Kindly Stop for Me

by Chicleeblair

What kind of person flees on the night of her husband's funeral and ends up hitting overwhelmed twelve-thousand miles away to her ex-lover's city? A Meredith Grey type. A "What Happened in San Diego?" fic. Mer/Der Past Meredith Grey/Sadie Harris

18. November 2014 (Part II)

"C-can you come over?"

Meredith had almost grabbed the wrong phone. Grabbing the old one and called Alex, or Cristina, or Callie, and letting them harangue her would've been comforting. It would've been helpful. It would not have been be what she needed. She needed someone who could physically keep her from throwing the laptop across the room.

"Of course," Sadie said. "Mer, what is it?"

"There are cupcakes in the oven, and I have twenty minutes, which is about the amount of time I can stand to spend going through my thousands of emails at once, and fucking Dillard has a patient portal."

"Dillard's like the department store?"

"You really weren't at Seattle Grace long, were you? It's the, um, a medical center in the suburbs. Along the Sound. The one where Derek died. I read the chart that night, but….

Flipping through those forms had made it almost possible it was all a nightmare. They were formatted just differently enough to be strange, but not enough that the numbers didn't symbolize the same thing they would with any patient. It'd made her flinch a little signing paperwork at the OB, and again charting cases at the clinic. Seeing the scans on her screen all these months later was an invasion that scraped a layer off an old wound and caused another. Grey+Sloan's paperless charting wouldn't protect her from having to face it one more time. This was one of those days where going back felt impossible.

"They…they digitized. Same as us. That's how I knew Maggie wasn't full of shit. Shouldn't've thought that. Who'd lie about being related to Ellis?"

"No one who knew her."

"Well, she didn't, but—"

"Mer? Are you looking at Derek's stuff, now?"

"No. Um. They sent me a link. I haven't opened it."

"Heading out. Don't…. Just let the kids watch Daniel Tiger on your laptop or something. Don't click anything."

"You realize I'd have to click to do that."

"You do not. B could start an episode himself if you got him on Youtube."

"Where does Daniel Tiger stream again, Sades?"

"Shut up. That's necessary Gay Aunt Sadie knowledge." Was she imagining the edge in Sadie's voice based the conversation she'd overheard I on Halloween

"Are you sure you can leave? It's a holiday." In healthcare, that didn't mean having the day off; it often meant there were patients who didn't come in any other time. "Not a huge one, but the kids are home."

"Veteran's Day isn't too bad. A little short-handed. We're in pretty good with the VA. Run enough support groups, and you collect vets on staff. Some of them marched in Pride a couple years ago. First parade where LGBT service members could march in uniform."

"The year of the firework bomb?"

"Oddly, yes. Okay, I'm in the car. Am I putting you on speaker?"

"No, that's okay." Meredith swiped the trackpad, hard, to get the arrow away from the open email.

"Ten minutes. Don't click."

"Got it."

She put the phone down and clicked, taking herself back to the cascading list of sale alerts and other messages from unrecognized email addresses. She'd almost missed the Your Patient Portal! subject line, and maybe it would've been better if she had. What would she be doing other than torturing herself? She hadn't ever wanted to see those details again, but it was all just there. Everything that'd been done that day; in the hours she'd spent half at work and half back in the woods.

She could hear Miranda saying, "Okay, well, how long can you go without hearing from him before you absolutely go crazy?" She could see the clock in the OR. He'd been meant to fly out of SeaTac at 7:45 a.m. on United. It'd put him at Dulles at 3:51 Eastern, one o'clock in Seattle. If he'd missed that flight—and he would've called her, but never mind that—the next flight left at 1:25 p.m. That landed at 6:20 Pacific, so, really, five o'clock would've been early to freak out, except that he would've let her know. The day she'd insisted that he go, he'd text her every time his flight got pushed, knowing that she'd have an intern monitoring the app. He hadn't been taken off of enough GSM alerts that he wouldn't have heard about the crash—Richard had probably told the story to his voicemail—He'd have updated her if his itinerary—

A shrill beeping reached her, and she couldn't say if she was in the OR with Bailey, or the ICU with Derek, or—"Mommaaaa! Bad oven!" Bailey bumped against her leg, his hands smashed over his ears, and his lower lip stuck out.

"Crap. I'm sorry, buddy. I'm shutting it off right now." She left the laptop balanced on the arm of the sofa, the same fifty out of a gazillion unread emails on the screen.

