of helpless grief he felt when he watched Meredith bury her sister and when he took his best friend off life support, a feeling he hadn't looked in the eye since his father died.
He did it because he was angry that Arizona had to learn how to walk on a prosthetic leg and Cristina spent a catatonic week in the psych ward and Meredith still couldn't get on a plane, even now.
He did it to try to get some power back when he felt impotent and when everything, not just his hand, felt numb.
He did it because someone had to know. Someone had to know what it was like for him to wake up in a hospital bed with Meredith in the chair next to him, crying and holding on to Zola for dear life. Someone had to know that Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan had lived and then died.
He did it because he had to do something.
Now that they've been, in theory, paid back, it remains true that the only things that are fixed are those that they fixed themselves. True, he still has weeks of physical therapy left on his hand, and even though Callie is begging him to be cautious, he will likely operate again. Arizona is walking, Cristina is working, and Meredith is smiling.
But Lexie and Mark are still dead. And an insurance loophole means that the hospital, for now, is who must pay. Derek believes the hospital will be tied up in counter-litigation with the plane manufacturer for months or even years, and while it will be expensive, he doubts that the hospital will actually be on the hook for $75 million.
He hopes so, anyway. Because the point of all this was to protect other people, and to make the plane manufacturer pay for the gross negligence that killed members of his family. He didn't mean to hurt the hospital, but the settlement was ordered to be paid immediately, and so now he's got enough money to buy a couple of planes of his own sitting on his kitchen counter and he feels like somehow this has gone wrong. The plane company dodged a bullet and the relief he was expecting has not come.
"We should do something good with the money," he says. "At least try to make something meaningful out of it."
"Yeah," Meredith replies.
"I don't know what that is," he says. "Do you? Do you want anything?"
He slings an arm over her waist, and she covers his hand with hers.
"No," she replies. "The only thing I can think of to do with it is save it for the kids. Granted, thirty million dollars, even after taxes, will pay for undergrad and medical school about fifty times over, but that's all I really want."
This is the only thing that's been said about the entire ordeal that has made him smile. He has worried about her, because he knows the risk as well as she does, of course, but also because he wants her to enjoy this as much as he is. He understands that it has been harder for her. He remembers her elated smile when he held up that t-shirt, and how tightly she held on to him afterward. But he knows she has been terrified and tense for weeks, and that's only recently started to go away.
"You said 'the kids,'" he whispers. "Not just Zola."
"It's not just Zola anymore," she agrees, and he doesn't have to look at her to know she is smiling.
He buries his nose in the crook of Meredith's neck and then kisses her shoulder. He rubs her hip for a second before he lets his hand rest on her stomach, and when she closes her hand over his, he feels like maybe he can get some rest tonight.
A/N: I wasn't planning on writing anything because-and this might be the first time I've ever said this-I have almost no complaints about the direction the show is taking Meredith and Derek right now. And even then, I think my only one is that there's just not enough of them, so I decided to do something about it. There are a couple things about what's going on with them right now that I can't get out of my head, and so I wanted to do a multi-chapter fic, albeit a super-short one, to kind of get those ideas out. If you wait for the show to do it, you're gonna be waiting a long time.
Please excuse any inaccuracies about the legal process; I'm not a lawyer and I tried to keep some degree of plausibility but I didn't go crazy with it because I want to have a little creative freedom without being tied down to legal minutiae that isn't really the point of the story anyway.
Please let me know what you think. I would love to hear from you, and I should have the next chapter ready to go soon!