A/N So admittedly, as you can probably see from my profile, I'm a Bang-o-phile. However, I do love the other characters on the show. There was a really poignant moment in Season 1 when Meredith said to a patient's mother, "You're her mother. She worships the ground you walk on." This led me to wonder what it would be like to grow up as Meredith Grey, from everything we've learnt of Ellis. So I decided to dabble in the idea.
You're her mother. She worships the ground you walk on.
She was four when she first discovered her mother's stethoscope.
Technically, Meredith Grey was already the owner of a stethoscope. Her mother had given her a bright red plastic one for her fourth birthday. She was absolutely delighted with it. She'd wrap it around her neck, and press it to her father's chest, to her mother's chest, to her own chest. When her father gently broke it to her that she couldn't keep following interrupting his work every three minutes to listen to his heart, her dolls became her patients. She'd sit with them on her bed, face screwed up in concentration, listening intently for something.
Listening for something that wasn't there.
Then she found her mother's one. It was much more boring than hers. It was silver and hard. Still, she realized when she picked it up, it was heavy. With the weight of importance. She carefully put it in her ears, and gasped at how cold it was on her chest. Then she heard something amazing.
Her heartbeat. She was fascinated by the sound penetrating her eardrums. This never happened with her stethoscope. She'd known her mother was important, but this was so cool. Meredith grinned.
Then she heard the door open.
"Meredith!" her mother sternly exclaimed.
Meredith smiled widely. "Mama! I can hear something."
Ellis Grey swiftly grabbed her stethoscope from her daughter's hands. "How many times have I told you? You don't go into my study! It's private! Full of very important papers and expensive equipment!" she was yelling by the end, and Meredith's bottom lip began to quiver.
"I'm sorry, Mama…"
Watching her timid daughter's eyes brim with tears, Ellis sighed. "Thatch!" she yelled.
Her husband appeared a moment later. "Yes, dear?"
"You need to watch Meredith more closely. She got into my study again."
Thatcher smiled fondly at his daughter. "I'm sorry, Ellis. But she's just fascinated by what you do in her. Maybe if you bring her in with you on occasion, she wouldn't feel the need to sneak in?"
"Perhaps, but not tonight! I have some very important paperwork to finish, and I've got to be in the O.R at 7 tomorrow morning. Take her to bed."
"Ok. Come here, sweetie." Thatcher opened his arms, and Meredith stepped into them, seeking refuge. "Say goodnight to Mama."
"Night," she whispered, terrified to speak too loudly. She didn't want the yelling to begin again.
She tried to picture Seattle in her mind, after they moved to Boston. She would squeeze her eyes shut, but all she could see was ferry boats. Nothing else.
She remembered her father. Over time though, images in her mind faded, memories blurred. But she remembered feeling safe in his arms. She knew that she used to press her nose to his neck and inhale. He smelt like mint.
In Boston, she used to creep into her mother's bedroom, just to see. But her mother still lay alone in gathering darkness. But Meredith was still looking.
Looking for something that wasn't there.
She learnt to condition herself after that. It was just her and her mother. Or, her and the nanny, Gwen. But once Meredith hit middle school, Gwen disappeared. Meredith learnt what it meant independent.
And she liked it.
In eight grade, she won the school science fair. Creating a perfect simulation of the human heart was no small feat for a thirteen-year-old. She was absently flipping through channels that night when her mother arrived home, removing her coat with an exhausted sigh. Meredith expected their usual exchange. She could rehearse it in her head:
"How was school today?"
"Fine."
"Have you finished all of your homework?"
"Most of it. Math was hard."
"It's supposed to be hard. Hard work is good for you."
"I guess. How was work?"
Ellis would smile at her daughter as she made herself a hot chocolate before bed. "Good. I had a bypass graft that got a little tricky, but we pulled through spectacularly. I tell you, I know it's been years since my fellowship ended, but I still love being an attending."
"I'm glad, Mum."
"Goodnight, Meredith."
"Goodnight."
But tonight, Ellis sat on the couch next to her daughter. "I got a message from your school today. They said you won the science fair."
Meredith continued flicking channels. "Yep."
"You created working model of the human heart? All on your own?"
Meredith shrugged. "I had some time."
"Will you show it to me?"
Meredith glanced over at her mother, to see if she was genuine. Ellis Grey only ever looked enthusiastic when she was in surgery. But tonight, she was looking at her daughter with enthusiasm.
"Sure." Meredith carried it out, and her mother spent several minutes studying it. "The left chamber should perhaps be a little bigger, but I'm sure that was overlooked, your teacher's aren't surgeons…this is great, Mere."
She looked at her with surprise. Was her mother looking at her with….pride?
The following week, she was given a medal in front of the entire school. As he fellow students politely applauded her, she glanced out into the crowd. She knew her mother wasn't there, but she could still be wistful.
Wishing for something that wasn't there.
Sometime in high school, she stopped being wistful. She began to learn the true value of an absent parent: freedom from supervision. Perhaps later she would say (or McDreamy would say, when asking about her in high school) that she was acting out to get noticed, having been ignored for much of her life.
