It's not that Meredith didn't want to get out of bed. Well, that's not entirely true. She did, and she didn't. But she could not physically find the mental and physical strength to take care of herself and get herself ready for the day, so she simply didn't. She didn't know how to explain this to her sisters, but they already knew what was going on. After Maggie had lost Sabi, she too had done exactly what Meredith was doing. Meredith was depressed. The only difference between Maggie and Meredith though, was that they didn't know how to help Mer. She seemed to be sleeping most of the day away, and she was refusing to eat or talk to anyone. Then, of course, there was the unborn child that was involved - the situation was getting dire, both mom and baby needed nourishment. After carefully weighing the pros and cons of barging into Meredith's room and forcing her to eat something, they decided to just go for it. Meredith needed to eat, if not for herself but for the baby. "Alright, Mer. We're coming in." Maggie said as they picked the lock on Meredith's door. "Please, no." They could hear her call out from behind it. "Mer, you don't get to say no. We're worried about you. You need to eat - badly." Meredith closed her eyes and mustered up all the willpower she had to keep it together as she heard the creak of the door.
"Mer, would you please talk to us?" Maggie said gently as she sat down on the edge of the bed. Meredith thought long and hard about whether or not she wanted to talk to anyone about her feelings. Slowly, she raised her face out from under the covers and sat up. Maggie and Amelia were heartbroken at the sight of their sister's tired, puffy, bright red eyes. "Oh, Meredith…" Maggie said, trying not to start crying herself. "Don't call Hayes please, I don't want to bother him." She said weakly. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the food that was sitting in front of her. "He's been worried sick about you since he left yesterday evening and all throughout the day, he texts me every hour asking how you are. I'd tried to keep things as positive as possible because I know that's what you wanted, but Mer. You need to eat. And I need to see you smile again." Amelia said as gently as possible. "So, with that being said, he's on his way over right now." Amelia revealed. Meredith groaned and let her head hit the pillow again, closing her eyes. She didn't know if she could face Hayes, with her puffy, tear stained eyes, and the heartbreak on his face that she knew was bound to come when he saw her.
Sure enough, that's exactly what she got. Hayes had bolted from his office when Amelia called him, worried sick about both Meredith and the baby. He made his way through traffic and just about busted the door down when he got to her house. He looked to the living room in a panic, asking Link, "Where is she?". "She's up in her room with Maggie and Amelia." He responded. Hayes only barely nodded before running upstairs. He knocked on her bedroom door and was met with Maggie saying, "Who is it?". Hayes was trying his damndest to not break from all the worry. "It's me - Mer, can I come in please?" His voice cracked at the end. In the room, Meredith heard Hayes' voice once and was reduced to a puddle of tears, not realizing how much she needed to hear his voice. "Come in." Amelia said, sitting at the foot of Meredith's bed. He opened the door, only to be met with the painstakingly heartbroken faces of Amelia and Maggie, and Meredith who was sobbing even more uncontrollably now that he was standing in front of her. "You're here." She said through her tears, and Hayes' heart shattered into a million pieces. "Yeah, I'm here." He said as he rushed over to her and engulfed her in a hug, stroking her back. He could feel himself crying as well, for multiple different reasons. He felt awful for leaving her the night before, his heart was broken at seeing her so broken and sobbing so uncontrollably, and he was upset that he didn't know why or what had happened to put her in this state. Maggie and Amelia had quietly left the room in the midst of the hug in order to give them some privacy. They hated having to leave her and not be able to physically help, but they knew it was what was best for the both of them.
"Can you please tell me what happened?" Hayes asked Meredith as he lightly ran his fingers through her hair. After quite some period of time he'd gotten up to lay on the bed beside her. She had immediately shifted to curl herself right up next to him, laying her head on his chest. Her eyes closed at the question, for the most part she didn't know what had happened. "I was okay, with Maggie, Amelia, and Link, for the first few hours after you left. I was. And then we all went to bed, and I couldn't sleep. My mind was just racing, and there was no one around to stop it. I couldn't stop thinking about my 3 perfect children sleeping in the rooms down the hall. I couldn't stop thinking about your boys either. I don't know if I want to do this to them. And I couldn't stop thinking about you, how you deserve better than to be wrapped up in the complete and utter cosmic joke the universe makes of my life. I mean, we haven't even said 'I love you' yet, and now we're here having to try and navigate whether or not we want to have a baby together? You deserve better than that, than me. And then I fell asleep, and I haven't been able to find it in me to get up or eat. I don't know why. I should be fine, I'm always fine." And with that, she turned over, unable to face him. She knew that she still hadn't eaten yet, but truthfully, no part of her wanted to.
"I'm no psychiatrist, but Mer, it sounds like you're depressed." He finally said after a few minutes of absorbing what she'd said. "And if you don't want this baby, then you are under no obligation to have it. I can make the appointment for you tomorrow if that's what you want, and if you do want the baby, I can get us an appointment set up with Carina." He reached under the covers and grabbed her hand, stroking it with his thumb lightly. "Just say what you want, and I will find a way to make it happen." He concluded. She turned back over, still hesitant to make eye contact. "I still don't know if I want the baby or not. But could you stay the night? It helps, having you here." She admitted. For the first time since he'd left, her thoughts didn't consist of 'whatever', or 'none of this really matters anyways'. She hadn't had those thoughts since before her drowning, and they terrified her. "Yeah, I can do that. Now, can you sit up and eat something? Is there anything you're craving? Your sisters seem to have brought up soup." He said, looking at the tray of food on top of the dresser. "Fine, and the soup is fine. But it's definitely cold." She sighed and rolled over, throwing the covers off of her. "Where are you going?" He asked, confused and slightly concerned. "Downstairs, to heat this up and eat it. You coming? You know, you should probably eat something too." Hayes breathed a sigh of relief and followed her downstairs.