"I got him," Zola said, popping up from the elaborate Duplo construction she'd been occupied with and covering Bailey's hands with her own. He jerked his head, but then noticed that she'd blocked more of the accursed trill. He hated it enough that Meredith tried to avoid using the oven unless he was at school, but there were only so many of those hours, and Zola's party was in three days.

She slammed the aluminum tray down onto the counter, next to a tray holding her last batch. Half of those had frosting dripping down over the paper holders, and the others looked like she'd sprayed shaving cream across the tops. She recognized the first mistake. Probably wasn't going to be frosting this next batch while they were too hot. Come to think of it… she grabbed the bowls of pink, purple, and white frosting and juggled them over to the fridge. That'd been a whole thing in itself. She didn't think someone like Izzie—well, maybe Izzie, doctors were nerds—put this kind of effort into learning what they were doing. They just followed the directions…recipe. She could've produced a lab report from her experiments with food coloring.

Meredith was interning in Mom-ing. If she needed to be able to do something on the fly, she needed to understand what she was doing, so she'd feel it if she was about to screw up. This wasn't a natural thing for her; she'd done okay in Chem, but she was a biology person. Some interns didn't take to suturing, but by the end of the year, they'd be able to close any incision. They'd also know when to call in Plastics. She wasn't deluding herself. She wasn't going to be a baker when she grew up—Zola might; her enthusiasm made Meredith wish she'd grabbed the chef's hat and apron from the costume box—Their baked goods would mostly be purchased, but she wanted to say she could. She wanted to be able to make Christmas cookies with her kids or produce a pan of brownies for a bake sale.

Baby Girl's smash cake would say Happy Birthday.

She'd just put the frosting next to the stack of egg cartons when the rap on the door startled her. A few seconds earlier and the kitchen would've been covered in frosting. Cleaning that up would be a better way to spend her afternoon than reliving that night, but all three bowls stayed balanced.

"Is Aunnie Sadie!" Bailey announced, and then giggled as Sadie made a face at the window. She knew the kids well enough to anticipate they'd be standing there and wasn't concerned with looking foolish if they weren't. Meredith couldn't help agreeing with Fati; Sadie was good with kids. This Sadie was. Her Sadie hadn't cared enough to try. But Sadie was Sadie. Wasn't she?

Meredith went to the door. She'd gotten to the point where words like "lumbered" and "waddled" definitely penetrated her mental narrative. She was almost past the point where Bailey had been born, but the condo was small enough that she didn't feel too ungainly.

"You could've used your key."

"It's with Fati. We figured that if you went into labor, you'd need a real adult."

"I…wouldn't mind you being there," Meredith said. Sadie's jaw dropped before she could pretend it'd been an off-handed statement. "You're my oldest friend, Sades. You were there for the food poisoning in Prague, and you've seen the rest of it."

"True." She tucked her tongue into her cheek. "Well, tell her to stay in 'til I get back from Lima."

"That your next destination?"

"Not for weeks. I'll have the joy of traveling right after Thanksgiving," Sadie said, picking up Bailey and dangling him upside down.

"I've never done that. Always stayed on campus, and then Derek and I made a point of not going out to his mom's. Working it was kind of a thing."

"It's not cases like this. It's this one case. You don't get it. You have a life; you go to sleep, you wake up, and that life doesn't exist anymore?"

Sadie's hand was on her arm. Meredith tried to pull away, and she dug in, the way Cristina did if she blinked out during a conversation. "You just went a whiter shade of pale, D."

Meredith let herself be led to the kitchen table and slipped on the overshirt draped over the chair. Still the third. She hadn't wanted to get flour and frosting all over the last one. The idea of Christmas already felt like a weight; she figured she'd need every comfort she could find.

He'd been wearing what he'd jokingly called "casual business" that day. A mediun blue shirt that she low-key thought washed out his eyes, but if he was going to D.C., she wasn't going to say anything. She'd been glad for the color when they'd handed her the plastic bag of his belongings; if it was a shade that'd stood out in her memories of him, she'd have integrated the dark patches into them.

"Have a few cupcakes?" Sadie asked. She started to change setting on the fridge, automatically, because Meredith generally left it on crushed out of sheer pettiness. That she stopped herself and filled it three-quarters of the way with ice meant that at some point in the past couple of weeks, she'd noticed that Meredith had been keeping cups of it around, crunching it until it became water and drinking the rest.

