Author's note: I split this chapter up in two so that I could get this part up today. I felt guilty about leaving everyone hanging! Don't expect all the updates to be this fast, though. I only have the story mapped out firmly to a certain point and then it'll slow down a bit.

I have not personally dealt with the issue at hand in this story, but I think I did about as much research on it as they would've on the show. Also, I'd like to remind everyone that this takes place three decades into the future, and I assume there have been some medical advances made in that time.

Thanks again for reading!

"How long have you known?"

I whip my head around to look at mom, as though dad had just served an imaginary tennis ball up the stairs.

"I don't," she says simply.

I turn back to dad. "Goddamnit, Meredith," he yells. "How long have you fucking suspected, then?"

She takes two steps down. "A week."

My dad's stare doesn't weaken and if anything, his fists get tighter.

She takes another two steps. "A month."

He walks to the bottom of the staircase and looks up at her with pleading eyes.

Mom meets him on the first step so that they stand at eye-level to each other. "A couple months," she says finally, running her hands across dad's jawline.

He growls and turns away. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" Shit. I didn't mean to say it out loud but they both turn to me, surprised. I guess they hadn't noticed us come in, after all.

Dad takes a deep breath. "Chase, Julia, can you go out back or something? I need a few minutes with your mother."

Chase takes a step back and tugs on my arm but I stand my ground. "No. We're not kids anymore, dad. Whatever this is about, we're old enough to hear it. We deserve to hear it," I say with a firm voice.

Dad opens his mouth to argue, but mom speaks first. "You can stay," she says quietly. Dad drops his gaze and clasps his hands in front of him.

Nobody says anything, though. I can hear Chase breathing hard behind me, and mom and dad are both looking at the floor.

"So... will you tell us what's going on?" I ask, breaking the silence.

Dad looks up, then, and glances first at mom before looking at me and Chase. "Your mother," he starts, but his voice gets caught in his throat. He swallows and starts again. "Your mother is exhibiting symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer's disease."

And just like that, the world as I know it is destroyed. My legs must have given out because I can feel my brother's arms around me, setting me down gently on the floor. He kneels down beside me and looks up at my dad.

"Just symptoms? So it could be something else, like a tumor or thyroid problems? Because then you could operate and it would be fine. And even if it's Alzheimer's... I mean, there's no cure, but there are treatments, right? It's not that bad... right?" Chase Shepherd, the rambling optimist.

"It's most likely Familial Alzheimer's. Her mother had it." Dad's voice is in full doctor-mode. "And yes, there are treatments but they aren't a hundred percent and they work best when they're started at the first signs of the disease." He turns to glare at mom again. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Mom just shakes her head. Her shoulders are hunched and I've never seen her look smaller.

Dad paces away from her, back and forth across the hall. "God, this is just fantastic. The best neurosurgeon on the West Coast missed signs of a serious neurodegenerative disease on his own wife for months."

I can't fight the tears anymore. I can't help it. I wish I was eight years old again and I didn't understand everything as well as I do now. I wish I didn't want to be a doctor, so that I wouldn't have to ask my next question. "Does that mean Chase and I might have the defective gene? There's a fifty-fifty chance that we have it, right?"

Dad's features lose their hard edge. "No, Junebug. You don't. Your mom and I made sure of that."

"H-how? Oh my god, don't tell me we're adopted." It's stupid, I know we can't be adopted. We look just like mom and dad.

"No, no, you're not adopted. We..." He stops, runs a hand through his thick white hair and leans against the wall closest to me and Chase. "It's not that unusual now, but you two were conceived using IVF for the specific purpose of preimplantation genetic diagnosis. It was controversial back then, but your mom didn't want to risk passing on the gene. She didn't want to know if she had it, but she wanted to make sure you didn't get it."

"Oh..." This is all just too much to handle. I want to turn the clock back to ten minutes ago when I was blissfully ignorant about everything.

Suddenly, Chase stands up. "You two are fucking unbelievable! Dad, you're a neurosurgeon, not a neurologist. You cut, you don't diagnose this shit. And besides, you work a whole fucking lot so of course you didn't notice. And you," he points to me. "Who the fuck cares if we have the gene? It'll probably be decades before it manifests and they'll have better treatments and maybe even a cure by then. The only thing that matters right now is that mom is sick, so shut the fuck up! And we don't even know for sure if she has it. We're jumping to conclusions and scaring the shit out of her."

We all fall quiet again, with only the sound of our breathing filling the room. I bury my face in my hands. Chase is right, completely right. I feel like such an ass.

And because nothing tonight is expected, the sound that breaks the silence is my mother's laughter. She laughs heartily and I'm scared shitless because, oh my god, what if she's losing her mind right now? We all turn to look at her and watch her until she quiets down because we don't know what else to do. Even dad is completely stunned.

"Anger, denial, fear, frustration, sadness and guilt... I went through it all myself a long time ago. And not so long ago, I guess. It's a lot to take coming from all directions, though," she says, with a lighter tone of voice than the situation really calls for.

