The night Meredith and Lexie had the conversation had come in the aftermath of Hurricane Sadie. Inspired by the sheer amount of revelations, good and ill, brought on by her mother's journals, Meredith had been making one of many attempts at keeping her own. The leather-bound cover of the notebook was her one additional act of deference to her mother's habit; Ellis would've despaired of the way she had it propped on her knees. She'd sat down at her desk in the study every night, a glass of wine within easy reach. Meredith hadn't taken hers out in a week, and the single shot she'd done to try to unwind the tangle of her thoughts wouldn't have impressed her mother at all.
"Mer?" Lexie knocked on the wood of the cracked-open bedroom door. "Can, um…can I talk to you?"
"Sure." Lexie's grin was bright, making her seem to be more in the light of the room than the shadows of the hall, but she didn't actually move. People who linger in doorways…. Meredith had shoved the thought aside along with the journal.
Ignoring her first instinct was something she did more and more in regard to Lexie. Hopefully, one day, it would shift to less and less. Most often, it confirmed Meredith's long-held suspicion: her mother's most common critiques were aimed at mannerisms that must've come from their father, by nature or (minimal) nurture.
"What can I do for you, Lex?"
"Oh, it's not…. You've done plenty for me, recently." The consequences of her class's cabal were still playing out. Whereas Meredith's class started fires that burned hot and were extinguished fast; Lexie's year had been chipping away at a fault line, and the quake came with unpredictable aftershocks.
"'Plenty' makes that sound sarcastic," Lexie continued. "It wasn't. Sincerely, you've done enough—God, why does that sound bad, too? You've put yourself out more than I exp—hoped—more than you had to. Thank you. There's just something I've been wondering."
"Okay…." Meredith drew the word out, and Lexie took a few steps closer.
"About you."
"Right." Again, Lexie's movements coincided with Meredith's acknowledgement, like they were playing some stop-and-go kid's game.
"And Sadie."
"Oh."
"I brought this!" Lexie held her other hand up, revealing a pint of ice cream decorated with bright red strawberries. She had two spoons pressed between her fingers.
"Bold of you to assume I know how to share."
"Oh, you don't have to! The freezer's full, because April made her lunch for the week, so I figured it'd be better for it to be finished, and it's the specialty kind without eggs, but if you can finish it— "
"Jeez, Lex, I'm joking!" she interrupted. "Come up here." She clipped her pen to the cover of the near-empty journal and put it on the bedside table, officially giving up on it for the night. Once they had this talk, her goal was more likely to be knotting up her memories, not smoothing them out.
Lexie perched on the edge of the bed and began picking at the plastic seal around the top of the ice-cream carton. She did it without taking her eyes off of Meredith, and as difficult as it was, Meredith didn't cringe away from the depth of the curiosity in her gaze. She took the spoon and ice cream when Lexie offered it, feeling there was something symbolic in being the one to jab a hole in the marbled, pink-and-white surface.
"So," she said, once she'd swallowed her over-sized bite and tipped the ice-cream toward Lexie. "Sadie."
"Sadie," Lexie echoed. "H-How long did you two know each other? How long have you known each other, I mean?"
"You had it right the first time. We don't know each other anymore. If we really did. I wasn't ever an open book." And she wasn't a reader.
"That wasn't just about me being…unwelcome?"
"You were an extreme case." Meredith shrugged and scooped out another bite. "This doesn't have eggs. How does it get so creamy?"
A beat. "That's… what… she… said?" Lexie ventured, uncertainty clinging to every word.
Meredith pulled the ice-cream closer, curling it to her chest. Gollum with the one ring. "You don't get more until you can commit to your innuendo."
"I commit! I can be very committed. If it's necessary."
"Oh?" She didn't need to know what made the entire top half of her sister's face go as pink as the ice cream, but she had to admit she wanted to. "Has it been necessary recently?"
"So! Sadie. You were close."
Meredith jabbed her spoon into a clump of icy strawberries. "We were very…" she timed her next bite to leave just enough silence to make Lexie's eyebrows go up before finishing. "Very close."
"Um." Lexie looked pained, like she was still afraid of poking the elephant in the room, and Meredith held up a hand.
"One, I'm bisexual. I don't know how, or if, she identifies. Two, I came very close to running away to be a riot grrrl drummer. Three, I have heard every 'Sexy Sadie' joke anyone could possibly make. Four, I once helped her escape from a hotel via the balcony and she called me 'Romeo' for a month. I asked what that made her. She said Mercutio. I never knew how to interpret that. Five, I've totaled two cars, only one was my fault."
Lexie was grinning by two, and Meredith was glad she'd had a reason to do it. Listing facts without a prompt would've been too much, but she'd been idly making the mental list for a long time. The less Sadie-centric items she'd cut would come up later. Like it or not, she was in for a lifetime of sisterhood.
"Thank you." Lexie said when she was done. "There wasn't a risk of me hating you, though. You don't have to worry about that. Now, Sadie…."
"Don't."
"She hurt you."
"She hurt you. I hate that. Under your definition, maybe I know too much to hate her."
"You don't have to. She came first— "
"You're my— "
"I know." Lexie spoke over her. "You don't have to prove it." A look passed between them, and Meredith tilted her head, part acknowledgment, part gratitude. "Is she always so freaking magnetic?"
Meredith choked on a laugh, pressing her hand to her mouth hard enough that she almost inhaled a frozen strawberry. "You could say that. My first memory of her is from an awards banquet—No, it must've been a fundraiser. Mom dragged me to those to 'encourage them to support the hospital's future' long after she cared about having anyone supporting her present."
The lines of befuddlement that appeared above the bridge of Lexie's nose were becoming familiar. Had those started appearing before or after the freckles? Meredith wondered if there was a photo album up in the attic, and how over-invested asking would make her seem. Maybe she'd look under the auspices of cleaning on her next day off. "How did you encourage…?"
"I started off cute and eager to say 'borborygmi' in front of people. And by the time I left precocious behind…. " She popped another frost-encased strawberry into her mouth. She should probably save a couple of them for Lexie. Maybe she did need remedial sharing lessons.
"You had other assets?" Lexie suggested, overplaying the double entendre.
"Excuse you? I had stellar Anatomy and Physiology grades!"
"Oh!" Lexie's eyes grew to the size of her spoon, and Meredith held out the ice cream with a grin. Lexie took a huge mouthful, presumably to make up for the time Meredith had been hogging the container.
"And boobs."
It was Lexie's turn to almost choke. That didn't stop Meredith from unapologetically stealing the pint back while Lexie coughed. "Your mother—Ellis Grey didn't—"
"'You'll encounter many people who only want to think of you as a woman when it's convenient to them. Make them remember.' she'd say. Then, sometimes, 'It's not as though I'll ever be permitted to forget what it is to be female.'"
Lexie winced, and her next words were drier than anything Meredith had heard from her. "Isn't it ironic?"
For so long, Meredith had been the only one with an "Ellis Grey Has/Had Alzheimer's" filter. She'd learned to braced against every reminder of her life's biggest plot twist, especially if the words were her own. Once the lid was off the box, she'd masked out of habit, her internal reaction playing out on other faces. If the slip was politely ignored, she'd lose the thread of the conversation; but having it broken by unsolicited sympathy felt far more inappropriate. She most understood being shocked or offended that she'd been the source of an unintended reference. Her occasional cracks—in all senses of the word—were earned. They weren't the same as letting the situation slip out of her mind while the words formed, a sin that would seem impossible by the time they reached her ears. Didn't her mother deserve more respect than that? Didn't she?
