Quiet landslide and nobody knows
Regretted decisions that nobody chose
Under water, sinking fast
No way out, no way to get back
What might have been is lost in the past
The whole procedure had taken less than an hour. Meredith stared up at the ceiling, unflinching, throughout the entire thing, and didn't look at Derek, who had slumped back in his chair and cried quietly with his head in his hands.
"Dr. Grey, I'm all finished here," Dr. D'Amico said gently, straightening up from between Meredith's legs.
Meredith nodded weakly, her eyes slipping closed.
"I'd like to admit you overnight, just for observation. As I'm sure you know, a miscarriage can trigger a lot of bleeding, and in your case, it was particularly extensive. The D&C should take care of most of it, but bleeding can continue for several days afterwards and I'd like to watch you to be sure that the situation will resolve itself without any further intervention."
Derek stared at the doctor, his eyes exhausted and tear-stained, and bored into her. She glanced over at him, like she felt his eyes on her, and smiled comfortingly, like she understood his fear. He routinely cut open people's brains for a living, and he was quite good at it. He did it with deft hands and the balls-to-the-wall kind of attitude that made him one of the most applauded surgeons on the West Coast. But despite all of that, he was completely out of his element here. It was his wife. His baby. He had just suffered a gut-wrenching loss. There was nothing he could do about it. All the medical knowledge in the world couldn't fix what had just happened. It was over.
"I can admit you, just until the morning," Dr. D'Amico offered again. "It would just be as a precaution, Dr. Grey. The procedure went absolutely fine."
Meredith shook her head no.
Derek transferred his stare to Meredith, prone on the table with her feet still in the stirrups and all the color gone from her face. He would have, in any other circumstances, disagreed with the doctor. He didn't know much about obstetrics and gynecology, but he knew that a D&C was a routine procedure. If he was going strictly by the books, a D&C was considered outpatient. The whole thing had taken less than an hour. Meredith should have been allowed to go home. The doctor shouldn't have even offered to admit her overnight, but she did. And he found himself going along with the doctor, simply because he couldn't be sure of the reason why she had suggested it in the first place. It was true that doctors could be counted on to bend the rules for their own when they needed it; there was that possibility that she had offered the room as a courtesy, a private place to grieve before they had to go home and face the rest of their lives. The rational part of him knew that in all likeliness, Dr. D'Amico was only trying to offer reassurance to a colleague in the only way she could. But he had left the rational part of himself in his second floor bathroom. It had thundered out like a tornado when he saw the blood, and felt fear boil inside him. He couldn't help but succumb to the other, more remote possibility – that Dr. D'Amico was legitimately concerned that there could be complications. And he had had enough of waiting it out until things got scary before he acted.
"Meredith, let's just stay the night and make sure everything is ok."
"No," she said, her strained voice coming out cracked and weak. "I'm going home."
"You're still bleeding," he pointed out stupidly.
"It should stop on it's own within a week or so," the doctor interjected. "Everything was evacuated, but the bleeding isn't something we can stop completely. Some bleeding is normal, and unavoidable."
"I know that. I'm not staying."
"Maybe we should. Mer, it's just one night."
"Derek, I am. Not. Staying," she said, her weak voice getting a little stronger, more defiant, for those words. "It's over. They got everything, ok? Emily's at home and that's where I should be."
Her words hitched up, coming out higher, faster, louder. She had the look of a caged animal on her face, being held against her will to be looked at, analyzed.
"Izzie said she could stay overnight," he said, swallowing back the lump in his throat. He closed his eyes for a second, and tried to squeeze out the frustration that had started to build in his head. "I'll call her. Em's fine. Mer…."
"I'm not staying. I'm not staying, Derek," she repeated frantically, gathering her strength to take her legs out of the stirrups and sit up a bit. "I'm not staying, I'm not staying."
"Just to make sure everything is ok!" he shouted, throwing himself back in his chair. Instantly, he regretted it. Meredith coiled into herself, and Dr. D'Amico shifted uncomfortably.
"I'm a doctor!" she yelled back. Her voice broke and she rambled on uncontrollably. "I know the risks. They're minimal and you know it. I did this for you, and now it's over and I am going home." She shifted her attention to the doctor, who looked like she was simply at a loss, and sank back into her chair. "I don't want any special treatment. I don't need to be admitted. You know that and I know that."
"Dr. Grey, it would only be…."
"No! I said I don't want it!"
"Meredith, would you just let her talk?" He couldn't explain where his fury was coming from. He knew that Meredith was just as devastated as he was, just as afraid. Probably more so. But he couldn't understand why Meredith didn't want to be in a hospital, why she was fighting so hard. But then that begged the question of why he was fighting so hard for the opposite of what she wanted. He looked at her, lying there with her legs dangling over the side of the table and tears spilling down her face, and he hated how vulnerable she looked.
"Let's go home, Mer," he sighed. "Let's just go."
"Ok," she whispered. She wiped her eyes, and covered her face with her hands for a moment.
"Ok," he said more definitively. "Thank you," he turned to shake the doctor's hand. He felt ridiculous as he did it, like it wasn't the right gesture at all, but he had never been on the bereaved family member end of this relationship dynamic and he wasn't sure how else to behave.
"I'll get your paperwork," Dr. D'Amico smiled sympathetically. It made Derek feel better that she didn't try to stop them. He felt more confident taking her home, and knew that if she really thought it wise that they stay, she would have spoken up.
Once the doctor had cleaned Meredith up and the appropriate paperwork was signed, Derek eased Meredith up and off the bed, and, while she gripped his waist for support, they walked out of the hospital.
