And I took you by the hand
And we stood tall,
And remembered our own land,
What we live for.
And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
One hazy afternoon in the middle of the summer, Cristina knocks on Meredith and Derek's front door. She's carrying a box of Meredith's things in her arms and the expression on her face suggests that she's not so sure about this, but that it's too late to go back now.
"Hey," Cristina says, almost helplessly.
Her tone takes Meredith aback. Standing before her is the woman who, for years, felt comfortable enough to barge into her bedroom and get in bed with her and her husband. Now Cristina—Cristina, of all people—seems like she's afraid to come inside. For a fleeting, but very real moment, Meredith wonders, for what feels like the millionth time, how the hell she wound up here.
"Hi."
"I brought you some of your stuff from your locker. I didn't know when you'd be coming back."
Meredith sighs. They haven't really talked much since everything happened with the trial. She's disgusted enough with all of it that she didn't need Cristina's shock added to it. But now that Cristina's at her doorstep, she realizes just how long it's been. It's funny how two and a half weeks seems like an eternity.
"I don't know when I'm coming back either," Meredith says quietly. She steps aside, and Cristina comes into the hallway. She presses the box into Meredith's arms. Inside, she can see her extra lab coat, a spare pair of scrubs, a coffee thermos, and a stack of loose papers and back issues of medical journals. It seems like Cristina has left all of her photos in her locker; she doesn't know whether that makes her feel better or worse, more or less hopeful that one day she can come back. She didn't know it was possible for the weight of her broken career to feel more real, or heavier, but somehow it does.
"Derek could have gotten this stuff for me," she says quietly.
"Oh."
Cristina looks down at the floor, and immediately, Meredith tries to backtrack. She wonders at how easy it is to take back the things that she really doesn't mean.
"No, it's just—." She puts the box of her things on the table by the door, and then says more firmly, "I'm glad you're here."
They don't say anything for a moment or two, but when they sit down on the living room couch, Meredith watches Cristina look around the room. She hasn't left the house all that much for a few weeks, so to her, it doesn't seem that different, but, looking at it through Cristina's eyes, she can see the changes. One of Zola's bottles is sitting on the coffee table, and her pajamas from last night are crumpled in a ball next to them. Her high chair in the kitchen is easily visible from where they're sitting, and some of her toys are in the corner of the room. It's a far cry from the tequila and the trashy magazines and the condoms that used to be out in plain sight.
"I had an abortion," Cristina says.
When she thinks about it too much—and maybe this is only because she's thinking about it in the wrong way—it hurts her a little bit. It's seems unjust; Cristina has one freaking fallopian tube, and she doesn't even want a baby, and somehow, she got another chance to have one. First, she wonders if Cristina might feel differently if she found out, in retrospect, that there would be no more chances. And then she wonders why it seems like neither of them can get what they want. But then she remembers.
"I had a baby."
Cristina nods. "Is it ok that I'm here?"
"Yeah," Meredith replies. When did it become wrong to want something different from someone else? "Are you ok?" she asks.
Cristina sighs, and for the first time, Meredith notices how tired she looks.
"Owen is—I don't know—beside himself," she says. "We're not talking about it."
"Derek and I haven't talked much about the clinical trial either."
"It's done," Cristina says simply.
She thought she wanted to talk about it, but now she realizes that all she wanted was someone to understand what it was like.
"Yeah."
"Can I meet Zola?" Cristina asks after another moment of silence.
"You want to?"
"She's yours, isn't she?"
Meredith smiles. This, she feels like she can say with certainty, is true. "Yeah, she is."
"Then I want to."
Zola is sleeping right now, but Meredith promises that when she wakes up, she will introduce them. In the meantime, she asks how the hospital is.
"April has no freaking idea what she's doing. Remember when Callie was chief for awhile? It's like that, except worse."
"How is it worse?"
"Bailey's not picking up the slack."
Cristina sighs, and Meredith can imagine that the injustice of April being named chief still must rankle almost every other surgical resident in the hospital. She tries not to think how close she came to having the job herself.
"How's Alex?" she makes herself ask. This seems to be an easier topic for Cristina to talk about, even though it's harder for her to hear.
"He's back to being a bitter asshole. It's worse than when we were interns and the whole Izzie and Denny thing was happening."
She has always felt like she's understood Alex best, even better than Izzie in some ways. It's why, ever since the initial shock of what he did faded away, she has been afraid that Alex will never come home.