"Dontcha think?" she responded, wishing she was less emotionally stunted and could express gratitude better. Lexie's simple acknowledgment held situational awareness (you can't edit thirty years of memories), empathy (being your parent's sole support sucks), and understanding (you carried this thing alone. No one else has rights to it). It absolved her; she wasn't an oblivious-at-best, cruel-at-worst daughter. She was someone who'd had to become a parent's secret keeper and caretaker all at once.
"Bet Thatcher hates that song."
"Oh, he does. That's why I now love it unironically."
Meredith laughed, genuinely, not something that usually happened after a accidental Alzheimer's allusion. "Mom would've if she ever listened to the lyrics of anything. Once, I made a game of asking her pop-culture trivia. By the time she got exasperated, I'd narrowed it down enough to say she checked out in the late 70's. Med school."
"Med school." Lexie groaned.
"She never checked back in." Meredith bit into one of the last icy strawberries. "But she knew how to rock the spanx."
"Mental image I never wanted, Mer!"
"Whatever. I inherited my assets honestly."
Apparently forfeiting the ice cream, Lexie grabbed a pillow off the edge of the bed and let her head thump down onto it.
"She wasn't modest, at all. There's only so much you can do with cocktail dresses, of course, but…." She trailed off, chasing small trails of ice cream around the bottom of the container until Lexie perceived it to be safe and sat up. "They cling, is what I'm saying, and the length doesn't mean you can't—" She wasn't not anticipating the pillow that came flying her way, so she managed to sit the empty pint on top of her journal just in time.
"Oh my god!" Lexie cupped her hands over her mouth; her spoon dangled over her mouth like a single walrus tusk. Meredith grabbed it and balanced it across the lid of the container with hers. "I'm so sorry, Mer—Meredith! I don't know why I did that, I just—"
"Reacted. That's how this works, isn't it? You do the sister thing instinctually; I'm relying on trial and error."
"So goading me with descriptions of your mom…like that…. Error?"
"Oh, absolutely not. You can deal with some words; I had to live through it. The eidetic memory is definitely from your mom's genes, but—." Another shared look, inscrutable to anyone who didn't share the particular trauma of seeing a parent's mental health deteriorate—or were they developing looks that were just theirs? Meredith didn't hate the idea. "It also might've been a stall tactic."
"If you don't wanna tell me, I can go. It's okay." Lexie swung her legs off the bed.
"I do!" Meredith threw herself forward and grabbed Lexie's arm.
"Okay." If their eyes hadn't been locked, Meredith would've believed Lexie wasn't fazed by her sudden vehemence. "I'm here." She rotated to face Meredith again, her legs crossed criss-cross applesauce-style. Not I'm here to listen! or I'm here for whatever you need, Mer! just I'm here.
Meredith didn't have a model for the role of "big sister" the way Lexie had Molly as her little sister, but she'd bet Lexie was a good one.
"I do. I want to tell you about how I pretended to hate the hospital schmooze-fests, because Mom hated anything that wasn't done in scrubs—but really, I liked having people see me with her. I liked them saying that the dress I'd originally bought for a Science Fair presentation was pretty, because Mom sure as hell hadn't noticed it. And I want to tell you about the night Sadie Harris wafted into this freaking Mariott ballroom wearing a dress that made her look like an angel, and a smile the devil would kill for. She turned out to be within months of my age, but she gave off this energy that felt grown-up. It wasn't. Being able to act without considering anyone's opinion is so very adolescent. It seemed like independence. And I want to tell you that she looked at me, and the urge to run away was almost as strong as the pull toward her, but not quite."
"You knew your future would be nothing but trouble, and you were equally sure it'd be worth it."
"That's it, exactly." Meredith hugged the pillow in her lap, remembering how at thirteen she'd seen the arched eyebrows and pressed lips of the adults around this girl, and known that she'd never be their darling again. Within five minutes, she'd forgotten why that mattered.
Lexie nodded, sagely. "I have a thing for guys like that."
"Guys?" Meredith raised her eyebrows. The way Lexie's face scrunched up in confusion was both dissatisfying—she couldn't mean George, and Alex…Meredith loved him, but did he give off "worth it" yet? —and a relief. "I thought, maybe you…Sadie…."
Lexie shot back like she'd been electrocuted. "Sadie and I…? No, it wasn't—I'm not…Men. I'm only into men."
"You wouldn't be the first person to think that before encountering her. Sadie-sexual is definitely a thing. Die-sexual. After the third time, we called it Die-sexual."
"The third…? Wow, that's…. Wow."
Meredith lifted a shoulder in half a shrug. "We ran in a few circles, and one held a lot of women who rejected the idea out of hand. They were 'wild girls.' Wild girls sleep with every man in sight. Women were the ones they went out onto the dance floor with—not who they left with."
"I was in a sorority with those girls."
"Everyone thinks I am one."
"You're not."
"Not exclusively." Meredith couldn't pull off a wink, but she desperately wanted to. "Sadie didn't like my Dartmouth friends. She hated nights that were more bars not clubs, apartments not bars, darts not dancing, debate not darts. They started becoming real adults, and I got folded in with 'the girls.' Similar habits, very different opinions. I didn't have a ton of patience for them, not after hearing 'men want you to dismiss other women as your competition, because they know they'll be ganged up on' my whole life."
"Ellis Grey said 'ganged up on?'"
"That's nothing. Mom could be coarse. That was the one thing Sadie liked about her. Die could never shake off the refinement her family instilled in her."
"Well, it definitely wasn't…. I mean, there are moments where I guess if her aim was to seduce me…but her goal was always getting you, uh, your attention. I was a chess piece; I saw it more often than I objected to it." Her eyes were big, expressing more earnestness than regret. Meredith wanted to blame herself—shouldn't George had been enough to teach her that she broke anyone with doe-eyes? —but maybe part of this whole growing up thing was recognizing when she didn't actually deserve the blame.
"She didn't start the shit that went down with your class, though, right?"
"No," Lexie admitted. "We were already looking for any way possible to get physical—shut up, physical experience—she just…escalated it."
"Oh so familiar. If an idea wasn't hers, she twists it until you think it was. It's something in her eyes. They're like ice, until they melt for one second, and suddenly you're frozen in with her."
"She's… really manipulative, yeah. And her eyes are very…blue?"
Okay, if Meredith had waited, Lexie would've given her that look, and she'd have known her sister wasn't into Sadie.
"You don't recognize it because you have your own eye thing, and it's all melty and sweet."
"I'm not manipulative!"
"I'm not saying you are. I'm saying she is, and you're…convincing. There are eye things!"
"Whatever you say. Not like I need to worry about it anymore. She's gone. Ugh, sorry, that sounded harsh once I said it."
"No, it's true. She won't be back. Not when I refused to jump at her command again. Fuck her." Meredith slammed her fist against the pillow. "Fuck her. Before Sadie, anything I did that could've been considered rebellious was directly related to not meeting the Ellis Grey standard. Then, she became my lodestone. I wanted her attention, her smile, her approval. I wanted the rush of running from the bartender holding a bottle of champagne and hearing her laugh. Unlike Mom she didn't spell out what she wanted, but pleasing her was easier. Disappointing her…."
