Part 4
He's not exactly sure what Ellis is doing these days, but he can only assume that she's still the Queen Bee of Boston Gen, while Meredith has returned to reestablish the Grey stronghold on the opposite coast.
(He imagines them working in tandem to encapsulate the entire country.)
It's really, truly like they're the same person, Thatcher muses as he pours himself another drink and stares at the inadvertent family portrait snapped on the fly at some Christmas party at the hospital.
He and Ellis had gone together, but she had left halfway through to check on patients. Meredith had tottered over to Adele, standing just as alone as he was, and seventeen minutes of uncomfortable conversation marked the beginning of a horrible inkling. Ellis had stormed back from the bowels of the hospital, Richard chasing after her, and he was torn between fury and pity toward the man his wife was preying upon.
No, the photo in his hand doesn't lie. It's Meredith, beaming near-toothlessly up at Adele behind the lens, Richard and Ellis in the background deep in conversation. Thatcher himself is hovering at the buffet table, scratching his head.
Scratching his head.
Jesus.
What the camera doesn't entirely capture is that the photo was taken during the three weeks that Meredith had demanded to wear only scrubs, and Adele had created a tiny set for her and an even tinier set for that ridiculous beloved doll of hers, Surgery Susan or something.
Or that her hair, preserved in black and white but actually a mid-blonde, was the exact same color as Ellis's had been.
Or that even though she could have been barely more than three years old, she already knew the hospital hallways better than she knew their own house. She could find her way from the tunnels to the north-east nurses' station on the fifth floor, nearly within the time that it took for him to find her juicebox.
No.
She's Ellis's child.
*
Two drinks later he has reached a crucial revelation: payback.
This is all payback. Payback for going to her. Payback for expecting her to understand love, something more than just surgical advantages and on-call room quickies.
(Which, according to a loudmouthed nurse near Molly's room, was a concept she had certainly become familiar with.)
But greater than that, it's payback for his attempt to move on, away from the stranglehold of Ellis and her…
Spawn.
Because really, they are so similar. It's almost like one of those spontaneous-regendation—geration—regenerd—whatsits.
They are both strong.
Ambitious.
Self-assured.
They have that ever-so-slightly condescending way of speaking to him, like he's a misbehaving puppy or a naughty child.
Their first priority is surgery, surgery, surgery.
If the discovery of her impending arrival wasn't six weeks after the only sex they'd had all year, he'd have started looking into that sponantious regner-thing.