"Where is he living?"
"No idea. I guess in Derek's trailer? But I don't know where it's parked. Hasn't he come back to get his stuff?"
"He already had it all out of here by the time I got home the day everything happened with the trial."
"Mere, what are you going to do?" Cristina wonders aloud.
There's nothing to do but tell the truth.
"I don't know," she replies.
When Zola wakes up from her nap twenty minutes later, Meredith can't help but feel a little nervous when she brings her downstairs. Cristina doesn't want to have kids. She really isn't even around kids that much. She doesn't know what she'll do if Cristina can't be ok with the fact that she has a baby now.
"Zola, this is Cristina. Cristina, this is Zola," she says. She sits down on the couch with Zola in her arms. She hasn't quite woken all the way up from her nap, so Zola is reluctant to look around the room. She nestles herself into Meredith's arms and regards Cristina cautiously, as a stranger.
"Hi," Cristina says.
Meredith isn't sure whether to offer to let Cristina hold her, or wait for Cristina to ask. Cristina never asks, and so she doesn't offer. But she watches Cristina regard Zola with a slight smile, and slowly, as Zola wakes up, she looks at Cristina with wide, unblinking eyes.
"So what do you guys do all day?" Cristina asks.
"Well, she eats and sleeps a lot. And we started doing her physical therapy, so that's a couple times a week." She shifts Zola in her lap before she continues. "I don't know, I'm still kind of figuring it out. I Google a lot of stuff to see what she's supposed to do all day, what I'm supposed to do with her, how to give her a bath and wash her hair, what her poop is supposed to look like. Everything."
"You Google what her poop is supposed to look like?"
"It's weird, right?"
Meredith smiles hesitantly. She wants Cristina to know that, a month ago, if someone told her that "what should my baby's poop look like?" would be in her internet search history, she would have thought they were crazy. She would have thought she was crazy and she understands if that's what Cristina thinks now.
But Cristina just smiles. Not in a patronizing way, but in a way that lets her know that, despite how ridiculous she may have become, they are still friends.
"It's weird. But you're a mom."
Meredith is fired at her reevaluation meeting that follows her two-month suspension. Derek can tell she's surprised by it. Maybe she thought Richard could protect her better. Maybe she really didn't think what she did was so wrong. Either way, what's done is done. They won't be working together anymore, and although it bothers him now that he's been forced to acknowledge it as a reality, there's nothing to say. There will be no "I told you so." There will be no more questions about why. No one has won, and how they got here doesn't matter anymore.
At first, she faces it head on, which make him think that her days of avoidance really are over. But it doesn't take long before Meredith starts to seem truly upset. He suspects it's not just getting fired, although that's certainly humiliating. But she's also lost her medical license for another four months, and is on probation for five years, and who would want to hire someone with a record like that?
A week after it happens, he notices that she's been going to bed early, almost when Zola goes down for the night. She's quiet, and when he comes home from work, it seems like she doesn't know quite what to say.
It's her birthday two weeks after it happens. In all the time he's known her, she has never really wanted to do anything on this day—nothing special, anyway—despite all his prodding.
In the beginning, he thinks that this year will be a little different, but then he realizes that it's yet another year when he just wants everything to be all right again. There have been too many years when he feels this way, but today, he thinks he's finally learned. He doesn't need a grand gesture; all she's ever wanted are the little things. That's how he can make it better.
Zola has been waking up lately at six on the dot, so he makes sure he's awake at five-thirty to get her before she cries. He hears her stir, and rolls out of bed to watch her wake up. Briefly, he wonders if their house really will be finished on time; it's getting tight for all three of them to share a room. Once, after a particularly grueling night, he mentioned maybe moving Zola into Alex's empty room, but the look on Meredith's face made him drop it immediately and never bring it up again.
"Hi," he whispers. Zola, blinking herself awake, stares at him and then smiles. He picks her up and snuggles her. "Good morning. It's Mommy's birthday today."
He tiptoes out of their bedroom to fix Zola a bottle and change her diaper, and makes sure they're back upstairs before too much time passes. He trusts that if Meredith doesn't hear Zola cry, then her internal clock will wake her up anyway.
He crawls back into bed with Zola, and puts her in the middle, between him and Meredith.
"Wake Mommy up," he whispers. "She's sleeping, but you can wake her up."
He taps Meredith on the shoulder to show Zola what to do. Zola leans over as best she can and puts both hands on Meredith's chest to catch herself. Meredith groans a little at the disturbance, and opens her eyes after another moment or two.