He managed to hold it together on the way home, staring at the road halfheartedly. He found himself focusing on anything but what had just happened, where they had just come from. He glanced at the clock. 10:22. The silence was becoming unbearable. Neither of them had said a word since they left the hospital. He didn't think they had ever been silent around each other for this long.
"Music?" he suggested.
She shook her head and reached for his hand, drawing it away from the radio dial. She wrapped her fingers around his, but looked away, out the side window. He smoothed his thumb over the skin between her thumb and index finger, and squeezed gently, but her hand remained limp in his grasp. He couldn't think of a single thing to say. His own grief overpowered him, and though he wanted to say something, and even felt like he really should be the one to speak first, he didn't have the energy or the heart to try in that moment. It was all he could do to keep his own head above water long enough to get them home.
They got back to their house at 10:38. By then, it had started to drizzle outside, and when Derek went around to the passenger side of the car, Meredith eased herself out into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest, silently, but he felt her tears on his shirt. Or maybe it was the rain. Kissing the top of her head, he breathed in the lingering scent of lavender. He pulled her closer and though neither of them spoke, he just held her there for a second.
Just for a moment, he convinced himself that this had all been a horrible, nauseating nightmare. They hadn't just been at the hospital. Their baby was still safely thriving inside Meredith. Nothing had changed. They had a date next week to pick out paint samples for the room next door to Emily's room, even though they were still deciding whether they wanted to know the baby's sex or not. They'd lay in bed tonight and trade ideas on how to tell her she was going to be a big sister. Nothing had changed. In that moment, everything was still so blissfully the same.
Meredith broke the embrace and walked with him tentatively towards the front door. That small gesture was enough to bring him back to the devastating reality that nothing was even remotely the same anymore. He felt so cheated, like it had ended before it really had a chance to begin. He'd seen couples come in for miscarriages before at the hospital, years ago, and he remembered feeling vaguely sad and sympathetic, but nothing could have prepared him for the aching sense of loss he felt now.
When he pushed the door open, Izzie sprung up from the couch. She looked at him expectantly, a little sleepy but still awake. He shook his head and Izzie's expression sank as he ushered Meredith inside. He had to hold on to her, like she wasn't even in control of her body anymore, while he helped her upstairs and into bed.
He didn't stay, and he said nothing. He simply shut the door and left her there. Though he felt some obligation to say things, do things – the right things – he had no idea where to begin, and the sick feeling in his stomach had been building for hours, becoming nearly impossible to resist now that he was home.
Back downstairs, Izzie was hastily trying to straighten up the living room, piling her things back into her bag.
"Do you need me to stay?" she asked, looking up at him when he stopped next to the sofa.
He shook his head. "It's ok."
"I'm sorry, Derek."
"Yeah," he breathed, sucking in a breath so hard in an attempt to disguise his wavering voice that it made him cough a little.
"Call me if you need anything."
She hugged him once more, and quickly let herself out. As soon as she was gone, he managed to make his way upstairs. Opening Emily's door briefly, he made sure she was safely asleep before he went to the bathroom.
He closed the door behind him, and sank down to the floor, his breathing becoming more ragged as soon as he realized that he was alone. Then, he couldn't stop the tears from coming. Big, angry, gulping sobs and tears that fell in droplets down his cheeks. He was an ugly crier. Over and over, the questions kept coming in his mind, storming through rapid-fire in a stampede of uncertainty. Where do we go from here? What do I say? When will this be over? But he always came back to the same thought – why, why, why?
Derek barely had time to react when he felt the bile rise in his throat, the culmination of the fear and the grief producing a real physical side effect. He retched into the toilet once, and then again mere seconds later, before he sank back against the cool porcelain of the tub, thoroughly exhausted.
Eventually, what could have been hours later for all he knew, he managed to catch his breath and stop crying long enough to entertain rational thought. He looked down and realized that he was still wearing the clothes he wore to work that morning. His dress pants and stark white shirt felt unbearably constricting, like they were somehow reminders of the life he was no longer living. They had to come off.
He picked himself up off the bathroom floor, and made himself walk to his bedroom. Meredith. He should check on Meredith. There could still be complications. Maybe she wanted something to eat or drink. He should do that for her. Stopping in front of the door, he hesitated, staring at the doorknob like when he opened it, he'd become a participant in a life that he didn't choose. Going in there would be conceding that, yes, this had happened.
But it had happened. This had happened to them – to him, to her, to all three of them. He spent his entire professional life studying the facts, not the philosophical, and these were the facts: this had happened, it was over, and somehow, Meredith felt very far away from him. He had to get to her. Another fact. When he tried to turn the doorknob, it refused to budge. Meredith had locked him out.
A week later and Meredith found herself back at work, subjected to an altogether different kind of stare. Instead of the gleam of gossiping eyes at the nurses' station, she was on the receiving end of pitied sideways glances, the kind that quickly looked away when she dared to meet them.
She'd made it through eight hours of her first twelve-hour shift back, scrubbing in on an emergency aneurysm almost immediately after arriving. She had to admit it felt good to focus on something else besides the baby, to have to focus on something else besides the baby, but the surgery had only taken a few hours. When it was over, she watched out of the corner of her eye as people literally slowed down when they walked by her as she finished her post-op notes. She could take it when nurse Olivia did it, expected it when nurse Debbie did the same thing, but when Cristina did it, something inside her snapped.
Grabbing Cristina by the arm, she pulled her into an empty on-call room. She noticed a bit of relief flit across Cristina's eyes as she caught a glimpse of the old headstrong Meredith just for an instant.
"What?" Meredith asked exasperatedly.
"What?" Cristina shrugged her shoulders.