Shaking out the sleeves of her shirt so she could cuff it, Meredith cringed. There was even a plastic container of knitting supplies on the table. "It's not what it looks like."

"Really? Looks to me like your beautiful, sweet daughter is turning five this weekend, and you're overdoing it."

"It's a little what it looks like, fine. I only…Izzie baked a lot, after her fiancé died. Muffins."

"Huh. And the Froot Loops?"

"Potty training starts after Thanksgiving."

"I don't want to know how that's relative." Sadie deposited the glass beside Meredith's elbow. "I'll set them up with…what DVD do you want to watch, guys?"

"Muppey T'easure Island," Bailey said, jumping up midway through placing a Duplo block under his sister's instruction. Zola plucked it out of his hand. Bailey didn't react, so Meredith didn't bother telling her not to snatch. She knows that rule. I can let her break it.

She could imagine Derek frowning, but he'd let their daughter get away with worse. "You're going to have to hold Bailey to the same standard," she'd pointed out, once, sighing. "You'll let them both get away with murder."

"Half a brownie is not murder." he'd pointed out, trading the wipe she'd been offering him for the napkin that had proved unequal to the quarter of a brownie on Zola's face. "Unless you made them."

Check me out now, bub. She surveyed the kitchen again. Yeah, he'd probably be wearing the same smirk. He'd have tried the cupcakes, though, and they'd gotten consistently not bad.

"Zo, is that movie okay with you?" she asked. They were going on months of Bailey picking the same movie on almost every rotation. She should've kept a tally; diversified their TV time…. Stop. Rewind. You did what you could when you could.

"Sofia the First is next," Zola told her brother, and he nodded, like he would never consider throwing a tantrum at the end of his movie. Never, not ever. Yesterday was absolutely the last time that would happen.

Sure, kid.

"It's fine, Mommy." Zola grabbed the remote off the coffee table. "I can do the menus."

"I was just telling your mom how good you guys are with things like that!" Sadie exclaimed.

Zola grinned. Bailey sat on the couch his shoes pressed together in an impression of crossed legs. His little anticipatory bounces said he'd stay entranced for a while. Meredith suspected Zola would go back to her construction, without having to worry that he would "not follow directions a-tent-a-tab-ly!"

"How long were Gho—Izzie and the patient a thing?" Sadie asked, unplugging the laptop cord from the outlet by the sofa and bringing it over.

"Um…He died the night of the knock-off Make-A-Wish prom, but it wasn't 'prom season,' so said to the clerk at Party City." That'd been a fun outing. She and Alex had run through the store like total dorks, channeling the adolescent hedonism that'd gotten them sent on the errand, and he'd almost worn the New Year's Eve Baby top-hat she'd crowned him with out of the door.

"Underclassmen maybe? Sweet kid. That was March. Denny…" She trailed off. That post-Thanksgiving period was bleary After they brought Doc home. After Christmas. George-sex was the end of January, and that was about when he got the L-VAD. "He came in right at the new year, so they quote-unquote saw each other for about three months. That's about what…not that we were engaged, but Derek and I met in June…July…whatever, and Addison showed up in September. I… would've been terrified, would've sabatoged myself, probably, but I might have said 'yes, just not right away.'"

"Well, think about it, my internship only lasted a couple months, but it changed everything. Started the change, anyway." Sadie smiled, the red-lipped, lopsided smile that Meredith knew. "Okay. What are we doing?"

"I'm not sure," Meredith admitted. "What if I missed something?"

"He wasn't your patient."

"He was my husband."

"You're not allowed to treat family. I didn't absorb much, but I got that."

"Eh." Meredith clicked. Shouldn't people have considered her Susan's family? Official, in charge of her, 'this is about more than your resentment or neediness' people? If she hadn't been in the room, would things with Thatcher have turned out differently?

"Crap, I need his Social Security card. It's…there's a box on the top shelf of the hall closet."

For the time it took Sadie to go down the hall, rummage through the closet, and return, Meredith considered closing the portal. She knew what'd happened. Blunt-force trauma. Head lac, ignored by a gung-ho general surgeon who wasn't listening to that…resident.

Soft. I was thinking of her as soft.

What happened to me?

You didn't call her that. You can be a good surgeon, not a machine. You are soft, and you are Medusa.

His wallet had fallen down to the side of the papers in the box, pinned by Zola's photo album. She fished it out. He kept the card behind his ID—When had she learned that? In the ICU, after the shooting? During the run-up to a wedding that hadn't happened?