"Hey," Derek says to her before turning back to Zola. "Zola, give Mommy a kiss."
She hasn't quite gotten the hang of giving kisses yet, but she gets the general idea. Zola leans forward and puts her open mouth on Meredith's mouth. Her aim isn't great, and she doesn't know how to pucker her lips, but he still thinks it's pretty cute when Zola gets drool all over Meredith's face.
Meredith smiles, wipes her face a bit, and then pulls Zola closer to her. "Hi, baby."
He leans over Zola and kisses her too.
"Happy birthday."
"Thanks."
She props herself up a little and kisses the top of Zola's head. "Do you want to get ready for work and I'll get her a bottle?"
"She's already had a bottle and I'm not going to work today."
"What?"
He smiles, as if to reassure her. "You're more important than work."
It's disconcerting to see him after so many weeks of silence. She doesn't visit Seattle Grace very much, but today, Derek is going to come to Zola's PT appointment, and then the three of them are going to have lunch. She and Zola are early though, and she sees Cristina at the nurses' station, so she stops to talk.
Zola sits on the counter, and a few of Meredith's old friends say hi when they pass by. But not Alex. He grabs a chart, and tries not to make eye contact.
"Hey," Meredith says quietly.
He looks up, surprised that she wants to talk to him.
"Hey," he replies. And after a moment, he adds, "She's getting big."
Meredith looks at Zola, who is staring at Alex and chewing on a pen that she must have grabbed off of the countertop.
"She is," Meredith agrees. It feels like a stone has dropped into her stomach; this is sickeningly uncomfortable. She catches Alex looking at Zola's legs. Since she's almost ready to go to physical therapy, she is wearing her tiny leg braces and knee immobilizers. They take up the better part of her leg, reaching above the thigh so that her legs stick straight out instead of bending at the knee.
"She's working on standing up," she says.
"That's great." He's sincere, but she can tell he's as uncomfortable as she is. "All right, well I'll let you get back to what you were doing."
He turns to leave, and actually gets a few steps away before Meredith realizes that this is her chance. If she doesn't say anything now, Alex will never come home. He might still never come home, but without trying now, it feels like that outcome is much more certain. Despite all that's happened, she knows that's something she does not want.
"Alex," she calls after him. She puts one hand on Zola's chest to keep her steady. When he turns around, she says, "Thank you."
He laughs a little, and shakes his head. "For what? I got you fired."
He takes a step back towards her. It's only one, but still, it's a step.
"Yeah, well." She laughs a little too. "I could have done without that. But you got Zola. We wouldn't have her if it weren't for you."
Alex shrugs, and says nothing. It seems like it's a draw as to which one of them feels worse about all that's transpired. It's true that if she couldn't have Zola and work here at the same time, she'd give up working here without a second thought. But it's also true that she could have had both.
Zola wobbles a bit, so Meredith takes her off the counter and puts her on her hip. "Come home, Alex."
"I got a place," he replies quietly. She can tell by the way he's looking at her that he never expected this offer.
"You know what I mean," she says. She's openly pleading, and as much as she would prefer not to do this in the public domain of the third floor nurses' station, it's imperative that it be done. "It doesn't matter where you live," she says, "Please come back."
"I was an asshole," he says with simple frankness.
She shrugs. "So was I. Please come back."
He nods, and relief she wasn't expecting, but now realizes she needs, washes over her.
All the books say that, what with the international adoption and the brain surgery and everything else that Zola has experienced, it's hard to say when to expect her first words.
At the grocery store one morning in mid-November, Zola sits in the basket of Meredith's shopping cart, eating a piece of cheese from the deli counter while they move through the aisles. Meredith still doesn't cook well, but over the past few months, she's gotten a bit better. Still, even if she remains a terrible cook, it amazes her how much more food they seem to go through even though they've only added one baby. With their busy schedules, everyone in the house was used to eating on the fly, usually cafeteria or vending machine food, but now that Meredith is going shopping regularly, there always seems to be a list of things to get on the fridge.
"Let's see," Meredith says, stopping the cart in front of an entire aisle of granola bars. Now that she's loaded up the cart with everything the three of them need, and Zola is still in a good mood, she moves down the list to look at what her friends asked her to pick up.
"April wants Mommy to get chocolate chip granola bars. But she doesn't say what kind."