She grimaced. Cristina had been impaled by an icicle, and her first thought had been of Sadie's eyes, even when she'd never expected to see her again. There were times they'd been sharp enough to cut every time they grazed her. "
She could be intense. So could I, but there was…I don't know… a line I didn't cross. A wobbly one, which maybe makes it not a line, but— "
"I get it."
"Yeah, you do." Meredith agreed, thinking of the ways Lexie had confessed to her recently, like a winding fuse had been lit from day one, and she had no idea when the explosion would be. "She'd say—she said— I'm too soft. That I didn't see she was the one who got me. That I shoved her away to start with. Maybe I did, but she…I was…." Meredith exhaled and the ferocity left her. "We were thirteen and fourteen when we met—" I'm a Christmas baby, Death; it's why I'm so selfish the rest of the year! "Seventeen the first time we kissed. She never let me call her my girlfriend," she murmured. It felt like the complaint of a teenager, but she and Lexie were making up for missed time, or whatever.
Lexie didn't manage to hold back her oh of surprise, and it was difficult for Meredith not to clench her fists again. The gap hadn't been a choice on her side.
"I didn't wanna be one of the girls she kissed because she knew it'd piss her family off. She always blamed it on that, or being drunk, or…there were so many excuses. I tried to stop caring. We were best friends, wasn't that better than anything I could hope for? I talked big about not believing in romance, and I didn't believe in sacrificing for it. I convinced myself that I hated every guy who hung around her because they didn't treat her well enough—Most of them didn't, in my defense.
"It was obvious that we wouldn't be going to the same college. The one real lie I told her, ever, was that I got waitlisted at Harvard. Her family all went there, and she'd say 'fuck legacy,' but she didn't have much of a chance getting in anywhere else. I was desperate to get out of Boston, away from my mother, but I was afraid I'd lose Sadie for good, just like I lost everyone I knew leaving Seattle."
Lexie winced but Meredith ignored it. For once this wasn't about her daddy issues. Much.
"So, I threw out the principles. I figured if I gave her something to miss…. I convinced her to kiss me as 'an experiment,' and that…snowballed. Either my attempt at manipulation wasn't necessary, or it worked. Every vacation, we'd go somewhere where her boy-of-the-week was out of sight, out of mind, and… she'd be mine. We'd flirt with boys. Get free drinks. Access to parties. But they didn't matter. We were all that was real, until our plane landed back at Logan. We'd get on separate buses to separate schools and I wouldn't see her 'til she broke up with some guy I'd never met and turned up at my dorm."
"Like she showed up here?"
"Par for the hole, or whatever. She wouldn't say explicitly, but I bet there was some scandal at that morgue. She was expected to be more than a goth-girl figurehead, got bored, and who knows—she sold organs on the black market, or stole belongings from the dead, or had sex on the cremation table."
"Forgot to close after an autopsy."
"Cut the 'Y' in the back."
"Showed a family the wrong body." The darkness of Lexie's laughter made Meredith wonder about her initial judgement of her sister; could she be a dark girl raised in the light? It made her more of an alt-world Meredith and gave them more in common. At minimum, it meant she hadn't been the only one wondering about the scandal that had Sadie running—though Lexie's thoughts wouldn't have her bitter edge.
So much for never needing anything from Daddy, huh Die? Think Ellis would've ever bailed me out of whatever that was?
It wasn't hard to imagine Sadie's snide response: "Then tell me why you dropped everything for that bitch?"
"Because family isn't all give and take!"
Huh. Another belief she and Lexie shared.
"I can't put it all on her. I didn't put myself on ice when she wasn't around—If I wasn't going to rely on a guy to be a person, a girl wasn't any different. She wasn't the settling type, and l didn't know enough about functional relationships to deal with…anything."
"Things changed slowly. Probably had to be glacial to keep either of us from darting. She'd get drunk and say…feelings words. And then she'd say them sober. I'd always been so perfect; she should've seen what was right in front of her—exactly what I needed to hear.. By graduation, with Mom at Mayo, Boston was safe. She'd rented out our place so—"
"Wait, why? She didn't just let you live there?"
"Hell, no. I could've probably taken on utilities and taxes, but I'm not ashamed to admit it would've been a risk. For a single-earner household in the middle of Boston, she did okay. Paid for school. I didn't have loans or much in scholarships. I had an emergency card. Sometimes there'd be a random deposit in my account, like she wanted to make up for not thinking of me in months, but she'd never have explicitly helped me with rent. Not until my contribution to society benefited those other than myself."
"Good sentiment, bad parenting."
"Eh. It wasn't like I was broke or homeless. Sadie bought this fixer-upper in Somerville with her first trust fund payoff."—the way Lexie's jaw fell and kept dropping was a solid reminder that the Boston area, was another shared reference —"I thought we were moving in together, separate bedrooms or not."
Lexie's listening look became a frown.
"It wasn't like you're thinking… No one's the victim. I honestly can't tell you who was using whom. On one level, yeah, I cleaned, she cooked. But there were no rules or boundaries. We both slept around at different points. She knew I'd handle the logistics of keeping the lights on. When my college friends needed a leg up, I offered up the guest-rooms."
"Teach me how to give, Deathy, I only know how to take."
"For a couple of years we were partners in avoiding adulthood. Technically she worked for her father, but she didn't care about not having anything to do. I tended bar, barista'd at a bookstore on Davis. Sales-clerked at a Beacon Hill boutique. My longest gig was Newbury Comics at the Garage."
"Seriously? I went there for CDs all the time! Everyone on staff seemed so…."
"Still up from last night, coffee, weed, and/or tequila vying for control of their limbic systems? Always. Queer, too. I loved it. Sadie wouldn't go to any of their parties. If orientation came up anywhere, she'd put her arm around me and say, 'oh, I'm into this one, but I don't really count.' I told myself it was enough; not everyone wants a label. But whenever she wasn't with me, it started to be women as much as men. Eventually, I figured I wasn't worth risking rumors getting back to her family."
"The family she cut ties with?"
Meredith shot exaggerated finger guns at her sister. "Thing is, we'd been living in a haze that would have eventually blown over. My friends were starting to have careers not jobs, and I…."
"You…?"
"Please remember, I was still one-hundred percent a layabout party girl. Made out with questionable people after concerts, sometimes to make my not-girlfriend jealous, sometimes just because. You probably think Boston was a quiet town; shut down when after-theater desserts were over, right?"
Lexie drew herself up, a threatened porcupine. "There were house parties that got wild."
"There were," Meredith allowed because disappointing her would've been cruel, though she doubted their definitions of "wild" matched up. "But I'm talking raves. Warehouse invasions. Shit like that. I was not on track for anything. I was a mess. Understood?"
"Mmhmm, total hot mess, got it."
Meredith had a sense that she was being mocked, but she didn't want to play the you did what on MDMA? game with Lexie.
"I'd started going to lectures around town." A single snicker escaped Lexie's firmly pressed lips, but Meredith couldn't find enough fuel for a full-on glare. She'd kind of asked for it. "Book talks, initially, but then there was a 'Gender and the Brain' panel sponsored by the Brigham. I started attending more medicine-y stuff after I wasn't recognized by anyone who knew my mother."
