August came with a whirlwind of cooler temperatures, rain, and smiles. With Meredith's spirits lifted she could sense a noticeable change with Zola and Bailey as well. The children seemed happier and more carefree, running around the house playing games. Meredith was on Maternity leave as she neared her 36th week and she didn't tire of watching her kids. The house they lived in was too small for a proper nursery for the baby girl in her womb; she'd fit a crib in and Bailey was still in diapers, so they could share a changing table. She felt like a crappy mom for not having the foresight to move to a bigger house for her and the three kids, one with at least four bedrooms, and she sighed, running her hands through her hair.

If Derek were here there would be a lot of things she wouldn't be screwing up right now. There would be an addition to their beautiful dream house; in a perfect world she would add a nursery onto their beautiful master suite so that their baby and any future kids they had would be close by. She wouldn't admit this out loud, but god, single parenthood was hard. She wasn't sure how some of the nurses she worked with did it, and a lot of them worked just as much as she did.

Since she had so much free time she took the kids out to see the sights of the city, glad she was able to spend so much free time with them. For Zola, it was even more convenient that school was out for the summer and she didn't start first grade until September. It was fun, really, exploring SanFran with the two kids, even though it completely exhausted her and she fell into bed every day, the kids climbing all over her at precisely 6:30 am the next day. Exhausting but fun and it made her feel better for clocking all those hours in the OR and feeling like a crap mother. It also reminded her that she wan't her mother, she wasn't Ellis. She loved her children and would do absolutely anything for her.

With her free time part of her almost wanted to visit Addison in Los Angeles. She knew she had an open invitation, and she knew the rest of the people that she worked with. But also at the same time, she didn't want to be desperate, she couldn't fly, and there was no way she was getting in a car for 6ish hours to Los Angeles. So she pushed that thought to the back of her mind.

Another thought popped up that she could return to Seattle, but that thought gripped her with such a panic that she started hyperventilating alone in her bedroom. She couldn't return to Seattle, not yet. She wasn't ready. The mere idea of returning to Seattle scared the crap out of her and racked her with such grief. It was a city of death for her, a city where she had lost almost everything.

One night she was standing in the kitchen, watching Zola boss around her baby brother, sipping a mug of hot herbal tea. That's the last thing she really remembered. The next, there was a horrible pain in her stomach, and she felt something sticky between her legs. She was down on the ground crying and the blood – there was so much blood, there was blood everywhere. She looked up at Zola, tears running down her cheeks.

"Remember those three numbers mommy taught you Zozo?" she managed to force out through the pain. Zola nodded, reaching up for the phone. Meredith tried to breathe, while also trying not to die in front of her kids. "I need you to dial them Zola and tell them where we live," she said, gasping for air. She was a doctor, she knew what was happening to her. She was 35 weeks with a hostile uterus, and extreme bleeding. It had to be a placental abruption. She laid on the kitchen floor for what felt like hours, slowly hoping that the blood loss would knock her unconscious, but she could hear the sirens in the distance, coming to their house, coming to help her and take her to the hospital.

Once they were there, Meredith managed to say to Zola that it was okay for her to open the door. The EMT's got to work on Meredith, asking her question's and taking what answers they could get, praising Zola for being a smart little girl for knowing what to do. Meredith had lost an awful lot of blood, but their portable ultrasound confirmed that the baby was okay. It also confirmed that the baby had to come out as soon as they got to the hospital, as she indeed had a placental abruption. Meredith drifted in and out of consciousness both from the blood loss and the pain meds, Zola and Bailey with her, as the ambulance sped through San Fransisco.

Everything that happened next was a blur to Meredith. She has a version of what she assumed happened, and what really happened. What she assumed happened is that the children were with a social worker for a few days while she went into surgery. What really happened is that Alex was called, as he was listed as her emergency contact. When she awoke in a hospital room, cleaner and not pregnant, he was sitting on her bed, staring at her pale form. Her eyes flickered open and she winced, ready for the onslaught.

"I had a baby", she said, her voice barely whisper, a small smile spreading across her face. She felt weak and defeated, ready to throw in the towel and ready to let her friends take care of her again. "How did you find me?" she said, looking around the room. She was in the hospital she worked in. Looking up at her IV pole, she had to wince. She was hooked up to a blood transfusion, among several other bags of things going into her body.

All Alex did was smile, reaching forward and taking her hand. "You had me listed as your emergency contact, so they gave me a call. Everyone in Seattle is relieved to know where you are. I didn't tell them what happened, though, that's your story. Your daughter is beautiful though," he grinned, rubbing his thumb on the back of her hand.