"Why the hell are you looking at me like that?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You're looking at me just like everybody else is, and I don't want it. I expect it from everybody else here, but not you. You're looking at me like I'm going to fall apart any minute."
"Are you?" Cristina asked pointedly.
No. Yes. Maybe. At least she could appreciate the honesty of her asking. "I don't know."
"Ok."
Meredith leaned on the doorframe, her hand still on the knob, and eyed Cristina for a moment. She hadn't told her she'd lost the baby, at least not in those words. When neither she nor Derek showed up for work the day after the miscarriage, Cristina had called their house as soon as she had an available minute. All Meredith had been able to manage when Cristina asked why her ass wasn't at work that day was some incoherent sobbing about the baby, the baby. Immediately, Cristina knew that she didn't mean Emily, and had let Meredith cry on the phone for five minutes before she had to hang up to tend to an emergency page. In the following days, Meredith was grateful that Cristina had the prudence to get the details from Izzie rather than subject her to telling the whole story.
"You don't have to be back at work, you know."
"Yes, I do."
"Ok."
"What?" Meredith snapped defensively.
"Nothing," Cristina replied quickly. She looked like she was at a loss for what to do. Meredith couldn't blame her for it. What was the appropriate response for a loss of this magnitude? "How are you holding up?" she asked.
"I'm here," Meredith managed.
"Shepherd?"
Truth be told, she ha no idea how Derek was faring in all of this. Her mind was consumed with grief, and though she had tried to present normalcy for Emily, she was even failing miserably at that. She and Derek had barely talked since the night they came home from the hospital completely shattered, moving like zombies through the house. He'd gone back to work after two days; she'd taken a few days more. Ever since she'd locked the door, he'd stayed away.
"I don't know," she admitted, and took a slick breath.
Cristina nodded, and another moment of silence passed while she mulled over the small bits of information she had gotten from Meredith so far. Meredith regarded Cristina carefully, watched her look at her and then down at her hands.
"Meredith…. I'm sorry."
Meredith smiled weakly, but stared at the floor when she nodded. She fought the urge to grip her stomach, reminding herself that there was nothing there.
"Lunch later?"
"Ok," she agreed. She didn't flinch when Cristina reached out and touched her arm gently. Cristina didn't pretend to know. She didn't pretend to understand. She wouldn't stare again. But she would be there, as she always had been, not emotionally showy but behind Meredith in quiet solidarity.
"I'll page you in a couple hours?"
"Yeah," she replied quietly, and wiped at her eyes a little.
Meredith smoothed down her scrub top when Cristina took her hand away. She pushed down on the door handle, about to let herself out, when Cristina stopped her once more.
"Page me sooner if you need to."
Meredith had been going to bed almost as soon as she'd gotten Emily to sleep for the past three months. Ever since the miscarriage, if he wanted to pinpoint the exact day, which still felt so achingly sad to admit happened at all. Once her bleeding had stopped, at least on the outside, their lives got back to normal. They went to work, and spent every waking moment when they weren't at work with Emily. Life had slipped back into its old routines. For the most part.
He didn't think either of them were back to their old selves. Well, he knew he wasn't. And anybody who knew Meredith could tell with one look that she wasn't either. She'd fallen back into a shade of herself that he hadn't seen in years, but it was one that scared him to death. Every day, he briefly entertained the fear that he might find her submerged in the bathtub again, holding her own head under the water.
Even he felt remarkably empty for someone who looked like they had it all. He'd been published again last month, for a series of complex multi-stage operations on an epileptic man, and would be featured at the hospital's annual banquet in June. His wife was well on her way to being a better surgeon than he was, and despite everything that had recently happened, continued to dazzle her superiors with her skillful hands and razor sharp intuition. His daughter was brilliant in the breathtaking way a two-year-old often is, and had taken recently to babbling numbers from one to ten in two languages, thanks to Dora the Explorer.
And yet he felt like a piece of him was missing.
The room next to Emily's tortured him. It was just there, full of unfulfilled possibility. The door hadn't been opened in months, and the thought that a layer of dust had collected on the baby furniture they had stored in there made him sick.
When the crisp fall air billowed into Seattle, Derek couldn't help but feel remotely helpless when it came to the matter of his continued grief. He couldn't shake the thought that they should be preparing for the arrival of a new baby in a few months. He had been ready to do the baby thing again, anxious for the 4 AM feedings and gurgling coos of an infant in his arms once more.
He knew that it wasn't the best analogy, but the situation had started to remind him of when he was in the third grade and his beloved dog Parker had gotten hit by a car. He'd cried for days, and screamed that he never wanted another dog ever again, but one day his father brought home a brand new chocolate labrador puppy and told him that the only way to fill the hole in his heart was to love another dog.
It scared him, and he knew it could never be the way he wanted it to be originally, but he wanted another baby.
One night in October, he joined Meredith in bed after getting home from work fairly late. She'd been asleep, but had woken when the mattress shifted beneath her to accommodate his weight.
"Hey," he mumbled against her skin.
"Hey," she replied lazily, lingering between consciousness and unconsciousness for just a moment to welcome him home.
"Mer…." He woke her after he realized she'd fallen back asleep.
"Hmmm?"
"I was thinking… Mer, wake up," he prodded.
"What, Derek?" she muttered grouchily.
"I was thinking…maybe we should try to have another baby."
With that, she woke up completely, and turned to face him.
"What?"
"I've just been thinking…when my dog died when I was eight…."
"A baby isn't a dog, Derek."
"I know. I know that," he sighed. "It's just…Sam didn't replace Parker…but it felt better, loving him. He wasn't Parker. But it felt better."
Meredith hesitated before she finally spoke. "I've been kind of thinking about it too. A little," she quickly added.
