Once again the waves creased and rolled and crashed against the shore. Once again she was here.
She hadn't really left. Her world- that of hospitals and kids and sisters seemed harder to get to... harder to be a part of. She was just here now...
Waiting... for something.
Derek had gone sometime after she was last awake. Now it was just her on the rocky bit of shoreline as the tide gently rolled up. It was peaceful.
But lonely.
Meredith didn't know what to do.
Finally, she turned her gaze to her right, down the opposite side of the beach. A lone white lifeguard shack stood propped in the center of her vision.
But it wasn't the shack that got her attention. A figure, a shadow, leaned against the rails, looking away from her. Was it-? No, it wasn't Derek. She tapped her nails together for a second, and then- "Excuse me!" she called out. The figure didn't move, hadn't heard her. "Hello?" she tried again, carefully stepping closer.
At this, he moved, turning toward her.
Meredith squinted. No, it wasn't Derek. But it was... someone else. Someone familiar.
He raised his arm to the sun to better see, and Meredith's heart fluttered.
"Mere?"
That voice... No. She didn't entirely believe it. Was it really? "George?"
He looked at her with equal surprise, and joy. "What are you doing here?"
Meredith stared, shaking her head and feeling her heart drum against her chest. What was she doing here? Well... that was a long story...
xxx
"Derek said the sand isn't real," she told George after filling him in on what was happening outside of here.
"Yeah, nope. Neither is the ocean. It is nice, though." George said, appraising the ocean and the sky with a long glance.
His eyes flitted back. He looked down at her kindly. "I wouldn't want to leave either," he said.
"The beach?"
"The kids!" he laughed. "Got great kids."
How did he know? "They're the best." She missed them. She missed Zola's know-it-all attitude, Bailey's never ending energy, and Ellie's sweet kisses. "You didn't meet them."
George shrugged. "I check in sometimes," he said.
Briefly she entertained the thought of all the people she loved who passed on, swooping in through the walls of her house and the hospital... 'checking in.' It felt all too... afterlife-y. She didn't want to think about it. "How'd you get older?"
"Sand isn't real, ocean isn't real... Body? Isn't real," George said, crouching down to sit beside her. He seemed so alive, so vibrant... as if he hadn't missed a beat in life. He was George... but More too. "Maybe it's just more peaceful for you to imagine me older?"
Meredith shook her head. "You sound like a fortune cookie," she quipped. George laughed. Meredith laughed too, remembering better days of popcorn and surgical tapes, of friendships fed with muffins and beer and honest acceptance.
She'd forgotten how much she missed him.
"Do I choose? Do I get to decide if I get to go back?" She asked. Once upon a time, she'd had that choice. She went back, and she never regretted it.
But...
This was altogether different. It lacked urgency, punch, drama...
And yet the stakes were so much higher.
"I don't know," George said. "I didn't. I would have stayed, if I could've. It's different for everyone, though."
xxx
Along the beach, they walked and talked. There was nowhere to be, and nowhere to go, except here, squelching soft mud under their toes while the salt breeze blew through their hair.
"I was devastated when you died," Meredith said.
"You were all cracking up at my funeral."
"Well we were-"
"What? What? No!" George's mouth quirked into a grin. "It-it made me happy."
"I was devastated," she continued. "And then... I was okay. Even with Derek... eventually, you go on." She'd mourned. She'd grieved. And then she'd picked herself up and carried on. "And the kids... would go on," she said. She didn't want to imagine leaving them, but she knew too, that she'd built a village for them. Some dark and twisty part of her lived in the reality that something could knock her out of this world... and in her Meredith-y way, she'd prepared.
"They would," George said. "But, I think maybe... with them, it's different. My mom didn't go on," he supplied.
The waves lapped at their feet. Water filled in their footprints, making them vanish. They talked about grief. About weight, about not letting go...
"My mom carries it," he said. "Sometimes I try to shake it out of her."
Shake? "What?"
"Like, you know..."
"Like you haunt her?"
"Well, I mean if you want to call it that."
Meredith laughed, imagining what her friend would do to 'shake' his mother out of her grief. Was he a poltergeist? Did he make the lights flicker and the doors slam? Did he hover over her and boo?
"I want her to know I'm still me, even though she can't touch me, she can't see me... I am still me."
"It's not the same." Meredith said. Not the same as having the real person there. A whiff was nice. But it wasn't enough.
"I-I know..." he agreed.
xxx
The sun was lower now, hovering over the ocean as Meredith warmed herself, resting with George against a large smooth rock. It was so peaceful here, and golden...
She felt like she could just...
Drift...
"Do you still dance?"
"Hmm?"
"When you're sad or you're stressed... do you still 'Dance it out?'"
"No," Meredith sighed. "Not so much anymore, not since Cristina left."
"Cristina didn't die!"
"I know." She closed her eyes. The gentle rushing of the waves tugged her to sleep. And she was so, so warm.
"That's what I miss about being alive. Dancing... till you drop. Laughing till you cry. Food, textures. The crunch of cereal as you eat it from the box..."
Meredith laughed. Cereal? Seriously?
"The feel of clean sheets and a good pillow at the end of a long day..."
Her eyelids drooped again. It was nice here. Really nice.
Beep. Beep.
I've got the consent forms for that clinical trial...
Huh? What? Richard? Meredith bolted upright. How'd he get here? How come she could see him?
"-And there's one more space and... I have to decide. It could be the best or the worst decision of my life."
Doctors, friends, family... they're worried about you.
"I'm trying to be strong for them but I'll admit, I'm struggling. Seeing you there like this-"
-And not knowing what to do.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"I'm sorry, Richard," she said, though she knew he couldn't see or hear her.
"And choices!" George chimed in. "Ah! So many choices... so many ways to live a life."
Muh.
Meredith? Meredith, what is it? I'm here. I'm right here.
"If you stay here, it might break him," George said.
She might stay here. But it wasn't time to decide yet. She had to trust she made the right choice when she picked him. She had to trust he wouldn't break. Don't break, Richard. "I know," she said.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I know, George.
xxx
The sun tinged the sky rose and the sea mauve as she sat across from one of her best friends. "I was so mad at you," she said.
"What? For leaving you?"
"For choosing someone over yourself."
"I didn't know I was gonna die," he said.
"Do you regret it?"
George tilted his head, the rays of the sun glancing across his still boyish face. "Does it matter? You'da done the same thing... isn't that why you're here?"
Actually thinking about it... she was one of the first to volunteer to man the COVID ward, battle the virus. "Yeah," she said. "I guess. So it's your fault," she joked.
"How'd you figure?"
"Because you..." she stopped and considered her words. How to describe the best of George. In her mind... she saw him as Dorothy's Lion looking for courage. Well, at some point down the golden brick road of life... he found it. "You went all in," Meredith said. "For everybody. Your friends, your family. A woman at the bus stop! You think that didn't somehow affect me? You changed my life, George. I didn't say it then, but it's true."
xxx
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I've known Meredith since she was a child...
I've watched her operate on dolls in the OR gallery. Took her for milk and cookies in the cafeteria. I helped her get over her fear of the film review room, because that's where she thought we kept the 'skeleton's'. And then I watched her become a surgeon, a wife... A mother, and a Chief.
You know, I knew COVID patients had to suffer in isolation, but I never gave any thought to how helpless and alone it feels for the people who care about them.
...
Richard... I know. Thank you for being here for me.
And then, she wasn't alone on the beach anymore. She was with George, and Richard, and Bailey...
She didn't feel so lonely anymore.
"Wait, I'm Bailey's favorite?" asked George.
Meredith laughed. "You were one of the good ones."