"Aw, they're so little," Sadie said, pointing to the photo insert.

"Longest hour of my life. Bay was screaming in every other proof. I think the photographer's creepy toy scared him."

Whenever Derek had taken out his wallet over those last couple months, she'd wondered if he preferred having a reminder of how perfect things had been. Now, she could believe they'd just been too busy to sit for or print out a new one.

It took typing in the first three digits of his Social to realize she knew it by heart. All the other required information auto-filled, and three clicks later she was on the Patient Records page.

03/26/14 - 03/27/14 ADMIT.

"You don't have to," Sadie reminded her.

"I do."

Silently, Sadie held out her hand. Meredith took it.

John Doe, early-40s.

"Oh, he'd have loved that," she murmured, her cursor hovering over the estimation on the scan. "'What can I say, Mer? You and the kids keep me young.' Something like that."

E.T.A.: 1:17 p.m. MVA, unconsciousness on-site. Blunt-force trauma to the head, chest, and abdomen. Persistent hypotension. Frontal left scalp laceration, no step-off. GCS 10. (E.O. 4, V.R. 3, M.R. 3.) Equal & reactive. Surgery paged 1:19 p.m., 1:20 p.m.

"Moderate. He arrived there with a moderate GCS." Meredith blinked, and she him in the ICU bed, all the tubes removed, the white bandage wrapped around his head the way they showed in cartoons to indicate someone had a head injury. She'd checked under it, at some point, needing to know measurements. Needing to see to believe.

It'd overtaken the scar he'd indicated the night he given her details and told her nothing at all. The night she'd taken him on faith she'd never been able to shake.

A week later, once the mortician finished his work, there'd only been the single line left on his forehead, signaling her to put her faith elsewhere.

The next page of notes was in a different handwriting, and the signature read Dr. Penelope Blake. That wasn't the neurosurgeon, or the general surgeon who'd spoken to her. The resident. It had to be.

Flail chest, treated w/ 36 French chest tube. CT Recommended. Continued hypertension, tachycardia. Suspected thoracic bleeding. Stabilized in ER. Proceeded to OR for exploratory laparotomy.

The tests that had been ordered. A trauma panel and crossmatch. CBC, electrolytes, BUN, creatinine, amylase, PT/PTT, INR, UA, ethanol level, ABG. Numbers she contextualized all the time. Here, they didn't say more than major trauma.

"They're working on a blood test that'll help diagnose TBI," she noted, clicking through ultrasound captures.

How weird that if she glanced up, she'd see one of her own, an abdominal anomaly that wouldn't have been traceable that night, hadn't been detected in the blood test Owen ran when she passed out in the lounge. Was anyone going to buy that? Owen would've kept it a secret, the way someone must've done for her mother. Short of pulling up her records, like she and Alex had done with her mother's was there anything to suggest she hadn't found out she was pregnant and run?

"It probably wouldn't have gotten processed quickly enough. Not in a place that couldn't do a freaking intraoperative CT."

DILLARD MEDICAL CENTER 03/26/14 13:45

SURGICAL NOTES:

DOCTOR: PAUL CASTELLO M.D./F.A..C.S. PATIENT NAME: DEREK SHEPHERD

"Wait. Why'd he go from John Doe to Derek? Is that when you got there?"

"No. I was at work. There was a plane crash. That day," she added, catching the line between Sadie's brows. "Not our plane. Small plane…. Um, they took him in with this other group. There'd been an accident. A first one. Remember, big damn hero? That's why he missed the plane. Saving people. He got back into the car, and…." She arced her hand in front of her.

PRESENTING: ABDOMINAL BLEEDING, COLON AVULSED, GRADE-2 SPLENIC LAC

PROCEDURE(S):

TEMPORARY COLOSTOMY. BOWEL RESECTED. THORACATOMY. INTRAOPERATIVE T.E.E.

POSSIBLE COMPLICATION(S): HEMOTHORAX. PNEUMONTHORAX NEGATIVE. HYPOTENSION. PERSISTENT BRADYCARDIA. BLOWN RIGHT PUPIL

The words on the print-out didn't dance out of reach of her eyes. They weren't impossible to focus on. Not like everything had after the night she read them over, and over, desperate for them to change. They didn't flip, or glow, or anything. They were just diagnoses. Just procedures.

Derek was just a patient.