"You have?"
She nodded.
"Do you want to?" he asked.
"I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe." She paused, and he watched her study his features in the darkness. When she reached out to touch him, just grazing his arm gently with her fingertips, the gesture took him by surprise. She'd been so reserved lately. Withdrawn, even. "You really want this?"
"Yeah, I do," he realized aloud, the full intensity of it hitting him square in the heart as the words escaped his lips.
"Ok," she whispered.
"Yeah?"
She nodded again.
He let her make the first move. When she kissed him, he felt it everywhere, down to his fingertips, like she was breathing the fire back into him. Briefly, he marveled to himself how they had gone without sex for so long, especially when it had been what defined them in the beginning, and had been so important for so long. How had it been three months?
She moaned incoherently into his mouth as he reached up to cup her breasts over her shirt, and he felt his body respond to her caresses. He kissed her harder, his tongue delving into her mouth, and when she tugged on the hem of his shirt, he was happy to lift his arms and oblige. He helped her lose her shirt, and immediately, her hands traced hot lines across his skin.
As they slowly peeled off the rest of their clothes, all Derek could think about was Meredith. Meredith. I'm touching Meredith. His lips traveled down to her neck, and her hand wrapped around him. She threaded one of her legs over his and drew him closer, and as good as her hands on him felt, being close to her again, and Meredith being Meredith, felt even better. His hands roamed over her body, reclaiming what was his, reclaiming his old life.
"Derek," she panted. "Derek…."
"Meredith," he choked out as the pressure built inside him. Kissing her neck, taking in the scent of her - he needed more.
He was about to go, to relieve the maddening tension building in him, when, breathlessly, anxiously, her palms pushed on his shoulders, like she was trying to push him away.
Gathering all his resolve, he stopped. Looking down at her, he saw the tears well in her eyes. She looked…scared.
She shook her head violently back and forth, looking slightly frustrated with herself. "Do you have a condom?" she asked, as a few tears spilled over and down her face.
Meredith hadn't liked Christmas at all until three years ago. She knew that that simple fact made her an oddity in normal American society, but she couldn't help it. The holiday cheer and the Claymation scenes of children opening presents in front of their adoring parents hadn't been part of her childhood. Her memories of Christmas didn't include a belief in Santa Claus or chestnuts roasting on an open fire or any of the wonderful things she heard about in Christmas carols. Her Christmases were more along the lines of opening a few gifts that she knew the nanny had been paid extra to pick out, and eating reheated frozen turkey from Thanksgiving. So, when you took that into consideration, who could really blame her for not feeling like Tiny Tim come December?
It'd changed for her three years ago though. Derek loved Christmas. She had his ring on her finger, and she found herself positively giddy as she holed herself up in their bedroom and wrapped up a tiny box for him in red and gold plaid paper. She knew it had been done before, to wrap up the positive pregnancy test as a Christmas gift, but she figured they deserved something normal, homey, at least once in their lives.
He had cried when he opened it. Actually cried. Not just a little glistening in his eyes, but full on euphoric tears as he held the test in his hand, dumbfounded, staring at Meredith with such joy on his face. That moment was when she started liking Christmas.
This December, she had to admit to herself that she was expecting more out of this Christmas a few months ago. She was expecting to be eight months pregnant, spending the holiday waiting for a new baby. Maybe they would have invited Derek's family out to Seattle since she wouldn't be able to fly to New York, and they'd be gathered around the tree with the three of them now, like a real live family.
"Mommy, look what Santa bring me!" Emily squealed, running over to her holding a pink box and jumping up and down excitedly.
"Oh, wow, Em!" Meredith replied with the appropriate level of excitement. "What's this?"
"That a baby doll," Emily nodded, thrusting the box at Meredith.
She looked up at Derek. This wasn't one of the gifts they had picked out together a few weeks earlier, the set of art supplies and the sled and the red wagon and the tea set, or one of the dozen other things they'd chosen at the store. He shrugged guiltily.
"Just one more," he mouthed.
Things had been strained between them at best since the night they had almost tried to have another baby. Embarrassed and frustrated, still in sometimes numbing emotional pain, Meredith retreated into her work, burying herself in surgeries and nights on-call when things were particularly difficult. Surgery forced her to focus on the open brain in front of her, rather than her own crumbling life. She could fix brains. But she was at a loss for what to do when Derek looked at her the way he did sometimes, like she was actively taking something away from him.
Once all the gifts had been opened, she held Emily close against her chest and watched her play with the doll in her hands. They were both still in their pajamas, Meredith in a pair of Derek's sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt and Emily in a set of white pajamas with red Santa hats printed on them. As soon as Derek took the doll out of the box for her, Emily had crawled into Meredith's lap, curling into her mother's arms. Meredith stroked Emily's hair and cradled her like an infant while she touched the doll's hair and then pushed her plastic eyelids closed. She wore a blissful smile on her face, looking so thoroughly happy that Meredith's breath caught in her throat as she watched her.
She couldn't ignore the twisting feeling in her stomach, a guilty gnawing that she still wanted more from her life. How could she think, for even one instant, that this child – this perfect, beautiful, blameless child – was not enough? Why had she let herself become a shadow of the person she used to be, something so much less than what Emily deserved? She had to make herself stop mourning over everything she didn't have, and focus on the child that she did have. Though she still felt empty, empty, empty, she couldn't deny that her arms were so full.
"I a lucky girl, Mommy," Emily said, sated and content.
Meredith pressed her lips to the top of Emily's head. Despite everything, her daughter adored her, even when she didn't deserve to be adored. Even when, by her own admission, she had been distracted by her grief. Emily still loved her. How could that not be enough?