"Really? I know your mom was at MGH, but all eleventy-billion hospitals there are kinda…incestuous. And competitive. In an incesty way."
"I didn't say I didn't recognize anyone, but there were more rivalries in the eighties. Have you ever heard of Catherine Avery?" Lexie rocked her hand in a "sorta" motion. "She and Mom had this insanely polite way of despising each other. And I had the advantage: my hair hadn't seen it's natural color since high school—before you ask, pink, purple, black, blue, bleached. Anything not this." She held out a chunk of the gold she associated with her mother, both in appearance and the memories of her styling it. Five minutes, once a day that Meredith spent the rest of her life yearning for and resenting. "Also, spring of sophomore year, Mom and I had a…confrontation…about how I presented myself at 'hospital functions.' Apparently, it's bad form for your sixteen-year-old to get drunk on purloined peach schnapps at a childhood cancer gala."
"Wait." A calculating expression appeared on Lexie's face. "You were sixteen? 1994?"
Meredith grimaced. The thing about Lexipedia wasn't just that she remembered things, it was that she linked them. "Ish."
"Spring. Could that've been in April?"
"Thereabouts…. Okay, yes, Kurt Cobain had died, but that wasn't the only thing." She'd almost brought up the summer she'd spent in Seattle, and Layla. As a lifelong Seattle girl, Lexie would kill to see some of her ticket stubs, no matter where her music preferences lay. Would she also wonder why her sister didn't show up on their father's doorstep then?
"Point is, Mom took me to fewer events, and if I went, there were rules about my appearance. So, it wasn't one of her colleagues or rivals who ended up recognizing me at a lecture at the BPL, it was a former professor. She said she always hoped I'd ask her for a recommendation letter to go to med school, so… I did. Die teased me about finally realizing Ellis Grey wasn't the only female scientist who could pass judgement. but I applied. More or less applied for her, too. Then…." she trailed off, voices—her own, her mother's, Sadie's—circling in her mind.
"You got in," Lexie prodded. "And…you went to Europe?"
"If only. No, I went to New York first, to tell my mother the news in person. She was so pissed."
"What! Why?"
"She said I didn't have what it takes. I would be wasting my time, and that of my professors. My character would reflect poorly on her. A lot of horrible shit. I was totally blindsided. I don't know if it was an early symptom, or if I want it to have been…."
"But it happened."
"It did."
"Sadie…um. She was saying something about being in Athens. I asked if you were with her, and she said No, not after Amsterdam. She totally wanted me to ask. I figure she was dangling information about you to get me to dance to her tune. 'Priss' isn't really your kind of word."
"Priss?" Meredith wrinkled her nose.
"Right? In the moment, it fit with your whole thing about me being too well-adjusted with the smiley-faces and everything, but given a second to think, well…. You never sounded judgey like that."
"Plus, it's a dumb word."
"Isn't it? Anyway, it wasn't my business. Not coming from her. Just. Yeah, Amsterdam."
"It all goes back to Amsterdam," Meredith murmured, pressing the side of her arm against her eyes.
"You don't have to tell me more if—" She held the other arm out, palm out to cut the option off before she could take it. To her surprise, Lexie took her hand. Judging by the moment it took her fingers to relax, Lexie was surprised, too.
We had this fight in Amsterdam, and she accused me of doing the same thing. She was proud of being this rolling stone, unbeholden, or whatever. I hadn't kept us quiet because she was Sadie; it was because she was Sadie Harris. And if at any point in our history she'd so much as implied that she wanted my mom to know—even if it was just to shock her—I'd have been in, just not…. II updated my location with Mom's office manager every time we switched hostels. She was doing policy work with the UN and researching at Mayo. Not operating much. Maybe I should've read into that. I don't know when she suspected…she called while we were in Amsterdam. First time hearing from her in months. Only said she was 'sick,' and…I didn't want to give her a reason to regret telling me."
"That makes a lot of sense."
"Yeah. I wasn't as logical presenting it to Sadie. But… Mom said she was sick, and she needed me to come home. Sadie wasn't…at first, she told me to ignore her. That I didn't know it wasn't a tactic to control me."
"You don't understand! My mother is sick, Sadie. She won't even tell me how bad it is."
"And how many times have you wished she was dead? …shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that, okay? I know I was always the one to say those kinds of things. Look how much better than me you are. You've been keeping her secrets your whole life. I know—"
"You don't know anything!"
"Explain it to me, then! Explain why Ellis Grey deserves your loyalty, after everything she hasn't done for you!"
"She did plenty. I was the one who wasn't— "
"Don't you dare say you weren't enough. You are fucking incredible, and she has never seen that. I have. I see you. Let me go back with you. You can see to Ellis, and we can— "
"There's a 'we' now? What's in it for you? There has to be something because that's the only time you use that word."
"That's not— "
"Oh, it's more than true. More than fair. I've never been your girlfriend, or your partner, or anything but your fucktoy, so don't pretend like you're not…not trying to make nice to my mother when she's vulnerable, or…or whatever your plan—"
"Isn't that exactly what you're doing? Heading to the bedside of poor, sick Mommy, hoping that she'll finally accept the daughter she has, and not the one she wants? Or is the med school thing another attempt to become her? You know, I think it might work this time. You've become just as fucking cold as her."
"She offered to come," she summarized for Lexie, who blinked in surprise. "That's when I really escalated things. I didn't…. I was afraid she didn't mean it. That she might get on the plane, but it'd all end up the way it had been for years. A holding pattern where we weren't…anything. Never tell Derek, but he wasn't my first partner in Sex and Mockery."
"Oh, don't worry, that will never come up."
"Better not." Meredith sighed. "I might've also been afraid she did mean it. I wasn't a paragon of commitment."
"Where would you've learned how to be? What should've been give-and-take had been all—okay, mostly—give on your part, and take on hers. You can't convince me it was equal."
"It wasn't….And she expected more give at Dartmouth."
Lexie shot up. "She what?"
"I'd spent two months expecting her to show in New York. I didn't hear a word from her, or a rumor about her. I thought I was hallucinating at orientation. From there, I had three goddamn years of her acting like…like she did here…like we were us, but we were always friends, nothing else. Like as a friend, I should be 'helping' her like I did in high school. Like maybe I remembered everything wrong…. I didn't. She didn't have as much use for me. We were split for clinicals. I avoided her at graduation, sure she'd say something about Mom not being there. Baiting me, whether she meant it that way or not…."
Lexie grimaced. "I didn't think…but of course your mom didn't go from no symptoms to…. No wonder you never talk about med school."
"I ran on adrenaline, confusion, and rage," Meredith confirmed. "I'm actually glad she was there, in retrospect. She could tell when I needed to blow off steam or I'd implode. We'd go somewhere loud; she'd make it seem like a group thing. I wasn't really making new friends, going home all the time to deal with Mom, and not being able to tell anyone…. It came off as aloofness. We were seen as medical socialites, not worthy of the spots we were taking up. It helped not to be the only heiress to a name. But we weren't in tune, at all. I wanted to prove that I didn't need mine; she coasted on hers. I never quite understood why she saw it through. Or how, knowing what I do now."
"You don't…." Lexie hesitated, biting her lip in that way that was far too familiar, and then backtracked. "She took the fall for—for a lot of things while she was here. Was that just to take credit?"
