Well, this is it, a sort of answer to some of the questions (not very conclussive I know) but anyway, this explains why people were talking about Meredith. I am considering whether or not this should be the last chapter. There are still a lot of unresolved issues so it doesn't have to be, but it really depends on what you guys think/want... So leave a review and tell me whether you want them (and me) to keep going or if you'd rather quit while they're ahead... lol...
Cupboard Love
Have you ever swum to the bottom of the lake, ready to bring back that proof full of sand? Can you remember the feeling on the way back up, when you see the light dancing through the waves above? Your lungs, burn like they're filled with acid and your muscles ache like they're clamped in place, but you kick even harder in blind panic towards that first breath of air.
Meredith tilted back her head and gulped it down. Her air from the bottle and she waited as it spread to her stinging eyes, to her heavy heart, and she didn't care as her throat caught fire, cause this was the price of peace.
Greedy as that little girl in the lake so many years before, she swallowed hard and gasped for more and more until reality slid down the wall of the linen closet. She slid down the wall of the linen closet, into a darkness without cheating, or pain, or guilt, or love.
That's where he found her. Shaking amongst the sheets, three bottles taken from her locker now lay empty at her feet. At first he thought she was dead. Irrational, blind panic overtook him and he leant forward to grab her, but she wasn't dead. Well, she was still breathing, but it felt as though her heart might have stopped months ago. Blearily, terrified by light and noise coming through the open door, she tried to pull away.
Carefully, he closed the door. Sinking to the floor beside her he waited.
The closet was uncomfortable to say the least. Somewhere amongst the spirits, Meredith had thrown up and the stench of vomit was overwhelming in the small space. Still he could be nowhere as nauseous and she must be feeling, so he held her hand as the tremors gripped her and he whispered meaningless words as the tears trickled over her cheeks and he wrapped his arms about her as the pain pierced her stomach. He grasped her hair as she vomited again and again and at last, he held her as she fell asleep.
Somehow, in that putrid little cupboard he found a pain and a love he had never imagined possible. No night had ever lasted like that one, where every set of footsteps walking past set his heart on edge, every moan from her tiny form was another little twist.
He thought over everything that had lead up to this moment. An angry Christina trailing, he had seen her heading down the corridor to where Bailey stood, George at her side.
"Grey, I'd like a private word please." Bailey, usually good with tact was furious, she didn't even send away O'Malley, or Yang, then, catching site of Derek, her frown had deepened. "Look, I might not approve of what you do in your free timeā¦"
It had happened at that moment. As though Meredith had been bottling up her feelings for months, as though, somehow, this public humiliation-confrontation-interrogation had just made her snap.
"I'm sorry." She shouted and by then half the nurses had gathered around the ends of the corridor. "I'm sorry for not being a better friend," Her eyes wandered to George, "And for not being my mother," she glanced to where Bailey and Webber stood, "and I'm sorry for falling in love with a man who's already married. I've tried to sleep, God," she laughed through the tears, "I've even tried to be celibate, but I can't help it, this is who I am."
When Meredith woke the next morning, she was in her own bed. Someone had washed the vomit off her face and out of her hair, and they had dressed her in her own clothes. They had placed four aspirin next to her permanent glass of water and a bucket next to her bed, and crazy as it was, for a moment, through the world's worst hangover, she thought that maybe, just maybe, things would turn out alright.