Meredith rolls her eyes and Zola looks at her quizzically, with a small piece of cheese on her cheek. Meredith peels the cheese off Zola's face and puts it in her mouth. "Is that good?" she asks. "You can have some more when we get home and have lunch."
Turning back to the display of granola bars, she checks her list again. All it says, in April's perfect girly script, is 'chocolate chip granola bars.' She sighs, and looks at Zola.
"What do you think?" she asks. "There are about seven different brands. Some have reduced sugar, some have added protein, some are all-natural, some also have peanut butter or fruit in them…. Mommy's not a mind reader, and this is just excessive anyway."
Zola grins, and reaches for her bottle.
Meredith tries to think back, but she can't remember ever buying granola bars before, and it's not like she pays that much attention to what April eats day in and day out.
"Should I call her at work and ask her?" Meredith asks Zola. "Is that crazy?"
She shakes her head at the thought. She is a grown woman; she will not be calling another adult at her place of employment to ask her what kind of pseudo-healthy snack she would like to eat. She picks a random box up and looks at it, with the full knowledge that she is putting too much thought into this.
"What do you think?" she asks again, holding the box up for Zola to see. "Is Mommy being crazy? She is, right? This is taking too much of Mommy and Zola's time, especially when Mommy probably shouldn't even be asked to buy food for everybody else. Right?"
Zola stares at her for a second, and then says, quite distinctly, "Mama."
Meredith drops the box on the floor. It stays there while she spends the next two minutes trying to get Zola to say it again, this time into the phone for Derek.
For a brief moment, he thinks about how close he almost came to selling this land. After he rolled out the blueprints on Meredith's kitchen counter, after the fighting and the stupid distractions and everything else they had put each other through, it seems a miracle that this hilltop is illuminated in candlelight once again.
Even though much has changed, the fundamentals are still there. Meredith lit this place up three years ago, and they committed and made plans, and now, Meredith lights this house up again. It's real now; no more candle blueprints or bare beams and piles of nails. It's a real house, with a porcelain tub and hardwood floors and a view overlooking the city. The candles have found a more permanent home on the living room mantelpiece and on the bathroom windowsill by the tub and in their bedroom, where they light up the framed post-it note over the bed. In the most improbable miracle of all, there is a nursery down the hall from their bedroom, where a small girl sleeps every night.
But then again, it's the season for miracles, and as such, it seems only right that they finally moved into their house two weeks ago. They'll travel to Connecticut to see his family in two days, but for now, Derek relishes this quiet Christmas Eve with his family.
There were so many times when he was sure he would never get anything he wanted, so many times when he thought that they'd finally hurt each other too many times or too badly, and more times than he could have ever imagined possible when he wasn't sure they'd both live to see this happen.
But all of that uncertainty has been dulled, and pushed aside, the way grief can be only when it is confronted with shocking, overwhelming happiness. Despite everything that's happened, despite the distractions, and despite all that's left to do, when he looks at the heart of the matter, he's gotten much more than he could have ever imagined. It's all he's ever wanted.
In front of a roaring fire, he and Meredith snuggle on the couch while the last few moments of a Christmas special play on television. Meredith is wrapped up in a blanket next to him, and he reclines a bit into the plush cushions. Zola sleeps in his lap with her head on his chest, exhausted from the day's excitement and the warm, quiet space of her father's arms. She is wearing white pajamas with red Santa hats printed on them, a gift from one of his sisters in anticipation for the next morning.
"She slept through the entire thing," Meredith says in the final moments of the show. She smoothes Zola's hair and uses a finger to wipe drool from Zola's open mouth.
He holds Zola closer, laying a hand gently on her back and kissing the top of her head. He breathes in the light, clean scent of her shampoo and thinks again that it's better than he thought it could be.
"We have tomorrow."
"What the hell are you supposed to wear to court?" Meredith asks aloud. She runs a flat iron through her hair and looks in the mirror, back at Derek. It's so much easier for him. He can just wear a suit and tie and be done with it, but she's agonized over this choice for days.
"I think that looks good," he says. She's most comfortable in scrubs or jeans; she knows she can't wear either of those to this hearing, but anything else makes her feel like she's something she isn't. She's finally settled on black pants, a black blazer, and a white blouse. It's a little corporate for her taste, but she doesn't want to leave anything to chance.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." He adjusts his tie in the mirror behind her, and then kisses the un-straightened side of her hair. "It's ok. You heard Janet; these last steps hardly ever go wrong."