She thought of going over Susan's chart with Lexie. She'd thought her ability to be so detached proved the truth of it: Susan wasn't her family. Maybe she'd been wrong.

FOLLOW-UP: NEUROSURGICAL CONSULT. COHN - 5:35PM (PAGED: 4:04PM, 4:24PM, 4:44PM, 5:01PM, 5:15PM, 5:25PM, 5:30PM)

She'd been following the police car by then. It'd taken ten minutes to get the kids loaded, and getting off the island was never fast. There was a reason they stayed at the hospital during overnights, and it had a lot to do with the reason she despised this Dr. Cohn. An on-call neurosurgeon did not take twenty minutes off-campus for dinner, let alone an hour and a half.

"Castello would've been general, right?" Sadie asked. "Not trauma?"

"They didn't have a trauma specialist."

"Would you have done anything differently?"

"I would've gotten a head CT. I would've done a craniotomy. Burr holes," she responded, and there were the CT results. Cohn had cleared the blood, but the damage was done. His GCS had gone down to three, the lowest on the scale.

What would it have looked like when his GCS was ten? They'd done recovery from gunshots, from drowning. A hepatectomy. A splenectomy adjacent to a C-section. Multiple operations on his hand. They could've gotten through a temporary colostomy. She was a general surgeon. She very literally dealt with that shit every day. Anything was better than dead.

"Mer," Sadie said, gently, like she was prodding a wound. "You're not a neurosurgeon."

I should've been. The thought came so suddenly and surprised her enough that her finger hit the trackpad and advanced the chart to the next page.

CONSENT TO WITHDRAWAL OF LIFE-SUSTAINING MEASURES….

OBSERVATIONAL PERIOD: 6:15PM-12:19AM

DONOR: Y

BLOOD TYPE: A

ORGAN VIABILITY: N/A …

PHYSICIAN SIGNATURE: PAUL CASTELLO M.D./F.A..C.S.

NEXT OF KIN: MEREDITH ANNE GREY

Her signature didn't look the same. She signed dozens of forms a day, even with the increase in digitalization. She knew the variations. This one curved where lines should be straight, the sharp angles on the M.

She'd left off her credentials. Putting them below his felt wrong. Like boasting. A taunt in the worst possible moment. She hadn't been there as a doctor. A doctor couldn't do anything. A surgeon couldn't fix him. His wife could do what needed to be done to keep him from suffering where the doctors and surgeons had failed.

She'd used her middle name. Meredith Anne Grey. When had she last done that? She resisted the urge to dive for the box in the center of the table to search her papers, just barely. She had a feeling it might be on a similar set of paperwork with her mother listed as the patient. When Meredith's identity was being remolded.

Click. Click. Click.

CONFIRMATION OF DEATH

NAME: DEREK CHRISTOPHER SHEPHERD

D.O.B. 01/13/66

"Hey, Mer?"

"What?" Meredith snapped and regretted it, but Sadie didn't flinch. Sadie had one eyebrow raised, the way she used to whenever she was about to say something that would make Meredith snort in the middle of some hospital bigwig's speech.

"Your husband's first birthday was on Friday the thirteenth. As were his many, many birthdays to follow."

Meredith snorted. "Two years ago. I told him he owed the universe. That maybe he blew out all the darkness he was supposed to get with his birthday candles."

"Was he not amused?"

"Ah, no. He was. Apparently, the year we met, his birthday had been on a Friday. He said it must've been lucky, after all."

"That's disgusting, and you are glowing."

"I'm pregnant," she pointed out, but somewhere on top of the misery this paperwork had evoked, deeper than she'd felt in months; she could feel the ghost of the smile she hadn't been able to stop when he said that. Her fingers curled against her mouth. "I love him," she said. "We should've repelled each other. Sometimes we did. I think something in me knew we were gonna be a family, because I had so many reasons not to like him. Pulling the stunt with Addison…shouldn't that have been enough? But even when I didn't like him, I loved him."

DILLARD MEDICAL CENTER ICU

ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: L. COHN, MD/F.A.C.S.

