Hello! So firstly, thanks for reading this! I've started re-watching Grey's now it's on Disney+ and this idea popped into my head, I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with it just yet so bare with me. But I'd love to know what you think and if anyone would be interested in me continuing. Let me know what you think!
Chapter One
"Meredith…" A voice filtered through into her mind although she couldn't quite place where it was coming from. "Meredith!" She shook her head and blinked a few times, trying to adjust her eyes to what she was seeing. There was no way she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, it was impossible. Her mother was dead. Ellis had been dead for several months, there was no way that she could be stood in the OR, that familiar look of disapproval on her face as she watched her daughter, it just wasn't possible. Except for the fact that no matter how many times she blinked and shook her head, Meredith could still see her, standing in the corner of the OR, in her scrubs, watching the surgery they were performing.
"Doctor Grey!" Derek's tone was sharper this time. Sharp enough that it snapped Meredith out of her confusion, and she turned to look up at him in confusion.
"Sorry…" She mumbled, unsure of what else to say. Explaining that she'd been trying to work out why her dead mother was in the room watching didn't seem like a great thing to do in front of a packed OR.
He lowered his voice a fraction. "Are you okay?"
"She's okay, she's just okay- ordinary at best." Ellis shrugged, the disappointment clear in her voice. "I thought my child would grow up to be extraordinary but no, as ordinary as the next resident this one."
Meredith stared open-mouthed at her mother. This had to be some kind of nightmare. She'd wake up any second now, she had to.
"Meredith." Derek hissed, conscious that the interns and scrub nurses were starting to stare.
She looked at him blankly for a moment. "I um… I don't feel well. Can I be excused?" She blurted out. She needed to get out of that OR, dream or no dream. She felt like the was about to throw up into the open brain in front of her if this carried on much longer.
"Are you okay?" Derek asked, looking at her with concern. He could see the beads of sweat on her forehead and the wide-eyed look of panic on her face.
"I'm fine," Meredith answered, staring straight ahead at her mother who was rolling her eyes at her. "I just um… I think I ate something funny last night and I need to go sit down for a minute before I throw up."
"You see this is why you're just ordinary." Ellis sighed, shaking her head. "Running out of the OR to go and hide because you don't feel well? Missing out on surgery to go and have a lie-down. Amateur."
"Shut up." Meredith hissed.
"What?" Derek looked at her in confusion.
"Nothing, sorry." She felt her face turn scarlet. "Can you please get someone to come and hold this clamp before I throw up into Mr Smith's brain?" She pleaded.
Derek nodded, his face softening. "Alright then, um…" He hesitated as he looked at the intern, trying to remember his name. "Steve… It's your lucky day! Take this, hold it like that, yes that's it."
The second Steve took hold of the clamp Meredith bolted from the OR before Derek could say anything else. Derek watched in confusion as she bolted into the scrub room, stripping out of her mask and gown and leaning against the sink. "Okay.." He said, trying to refocus himself. "Let's get this finished up."
Meredith fled to the nearest on-call room, running past Sloan who tried to speak to her as she ran past the nurse's station. She sunk down on the bed, put her head in her hands and tried to slow her breathing. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, her stomach churning as she fought to regain control over her breathing. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, focusing on breathing in and out. Nice and steady. In and out.
"Oh, get it together, Meredith." Ellis sighed, rolling her eyes at the state of her daughter. "You're never going to make it as a surgeon, are you?"
Meredith's eyes snapped open, staring at her mother in confusion. "You're not here." She shook her head. "You're not here, you're not real. You're dead." She repeated it over and over, like a chant, trying to convince herself. "You're not real. This is just a dream."
"If I wasn't real would I be able to do this?" Ellis asked, taking a couple of steps forward and putting her hand on Meredith's shoulder.
Meredith shrank away from the touch as though it burned. "No… No… Just… No." She mumbled, her breath coming in short, ragged bursts again. "No." She sobbed.
"Why do you think I'm here?" Ellis asked, raising an eyebrow at her daughter.
"See," Ellis smirked triumphantly, taking a step back again and sitting on the edge of the desk that was opposite where Meredith was sat. "I told you so."
"You… but you…. This isn't happening." Meredith shook her head. "Why… Why are you here?"
"What do I mean why am I here?" Ellis asked. "You know why I'm here, Meredith."
"Oh yeah, because this all makes so much sense." Meredith choked out between her gasps for air. "I'm sitting here talking to my dead mother for god's sake."
"I'm here for you, Meredith," Ellis said simply, as though Meredith should know exactly what she was talking about.
Meredith snorted with indignation. "You were never there for me when you were alive so excuse me if I don't believe that for one minute."
"I'm here for you," Ellis repeated.
"Can you please close up for me?" Derek asked. He'd struggled to make it through the last hour of his surgery without knowing what was wrong with Meredith and if she was okay, now the end was in sight he wanted out of that OR as quickly as possible. He barely waited for the resident to nod before he turned and headed for the door, stripping out of his gown and gloves and heading in search of his girlfriend.
"Looking for Grey?" Mark asked as Derek rushed past the nurse's station.
"Have you seen her?" Derek asked, pausing as he waited for his friend to answer him.
Mark smirked. "She's knocked up, isn't she?"
