They say doctors make the worst patients…
Mostly everyone becomes a patient at some point during his or her lifetime. It's part of our regular routine as human beings in the 21st Century. There are generally two types of people in the world: the person who goes to the doctor over every sore throat, and the person who wait until the extreme happens. The latter are the ones who usually end up in the O.R. in emergency surgery at Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital.
However, the tables are a little different when you yourself are a doctor. You're surrounded day in and day out by other doctors. They spend their days taking care of others, so it's only natural they take care of each other, too. While professionals in any other career setting might be able to put off having a sore throat checked out, having a seemingly harmless bullet removed from their flesh, or having a rape kit done after a brutalizing crime, it isn't so easy when you're a doctor and have hundreds of medical eyes around you each day.
Fear is a central reason for avoiding the exam room. We fear that we'll have a blood exam, and the test results will come back positive for some terrible, ugly disease. We're afraid to have that lump on our chest biopsied, because the results may come back cancerous. Chances are it's benign, right, so why waste the time going to the doctor? We live in fear, even though we know that it's better to get checked out sooner rather than later. It could save our life. Or, in the case of a sexual assault victim, save another person's life.
It may not make sense to an outsider why a victim of sexual assault wouldn't want to be examined. In fact, it's what makes logical sense, right? A rape kit is the only evidence, aside from the victim's word, that can put a rapist away. It's very difficult to prove a case solely on hearsay, so it's crucial that the forensic evidence exist.
Everything felt so unreal as she sat on the edge of an exam chair for the second time that day. For a moment, she flashed back to that morning, when Bailey had found her lying at the bottom of the stairway. "What the hell happened, Grey?" Bailey's words replayed in her head. What the hell had happened to her? Meredith's head ached. She just wanted to take some sleeping pills and lie down and go to sleep. As she sat on the edge of the bed, Meredith tried to remember the last time she had felt this horrible; this worthless; and this disgusting.
There had been a time that she was the laughing stock of her family. When she was in college, she'd lived quite the partying lifestyle. Yet, she still managed to make it to all her classes and do relatively well without studying. The medical terminology was instilled in her brain. When she was a child, she could remember her mother talking about teratomas and pseudoaneurysms. So, since she was already familiar with the terminology, learning medical definitions had been much easier for her than other medical students.
Growing up, Meredith was never a bright and shiny person. In high school, she tried to push as many people away as possible. She wore loads of black, dyed her hair an exotic pink color, and tried her best to be weird. She didn't care what people thought about her; and she certainly hadn't cared if they liked her. She learned at a very early age that she didn't need people in her life. Perhaps it all stemmed back to the fact that her mother had never been there. Her mother had always been working, leaving her in daycare or once she was in school, with nannies. She learned to fend for herself, which shaped her as a whole.
Her residency had changed her. Meeting Cristina, Alex, and specifically, Derek, changed her. Suddenly, she had "people." She'd never had someone to call her "person" before Cristina. She'd never had a man who told her that he loved her. The words "I love you" seemed so surreal to her before. Derek Shepherd was the first man who she had told she loved. All the men before had been nothing more than fuck buddies. That's all she'd wanted and expected from Derek. Of course, she hadn't known that he would turn out to be her boss, and she certainly hadn't expected him to want to see her again. This was all before she knew he was married.
Meredith had put her "dirty ex-mistress" past to bed years ago. She rarely thought about how she and Derek had started. Instead, she focused on the now. The present, where she had a beautiful baby girl, and a loving husband. The present that had been so perfect. That was, until an evil man had stepped into her life and taken away everything she knew to be good in the world. A horrible man, who she didn't even know, had pushed her into an on-call room and taken away her sense of dignity. He'd hurt her in ways Meredith didn't even know she could be hurt.
Throughout her life, Meredith had felt her share of emotional and physical pain. She'd been led to believe that her father had walked out on her and her mother, when in fact it had been her mother who had the affair then left her father, taking her across the country. At the age of thirteen, she'd had a very distinct view on love and life in general. At the time, she'd thought love was stupid, and Juliet was an idiot for falling in love with the one guy she knew she couldn't have. She'd decided that love, like life, was all about making decisions, rather than fate. Meredith had never been a believer in fate, until she met Derek. She also hadn't encountered real pain until she'd met Derek, because before Derek, she'd never permitted herself to get attached to anyone.
As a young child, Meredith learned becoming attached to someone was possibly the worst thing you could do to yourself. If you became attached to someone, then they would leave you and in turn, cause you pain. It was better never to get attached, which was why Meredith sought sex, not love. Sex was all fun and games until feelings started to play a role in the mix. Meredith remembered the day that Addison appeared from thin air.
