A/N: Most of this was written before Dec. 17 airing.
Clear water washed over her toes while Meredith waited...
Would someone else come? How did this work exactly?
Mere. Hey. Wake up. You need to wake up. I need to tell you something.
"Andrew?"
Mere, c'mon. Wake up. Just for a moment.
The beach fizzled and faded into her own pale reflection against Deluca's face shield. She missed it instantly.
Mere?
She coughed. Her bones ached and her skin was damp with sweat.
Hey.
Hey.
Deluca's gloved hand squeezed hers.
How long...?
A couple days.
No...
Mere, listen, we got you on a trial. Monoclonal antibodies.
Mono... She was too tired to finish the word, and her brain to muddled and exhausted to try and deduce a meaning from it. She blinked slowly, forcing her eyes open to stare at her friend.
We got you on a trial. We're fighting for you, Mere. Please, hang in there.
She wanted to, she really wanted to...
Deluca's concerned gaze disappeared into the clouds and sky.
She was back at the beach.
xxx
Hi Grey. It's me. I'm gonna say it. I miss you.
"Bailey?" Meredith could hear her small sob. She turned around, looking, and ran up to the walkway. "Bailey?"
When I was a kid-
And there she was. Her friend, her mentor, her colleague stood at the end.
"Bailey!" Meredith stepped up the last step to regard her.
"-I had big thoughts. And I never knew where to put them, physically. They ran through my body like a high speed train. And anytime I felt the train coming, my mom, could see it."
Meredith tilted her head, listening. Trying to imagine Bailey as a kid... trying to imagine Bailey's mother. She must've been an amazing woman.
"So she took me around the corner to a park. To this strange twisted tree. Said it was my tree. Said I could scream at it, hit it, hold it... and it would make the feelings small enough that they would fit back inside my body again. So, I did. And it worked. But now I'm an adult, and... tree hitting is frowned upon."
Sensing that Bailey had some big feelings she had to let out, Meredith spoke, "I can be your tree."
My mother has Alzheimer's. I...never told you because she was older, and... I didn't want to bring up any old pain for you or Richard.
They sat on another log now, amid the rocks, as she listened to her friend.
"-But it would be a lie to say that it hasn't been hard. Or painful.-"
Even as a doctor who knows about the disease, I... feel... like...
"I didn't know crap," Meredith said.
"-I don't know anything-" Bailey cried. "It's difficult to talk about it with someone who hasn't been there, been through it," she shook her head. "No one understands that you are... watching your own mother die, twice."
Twice? Meredith blinked... suddenly understanding. "I'm so sorry, Bailey," she said. Crap. She hated this. That she couldn't be there physically for the people who needed her. She just wanted to hug her and love on her and tell her that stupid cliche crap like, it'll be okay, and 'get some rest'.
But she couldn't. She was stuck.
"I wish you were awake."
Bailey left, and she was alone again. Left to her own devices for the time being, Meredith stepped down the walkway and strolled to a small rocky outcrop. She sighed. It was so sad that Bailey's mother was dying. And so sad she had Alzheimer's. If there was one thing that she wished, it was that she could stay awake long enough to make a difference, long enough to be there.
Damned COVID.
The mist swirled around, its tendrils ebbing and flowing with the tide, and Meredith sat down, picking at the rocks. What a strange purgatory this was. The waiting. Waiting for whom? Or what? Part of her was thankful for the break from the real world, but a bigger part of her struggled. She was a surgeon. She saved lives.
But she was stuck here. Until... something happened.
Meredith dug a small rock out from the mud and flung it into the breaking waves before her. The ocean swallowed it up as if it was a crumb and groaned, hungry for more.
She dug up another rock, stood, and threw it like she was a pitcher at a Mariners game. A really bad pitcher. Okay not even a pitcher. She threw it like a 40 something year-old surgeon/mother who hadn't been in sports (sober) since ninth grade. 'Galump!' It disappeared a few yards away, into the sea.