But at the time, it was just about the freedom. Having an awesome house (doctor's salary, remember?) that was empty meant that Meredith's place was the cool hangout. She had her best friend Sophie dyed their hair black in the bathroom one day. Just because they could.
Meredith was sixteen when her mother caught her making out in her bedroom with her boyfriend Craig (the high school McDreamy). At the time, Meredith found it mortifying being exposed.
"I come home early, and this is what I find? Is this what you're doing when I'm at work, giving it up every afternoon?"
"Mum!" Meredith exclaimed, appalled. "I'm not 'giving it up' at all. We were just making out. He's been my boyfriend for five months. Five months! And this is the first time you met him. What does that say to you?"
She slammed the door to her bedroom, and picked up the picture frame she kept, just to piss her Mum off. It was Thatcher holding Meredith when she was a baby. She stared into the stranger's eyes. He had her eyes. And that pissed her off. It was time to stop fantasizing about being saved. She didn't need saving. It was time to stop waiting.
Waiting for something that wasn't going to come.
She learnt to survive on her own, make her own decisions. At college, she majored in biology and tequila 101. She was home less, and after she finished high school, her mother spent some time with the U.N. The distance actually improved their relationship somewhat. For Ellis, her career always came first, but she wasn't blind to the fact that Meredith was her only family.
Ellis was based in Seattle again, writing a book, working, traveling. Meredith couldn't really keep up. She was wondering what the hell she wanted to do after college.
Actually, she knew. She'd known for a long time. Ever since she'd pressed a stethoscope to her chest and heard her own heartbeat. But she was scared to tell her mother.
She'd spent her whole life, living in her shadow. Trying to get her approval. She'd let go off this obsession somewhat as a teenager, but for this decision…it was something Meredith needed.
She spent some time in Seattle the summer after her sophomore year.
"Have you been taking your studies seriously? Or have you been partying too hard?"
Meredith picked up her glass, and took a sip of water. Slowly, deliberately. She peeked at her mother through her lashes. She was cutting her steak with swift precision. "I've been taking them seriously. I topped my class in biology last semester. I'm going to have to work hard, if I want to make it into med. school."
Ellis Grey did something she never did: she paused mid-cut. "You want to go to med. school?"
Meredith watched her mother carefully, trying to gage her reaction. "Yes."
"Since when?"
Meredith shrugged. "For a while now. I want my life to mean something, Mum." She spoke slowly, willing her mother to understand. "I want to help people. I want to push myself, and medicine will do that. I'm good at science, I always have been. And you live for it, you always have; I want that kind of focus."
"Well, you'll need a lot of focus. What do you want to specialize in?"
Meredith swallowed. "Surgery."
Her mother fixed her with a stern look. "Meredith, there are several less demanding fields in medicine that you would be better suited to."
"But I don't want another field. I want to be a surgeon."
Ellis sighed, and set her wine glass down. "You don't understand, darling. It's a very demanding life."
"Mother," Meredith began, more formally. "I understand just fine. I was the demand that suffered, remember? Notice how there's only been two of us in this family, the past fifteen years? That's because the demands of being a surgeon always came before our family. I understand just fine. And I am going to be a surgeon."
Ellis gave her a hard look. "You don't have what it takes."
Meredith fixed her with an equally stubborn stare. "We'll just see about that."
Meredith was determined to prove her mother wrong. But it was more than that. She wanted to fill the void.
To create a satisfaction that had never been there.
When it became apparent to Ellis that her daughter was fixed on this decision, she dug up all of her textbooks, and shipped them over to Boston.
When Meredith began medical school, her mother was still one of the most foremost surgeons in the country. By the end, she was in a nursing home.
She had a range of difficult decisions before her at the end of medical school. She'd wanted to stay in Boston for her residency; but her mother was in a home in Seattle. So the choice for Meredith was sealed. She found it ironic that she'd be doing her residency at Seattle Grace, where her mother had. But it was the best teaching hospital in Washington, so Meredith sucked it up, and went to face what awaited her there.
Gruelling hours. Awesome surgeries. Good friends. Complicated matters of the heart.
A few months into her internship, when her heart had already been through the wrecker, she went to sit by her best friend's hospital bed one night.
"You've stopped crying."
"Yes. Burke was here. He made it stop."
"Oh. What does that mean?"
"I'm not sure. What'd I miss?"
Meredith gave a small smile, reaching up to pull the band out that held her hair in place. "I kissed Derek."
"What? McDreamy will forever have you panties in a twist, you know that?"
"I hope so," Meredith replied lazily. "But he's got some things to work out."
Cristina nodded, as she lay her head back. "Thanks for getting rid of my mother."
"My pleasure. I don't think your like her, for what its worth."
"I don't think you're like yours either."
Meredith pensively gazed out the window. "I used to want to be. Still do, I guess. In some ways."
When she visited her mother, she'd peer into her eyes, waiting for a flicker of recognition.
It was rarely there.