Every head turned as they heard the noise at the stairs, and Maggie damn near cried when she saw it was Meredith. "We've been so worried all day." She said as she got up to hug her sister. Meredith forced out a small smile and made her way to the kitchen to heat up the food. As Hayes entered the kitchen, Meredith got an overwhelming craving for hawaiian pizza. "Ooh, do you think we could order pizza? Hawaiian?" She asked Hayes with hopeful eyes as he walked up beside her. "You hate hawaiian pizza." He stated, eyeing her up and down. It was the one thing they could never agree on, he loved pineapple on pizza, while she despised it. "Well, this baby wants hawaiian pizza right now. So… it's definitely yours." She said jokingly as the soup finished heating up. He laughed at her remark, as did Link, Amelia, and Maggie. She was grateful that all her kids were upstairs, playing and that they didn't have to worry about mentioning the baby. "Say no more, I'll order now." Hayes told her with a smirk, he couldn't deny it to himself that if they decided to have this baby, he wouldn't mind not having to argue with Meredith about her choice in pizza toppings for the next 7 months.
The food arrived 30 minutes later, and luckily Hayes had enough sense to buy two pizzas, one just for Meredith, and one for himself, Link, Amelia, and Maggie to share. As they waited for the pizza to arrive, Meredith had eaten the whole bowl of soup, a bowl of cereal that she insisted she needed, along with bites of several other snacks. And she still ate the whole pizza. Hayes had forgotten just how much pregnant women could eat, but this was no surprise to Amelia, Maggie, and Link, who remembered very well just how much Amelia ate when she was pregnant with Caleb. The kids came down and hung out with the adults for a little while. "Were you not feeling well today mom?" Zola asked as she cuddled up beside Meredith on the couch. "No, I wasn't Zozo, so thank you for being so good for your aunts and Uncle Link today. It helped mommy out a lot." She snuggled her daughter close to her. "Will you feel better tomorrow?" Ellis asked as she played with one of her dolls on the ground. "I hope so Ellie." The rest of the night went fairly smoothly, the kids went to bed easily, the adults spent a little more time hanging out before both Maggie and Link were paged into the hospital, and Amelia headed to bed.
As Meredith laid down in her bed for the night, the terrifying thoughts slowly began to creep back into her mind. She tried to ignore them and fight them off, trying everything she could to get her mind to shut off for the night so she could sleep. But it was no use. To make matters worse, it seemed like Hayes had already successfully fallen asleep, so she was alone. She carefully tossed and turned, trying to hold back tears as she wrestled not only with her mind, but herself in order to try and get comfortable. "Hey, you alright?" She heard Hayes whisper and sit up in the bed. "Nights are hard." She admitted, laying her head on his chest. "Sorry for waking you up." Hayes wrapped his arm around her waist. "I'd much rather you wake me up than try to deal with this on your own. Do you want to talk about it?" He offered her the option. "I want to know what we're doing. This terrifies me. But I need a plan, and I think you do too. And I have a lot of worries - our kids, my age, and obviously the whole Alzheimer's thing. Do I really want to put a baby through that?" She closed her eyes. She was really glad that Hayes was there. "But I couldn't stop thinking about how good we are together, and how part of me does kind of want to meet this baby." Hayes' breath hitched at her words. "Wait, what about your age worries you?" He asked, confused. He'd met plenty of new mothers far older than Meredith in his years as a pediatric surgeon. "I guess it just makes me feel bad, knowing that hypothetically, if we have this baby, they could reach 15 years old and I might develop Alzheimer's and not remember them. Is that fair to either of us to take chances on?"
"That's not up for me to tell you what to do, but Mer, you are an incredible mom already. And I highly doubt you'd forget about your own child if it came down to it. And I don't know what will happen in the future - but what I do know is that no matter what, I'm in this for the long-haul. I don't see myself leaving you. Our relationship is incredibly special to me, and nothing you do will change that. I can't say that I haven't had my own worries, and I know we both are thinking of Derek and Abby, wondering what they think about all of this. Would they want us to have children with someone other than them? I don't know. I couldn't answer that question if I tried. But this decision is up to you, and I will support you every step of the way - if that means we have this baby and our relationship takes a speed run, or if we decide to keep it with just our 5 kids and take things slow. I'm prepared, and I'm not going anywhere. No matter what. Okay?" Hayes said everything Meredith needed to hear. She nodded her head, and they laid back down properly. She went over everything Hayes said to her in her head and tried her best to come up with a decision.
Finally, after 30 minutes of weighing the pros and cons, talking to Derek a little bit, and going over every little thing Hayes had said to her over the previous few days, she turned to her boyfriend and tapped him on the shoulder. "Hmm?" He said sleepily. "Okay, I think I want to do this. As much as it scares me, and as high-risk as I am, this could be a good thing. I mean, it's a miracle. And miracles don't come around very often. I want to embrace the good. So, let's do this." She told him as she stared at the ceiling. "Okay." Hayes said as he was half-asleep, with a small smile on his face. And with that, she laid her head on his chest and promptly fell asleep. It was the best sleep she'd had in ages.