"No," Meredith assured her, and then thought for a moment. "No. She can be a good friend, but she… She thinks it's better for her to take the blame, because she's already been through the wringer. She knows best; she's just saving you from yourself. Her father was a real winner of a rich, white man. She got more from him than she'd ever admit."
"Or maybe she would," Lexie offered, not seeming conscious of the way she was running her right-hand fingers over the tiny scars on the opposite arm. "And those are the parts of herself she hates."
"She loves herself. She puts effort into ensuring that the world revolves around her."
"Do you really think that? Or are you buying into the costume she put on? The same way you pretended to be happy with having no direction, even though it was eating you up inside?"
Meredith narrowed her eyes. "Did your group of idiot interns practice injecting each other with actual drugs?"
"No." Lexie rolled her eyes, in a way that reminded Meredith of Izzie when she was flat-out rejecting Meredith's view of the world. "Not scheduled ones. Look, she's convincing. She can only have honed that skill in the…five years?" Meredith wobbled her hand to indicate give or take. She wasn't sure how to count med school. "Five years since you were living out of each other's pockets. But her bravado is ninety-eight percent bullshit. It's like…whatever her dad did, it made her feel small. But if he's wrong about everything—she has to reject anything he says out of hand. So, she sets out to she's the opposite of that. She's larger than life… but she can't buy into that any more than you couldn't at least try to be a doctor.
"You should know, she did talk to me about that. About how Ellis had gotten into your head, and she was always trying to convince you to ignore your mom, because all the things she thought were weaknesses were reasons you be great. She, um. Her exact words when I visited her post-appy were 'your sister's a healer. She'll go out of her way to take care of people who hurt her.' She said she'd never been sure if it was admirable or crazy, but you were a 'selfless science sponge.'"
"That's why you'll be such a good doctor one day, Death;" "such nimble fingers, Dr. Death;" "God, must you always be such a future doctor?"—countless off-hand comments that'd felt like insults. Could Sadie have been that incapable of giving genuine compliments?
Yeah. She absolutely could have been. She had been.
"Sh-she said that?" Meredith asked, hurrying the words out before her throat got too tight for them.
"She did," Lexie confirmed. "Then she got kinda caught up in the alliteration and kept repeating it. She was on a lot of morphine."
For Meredith, the substance was truth serum. What was it for Sadie? She should have known, but opioids had settled on the other side of her wobbly line after one or two tries. That didn't mean Sadie wouldn't take them. It meant she'd hide it, and Meredith let herself ignore the signs for long enough that eventually she couldn't tell one Sadie from the other. High Sadie, sober Sadie. Genuine Sadie, conniving Sadie. Suicidal Sadie, mocking Sadie, adoring Sadie, abhorrent Sadie….
"When I visited, she tried to convince me to 'ignite the endorphins,' for old time's sake."
"Ew! What about Derek?"
"What about him? She and I never managed exclusive; the fact that I had it with him must've…um…blown her mind."
Lexie snickered. "It would be really inappropriate to tell you to commit now, but…"
"Do you have to lead him on like that?"
"Come on, Death, you know it doesn't mean anything about us."
"Ellis never taught me to share."
"Aren't you the one who says we're always learning? How's this: sharing is caring, you got that in kindergarten, right?"
"I…probably. I don't actually—"
"Yeah, that was the Trauma Year, I know, babe. Let that guy over there teach you a few things, and then you can use them to show me exactly how much you care about me."
Meredith's dalliances were almost all like that; the result of spite or proving that she understood sex could just be physical as well as Sadie did. Not all that far off from the ones she'd had after Addison showed up.
"I think she was surprised that your thing with your boss was a thing with someone who happened to be your boss."
"Talk about a hypocrite. She—! Never mind, I'm sure you're tired of hearing about all the ways Sadie manipulated everyone in her life, sexually and otherwise."
"It's nice to know I'm not alone."
"Nope. You definitely are not."
"Mer…?" Lexie ventured, scooting a bit closer onto the bed. "I wasn't just asking about your relationship with her to be nosy. I thought you might need someone to talk to, because Cristina didn't like her, and Derek has his own shit going on right now. I'm also the person who got closest to her while she was here, and I'm the one she tried to make into her pawn. Now, the least you can do is listen to something I think you need to hear."
The least she could do was what she'd done: tell Sadie to keep away from Lexie. There was no possible insight she could give that Meredith hadn't put to the test in the past decade, but they'd gotten this far. She gestured for Lexie to go on.
"Whatever brought her here—or even into med school, from what you've said—if it was her family's expectations, or just boredom— "
Meredith clenched her fist. That hurt more than anything, in the end. She'd helped keep Sadie afloat in high school—what kept her father "off her ass" was minimal compared to what Ellis deemed acceptable—but part of the reason Meredith had always been so hard on herself was the one thing she agreed with her mother on: no matter how egotistical a surgeon was, in their heart they needed to know it wasn't about them. Whatever Sadie's motives were, they never touched on selfless.
"—I don't think it would've been enough without…the promise of you. And whether she'd admit it or not, the hope for something more."
"I didn't—I'm not responsible for that." But wasn't she? Hadn't she been there every other time Sadie popped up in her life, ready to embrace her particular brand of chaos? That'd been the precedent. Why shouldn't it have played out again when Meredith was the one to take off?
"What if I need you, Death?" She'd only heard the "what if." The one time Sadie had maybe been willing to commit, and all Meredith could do was lash out.
"I didn't say you were. Just, it seems like you never knew for sure how she felt, and that seems like proof to me."
"Maybe." That was as far as Meredith wanted to go. It was already forcing her to re-conceptualize all the times she'd found Sadie on a doorstep with her bags.
"I Just couldn't stay away from you, M-D Grey!"
"You broke up with Brad, and you don't want to go home."
"Do you blame me?"
"Even if…. I wanted that so much, for so long, Lex, you have no idea. When things got really bad last year, I considered getting on a plane and showing up on her doorstep. Losing myself in the cycle of Die and Death again wouldn't have been hard. But after having her here…. I think it was for the best." Her throat was tight again, and she knew the Boston accent she used to play up to annoy both Ellis and Sadie would be getting stronger as she got hoarser. "Right before she died, my mother had a day where she was lucid. She didn't remember anything beyond my leaving for Europe, and…and…dammit." Why couldn't she manage to out-talk the emotions of this memory? She really has gotten soft—or else, Lexie become one of the people she didn't repress in front of, which might've been scarier.
"Oh, no, Meredith!" Lexie's panicked tone almost quelled the tears on its own, but not entirely. Lexie lashed out to Derek's bedside table like a ninja and sprawled next to Meredith with a Kleenex, wiping the drops that escaped onto her cheeks. She'd been overwhelmed for a second, but she reeled it in faster than Derek catching their breakfast trout.
Sadie would definitely be anti-trout. She would've gotten along with Addison, to a point—but Addison would have no respect for her laissez-faire attitude toward medicine.