Now that I think about it, I realize she's been 'off' since we've been home. There have been signs and I totally missed them. And before I left New York, there were some occasions where she asked me things more than once over email but I figured she was busy with work so she wasn't paying that much attention, even though that had never been an issue before.

Taking time off from work, letting me drive the Porsche, not doing that surgery today... she had ulterior motives for all of it. I lay my head down on my knees. I think I'm going to be sick.

Chase walks over to mom and leads her down the last step. He puts his arm around her waist and guides her a nearby couch like she's some fragile old person. I want to scream at him to let her be. She's our young, strong mom; she's not some ninety-year-old grandmother. I join them in the living room, but dad doesn't make a move.

"What do you know?" Chase asks her, soothingly.

"I know that today is a 'good' day, so I can tell you all of this." She sighs. "A few different interns told me I was repeating orders, but I was hoping it was just stress. I didn't want to think it was anything else. I was in the middle of writing a paper and when I proofread it a few days later, I realized that I wrote out full sections without having any recollection of doing it. I started leaving myself notes with the date and time, and sometimes I would come back and find one and have no memory of writing it. It didn't start affecting my fine motor abilities until very recently. That, coinciding with you two coming home, is why I took time off from the hospital."

Chase nods and then gathers mom up in his arms. I sit down and get in the hug. Dad is noticeably absent, so I look up at him. He's still up against the wall, staring at an invisible spot on the tiled floor.

I wonder what his deal is. "Dad?"

He startles a bit and meets my eyes for a brief second before looking away. "I can't do this right now," he says, before turning and walking out the front door without stopping.

"Shit, I'll go after him. You stay with mom." Chase gets up, throws on a pair of shoes and runs out the door after him. How my brother is managing to be the most rational, logical person in this situation is baffling. Dad should be the leader here, but he's just being an ass.

I snuggle against mom on the couch and try the whole rational logic thing. "Tomorrow, we'll take you to the best Alzheimer's specialist we can find. Dad must have some pull with that. We'll get you diagnosed for sure so that we can figure out our treatment options."

I feel her nod against me. "I'm sorry, Jules. I didn't want you all to find out like this. I don't know how I wanted you to find out, but definitely not like this."

"It's okay, mommy." I haven't called her that since my age was a single digit. I don't really know why, since calling dad 'daddy' is so easy to me. "How did your mom tell you?"

"I was in Amsterdam." That's weird. I don't know if she actually meant to say that or not, but I let her continue before embarrassing her by checking. "She wanted me to go to med school and make something of myself but I didn't even know who I was so I emptied out my trust fund and took off to Europe to try to 'find myself'."

The confession makes me see her in a whole new light. I always figured she had it together from the start and knowing she wasn't always perfect makes me feel strangely appreciative.

She continues. "I called every now and then to check in out of some feeling of responsibility towards her even though I was technically running away. The fourth time I called, two months after I landed in London and just hours after smoking a large amount of cannabis in a Dutch coffee shop, my mother told me in her best professional voice that she'd just been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and that she needed me to come home immediately." Mom chuckles, but it's humorless. "I was so high, and I had no idea how to process what she'd just told me. I just said 'shit' and hung up. I guess I had it together enough to clean myself up and get a cab to the airport, though. Less than a day later, I was home."

I try to imagine my mother, the famed Dr. Meredith Grey, high, but it just doesn't compute.

"The entire time on the plane, I just thought, she's not even fifty years old. And I couldn't build up any more of a family history because her parents died when she was eighteen so I started to worry about it being genetic, and then ending up with it and having my life end at fifty, too. As if things hadn't been shitty enough for me already."

I want to ask her to elaborate, but this is her story to tell. I'll ask her some other time, and I know there will be other times. There has to be. And I'll ask her everything.

"I decided then that I was going to med school – partially to please my mom while she could still be conscious of it, but also because it was something I could invest myself in. If my time was going to be limited, then I thought I should make something of it, you know?" I nod my agreement. "And I thought I'd just dive into the books and be the best. Just me. No relationships or responsibilities to anyone else."

I giggle a bit at that. "That worked out well for you."

She nods again. "I blame your dad. He made me want things."

"Are you ever going to tell me that story?"

"Not without him to tell his side. It's... not great for either of us. We said and did a lot of things we weren't proud of." She sits up and smiles at me. "But it turned out pretty well in the end."

There's a feeling like a vise on my heart and I tear up again. "I don't think I can take it if anything happens to you."

She leans back on the couch and pulls me with her. She strokes my hair like she did when I was a child but doesn't say anything. She's a doctor. She knows the deal and doesn't want to lie and say it'll be okay when she doesn't know the truth.

I wish she would say it anyway.

We sit in companionable silence for a few more minutes before I start to wonder where Chase and dad are. "What's wrong with dad?"

Mom sighs. "He doesn't deal with things like this very well. He doesn't like it when something is out of his control."

"But he should be here," I say, pouting like a toddler.

"Yeah, he should. It's okay, Jules. He'll come back. He always does, eventually."

The heaviness of her statement leads me to believe that there's more to it, but there's always another day.

I have to believe there will be.