"You are a lucky girl," she murmured.
And you are enough.
"Daddy, I ready!" Emily called loudly up the stairs.
"Bean, one second, ok?" Derek replied, rummaging through his drawers for an extra pair of socks.
He'd been promising her for weeks, ever since they had watched a choice handful of Christmas movies together, and she'd seen other children sledding and playing in fluffy white snow. Two and a half year old Emily had to have a chance to do that too, and this morning was the morning. All of the variables had fallen into place: Derek had the day off, and Seattle had been coated with four inches of fresh snow overnight. When Meredith expressed concern, Emily had shrieked that she was a big girl. When Derek swore that he'd watch her like a hawk the entire time, that had settled it. They were going sledding.
While Meredith finished getting Emily ready downstairs, which involved a lot of begging her to go potty before she layered on the warm, waterproof clothing, Derek pulled on two of everything upstairs. Two pairs of sweatpants, two sweatshirts, two pairs of socks, finishing up with a fleece jacket. The sheer volume of clothing made him sweat as he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on a pair thick-soled boots.
He was almost finished getting ready, and had just tied the laces of his second boot, when something on Meredith's dresser caught his eye. The packet of pills was sitting right on the dresser; Meredith hadn't even attempted to hide it, like she was daring him to say something.
Birth control.
And she hadn't said a word about it.
To be fair, neither of them had talked about having another baby outright, not since the debacle of the night that was barely an almost, though Derek had certainly hinted over the past several months that he'd like nothing more. Meredith had altogether avoided the topic, and was currently avoiding most conversation with him if he was being perfectly honest.
The grief felt different to him now, less of a gnawing pain in his gut and more of a dull ache that had settled deep in his chest. The strain of trying to keep Meredith close, when it seemed like all she wanted to do was run, had bruised him but he kept holding on.
He sucked in a breath, got up, and took the packet in his hand. Several pills had already been punched out. He sighed, and stared at the empty holes in disbelief. She could have at least told him.
He felt like Meredith had loosened remaining grip he had on her with this omission, like she had pried his clenched fingers away one by one, and now he was just freefalling. How far to the bottom, he wasn't quite sure, but it felt like quite a distance from where he was to where Meredith remained.
He didn't want a replacement. Or a Plan B. At all.
But he did want to continue with his life. He had to. They both owed it to themselves, to Emily, to each other. That was all he was asking her, to continue with life, and another baby, maybe even two more, had always been part of his plan. Meredith knew that. At least, he thought she did.
They'd never discussed losing the baby, ever. As far as he knew, not to anyone, let alone each other. He hadn't, anyway. Maybe they needed to, but she would barely talk to him at all, let alone about something so monumental.
Is this what they had come to? Sliding backwards down a slippery slope?
He couldn't help but feel the resentment bubble out from his stomach through his veins. He wasn't saying today, or next month, or even next year, but how long was she going to keep someday from him?
"Daddy!" Emily called again, wondering if he had forgotten.
"I'm coming, Bean!"
Downstairs, Emily was bundled up to the point that her face was barely visible, and her entire body was wrapped in layers of fleece and waterproof material.
"Are you an Eskimo?" Derek asked, barely able to contain amused laughter.
"I not a cookie," Emily said indignantly, and crossed her arms across her chest.
"What?" Meredith laughed.
"I not an Oreo," Emily muttered, growing frustrated when her parents tried to contain peals of laughter. "I am Emily Grace Shepherd."
"Em, not an Oreo," he chuckled. "An Eskimo," he pronounced as deliberately as he could.
"What that?"
"It's a person who loves cold weather and loves to play in the snow," Meredith interjected.
"Oh…I an Ekimo. Daddy, come on," she whined. She drew out every syllable as she tugged on his hand, and attempted to march towards the door.
She pulled, but she couldn't drag him away quite yet. He paused to stare at Meredith. She was still in her pajamas, a pair of flannel pants and the old reliable Dartmouth t-shirt that now had a hole in one elbow as well. His gaze felt like it was going right through her, an effect that apparently had not gone unnoticed on Meredith. He could have sworn he saw her squirm just a bit, and when her eyes met his, he knew that she knew he had seen the pills on the dresser.
He said nothing, and neither did she. She didn't back down, continuing to look back at him, unapologetic.
She had kept someday for herself.
She knew she hadn't been herself lately, and she knew that her marriage had taken a hit for it. The grief she felt over losing the baby had crippled her for months, and finally, she could feel herself starting to ease out of it. As the cloud started to lift, she could see the effect that the defensive walls she had put up around her had had on Derek. She had spent so many months pushing Derek, in so many words or sometimes with no words at all, away. Don't talk about this. I will shatter if you do. Don't touch me. Just leave me alone.
And eventually, he had.
At first, Meredith had hardly noticed it, just vaguely observed Derek curling into his own devastation, finally, after he stopped trying to take care of her. Things hadn't really changed for her; Derek had felt far away for a long time before he actually moved away from her of his own volition. A few days ago, though, when she woke up one morning, with Derek on the opposite end of the bed and his back towards her, and realized that their anniversary was in four days, this arrangement suddenly felt very wrong.
She couldn't mourn this baby forever. Cristina had, as gently as possible, tried to tell her that. Many times, even. Despite Cristina's well-meant advice, as the would-be milestones ticked by, Meredith couldn't help but let her mind drift to all of the wonderful things she was missing. Ultrasounds. Name discussions. Cravings. When the due date arrived three weeks ago, she'd spent almost every moment she wasn't working in bed with the shades drawn.
But when she woke up next to Derek, but still so far away from him, she woke up in more ways than one.