Meredith took in a shaky breath. "Right before Mom died, she was lucid for a day or so. I, uh. I know you'd give anything for another day with Susan. I think that'd be pretty nice, too. But.…She wakes up one day in a strange place, where everyone is rushing around to call Dr. Grey, who turns out to be her wayward daughter, who should be in Ibiza drinking off the last of her adolescence. Said prodigal child tells her she has Alzheimer's, which is enough of a shock to give her a heart attack." Meredith slammed her fist against the bed; there was nothing to aim her anger at, except circumstance, but it wouldn't be the first time they'd been at odds. "She was terrified. She'd said, 'you don't have what it takes to be a surgeon,' not 'you don't have to be a surgeon to succeed'—and the way I was telling it, I followed through on a whim to go to med school, and all I'd gained was a neurosurgeon boyfriend. Her daughter was making the same mistake she did, and she didn't have time to tell me everything. She said I was 'ordinary,' which for her—We basically relived our last fight."
"But you'd taken care of her, you went to med school. You were a surgeon—"
"I wasn't focused."
"You were an intern."
"Look, did she underestimate me? Maybe, she didn't know me. Not adult me, and especially not grown-up me. Look, I cannot imagine what I'd say in her situation, but I know what I said, and if I'd known those would be the last words that she'd understand came from her daughter…." She ran her index fingers under her eyes. "Her obsession with career was very second-wave feminism, but she had it for personal reasons. She…there's a lot you haven't heard about her relationships. Can we leave it there for now?"
"Of course."
"Thanks. It, uh, wasn't great to live through. Sent me into a tailspin that I wasn't out of when you showed up. It sort of peaked when that ferry boat crashed in Elliott Bay."
"I've heard…." Lexie swallowed and let that be enough.
"Yeah," Meredith exhaled, glad she wouldn't have to say it. "I…. The Die and Death thing, we weren't…but we were…. We were running hand-in-hand through a graveyard, hoping to miss a step."
"Okay, Buffeee—oh my god, she's your Faith." Lexie cackled. Her teeth were perfect, except for one filling in the back. Meredith wondered how long she'd had braces. If she'd had someone to pass the wax and hands onto, maybe she wouldn't be finding them in old clothes to this day.
"I—she—shut up, Dawn."
"Okay," Lexie gasped, clutching a pillow to her abdomen. "Phew, it's just—You wield blades! And-and Derek's hair; he's Angel for sure."
"With a best friend who is kind of a Spike-type," Meredith mused. "Oh, I would pay someone so much money to get Addison Montgomery to cosplay Drusilla."
"Mmm." Lexie clearly had her lips pressed together to stop losing it again, proving that she was absolutely the randomly-appearing sister all the fans found ignoring initially.
"Continuing on the theme of my resurrection…." Meredith smiled. At some point, she and Lexie had been in dorm-rooms in adjacent states watching the same show. Somewhere in her head Sadie and Cristina were both calling her soft. Whatever. "Something happened when I went in that water. Something became clear, and I don't know what, exactly. I came out knowing my mother had died, and that I could forgive her."
"How? I can't. She was terrible to you!"
"Do you forgive Thatcher?"
"It's not the same…. That's grief. It's situational."
"Mom was grieving, too. Over and over, I was the only symbol of what she'd lost. She did her best. Another day, I'll tell you about the good times if you want."
"I would. She can't have been entirely horrible. You're not."
Meredith started to say that on the day of the gift, she'd worried Cristina would say something similar because of her mother's surgical techniques, not her. Meredith started to say that sometimes she thought logic was all that set Ellis apart from Sadie. Meredith managed to swallow and squeeze her sister's hand.
"I had to almost die to determine which parts of what Mom said were true. Whether the lie was that she wanted to know me, or that she thought I was a force of nature, passionate, focused, a fighter. Hell, she said I was 'soft' too. Maybe that's.…"
"Don't worry, you're not. Ask your underlings."
"Everyone's soft compared to them. No offense."
"A little taken." Lexie's smile was even more adorable seen this close up; Meredith would've been a sucker for it if she'd known her when they were younger. She would've been wrapped around her little sister's finger.
"Fair. It took me a while. She was gone, and I was alive, but resurrection doesn't cure depression, especially if you don't admit to having it. Derek was impatient with me—No one knew how to react, really. The teen vampire show got that right."
"He…seriously?" The frown on Lexie's face made her think of Dawn kicking the shins of the vampire who'd jilted her sister. She bit her cheek to stop a smile but couldn't stop imagining what it would've been like to have her around on the playground whenever Meredith got an attacker down on the sand.
"Other stuff happened right around the same time. I wasn't…wanting to live and living are different."
Lexie blinked, expectantly, and then the realization washed over her face, feature by feature. "Mom died. And Dad lost it at you, right after your mom did the same thing, and also died? Oh, Mer."
"I don't…." She bit her lip. Childlike as Lexie could be, Meredith wouldn't be protecting her by lying to her. "In the nurses' rendition of The Tale of Meredith Grey, that's what shattered me, but I promise the cracks were all there already. I'm sorry he put you through a fraction of it."
It had given her more insight into Sadie, but apparently not enough to see her clearly.
"If he…when he's himself again… he'll want to know you. And you don't have to worry, I mean obviously, Derek, but if Sadie or someone else came up…. They once sat me down and said it was okay if I was gay."
She was buffering, Meredith recognized the technique as an adept wielder. Since it wasn't as though Thatcher was anywhere near working the program Webber talked about, much less making amends with the daughter he blamed for his wife's death, she gave her sister the reaction she wanted: "What?"
"I was obsessed with the first clarinet in band, but it really wasn't…."
"You wanted to be her, not to do her?"
"Something like that. I know you can't rule anything out, gender varies, right? But anyone I've liked that way had been male. As far as I know."
"Very, considering the ones I've met. George is only an outlier if you see men the way Alex does. Then there was Alex. And Derek…. "
"I really don't get that night. You were going through all that, and Derek was flirting with me at Joe's? Because, Mer, I'm not sure even Sadie—"
"Don't. You know how I say you grew up all bright and shiny? He really did. His family, there are problems—remind me to tell you about Amelia one day. Oh, and Nancy. Ugh—but it's not—there aren't any deep, dark secrets, or half-siblings, or…."
"Situational alcoholism leading to adult child abuse?" Lexie offered.
"Sure, if you want to put it concisely." Meredith rolled her eyes to the side, and the sisters stared at each other for a moment before they started laughing. "Derek absolutely dropped the ball. I'd been compartmentalizing for so long, and when that became impossible, he expected me to tell him everything. Like I should've known how to explain myself in a context he could understand. If I couldn't, I should move on, because that's what he'd do. He tried to go too fast, and…. You were there, do I have to go over it?"
"No. The Plant. I always hated her."
"Not sure that's true, but I appreciate it."
"I did! She arranged the trays wrong, and her bedside manner sucked."
"Okay, Lex. Point is, I didn't want to be as…confused as I was. So, after thirty years of joking about it, I want to therapy. Too late to send the bills to my mother, unfortunately."
"Dad would love to get a nice letter from a bill collector."
"Check it out, Three can cut. Luckily, we have decent insurance."
"I'll keep it in mind."
"You're a Grey. You should." Lexie stuck her tongue out. "I bet you were a licker, weren't you?"
"Were you a biter?"
"Not once I learned how to hit. I was a fighter. Not always in a good way. I knew I'd changed, but I didn't think I'd changed that much. Being around Sadie again… I had—I have. I stopped wearing my anger on my sleeve and took the reinforcement out of a few of my walls. From when Addison showed up to…recently, I was walking around with more exposed nerves than a teenager. If Sadie had been around, she would've encouraged my old coping mechanisms, which…. If…if you're right, and she… No. She does—did? —has loved me, but her version of support…."