NON-PERSONNEL PRESENT: MEREDITH GREY (WIFE)

PATIENT SUFFERED BLUNT-FORCE TRAUMA AND SCALP LACERATION FOLLOWED BY CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE. NON-RESPONSIVE OVER A PERIOD OF SIX (6) HOURS. WIFE AGREED TO WITHDRAW LIFE-SUSTAINING MEASURES AND PALLIATIVE CARE. GCS 3

VENTILATION SUPPORT REMOVED AT 1:37A.M. 3/27/14

X D.C.A. IDENTITY CONFIRMED AS DEREK SHEPHERD

X NO CARTOID PULSE PALPABLE

X NO RESPONSE TO VERBAL STIMULI

X NO RESPONSE TO SUB-ORBITAL PRESSURE

X PUPILS FIXED AND DILATED BILATERALLY

X NO HEART SOUNDS DURING THREE (3) MINUTES OF AUSCULTATION

X NO BREATHING SOUNDS DURING THREE (3) MINUTES OF AUSCULTATION

X NO SIGNS OF LIFE

DEATH CONFIRMED AT 4:12AM 03/27/14

Every step. She could see the figures in teal, and she couldn't identify the color of the nurses' scrubs, because she might settle on gray; it was stupid to avoid a homophone. Everything about the situation was stupid. Her stupid neurosurgeon husband dying of a stupid brain bleed. Stupid doctors. The stupid paramedics not taking him to a trauma center. Stupid truck driver.

They'd done what they could do. Not what she would've done. If….

Had she thought that, then? Remembered that first surgery, and the candle house, and his proposal with all their wins wallpapering the elevator? What if the sensors had been theirs?

Sadie reached over and closed out the window, each move deliberate like she expected Meredith to lash out and stop her. She expected herself to do that. She didn't, and that felt like a more decisive action. If she'd found this email six months ago, heck, three months ago, she wouldn't have been able to stop going through the chart, again and again. At night, while the kids slept. During the day, while they were at school. She could see the universe where it would take her over. She wasn't positive that wouldn't happen. She end up here again in the darkness, alone. But in this moment, she looked away. She thought Derek would be proud.

"It really wasn't your fault, with Izzie. The first time I had to take someone off life-support, I'd made the mistake. It wasn't anything…I'd kept her alive. We had all these nursing students messing up charts. There was a strike. She had a DNR. The woman. Grace. Her name was Grace, the hospital was still Seattle Grace….They called her family. Family like I'll have, unrelated sisters—"

"You have—"

"Maybe. Not my point. These three biddies…bubbes, really. Like the queens at their fussiest. Full on Trev, Chrys, and Antoine all 'Dollface, where do you think you're going at this hour?' Knowingthey couldn't stop me, but just being there.Also like the queens, these ladies had a dying loved one and no power of attorney. We had to wait for her daughter. She was a lesbian." Meredith choked on a sudden laugh and had to gulp half the glass of water to speak, with Sadie looking like a bird who wasn't sure if she'd had a feather plucked or not. "One of them was worried that meant she couldn't sign. Or, not worried. Distracting me from her gossipy friend. That's when I realized who they reminded me of. I didn't think about them enough. Couldn't.

"The daughter showed up with her partner. I took the tube out. I don't remember how long it took. I kept…I wanted to do something. I'd never not done anything. But this lady, she'd lived her life. I don't know if things were good with her daughter. If she was PFLAG or pray it away. She knew, at least. Seemed like the partner had met her. Still, I…."

"You thought of Ellis."

"Uh-huh. Derek saw me run into a supply closet. I was panicking All I could tell him was I didn't want Mom to die alone. Ended up, he was with her.

"I'd made a mistake, intubating Grace, but if I hadn't gone into that room, she would've. She was visioning her husband. That's what the hospice types call it. But that's not…it's not having a person there with you, to give you reassurance and dignity in the last moments. So, even though I…." I killed her. She caught the words before she said them. It was different. She knew that. "She had her daughter with her.

"With Derek… it took longer. He went into DIC. Breath sounds were irregular. The nurses kept telling me I could get up. Get water, stretch, but I couldn't…. I couldn't. I, um. I'd told him he could go. We'd be okay. I don't know how much I…if I believed myself, but I knew I had to tell him, because every other time, whenever I said 'go,' I meant' stay.' So, I think he just had to know I was telling the truth."

"Go to be a soul, right?"

Meredith and Sadie turned to see Zola standing next to her Duplo fort—Crap. She should've sent them to the bedroom. Zola might've argued, and had she been so impatient to be in that room again that she'd…? Sadie squeezed her hand. Meredith hadn't realized she was still holding it.

"Yes, baby. He had to leave his body because it couldn't work anymore."

"No one could fix him, because he was dead."