Now, on their third wedding anniversary, Meredith had managed to hastily throw together a plan in just a few days. Izzie had agreed to watch Emily overnight, quite gleeful with the thought that she'd get to play mommy for a night and also that Meredith had shown a glimmer of her old self merely in asking. On her day off, she'd gone to the mall and bought some new lingerie. Something expensive. Slutty. A little red number that, if she still knew Derek, he wouldn't be able to resist.
She'd tried to wake him up like she used to, curling around him and kissing his neck until he opened his eyes, but this morning, he was apparently altogether unaffected by it. When she told him she had something planned for him that night, he didn't seem to register that it was their anniversary today at all, and simply told her that he'd be home after his three surgeries.
Nonetheless, after going into the hospital and checking to make sure all of her post-op patients from the past several days were recovering nicely, she left work early and took Emily with her.
Late in the afternoon, she showed up at Izzie's house, the familiar home they'd once all shared and Meredith had sold to Izzie two years ago. Keeping it in the family, she had said. In that time, Alex, in his ever-charming despite being an asshole kind of way, had won Izzie over, and they had been living together ever since. At one time, Meredith remembered talking to Derek in hushed whispers at the annual hospital banquet that she was sure Alex would propose soon.
He had, but Meredith couldn't remember saying anything to Derek about it when it finally happened. She'd barely been able to muster up a passable level of happiness and excitement when Izzie told her herself.
Now she was making a concentrated effort to call back into existence Bright and Shiny Meredith. The Meredith with the dreamy eyes that was so in love with her husband with the perfect hair. The Meredith with the bright, beautiful daughter who thought she was lucky.
She sat at the kitchen counter with Izzie, drinking the iced tea that she had set out for her, and watched as Izzie's diamond ring caught the sun and sent rays of light bouncing all over the kitchen.
"You seem better, Mer," Izzie observed happily.
Emily, who until this moment was perfectly content to sit on her aunt's lap, started to wriggle, and Izzie set her down on the floor. Emily darted into the living room, and started to unpack her overnight bag herself so she could show Izzie all of the wonderful toys she had.
"I feel…kind of like me again," Meredith replied, almost proudly.
Izzie smiled widely, like she too was equally thrilled that Meredith was feeling like Meredith again, or was at least willing to act like Meredith for one night. "So is McDreamy going to get McLucky?"
"Izzie," Meredith hissed, rolling her eyes. She shrugged, and with a twinkle in her eye, added, "Well, that's the plan."
"How did I become the coconspirator to get Shepherd laid?" Izzie mused aloud.
"I'm Emily Grace Shepherd," Emily interjected in a high-pitched voice from her place on the living room floor when she caught mention of a name she recognized.
"That's your name," Meredith called cheerfully back, before returning her attention to Izzie. "And, yes, if it makes you feel any better, your official title can be coconspirator."
"It doesn't, really," she wrinkled her nose. "I wasn't even this involved in your sex life when we lived together. I don't want an official title. I just want to be the babysitter. No official titles."
"It was either you or Cristina."
"So what I'm really doing here is taking one for the team," Izzie finished.
"Whatever makes you feel most useful, Iz. I'll pick her up in the morning?"
"Yeah, that's fine," Izzie replied.
"So," Meredith said with a flourish as she stood up, "In the spirit of moving on."
"In the spirit of moving on," Izzie agreed. "Go have sex."
"Bye, Em," Meredith kissed the top of Emily's head while she absentmindedly played with the toys Meredith had packed for her. "Be good. I'll see you in the morning."
"Where my Daddy?"
"He's at the hospital. He'll see you in the morning too, ok?"
"Ok," Emily agreed. "Mommy, I go with you?"
"No, remember you're going to stay with Aunt Izzie tonight?" Emily stared at her blankly. "Remember how you're going to have a fun sleepover?"
"I sink I go with you instead," Emily decided, reaching her arms up for Meredith to pick her up.
"Em, we're going to have fun," Izzie promised. "And Uncle Alex is excited to see you too. He wants to play horsie with you. You can show me all your cool toys. What's this one?" she asked, holding up a doll.
"That a baby," Emily replied tersely, like if she could roll her eyes, she would have. "I sink I go with my Mommy." No offense, Izzie.
"How about you stay with Aunt Izzie and Uncle Alex tonight, and then tomorrow we do something super fun?" Meredith offered, doing her best to stave off the tears she knew were mere seconds away.
"Want to make cookies?" Izzie suggested brightly, and at that, Emily seemed to perk up a little.
"I eat all the cookies?" she asked.
"Sure, you can have as many as you want," she replied cheerfully. Three tops, she mouthed to Meredith. "But I need you to help me make them because you make the best."
"I make the goodest cookies in the whole world?"
"You do."
"Em, that sounds like fun," Meredith said brightly. "What do you think?"
"Ok," Emily finally agreed.
"I'll see you in the morning," Meredith tried again.
"Ok."
"Bye, Em," she repeated with another kiss.
"Mer, 375 for like 25 minutes, ok?" Izzie interjected, handing her a casserole dish covered in tinfoil.
"What's this?" Meredith asked.
"Chicken. You know, for dinner for you guys tonight."
"Coconspirator," she teased, making Izzie groan.
By nine o'clock that night, Derek still wasn't home. Meredith had taken to lounging on the couch in her sweatpants, picking at the chicken Izzie had made with her fingers, and flipping channels on TV. Even three craniotomies couldn't be more than a fourteen-hour day. This wasn't sexy. Old Meredith was back, not for one night only, but still. Where was Derek?