"Letting it get as bad as possible, and then taking the blame."
"And running from the consequences."
"Does she have anywhere to run to?" Lexie asked, and her lack of self-absorption resonated with Meredith again. It amazed her that more and more often Lexie made her wonder how different she'd actually have been with her father and Susan in her life. "Obviously, your doorstep is out, but I assume her dad won't be stoked about… everything. Mine wouldn't be if I told him anything anymore, not your fault."
Meredith rolled her eyes again, but Lexie's golden retriever-esque determination to reassure her was growing on her. Lack of positive reinforcement rearing its head, Dr. Grey?
"She has a…a brother. Eric. He's at least five years older than us, and he's the favorite on her mother's side, but they get along okay."
"A brother?"
"Lexie!" Meredith thwacked her sister with the pillow, until she wrestled it away.
"I didn't mean it like that," she said, sitting on her knees, with the pillow firmly behind her. "If I was on the market, or—" Oh? And why not? "Ew, why do we talk like that?"
"The patriarchy. I can hook you up with some sources if you want. What'd you get your degrees in, anyway?"
"Math and statistics."
"Nerd."
"Rubber," she pointed at herself, and then rotated the finger to aim at Meredith. "Glue."
Meredith shook her head. "You're actually saying that?"
"C'mon, I get that you didn't have siblings, but you were a kid once."
"Never. I was a very small medical dictionary."
Lexie snorted. "I bet." She flipped the pillow up toward the head of the bed and flopped onto it. "Sadie's got a brother, huh? And you like both? But you never…."
"Five years older!"
"Please, your boyfriend could be my dad. 'Age is only a number,'" she sang. "Man, that poor girl," she added at the same time Meredith said, "Poor Aaliyah," and they burst out laughing.
"First of all." Meredith sat up and leaned against the headboard. "Siblings aren't interchangeable, just because I'm bisexual. Second of all…I never actually met him." She'd been wrong about how far Lexie's jaw could drop. "It's not like I never met the parents! Sadie and Eric didn't really get to know each other until we were out of high school. He went to Berkeley, and they're…." Meredith trailed off. "Do you wanna stay in here tonight?"
She grabbed the spoons from their ice cream in one hand, and the carton in the other. It could go in the bathroom trashcan if she took it out the next day.
"Yes! — Wait, is Derek staying over for Jen again?"
"He's pretty into this case." Meredith yanked a pair of pajama pants out of the dresser. "Will these fit you?"
Lexie let them unfold in front of her legs. They'd be a little short, but they worked.
"He always cares, just…." Meredith headed into the ensuite bathroom she'd only really started using when Derek moved in.
"Just what?"
"I think it's personal. I know it's soon, what with our year-long rollercoaster, and me not being ready, but, uh…. I stopped taking my birth-control. We're still using condoms, and I've got a…a…" Meredith yawned. "A thing."
"A diaphragm?"
"Right. That. It's just, if it happens, it happens. We know we want kids, and if I get Alzheimer's, I want them to have me for as long as possible."
"You…oh my god, seriously? I'm going to be an aunt! Not that—I love Laura, just haven't seen her much. If you have a baby, I'll be able to be around all the time—if you want me around all the time. Are you waiting for the house to be done? That's gonna take a while, and if you…. Not that I think you're especially fertile, or anything…."
"Probably not," Meredith said, squirting toothpaste onto her toothbrush. "Never had a scare."
"Never?" The mirror made Lexie's wide-eyed expression even more exaggerated. She would be great with kids. "I don't mean—I've had—That was the one time I really expected Mom to freak, but—Okay." She shifted, evening her stance and put her hands on her hips. "You've been on them…how long?"
"Asking me when I lost my virginity, li'l sis?" Meredith was tired, and therefore hoarse, and therefore sounded very Boston, but she didn't think the way Lexie shrank back had anything to do with her accent. She almost apologized, but Lexie straightened, and the biggest smile Meredith had seen from her yet exploded on her face. That was it, no squeals, no over-enthusiasm. A smile. One Meredith was definitely getting used to having around.
"Not as early as people think," she continued casually to confirm that she'd been teasing. "The nurses used to have a pool. Alex won. Far as I know, it went straight to Joe, and I'll contribute whatever I can to getting his tab paid by the time he leaves for his fellowship. Seriously, I had a few bad months, and sometimes I still feel like nurses are doing a breath check on me. Alex is there every night."
"He's been through a lot."
"You don't have to tell me he had it worse than me. If I'd been any younger when…there was a time I narrowly avoided the system."
"But— "
"I don't know. Maybe they called him. Maybe not. I'll tell you what she…what happened another time. It's a Cristina, Sadie, my shrink, and Derek thing, not a the whole damn hospital thing."
"You don't have to—but I'll be here."
"No one gets all my trauma at once. I just had it easier than Alex is all. I didn't used to have siblings to look out for, either."
Lexie stuck her tongue out again. Definitely a licker as a kid. "Didn't you mind the hospital betting on your personal stuff?"
"Nah. Debbie and I talked about it. She woulda killed it if I'd really objected, but I just gave her the answer and let it play out. I…I really did kind of put my business all over last year, Lex. That isn't the worst book that's been run. Definitely not the worst about me."
Lexie crossed her arms, and for all Meredith joked about protecting Lexie, she wondered if she'd have been the Seattle Grace pariah with Lexie around to shut things down.
"Anyway, I went on the Pill late freshman year. I had some pretty intense cramps and mood-swings. Enough for Mom to notice, or maybe she wanted to take away an excuse to skip class. It was afterward that I learned to erase the administrator's messages. For what it's worth, I cut far fewer classes than anyone—"
"I'm the one who gets to say 'don't' this time. You're smart, Mer."
"Spread that around the hospital, would you?" She got in because of who her mother is. That crazy friend of hers totally failed out. If she weren't the Head of Neurosurgery's piece of ass…. They weren't as loud as they'd been a year ago, but the whispers were surging again.
"Mom said protection wasn't permission, but we should make sure I wasn't going to have any side-effects before I started taking risks. I don't blame her. I had limited supervision, my assets had developed, and I talked big."
Lexie was nodding along like she got it, and she probably did, to a point, but Meredith was pretty sure that in this their upbringings mattered. If Thatcher had a say in raising her, would she have been as sex-positive? Ellis had very few boundaries when it came to discussing the human body—Yeah, hearing her talk about "urges" was beyond strange; if Meredith hadn't been the proof, she would've thought her mother never had sex. The whole torrid Richard affair actually made far more sense. —and Meredith couldn't pretend it wasn't something she wanted to pass on.
"Plenty of messing around happened, but actual V-card cashing…. However you count it with girls, that happened first, the summer I spen—of freshman year. Boys my age were clueless. Older ones weren't as eager to get with a PiV virgin as they pretended. Always afraid you were gonna get attached. Sophomore year, I let Paul Waxman deflower me, or whatever. Guys got less shy, and I got bossy. Sex got good. My experience caught up to my mouth."
Lexie tilted her head at her, eyes narrowed. "I can't tell if you wanted there to be innuendo in that or not."