"C'mon, you can do better than that, Grey!"
"What?" Meredith spun at the voice. She knew only one baritone like that. "Mark?"
"Hey hey!" he boomed.
She didn't even get a chance to look at him, suddenly she was off the ground, spinning as he swung her in a circle. "Mark!" she giggled.
"Sorry, been wanting to do that since you got here." He put her down and stepped back, grinning.
"Since I got here?"
Mark just shrugged. "You're not alone. Even when you think you are."
"Now you sound like a fortune cookie."
xxx
"You look good for being nearly comatose," Mark said, launching a rock into the water.
Meredith eyed him. He was the same fit man he'd always been, with a dash of salt and pepper in in his hair, and a couple days stubble gracing his cheeks and square jaw. "You're not so bad yourself," she said.
"Yeah, well... however it works in your head I guess, hey?"
"Derek's sexier."
"In your eyes I do not hold a candle to Derek."
Meredith laughed. "True," she said.
Mark picked up another rock and bounced it in his hands."Look Grey, I just... wanted to tell you, I had my own beach. Well, it wasn't a beach, exactly. Anyway, I had my own place, you know? When I was... sick. I'd be awake, in the world, alive and talking... and then I'd fall asleep, and see her."
Lexie. Meredith swallowed at the mention of her sister. "You loved her."
"Yeah... I- She loved me, Grey. She told me she loved me, and I..." He threw the rock, hard. Looking like one of those Major League pitchers from TV.
SPLOSH!
"Mark."
"I didn't want to die at first. Sofia needed a dad. Avery needed a mentor. Callie, Derek..."
"But you missed her."
"I couldn't breathe. I just... couldn't live in a world where she didn't exist."
xxx
"I did," Meredith said as they walked side by side on the walkway. "I survived losing the love of my life."
"You did." Mark nodded.
"If I die..." she struggled with the words. How do you say you'd be happy to die?
"I ran into her arms so hard I knocked her over," Mark said. He blinked. "I was born again. I had a thundering new heart. Nothing else mattered. Nothing."
She wanted that. She wanted to run to him, to wrap her arms around his waist and squeeze. To feel his warm cheek against hers. "I miss him."
"Look, I'm not gonna lecture you on which way you should teeter over the line, cause God knows I'm biased. Lexie and I are finally together, the world went on without me, and everyone... eventually, was fine."
"But?"
"You miss him now. How many people are gonna miss you, Grey?"
xxx
Absently she swung h. The wind whipped her hair every which way around her face as she watched the gulls dive bomb the shore.
"Hey, it's me."
Meredith turned at the familiar voice. Maggie. It was strange... hearing from both the living and the dead.
Sitting beside her in a pale pink blouse and white khakis Maggie stared out at the shoreline with her. "I miss you," she said.
"I miss you too." Meredith replied, resting her chin on her knee. She wanted to reach out, touch her, but there was a strange barrier between them. Maggie couldn't hear her...
"Bailey's mom is dying... It's so unfair! I hate this! Not just that people are dying, but that this disease-"
It just brings out the worst in us. Everyone's scared, and we can't-
"-connect like we used to. We can't hug, or socialize, or go out to escape-"
Bailey's mom is dying and she wants to go home. She's not ready to die stuck in this stupid, impersonal-
"-sterile room, and we can't even-"
"Okay, I thought the rambling came from Dad's side." Meredith heard from the other side of her.
She whirled. "Lexie?!"
"Hey Mere," her kid sister said. "Surprise?"
xxx
Meredith stared in shock at the sight of her sister. Her other sister. She looked brilliant, happy, young. So Lexie. After all these years, she'd forgotten how amazing she was.
Lexie grinned a megawatt smile. "I like her," Lexie said of Maggie. The three sat on the walkway, Meredith in the middle, her sisters on either side leaning against the wooden support rails.
"I didn't want her, not at first." Meredith scrunched her toes. She hadn't wanted Lexie at first either, but that was water under the 'thing' or whatever.