She tried to focus her attention on the television in front of her, where a large blonde woman was particularly focused in selecting one out of several numbered suitcases, held by an array of beautiful scantily-clad models. She agonized over her decision – three or eighteen, three or eighteen – like she was attempting to solve an advanced calculus problem, and Meredith realized that nothing except dumb luck and intuition was telling this woman that one case was better than the other. Just pick one; what's the difference? Meredith thought to herself. Finally, the woman selected case eighteen, for some convoluted reason about how she met her husband on the eighteenth hour of the eighteenth day on Eighteenth Street after she had just eaten eighteen peanuts at the bar – or something to that effect; Meredith didn't quite follow the woman's shrill yelps of anxiety.
When another woman, a twiggy brunette with legs for days, opened the suitcase to reveal a gold plate with $1000 emblazoned on it, the contestant literally jumped for joy. Literally screamed and almost cried at her good fortune. The host then posed a simple question – would she like to take the money that the show was willing to offer her now, an impressive $175,000, or would she like to open more suitcases and try to get even more money?
The woman hemmed and hawed over the decision, and consulted with her equally large and equally blonde family. Take the money, Meredith thought. Take it. It seems too good to be true because it is. Why would you chance something that is guaranteed and wonderful in a greedy attempt to have more? That is always the goal to have more – but there is a cap, and when you hit it, you will know. I understand this. Often, just when you think that you have it made, the carpet gets pulled out from under you and you feel like you've lost everything.
The woman decided to move forward with the game, because when it all boiled down to it, that's all it was anyway – a game. Her next move didn't go so well, and as Meredith watched her entire family hit their knees in disappointment, she found that she had a smug grin on her face. I told you so. You can't have everything.
She pulled another sliver of chicken off the plate and dropped it into her mouth with two plucked fingers. Nine-thirty. Where was he? She had monitored the board earlier that day like a hawk, staking out when he would be in surgery, and when he would be getting out, a modus operandi that she had used…well, never before. It made her feel a bit like a stalker to do it, and it felt especially strange when she considered the fact that she had been doing everything in her power to avoid him at work for months. She hadn't forgotten that elevator confessionals were his specialty.
By ten o'clock, she had given up on the idea of dinner entirely, and had taken some of Izzie's cupcakes into the living room with her. She had tried to resist, started by just licking the icing off of one of them. A few minutes later, she'd let herself eat half the cupcake, and the rest of it had followed soon after. Before she even realized what she was doing, she held two chocolatey wrappers in her fingers.
It was then that she picked up the phone and paged Cristina, knowing she was putting in extra nights on-call to balloon herself up for the chief resident race. She wasn't going to beg for Derek, but she could find out what the hell was taking him so long. His third surgery couldn't have lasted past six, unless there were complications.
Cristina called her back a few minutes later, answering her page with a gruff, "Aren't you supposed to be having some hot sex right now?"
"If I was, do you think I'd be paging you?"
"It's been awhile, I don't know. Maybe McDreamy would have already been McDone for the night."
"McDre…No, Derek isn't even here yet."
"Well where the hell is he?"
"I have no idea!" Meredith exclaimed. "Still there, I guess! That's why I paged you. Did he get held up in the OR?"
"Meredith, I really haven't creepily stalked Shepherd at all today. Or ever. I was kind of busy saving lives all day to notice what he's been doing. Why don't you just page him?"
"Well now it doesn't even matter. I already ate half of the fucking chicken with my hands, Cristina. And two cupcakes. Do you know how disgusting that is? The dinner isn't happening, and he'll be lucky if he gets sex at all tonight. If he ever gets home."
"I'm sure he'll be home soon. He probably just got held up in surgery. There was a fatality earlier; maybe it was his, I didn't see."
"Yeah, maybe."
"He won't forget. You essentially promised him sex, didn't you? No guy is going to forget about that. Well, Shepherd won't, at least. I have to go though, I'm getting a 911 page. I'll talk to you in the morning, Mer, bye."
She hung up so quickly that Meredith didn't have time to say anything back. Maybe Cristina was right, even if it was only on the grounds that Derek Shepherd liked sex, and she knew just how long it had been since he'd gotten any. In Cristina's mind, that simple fact alone wouldn't keep him away.
Meredith lamented the failure of her plan, the one truly romantic thing she had tried to do in months. This was it. This was supposed to be the way that she would show Derek that she was still a good wife, that she could still be the woman he fell in love with, that loss hadn't changed all that forever. Or at least this was supposed to be her attempt to prove all those things, to make herself become them again, and so far, it was failing miserably.
She set the empty plate of chicken on the coffee table, and reclined back onto the couch, propping her feet up on the far armrest.
Derek liked sex. He was good at it, and he knew it. And she hadn't been exactly careful in not dropping a single hint over the past few days that on the day of their anniversary, he might come home to find her already in bed, wearing a lacy red thing that she didn't care if he ripped. That alone should have caught Derek's attention, and it did…most times. But she hoped that when the night of their anniversary found the two of them alone, he'd be there for more than just the sex. She hoped that he'd be there at least partly because he missed her.
She woke up to the sound of her cell phone ringing, vibrating across the table, about an hour later. Groggily, she blinked the sleep out of her eyes and fumbled to answer her phone. For a moment, she forgot where she was, thinking herself in an on-call room at the hospital, but the plate of cold chicken scraps and the TV blaring low in the background brought her back to reality.
"Meredith," Derek's voice crackled across the line.
"Hey," Meredith mumbled tiredly.
"Hey, listen, I can't talk long but I'm not going to be home tonight. Incoming trauma, GSW to the head and the guy is still alive. I'll see you in the morning, ok?"
"…What?" Meredith asked, sure she was mistaken in the way that she had heard him.