Of course, she already knows. Their lawyer and Janet have told them that this is, for the most part, a formality. They don't see any reason why they should be denied permanent custody of Zola and why this adoption should not be finalized. But still. Meredith knows that the best laid plans, especially hers, tend to go awry.
"What about what Zola's wearing?" she asks.
"The white dress my mom sent, right?"
"Yeah," Meredith replies. She's laid it out on their bed along with a pair of tiny white shoes early this morning, but even that, she's second-guessing. "Unless you think it makes her look too—"
"Hmm?" Derek asks.
"I don't know. She's not a sacrificial offering we're going to make to the judge. Does she look too—I don't know—lamb-like in it?"
"I think she looks adorable, but then again, I'm extremely biased."
Meredith sighs, and then smiles. "She is adorable." Ducking her head out of the bathroom for a second, she looks into the bedroom. Zola peers at them through the bars of her crib. She's had her breakfast, but they haven't changed her into the dress yet in case she is still hungry.
"Zola," she calls. "You like that dress, right?"
She doesn't expect an answer, but she does like to get into the habit of asking. Zola wore it for a few minutes yesterday, just to make sure that it fit, and she didn't cry, so Meredith supposes that's as close to "I like this" as a one-year-old is going to get.
"Ok, can you change her?" Meredith asks Derek. She starts straightening the other side of her hair, puts the hair straightener down to start her eye makeup, and then picks it back up. They have plenty of time; court is twenty minutes away and they don't need to be there for another hour, but she can't settle.
"Come on, Zola," Derek says cheerfully, "Mommy wants to get you ready to be offered up to the powers that be."
"Derek."
As stressed as she is, it's nice that he's joking. It's nicer still that she doesn't feel like she's compounding her nervousness about finalizing Zola's adoption with a different nervousness about seeming crazy in front of Derek. There are still choices to be made and broken things to fix, but for this, the most important thing, they are and always have been on the same side.
He hasn't left the bathroom yet. Instead, he's staring at her with an amused sort of look on his face. He grasps her shoulder, and looks at her in the mirror.
"It's just like when we got married," he says quietly. "The second time. You and I knew we were already married. We just had to make it legal. It's the same thing now, so don't worry. You and I already know she's our daughter. We just have to make it legal again."
He kisses her hair again, and leaves to dress Zola.
Two hours later, Meredith and Derek stand up in front of the judge and make it legal. Meredith holds Zola in her white dress, they take pictures with the judge and with Janet, and then they sign papers that tell everyone else what they've known for seven months: Zola is their daughter.
Today, there is no worrying, and no resentment, and no uncertainty. There is no Alzheimer's, and there is no surgical ward. No one, and nothing, is trying to take their future away. There is only bounding joy and possibilities.
The week after they stand up for Zola in court, something amazing happens. In a third floor office of Seattle Grace-Mercy West Hospital's PT department, Zola, wearing leg braces and knee-immobilizers that reach mid-thigh, stands up too. She lightly holds Meredith's hands for balance, but she barely needs her help. Meredith cries, and Zola smiles proudly as she stands by herself for two whole minutes.
He makes it a point to be home for dinner every single night now, unless there is an emergency from which he absolutely cannot get away. Zola knows when he's not there, and more than that, eight months of being home alone with Zola has been exhausting for Meredith. He knows that she loves Zola, but he never expected her to love Mommy and Me music class, and Gymboree. He's not surprised when it turns out that she really does hate these things. So he comes home, and cooks dinner almost every night.
Zola, at fifteen months old, eats a lot of what they eat, even if Meredith does have a tendency to cut everything up into miniscule pieces, or mash it up to such a degree that it is unrecognizable.
Tonight, over dinner, Meredith freaks out. Last month, she began her job search, and tomorrow, she has an interview at Seattle Presbyterian.
"I haven't been on a job interview in six years," she says. "And even then, that wasn't even real."
"When you had to interview for residency placements?" he asks. "That was real."
"Yeah, well, it helped that everybody who had any power whatsoever at Seattle Grace knew my mother."
Meredith scoops a bite of mashed sweet potatoes off of Zola's plate with a finger and puts it in Zola's mouth. She eats well, but sometimes she gets bored or distracted, and slows down. He feels badly when this happens, wondering if she's tired. Meredith has gradually pushed Zola's schedule back so that she wakes up later and goes to bed later, all so they can have these meals together and so he can spend time with her in the evening.
"You got into other programs too," he said.