She'd been so firm with them that… night? Morning? The social worker tools her it has to sound final. They were the first ones she had to tell. She'd told herself at the same time.

"That's right, Miss Z. Bodies don't last forever."

"But his soul sees us. Like Santa Claus. Except no presents."

"What do you call that?" Sadie pointed at Meredith's belly. Meredith frowned. Derek didn't give her this baby. They made her. She was growing her, without him, and she'd be doing it if he was here. There'd be a baby if he was here

"Is Baby Girl a Christmas gift?"

"Maybe."

"No."

Sadie turned at Meredith's vehemence. "Oh?"

"I'm not having her in 2014. No way."

"You realize you don't control—"

"Watch me. Have I been killing your hand by the way? I clench."

"And I bet Mr. D.C. Shepherd loved it. Nah, I can handle your—"

"No D.C., Aunnie Sadie!"

"That was the first lesson you taught me, huh? I'm sorry. I meant Derek Christopher. "

"I Derek Bailey!"

"You are? Like your dad? That's so cool!"

"So cool!" he agreed, and then eager to keep the conversation going, he pointed at the TV. "Long John Seever."

"Mer? Is that Frankenfurter?"

"Oh, yes."

"He pirate! Has'a wood leg." Bailey stood on one foot, a recently gained skill. "Aunnie Callie make bot leg." He lowered his other foot, making a low whirring sound that wasn't far off from his growl.

"She had to ask Daddy for help," Zola interjected. "Brains move legs, and only Daddy can fix brains."

Meredith turned her body in the chair to face Zola and her tower. "That's not quite the whole story, sis. Your dad was a neurosurgeon. The brain is part of the nervous system. Do you know what that is?"

"The spine?" That was her go-to answer, but how many kids had a go-to answer when it came to neurology?

"There are a lot of nerves that make up the spine. They're made of neurons, and it's all part of connecting your muscles and organs to your brain. Pick up one of your blocks. Most robotic prosthetics like Aunt Arizona's are controlled by moving muscles above where the limb was removed. They only have a few ways to grip. Here." She held her head out for Zola's and arranged her fingers in an approximation of one of the grip positions she'd watched Callie program into a prosthetic hand. "Try picking up another."

Zola crouched over the box and scowled at the discovery that her fingers were too far apart to simply place on either side of a Duplo. She scooped with the side of her hand, and eventually flipped one onto her palm. "That's hard."

"Do you think you could draw as well if you couldn't feel where the crayon was?"

"I'd have to learn."

"And if you couldn't adjust your grip? Amputees who lose the hand they write with struggle for a long time, because their brain isn't used to sending those messages to the other hand. Do you remember how we talked about how much your brain does without you thinking about it? Your heartbeat, and breathing? When you walk, do you think time to move my left leg? Or do you just walk?"

Zola considered it, and took a couple purposeful steps forward, looking like Frankenstein's monster. "I hafta think about climbing the jungle-gym."

"That's true because that's a new skill. You had to learn to walk, too. But your nervous system is how you feel where your foot is. For a long time, prosthetic arms and legs have been made to feel natural to the touch, and to be light so they're easier to move, and comfortable to wear, but they aren't the same as real limbs, because they're not connected to the nervous system. Whenever someone learns to walk, their muscles are triggered by messages from a specific part of the brain. Your dad figured out how to find that place and created a sensor that could read the electric signal those neurons used. Instead of sending it to another neuron that went down to the leg, it went to a receiver attached to the prosthetic. It's similar to how I can tell my phone to play music on the speaker in the bedroom.

"That wouldn't work if Aunt Callie hadn't made the robotic parts of the leg move the same way in response to that signal. Her robot legs move like real ones. It's a complicated procedure. One that your dad didn't do alone. Surgeons specialize so that they understand everything they can about their part of the body, but the body is a system made up of systems. Everything is connected. Like your tower. You couldn't start building up from here—" She pointed to a spot in the air, two-thirds of the way up the construction beside it. "Could you?"

Zola held a blue Duplo up in the air and dropped it. "Nope."

"Aunt Callie asked for your dad's help, but it wouldn't have meant anything without her part of it. Besides," she added, "Aunt Amelia is a neurosurgeon. You want to be the one to tell her only your dad fixes brains?"

Zola frowned, but before she could respond, Sadie interrupted. "Wait, what's your sister-in-law's name?"

"Aunt Amy lives with us," Zola offered.