"Head trauma. I can't really talk, Mer; they're prepping him now. There's a lot of bleeding, the bullet has to come out. It's lodged in the temporal lobe. I just wanted to let you know I'm staying."
"Oh," Meredith replied dejectedly. "But - "
"I have to go, but we'll talk in the morning," he offered hastily. "I don't have anything scheduled for tomorrow yet. Kiss Em goodnight for me."
"Em's not…."
"Bye, Meredith." And he hung up.
"Em's not here," she finished, to no one in particular in the empty house.
Neither are you.
When I finally am, you're not.
She drew her sweatshirt across her thin frame, and put the plates in the sink and the wrappers in the trash. Upstairs, she tried not to look at the lingerie she had hung up in the bathroom. Instead, she brushed her teeth in silence, and crawled into bed alone.
She was doing her best to try to fall back to sleep, to forget that this day had ever happened, but her mind was racing. Mostly, she was frustrated with herself for yet again believing that she could chance good enough for great. Stop trying to have more. Just enough is exactly that, just enough.
The concept of it all was working in a twisted reverse on Meredith. Try though she may to have more, each time she did, she wound up with less. It was her stupid fault for being too stubborn, too greedy, to just surrender and take what life had already been generous enough to give.
Derek didn't cheat. He adored Emily with a fervor that her own father had never had for her. She was sure enough that Derek still loved her, at least a little bit. Though she wasn't positive, she was just going to have to force herself to accept that sure enough would have to be good enough.
It was Derek who had shaken her out of this belief years ago, made her believe that she was meant to have everything, even that she deserved it. It was him, with his honest eyes, that knocked the breath out of her time after time, first drunkenly in a bar, then in a hospital elevator, and years later, on the altar. But ever since she had been trying to wrap her fingers around everything, to pull the stars down to her, it seemed like loss followed closely behind like a phantom everywhere she went.
Maybe the more naïve version of Derek had left too. Maybe she was, again, a little slow on the uptake. Nobody she knew believed you could have everything, that good things would happen because you had a good heart and you deserved them. Not even Derek anymore. And here she was, some stupid fool, still clinging to that dream.
She'd already lost more times than she cared to count. Her whole life was defined by opening just one suitcase too many.
Derek had stopped trying. So, so would she.
She'd take what she had left and hoard it close to her heart, protect it from destruction, watch it grow but never multiply. Maybe that would be ok. Everything in life was just a matter of getting used to it.
She surrendered.
She'd already lost. It was just a matter of allowing herself to recognize it.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Meredith blustered into Emily's room as quietly as she could on a cool night in the beginning of April. "I got held up at the hospital. They needed neuro consults on a couple of kids – car went right into a telephone pole a couple hours ago. They think the driver was drunk but they haven't gotten the tox screen back yet," she rambled before Derek cut her off abruptly.
"She waited for you," he whispered. He was already in his sweats, sitting in Emily's rocking chair and holding her tightly with both arms. She was fast asleep, curled into Derek's embrace in her favorite yellow pajamas. Her loose curls, still a little damp from her bath, streaked across her cheeks and forehead.
Meredith eased a sleeping Emily out of Derek's arms and into her own; the child barely stirred as she switched hands. Emily settled against her chest, and rested her head on Meredith's shoulder as her arms unconsciously draped around Meredith's neck. "I love you," she murmured gently, the words floating by Emily's ear like a lullaby. "I love you so much. I'll see you in the morning, ok? Goodnight."
Emily muttered something incomprehensible, and never really woke up as Meredith laid her down in her bed. "I'm sorry," Meredith said again, and pressed her lips softly to Emily's forehead.
"You were supposed to put her to bed tonight. She waited up asking for you," he said, pulling Emily's door closed behind them.
"I know, I know," Meredith replied guiltily. "I'm sorry."
"Don't tell me. Tell her." His voice was bitter, laced in anger. This was the third time in two weeks that she'd done this. Emily went to bed promptly at 8:30. He knew that, and she knew that, and they'd long ago promised that if they weren't going to be home to kiss her goodnight, Emily would at least know about it beforehand.
"Derek," she whispered, stopping for a moment before adding, viciously, like a wounded animal, "You do it too."
She regarded him wearily, staring at him with such exhaustion in her eyes. It was the little things, he realized. The little hurts. They just kept building. Stacking themselves sloppily one by one on top of the thing that neither would talk about.
It was almost a year ago to the day that Meredith had rubbed against him in bed, told him she was pregnant, and turned his world upside down again. It had felt so good. So, so good.
He stopped before he let himself go down that road again. At first, he didn't think anything would ever hurt more than losing the baby. But over the past few weeks, he realized that Meredith wasn't just slipping away anymore; she was full-on running. He knew that he had found something that would hurt even worse – a marriage ripped at the seams.
"Are you ever going to stop running away?" he asked.
"Are you?"
"Yeah," he breathed, slow but certain.
"When?" she countered back, but didn't wait for his response. "I'm going to bed."
Derek stood there, feeling quite abandoned in the hallway. This house, set on his wide open, lush green property, suddenly felt like it was closing in on him, trapping him inside his grief at everything he had already lost, or was slowly but surely in the process of losing. He wanted to get away, to go somewhere where he couldn't hide behind a surgical mask and a busy OR board, and neither could she. He wasn't going to lose a marriage because they'd been hurt too badly to try to fix it. Not again. If she insisted on running, he'd follow her until he caught her, because he knew that, despite everything, he loved her too much not to.
His own subtle slip into apathy shocked him, and he hadn't fully realized he was doing it until Meredith's harsh words just a few seconds ago.
You do it too.
Guilty as charged.