"Yeah, well, everybody in the country knew who my mother was, didn't they?"
He cuts a bite of steak and wonders at the transition. Six months ago, she was confident enough to knowingly manipulate an important clinical trial. Now, she questions her most fundamental skills and qualifications, like she might not have deserved anything she got.
"Meredith, you are qualified," he assures her. "More than qualified. You can ace this job interview."
Meredith winces but says nothing. He gets up to refill Zola's sippy cup with water, and when he sits back down at the table, he asks her if she wants to practice.
"Practice?"
"Yeah, for your interview," he says calmly.
She rolls her eyes, but then agrees. After they put Zola to bed, they sit in the living room, across from each other. He tells her to pretend that it's a real interview, and to just say what she would say if asked the same questions tomorrow morning. At first, she sits Indian-style on the armchair across from him, but when she realizes that he's actually playing the part of the interviewer, she switches to sit with her legs crossed.
Her instincts are generally good, but then again, he's always known that to be true. All the best doctors can think on their feet, and she certainly proves that when she answers his questions. Her answers, though they sound slightly rehearsed (has she practiced with Zola as an audience, he wonders), also sound sincere.
He takes a deep breath, and asks the question he has been putting off for as long as possible. It's not something either of them really wants to talk about anymore, but he'd be doing her a disservice if he didn't at least give her the opportunity to give a practice answer, and quite honestly, part of him wants to know, has to know.
"You were suspended and then fired from Seattle Grace Mercy West's surgical residency program, and your medical license was only recently reactivated."
He stops for a moment. Up until now, it's been easy to play the interviewer, to avoid mixing professional and personal concerns. For this, though, he doesn't know how to find out what they will want to know without marring the question with what he wants to know. He thinks before he speaks again, testing out different questions before he asks. Why did you do it? What were you thinking? Was it worth it? And then he settles.
"How can we trust that something like this won't happen again?"
Meredith looks at him helplessly. She grasps her hands together, and , breaking character, whispers, "What should I say?"
"Just tell the truth."
Meredith nods, and doesn't say anything for a full minute.
"Ok," she says, sighing. "So, you don't know that it won't happen again. Not for sure, anyway. But I believe I'm a good doctor. I'm capable. I care about my patients. That's why all of this happened in the first place."
She stops, gauging his reaction, but he says nothing.
"We all took an oath to do no harm," she says. "I thought I was trying to uphold that oath. But all of this has taught me that it's more complicated than that, and even though I was trying not to do harm to my patient—or allow her to be harmed—I caused a lot of pain that I didn't think about. I can't promise that I'm not going to butt heads with other doctors about what's best for my patients, because I know what it's like to watch someone you love almost die right before your eyes. I know what it's like to watch someone waste away. Those experiences have made me a more sympathetic person, and, I think, a better doctor."
In the periphery of his mind, he remembers her pleading with him to stay awake. He can almost feel the pressure of both of her hands on his chest. He represses a shudder when he recalls the clamminess of her frozen skin. And then, like it happened yesterday, he remembers the weight of her head on his shoulder as she breathed into a paper bag. He cannot truthfully say that those memories did not change the way he practices medicine too.
"This experience has made me think about how else I need to be a good doctor," she says, her voice growing more confident as she continues to talk. "I know that that's complicated. And I know that there is a time for split-second decision-making in medicine, and that time wasn't it. It's something I think about a lot more now: the difference between making the split-second decision and making the decision that causes the least harm. Sometimes those things are different, and sometimes they're not. You can trust that I know the difference now."
He nods, but doesn't say anything. He tries to get back in character, to finish the mock interview, but he finds it difficult when he sees that she's fighting tears.
"Do you think it's too long?" she asks.
"No," he replies. "You should say that if they ask."
"So you think it's ok?"
He watches her for a moment, and somehow, what felt impossible a few months ago, now feels natural.
"Yeah," he says. "It's ok."
A week after Meredith's interview, he wonders for a moment if it is his place to do this. But then he picks up the phone. He's only met the chief of surgery at Seattle Pres a few times, at conferences and city-wide medical functions when he too was the chief of surgery. He knows that they barely have a working relationship, but he has to try anyway.
Dr. Greg Freehold takes his call, but is quickly surprised to learn that Derek wants to talk about a job interview they conducted last week for an open spot in their surgical residency program. Derek decides to go for full disclosure; he explains the situation and says that Meredith is his wife, but even if she weren't, he would feel compelled to make this call.