Meredith barely remembered the c-section as she had been so out of it from the pain and the blood loss, but she remembered the baby, slightly premature, being placed on her chest in the OR. "I named her Ellis, after my mother," she smiled, still slightly high from the pain medicine. "Ellis Elizabeth Shepherd," she smiled, picturing her little girl. She was 5 weeks early, but the doctors and nurses told her she was strong and a fighter; she wasn't in the NICU but rather was in the regular nursery simply because Meredith wasn't strong enough to take care of her by herself yet. "5 pounds 2 ounces and a fighter, like her parents and grandmother," she said proudly. She never thought, in her entire life, that she would proudly be talking about one of her children. Ten years ago she never wanted marriage and children; she wanted tequila and one night stands. Oh, how ten years changed a person. She had embraced married life and even motherhood, setting out to be the best mother she could possibly be while still being the best surgeon. Apparently she had been able to find a balance because three kids in, she still had a successful job.

"I'm here to bring you home, Mere," Alex said, moving closer to her. Meredith looked at him and bit her lip. "I don't know if I can," she whispered, her eyes watering. "It's so painful, I feel like…like I've lost everything and everyone I've ever loved. Like if I get too close to someone else, they'll die too, and that's terrifying to me, I can't lose anyone else," she managed to get out, swallowing a lot as she tried very hard not to cry. For her, Seattle was like a battleground. It had taken her mother, her step mother, her sister, her husband, her husbands best friend, and more. The wounds were just too deep. But she also knew her entire support system was there. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child…and she had three.

They sat in silence for a few minutes; a nurse came in to check her vitals and administer more pain medicine, and after awhile another nurse came in with the baby. Meredith was overjoyed to see Ellis, and Alex got up to pick her up, placing the small baby in her arms. Meredith smile down at her proudly, moving the swaddled blanket so that she and Alex could see her face.

"Isn't she beautiful and perfect? And look," she smiled, taking off the knit hat, to reveal a shock of black hair. There was no mistaking it, Ellis was definitely Derek's child. "Zola and Bailey have been calling her Ellie, and it's stuck. We like Ellie for her," she smiled, leaning back in the bed with the baby snuggled up to her chest. She felt happy for the first time in awhile – or maybe that was the pain meds working. Or it could've been both, or maybe even actual happiness hormones, and the pain meds. She was proud of baby Ellis, but still deeply saddened that Derek would never know their baby girl, and she would never know her father, despite growing up in a world that had reminders of him everywhere.

"Meredith you're coming home with me," Alex stated, and Meredith, looking up from cooing at Ellis, sighed a bit. Through the haze of morphine she could only nod, knowing it was best and what she needed. She couldn't run anymore. She needed her people. She needed her village for her three children.

"I'll come home with you," she conceded, knowing it would take a few more days for her in the hospital, and probably a few more weeks for her to wrap up her affairs in San Fransisco. She knew Grey-Sloan would accept her Neuro fellow easily enough and give her her job back. She'd be working with Amy, which would help a lot. Working with Derek's sister would take away a lot of the pain, she reasoned. "There's just so much to do here before I come home…and so much to do in Seattle…" she said with a sigh, laying back in the bed. Ellis wanted to feed and she let her, maneuvering her hospital gown so that the baby could get to her breast. All of her hospital-friendly clothes were back at the rental house so she was stuck in wearing hospital gowns. "Will you take Zola and Bailey back to our house tonight? I might need you to go alone at first…I um. I bleed out all over the kitchen floor," she said, turning her head to one side with a sigh.

"I know, Mere, I read your chart. You trained Zola just like your mom trained you. Your daughter is smart, she knew what to do when you asked her," he said with a smile. "But I can definitely clean up the house while Zo and Bails visit with you and Ellie, and come back for the two of them. I told Owen I'd stay with you as long as you needed me to."

Meredith sucked in a breath. She had been on her own for nearly 9 months now, so it was nice knowing that there was someone out there who cared enough about her well-being to take care of her and her little family. She wasn't stupid, she knew people cared, she had just built her walls up so high that she didn't let anyone in, that she hadn't let any of her closest friends even know where she was. She and Cristina hadn't talked in over a year, not since shed left Seattle. But she still had family and friends in Seattle.

A few days passed, and finally Meredith and Ellis were allowed to go home, with Meredith on strict orders to take it easy. Taking it easy was something she wasn't used to, but it was nice to just be home with the kids, packing everything they'd accumulated over the past 8 months into boxes and containers so they could move back to Seattle. Meredith had already contacted the realtor and told him they were leaving; she promised she would pay the remainder of the year and threw in the furniture as well.

This wasn't the first time Alex Karev had saved Meredith's life.


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