"She grew on you."
"Yeah."
Watching Maggie look so lost and sad broke her heart. But she didn't know what to do. How could she help Maggie when she couldn't even wake up?
"She's gonna miss you, Mere."
"Why does everyone think I wanna die?"
"Because you act like you want to!"
"I do not!"
"But you do! A little!"
"How?"
"You're not trying!"
"Trying? What's there to try?" she flung a hand out to her surroundings. Try what? Do what? She was on a freaking beach!
"Look, I know you want to be with him. I know, believe me. But even he told you you're not ready."
Meredith scraped her fingers over the painted wood. Derek. Where was he? Was she too far away from him now?
But she couldn't think about him. Not when people needed her. She just...She couldn't break through, and the rush of the ocean, and the grit under her feet kept her in this real-not-real place.
Oh, and Bailey finally lost that tooth, so-
"-you don't have to worry about that," Maggie said. "And Zola competed in her first online spelling bee-"
"God, Mere, you just don't get it!" Lexie nearly screamed. "I died! In the most insane, worst way someone could go. I was one in eleven million people! I died. And it sucked. Not for me, though. But for you and Molly, and Dad... and Mark. He died of a broken heart. Literally and figuratively."
"Yeah, losing you... hurt. But I survived. And you and Mark are together." Meredith pointed out.
Lexie sighed. "Yeah, you survived."
Meredith squinted. "What are you saying?"
-please Mere, I just... you have to fight this, okay? You have to wake up.
"-we love you." Maggie said.
"When I died," Lexie said, "I was really angry."
"What?" Meredith asked. That didn't make sense. Wasn't death supposed to be peaceful? Walk into the light- see your dead loved ones reaching for you?
"And jealous."
"Lexie, why?"
"Because it was a one percent chance that killed my mother. And I was one in eleven million- and I was this close to being an attending, and this close to getting Mark back. I was this close to getting everything I ever wanted. And then it was gone. And you got it all. The job, the kids, the house, Mere... you got it all. You even got another sister."
The force of Lexie's intensity caused Meredith to look down at her feet.
Lexie huffed. "Okay, I was only angry for like, a minute. Time is funky here."
"I am grateful. I've been given a lot more than I feel I deserve sometimes," Meredith said. "Losing you made me want to fight to keep everything. My son, Derek's career, the hospital..." She wiped a stray tear from her eye. "God, I can't believe you're here."
"You can't die, Mere. Not yet."
Meredith nodded at Lexie, and then regarded Maggie beside her. Her 'newest' sister seemed tired and scared. "What do I do?"
"-We're just so overwhelmed. All the patients... the kids-"
Your kids are crazy. I don't know how Amelia does it. If it wasn't for Link-
"-God please, please, wake up."
"Talk to her, Mere. Hold her hand. She needs you." Lexie came around and sat on the other side of Maggie. She'd always been the more empathetic one.
Meredith sighed. Touching hadn't worked before. But at Lexie's nod, Meredith scooted closer. She could be Maggie's tree, then. Or maybe more. "Hey Maggie, I hear you." Her slim fingers stretched out to her sister's hand. And maybe it was the new trial drugs she was on, or maybe it was because she was 'trying' this time, or- "I-I'm-"
M'here.
Meredith?
Maggie...
She squeezed her sister's gloved hand, struggling for breath,
Oh God Mere!
Not gonna... die yet.
No, no... you're not.
Kids?
They're great. They're fine.
Little... monsters.
Yeah, that too. But they're okay.
'Melia?
She's good. We're all good, Mere. But we miss you. You have to fight this.
Trying.
I know. I know you are. Keep trying.
Will.
...
Maggie? Take care... of you.
Oh! I am. I am...
Kay. Love...
"-you. Just keep fighting, Maggie. I'll be okay. I haven't given up yet." Meredith said, as the beach came back into view. Her hand was wrapped tightly around Maggie's, and she stared at it, before looking up at a smiling Lexie and Mark. "I'm not giving up."