"Mark." Derek snapped. "Where did she go?" His mind began to spin as he processed Mark's words. Was she? It was possible, he supposed, but surely, she would've told him, wouldn't she? Then again it was very unlike her to nearly throw up into an open brain. He had to find her.
"On-call room, down the hall." Mark pointed. "She ran in there about an hour ago and I haven't seen her leave."
"Thanks," Derek called, already jogging down the hall to find her. He could hear the muffled sound of sobbing through the door and it broke his heart.
"Meredith?" He said softly, opening the door. It was dark inside, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the light. "Hey, it's okay." He quickly dropped to his knees in front of her, his hands on her knees.
She sat on the edge of the bed, head in her hands with her body shaking from the strangled sobs that were escaping her mouth. She flinched at his touch, her eyes opening, and she looked at him in confusion as the tears continued to stream down her cheeks. "Derek?" Her eyes searched the room for a moment before she looked back at him.
"What's wrong?" He asked gently, she'd seemed fine this morning and he had no idea where this outburst had suddenly come from.
She looked at him for a moment, her eyes wide with terror at the thought of explaining what had just happened, he'd surely have her committed to the psych ward. Maybe she had gone mad, it seemed like a logical explanation for what she'd just experienced.
"Breathe, Meredith. You need to breathe." He reminded her, her breaths were short and shallow again, the panic rising in her throat making it difficult to breathe. He could see her chest heaving with the effort. "Meredith, look at me." He put a hand on either side of her face to lift her head until she was looking at him. "Deep breaths okay, just keep looking at me. Ready? In….. Out…. That's it… Keep going."
He had no idea how long they'd stayed there like that, him kneeling on the floor of the on-call room reminding her to breathe. Eventually, her breathing slowed to normal and the fresh tears stopped flowing down her cheeks. He reached up and gently wiped the tear marks from her cheeks.
"Meredith…" He said softly.
She shook her head at him. "Please don't." She whispered, her voice hoarse. "Can we please just pretend that this didn't happen?"
"Meredith…" He sighed. "This is not nothing." He worried about her on a normal day, she'd always been a bit dark and twisty, or whatever it was her and Christina were calling it, and ever since that incident with the bathtub and the drowning at the ferry crash he'd not been convinced that at least part of it hadn't been deliberate. But she wouldn't talk about it, and so instead of talking about it, he worried about it every day. Seeing her sat here like this was making him wonder if he should have done something sooner though.
"Can we please just talk about this at home?" She sniffed, giving him a pleading look. She knew there was no way on earth he was just going to drop it, it wasn't in his nature, but it would give her a few hours to come up with something that she could tell him that didn't involve confessing that she was having full-blown conversations with her dead mother.
"I think maybe you should go home?" He suggested. "I can go and talk to Richard."
"I'm fine, I have patients." She shook her head, moving to stand up. His hands-on her legs held her firmly in place.
"Meredith, you are not fine." He shook his head.
"No, he's right Meredith." Meredith's head snapped up at the sound of her mother's voice. This couldn't be happening, not again. She stared blankly at her Mother, willing her to go away. She was still there though, no matter how much she willed her to disappear.
"Meredith?" Derek prompted, seeing that she'd zoned out again. "Earth to Meredith…"
She looked back down at him, although he could tell her mind was somewhere else. "You know what… I think um… I think you might be right. Maybe I'll go home." She mumbled.
"Why don't I cancel my surgeries and come with you?" He suggested, far from convinced that she ought to be on her own in this state.
She shook her head at him. "I'm fine, I'll be fine. Can you please just go back to work and tell Richard I'll be back tomorrow?" She pleaded.
Derek reluctantly agreed. "Call me when you get home?" He asked.
She nodded, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before she headed for home.
"What do you mean she's sick?" Bailey asked him incredulously. "That girl worked a full shift with appendicitis and a fever last year. If she hadn't passed out, she would've carried on. Meredith Grey does not do sick days."
"Bailey, please can you just drop it?" Derek pleaded. "She wasn't feeling well and she went home, that's all it is. Richard knows, he's fine with it."
"I didn't say she wasn't sick, I was just saying if she's that sick that she can't work then there must be something really wrong with her so I'm not sure what your stupid ass is doing standing here talking to me and not looking after her." Bailey shot back at him.
"I've got one more surgery to do then I'm going home to check on her." He sighed. "I tried to cancel it but I can't and there's no one who can cover for me. If you stopped interrogating me I'd be in the OR by now." He started to walk away from her, eager to get the surgery over and done with so he could get home and find out what on earth was going on with his girlfriend.
"Dr Shepard?" Bailey called after him.
He stopped and turned to face her. "What now, Bailey?" His patience was wearing thin already.
"Can you let me know how she is, later?" Bailey asked. "It's not like her and I'd feel better knowing she's okay?" They might not be her interns any more, but it didn't stop Bailey from worrying about them all the same.
"Will do." He nodded and headed to the OR before anyone else could stop him. He sometimes forgot about the softer side of Miranda Bailey, but he could see the genuine concern for Meredith on the other doctor's face.
Meredith would be okay, whatever it was- they'd get through it. For now, he just had to get through a couple more hours of surgery.