"I…Me either." They both laughed, and Meredith leaned against the bathroom counter, starting to feel how late it'd gotten. "So, the Pill. Sixteen years? Seventeen? Continuously, to skip my period for four, five? Whenever that research started coming out. I was a fanatic. Maybe if I had had scares never having a period would've freaked me out during my…sexual high points, but I started doing it in med school. I sure as hell wasn't going to go back during my internship. Addison actually made sure the whole hospital knew that was a thing. My enthusiasm didn't help my notoriety, but everyone with a uterus should know. Periods suck. I did not miss tampons, let me tell you."
"Who would? Not unpacking the whole gynny care from your…Derek's ex thing."
"She wasn't my gynecologist. I just talked up her lecture. I guess it is weird. I don't have a lot of the hang-ups about sex other people do, I get that. Has…." She looked down at her bare feet on the carpet. "Has this whole conversation been too much? Cristina and I talk about sex stuff, but it's still with the oh, so dirty, undertone, but I…don't think…if everyone didn't make me think I should see it that way…."
"No, Mer, absolutely not. It's kind of amazing for me. I've always felt like…Sex is a way of connecting. Yeah, for me it's usually with someone I like in other ways, too, but not…Molly waited until marriage, not because she's any more religious than any of us, but Eric's mom was, and… one person! She's had sex with one person!"
I'll be happy only ever having sex with one person again. It wasn't a thought Meredith would've imagined herself having two years ago, and not simply because of sexual appetites. Sure, she'd considered her partners to be more or less interchangeable until Derek, with a couple exceptions, but she wouldn't put anyone through the pain of being cheated on, either. More, it was that she couldn't imagine finding the person who felt the same way about her.
"Um. Seventeen. By the way…just. If we're sharing. I was seventeen, and it was good. Everyone is always so judgey when I say that, but, god, I was a teenager. They're walking nerves, like you said, of course it can be good, if you know what you're doing."
"If you've read The Joy of Sex with an eidetic memory. you mean?"
The strawberry ice cream pink came back into Lexie's cheeks. "And you're willing to be bossy."
"Nice." Meredith jammed the faucet on, keeping eye contact with Lexie in the mirror while she wet her toothbrush. She was still pretty sure their experiences were different, but they might not be as different.
"Does Derek know when you…? He seems like he'd be…."
"Judgmental, but try to pretend it's jealousy? Yeah. He was a bandnerd. I was in a band. Major difference. Uh, he knows. And he knows not everyone grew up Catholic, and I don't see it as a big deal. It'll be a conversation or twenty once we have a kid."
Meredith stuck her toothbrush in her mouth and began to scrub much more vehemently than usual. He will never give my—our—child the look he gave me on that stairwell. They will never feel like they are meant to be ashamed.
"He'ssa priss," she summed up for her sister, because she still looked at Derek like he might not be a god, but he sure wasn't human. Meredith knew he was human, and she loved him for it. A conversation or twenty for sure.
"Seriously, no one knows you're not-trying-but?"
"They do not, and if you tell anyone…." Meredith wagged her toothbrush. She'd ended her attack on plaque before she made her gums bleed. Mostly. Lexie held up her hands.
"Nope. Got it."
"Good." She could conceive tomorrow, and there'd be months before she had to deal with the gossip. She needed the months.
"You'll be a great mom, whenever. Wanna know how I know?"
"Yes, because last I heard, I have some pretty big mommy issues."
"Sure. But a minute ago, you said you want to make sure your child has you as long as they need you. Not that you have them as long as possible. That's how. You're selfless."
Meredith gripped the counter, her knees wobbling a little beneath her flannel pajama pants. Hearing that from Lexie, from this girl—woman—who had a great mom and could probably find every reason to insist Meredith should never be put in charge of a child, saw the reason she stopped picking up her prescription. She wanted to be a mom. She wanted to have Derek's baby, flaws and all. And she wanted to give that baby the world.
"Everyone's going to say, 'well, you know what not to do.' I kept expecting Sadie to know somehow and come out with it. Cristina will. Anyone who ever met my mother. But she wasn't…she didn't…. She gave me a lot of other things, too, you know? I want to give a child those, but also the compassion, and the love, and all the other touchy-feely emotional mumbo-jumbo."
"Send those people to me. I'll shut them up. Um. About the sex stuff, too. If anyone ever…said anything." Their eyes met in the mirror, and Meredith paused with floss halfway to her mouth.
"That's not…. It's not a secret, exactly. I'm just not out to many people."
"No, I meant… I don't know what happened, but Derek obviously said something at some point about you being a…sexual person…and it wasn't good. So. If anyone, even him—especially him—does that again…."
"I'd handle it," Meredith said. Lexie's face fell. "And then I'd send them to you." Boing! Back to the smile. How does she flit between dark and light so quickly? "The bi thing…. I kinda expected more people to figure it out, with Sadie running around…."
Lexie shrugged. "I know what a spurned Grey looks like."
"So does everyone on staff."
"If it's an open wound, yeah. I know the scars. It's an eye thing."
"Is it?" Meredith didn't bother masking her amusement.
"You get your Sadie eye thing, I get this." Lexie's voice carried from out to the hallway bathroom, where she'd gone to get her own toothbrush. "When Molly broke up with Eric this one time—Whoa, hold on—" Meredith, who'd been turning down the bed stopped. "Eric. You never finished. What's the deal with Sadie's brother?"
"There's not a deal."
"No way. I may not be used to being a little sister, but I am a sister, and I have ways of making you talk."
"You don't wanna go there, Little Grey." Meredith put a hand on her hip. "My front tooth was gone for all of third grade, because I got it punched out, and you should have seen. Aaron Caulder."
"Wow, you really were... Nope. Not falling for it. Besides, you wouldn't. You're not the kind of person who hits littler…well, younger…kids. Sisters."
"I—You don't know that!" Meredith knew the way she was holding her chin up made her look about ten years old, in addition to sounding it. Sometimes she loved how right Lexie was about her all the time, but sometimes she hated it. Especially when she knew she'd gotten this trait from her mother.
"I bet. C'mon. It's eleven-thirty. What time's your shift?" Lexie asked. Meredith winced. "That's what I thought. I'm off tomorrow. Wanna know how many bottles of pop I've taken down and passed around?"
"It's really not a…. He's her half-brother, okay? From her mom's first marriage. He lives with his dad, and he didn't meet Sadie until she was twenty-one."
Lexie gave her the long stare she expected, but the rest of her reaction was wholly unforeseen. She simply uncrossed her arms, and said, "Huh. No wonder she knew to play me to toy with you." Neither of them spoke while Lexie brushed her teeth, and Meredith finished getting ready for bed. It wasn't until she'd flipped off the light that Lexie added, "I feel sorry for Sadie in a lot of ways. I kind of hate her, knowing how long she had you, and what she took for granted, but I am sorry for her. Her long-lost brother must've been a disappointment, too."
"Why?" Aside from not having met Eric, Meredith didn't know much about him. Sadie mentioned him about as much as Meredith mentioned her second-cousin Roland, the only living relative on her mom's side.
"'Cause…." Lexie already sounded sleepy. "She'd have known not to mess with someone's little sister."
It would've been easy to assume Lexie was talking about Molly in relation to herself. It would've taken Meredith off a hook she still wasn't sure she wanted to be on—protecting Lexie, not just protecting a younger class of doctors. She didn't. Not with Lexie's snores, lighter than hers, but there, wafting through the room. At some point while she'd been learning to accept Lexie as a person, she'd stopped hating the idea of having a sister.