"I have to say, Derek, a suspended medical license doesn't look great. You know how it is; we have enough problems with malpractice suits even without this bull's-eye on one of our residents. It's a risk I'm not generally inclined to take, especially when I've got qualified people lined up to take this spot. Be honest with me, Derek. Is she a good doctor?"
"She's excellent."
The day Meredith accepts the surgical resident position at Seattle Pres, Derek goes to Richard and tells him that he needs to go part-time until further notice. They want to minimize Zola's time in daycare; surely Richard can understand that.
Richard asks for a few weeks to hire a part-time neurosurgeon to pick up the slack, but he agrees with no argument. More than that, he actually seems happy to be able to do something for them.
Somehow, it all works out. Meredith was able to negotiate a three-week lag between accepting the position and actually starting, giving them enough time to figure out Zola's new schedule. It'll be a combination of the two of them and Seattle Grace's daycare taking care of her, and it'll take some organization and some sacrifice to keep everything straight, but for now, it seems like it will work.
A few days before Meredith starts work, he waits with her in the PT office, a place that has grown quite familiar over the past year, for Zola to show off.
"Do you want to show Mommy and Daddy what you can do?" Marlene, Zola's favorite on the PT staff asks.
Zola nods, and Marlene helps her stand up and place her hands on an impossibly small walker. Zola leans backwards onto the walker's handlebars, which wrap around her back in a U-shape, leaving the front of her unencumbered.
She wears her orthotic braces, which cover her legs almost entirely, over a pair of purple leggings, but the braces are partially covered by a coordinating purple dress. Zola looks less like a baby and more like a little girl now that she is eighteen months old. Her face has started to angle out a bit, and her hair is longer. As capable as he is with his own hair, he's still hopeless when it comes to Zola's, so Meredith has pulled it into two puffy pigtails.
"Meredith, Derek, why don't you stand back a bit," Marlene suggests.
"Like here?" Meredith asks, backing up about five feet.
"A bit more," Marlene says with a smile. When they move further back and sit down on the floor, Marlene turns back to Zola and says, "Ok, are you ready, Zola? Show Mommy and Daddy what you can do. Go get Mommy and Daddy."
Slowly, Zola swings her right leg forward. The way her leg braces are now cause her to swing her entire leg in front of her, but as she gets better at this, she might be able to have a more normal gait.
Derek takes his eyes off Zola for one second, just long enough to see Meredith start crying, but then can't make himself look away from his daughter at all. She takes the most deliberate, arduous steps he's ever seen, and Marlene is behind her the whole way, guiding the walker, but it hardly matters what they look like. And Marlene was right; five feet back wasn't challenging enough for Zola.
After a minute or two, Zola, gritting her teeth, takes the last step. Standing in front of them, her face breaks out into a smile. He knows she hasn't quite mastered how to leverage her body, and transition from leaning on the walker to standing on her own power, so when Zola gets to them, he grabs her and hugs her so tightly.
"Zola, that was so good!" he exclaims, not at all surprised to discover that his own voice is thick with tears.
"Walk, Daddy," she replies proudly.
"Yes, you did!"
Tears roll down Meredith's face, and Zola, still in Derek's arms, leans forward to put both hands on Meredith's cheeks. Meredith cups Zola's head in both hands, and kisses her forehead.
A few days later, Meredith leaves the house bright and early for her first day of work. Her friends are becoming attendings soon, and she still has another year as a resident, but she's excited to go back.
She opens her car door, puts her coffee in the cup holder, and her bag in the passenger seat. And then she looks back, one last time. Derek is holding Zola behind the glass storm door. They're both still in their pajamas and bare feet. He's staying home with Zola today so they can slowly transition her into daycare instead of changing everything all at once, and when she left, it didn't seem like they were in any hurry to truly start the day.
Meredith waves, and she laughs when Zola waves back with both hands. She can read her lips from behind the door; she can tell she's saying, "Bye bye, Mommy."
She gets in her car and backs out of the driveway, and even though she's excited to get back to the OR, she's even more excited to come back home.
Thank you all so much for reading and reviewing! I must admit that this is all wishful thinking for what I hope will happen. I've stopped myself from looking at ANY S8 spoilers until this was finished so what's actually going to happen wouldn't cloud my view of what I think should happen. I am a junkie, so that took some willpower. Anyway, again, thank you all so much for your kind words. I would love to hear your thoughts one more time!