Merdieth Grey is five years old. Her daddy has not been home for days and days, she does not know how long, but it has been a very long time. Mommy's been working and Merdieth only sees her at night when she should be asleep. Mommy used to yell at her when she was up past bedtime, and then Daddy would tuck her back in. Now, there is no Daddy to tuck her in, so Mommy just takes her hand and puts her back in bed. She kisses her lightly on the forehead and leaves. When Merdieth wakes up she is always gone. It is the housekeeper, Elena, who takes her to school, who fixes her meals and who puts band-aids on her cuts. Other than that the little girl with big, sad eyes is alone in a house which is much too big for her.
At twelve Meredith Meredith has accepted that her mother is never going to think that anything she does is good enough. She has learned to cook her own meals, although they don't taste very good. She went by herself to buy her first bra. The only reason she does well in school is to make her teachers smile at her. She craves something more, someone who cares more. She has grown to hate Seattle, the way it always rains, the puddles, the dreariness. She wants to get away from here to go somewhere. Her mom is dead set on her going to college, already, and Merdieith thinks that this will eventually be her tikket out.
Her teachers do not know what to do with her. They are not sure when sweet little Meredith Grey became the girl with too much mascara in the back row of the classroom, the one who misses first periods and drags herself into second with bloodshot eyes. They imagine it has something to do with the promotion they have heard her mother recieved, or the huge sixteenth birthday party that had the entire population talking for two weeks later. Something about no supervision and booze, and Meredith's mother coming home to find her duaghter in her bedroom with James Wilson, a senior. What surprises them the most are her grades. Despite being the student with the poorest attendence and attitude, Meredith has the best grades in her class.
Graduation day. Meredith is valadictorian. Her classmates whisper about this. They are still flabbergasted that this girl, the one who all of them have seen boozed out of her mind dancing atop someone's kitchen table, managed to get fives on all ten AP test she has taken and graduate with a 4.9 GPA. There have been rumors that Meredith was planning something big for the speech at graduation, but then Kira Johnson, who is somehow Meredith's friend despite being the furthest thing from a party girl. No one knows how they are friends but the two of them. The truth is that Meredith hit rock bottom in her junior year, and the only one she could call was a girl who she hadn't spoken to since she was eleven, but who was once her best friend.
There is no uproar at the ceremony, instead Doctor Ellis Grey sits in the front row, smiling at her daughter and Meredith's speech reveals nothing of the girl who has spent twelve years in school with those to whom she is speaking.
College is rather a blur for Meredith, up until she got her Bachelor's. Away from her mother's disapproval and demands she was able to relax and do well, but there was always that temptation lurking around whenver she heard about a parry going on, and soon she gave in. It was deeper than high school there were more men, there was more alcohol and more sex. It is not until she comes home for Christmas that she realizes that she cannot do this. Christmas day her mother is at Seattle Grace, and for once Meredith goes along. She wanders the halls as she once did as a small child, waiting for her mother to get out of surgery. Some people say hello to her, but there are people she does not recognize. There is a new cardic surgeon and the interns are new, of course. She ends up in the gallery of the room that her mother is operating in, and as she watches, she knows. She wants to do this. She wants to be a surgeon.
She does not tell her mother that she has been applying to Med schools. It is not until she gets accepted at Dartmouth that she has to tell her. Her mother sits her down and gives her a long lecture that ends with: "For God's sake Meredith, do you want to be me?" Meredith shrinks slightly, but she knows the answer.
"No Mom, I want to be me. And that me is a surgeon."
Her mother does not say anything else.
The last place she expects to do her internship is Seattle Grace. She had been accepted at Johns Hopkins, but then her mother called asking her to come home. The last time that happened was when the former chief died, a man who had been a presence throughout Meredith's childhood. Now Meredith comes, on a weekend between the end of classes and finals, because she has never heard her mother seem weak and in that one phone call, she did. They sit in the livingroom, and her mother does not meet her eyes.
"Meredith. I have to tell you something. I've been having some problems lately. I was forgetting surgeries, losing things. I thought it was stress, but... but two months ago I was at the hospital and I had no idea where I was. It frightened me, Meredith. So I went to see someone I interned with, who is a neurourgeon now. He practices in Dallas." She looked away towards the window, fiddling with the watch on her arm. "Meredith. I have early onset Alzheimer's."
Meredith drew in a breath and reached out to her mother, but the woman shifted away from her.
"No one can know this, Meredith. No one. They think... well... Didn't you apply to intern at Seattle Grace?"
Three months later, twenty-nine year old Meredith Grey stands in the livingroom, alone, in a house that is still too big for her.