"And you must be the woman who's been screwing my husband."
It felt like a knife had been stabbed into the core of her heart. Her heart bled into her stomach. She remembered feeling like she was about to vomit as she stormed out of the hospital into the Seattle downpour.
"Open your mouth," said Alex, holding a swab in his hand.
"W-Why?" she stammered, tightly holding her mouth closed.
"So I can perform the oral exam. It's kinda impossible to do without looking at your face, and you don't have to take your clothes off for me to do it. Open your mouth, Meredith."
"He-uh-didn't penetrate my mouth," she told Alex with a slight hesitance. She was a doctor, who was formerly notorious for screwing boys like whores on tequila. That was beside the point. Words like "penetrate" weren't supposed to be awkward for her to use. Sexual terminology had been part of her every day vocabulary for so many years.
"And you know as well as I know that there could be other fluids present, such as saliva. Open your mouth already so I can get a swab of your saliva. Mer, I don't want to be doing this any more than you do, but you know that we gotta do it. It'd be helpful if you would cooperate with me."
Their eyes locked. It felt as if Alex was reading into her thoughts. He knew her well enough that if she could have her way, she go about her day like nothing happened. He also knew that it had taken her an amount of courage to come forward and open up to him. Alex typically wasn't the warm, fuzzy person who let women cry on his shoulder. Though, he cried on hers before, back when he thought Izzie was going to die.
Meredith was the person everyone dumped their problems onto; at one time, she had been the "president of people with crappy lives." Later, she'd just become the voice of wisdom. She'd seen worse than most, so people felt comfortable talking to her. She was awful at talking about her own problems, though. For so long, she spent so much time fixing other people's lives that she hadn't cared about her own. Then, after they adopted Zola, everything seemed to fit into place. She finished her residency, passed her boards, and then, of course, the plane crash happened.
Just when everything seemed to fit into place, it fell apart at once. That was just how her life happened to worked.
She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth, permitting Alex to stick the swab in her mouth. Meredith gagged a moment after Alex inserted the swab.
"Geez, Mer, quit being such a baby," laughed Alex. "I'm not even sticking the swab in that far. Most of the kids whose throats I examine don't gag."
"Oh-just-shut-up." Her words slurred together because the swab was still in her mouth.
Alex laughed, looking into her eyes, as he pulled the swab out and stuck the collected evidence in the bag he'd grabbed. "Okay, well, I'm going to find an intern. You get ready, and once your face is covered shoot me a text."
"You know, I don't think I like the idea of an Intern doing the exam. These interns...they're not very bright."
"You're right, and we could ask a nurse to do it, but no nurse in this hospital is going to be dumb enough to fall for not being able to see your face. An Intern will do whatever I say, because like you said, they're not that bright."
Meredith nodded, realizing Alex was right. Before Alex left the room, Meredith felt her phone buzz in her pocket. Derek? her heart jolted as she pulled her phone out of her pocket. Her heart sank as she saw the picture message on her screen.
It was a picture of Zola and Sofia playing with blocks at the hospital daycare. The photo had clearly been taken through the window. Zola was wearing the same outfit she'd been wearing this morning when Meredith dropped her off at daycare, so it was obvious that the picture was from today. It was the caption that stood out to Meredith, though. The caption read "Zola misses her mommy."
The text had been sent from a blocked number.
"Mer, you okay?" Alex asked, staring intently at Meredith while holding his clipboard in his hand. "You look like you've just seen a ghost."
"I have to go," Meredith said quickly, clenching tightly onto her phone. "We'll have to finish the, uh, rape kit later." She rushed out of the exam room.
"Meredith! Where are you going? You know we don't have that long of a time window!" Alex called after her, but Meredith started to run away from him. She stood in front of the elevator, and she repeatedly pressed the down button with rapidness. Come on, elevator, she thought, but she didn't have the patience to wait. She had to get downstairs to the daycare immediately.
Meredith ran toward the staircase, and she raced down the four flights of stairs to the daycare level. She looked through the window, searching for Zola. Her eye stopped at Sofia, who was playing with a little girl. It only took Meredith a moment to realize that the little girl wasn't Zola. Meredith's heart started to race. She didn't see Zola in the daycare. The little girl was nowhere in sight. Meredith looked around her surroundings, and that's when she realized she was standing in the same spot the photo that had been sent to her was taken. However, there was no one in sight. Her heart pounded rapidly, blood poured through her veins in sheer panic.
She barged into the daycare, demanding, "Where's Zola? Where's my baby girl?"