"Okay, but you didn't call her Amy, just then."

"It's a bad habit. Derek always called her that, didn't bother to tell me she only accepts it from him. She's not here, though, so…why are you looking at me like that?"

"Amelia Shepherd. That's your sister-in-law."

"Yup. Why, do you…? She did her undergrad at Harvard, but that was…" Meredith frowned, shoving aside a space in her head to do the mental math. Amelia was five years older than them, with a fall birthday. Carolyn had waited to put her in kindergarten. Her overdose delayed her college enrollment, which put her in the class of…'95? '96? "We'd have been in high school while she was there." That was always a weird thought. Whenever they'd almost moved to Boston, Derek would mention loving it when he visited Amy, and Meredith would freeze at the thought of him wandering through Cambridge at the same time as she and Sadie had.

Sadie, who'd tended to blend in with groups of underclassmen toward junior and senior year. You had more free time when you could say hey, D, can you check my work? What'd started as circling erroneous numbers and incorrectly used apostrophes became another series of practice problems, and turning an outline into an essay; became writing out lab reports from her lab partners' notes. Sadie had been less wild than she would be, but more than Meredith.

"Was she your dealer, or something?" Meredith knew she'd said the wrong thing before she got to the second half of the sentence and trying to hold it back only drew it out. "Crap, Sades, I didn't mean…I was thinking…I did shit, too, I…crap. "

Sadie crossed her arms, and every one of her muscles was held tightly. Meredith recognized the feeling, it was taking everything in her not to run. A vein in her temple stood out, making her think of Sadie at fifteen or sixteen, shaking with what she'd swear was anger while Meredith tended to the newest bruise.

"This vein in his forehead starts pulsing, and I know he's gonna lose it, and I can't shut up."

"So don't give him the chance. Stay here. Hellis won't notice. She's not…like that anyway."

"She would, Death. Which vein is it?"

"That doesn't—! "

"Come on, show off for me."

"The superficial temporal. I…I think."

"That's why. You're her science project."

It'd been cruel to point out, and not the whole story. At the time it'd felt like someone confirming the thing she'd never said aloud. How many things did Sadie understand better than she had, as an abused kid who couldn't figure out why she couldn't summon the depth of passion Meredith could about anything? Not over the long-term.

"Sades," Meredith repeated, and then glanced at the kids. They were fully engaged with the movie. That didn't mean Zola wasn't listening, but she tended to ask questions before repeating verbatim. She already knew Aunt Amy had a grown-up disease called "addiction," because it didn't matter how large the house was, Amelia would be overheard. "I'm sorry. That wasn't fair. Not to you, or…or to her. She got clean in high school, didn't relapse until a few years ago, but they always talked about her like she might be shooting up in the bathroom."

For a long time, Meredith had thought there must've been another instance, after the OD, and by the time she knew better she knew Amelia. She understood how her family could believe she was standing on a livewire. She'd told Derek to consider how far she'd come a couple of times, but she'd also seen what happened with Richard. How much slack was too much to cut someone when you had your own destructive past?

More than she was giving Sadie.

"And it's not like I think you're using, or anything."

"It was still your first thought. I'm set to inherit a major medical corporation, and I run our most successful clinic. That couldn't possibly be why I recognize the name of your sister-in-law, the world-class neurosurgeon."

"Of course it could. It is! I only… everyone I know lived in Boston at some point, it's not a stretch for me to expect that to be the point of intercept!"

Sadie snorted. "'The point of intercept.' God, you're such a nerd." Her phone buzzed, and when she flipped it over, her smile made Meredith feel like even more of an asshole. "Fati wants to know if you're good with Indian takeout. Or rather if the fetus is."

"So far. You don't have to stay. Not if you don't want to."

Sadie looked up from her phone. "Twenty-two years and you haven't gotten it? I don't stay anywhere I don't want to be." She got up from the table and settled down on the couch. Bailey scooted over to her.

Meredith stayed at the table. However she felt about Amelia at this point, she shouldn't have taken on Derek's opinions so quickly. He hadn't really known his sister for almost twenty years. This time, she was the one whose opinions couldn't be trusted. She needed to remember to see this Sadie; the one Fati fell for, and the one her son was holding in rapt attention.

"Oh, no! Boat stop," Bailey threw his arms up, dramatically.

"Oh, no," Sadie echoed. "What are they going to do?"

"Sing," he said, and then in an imitation of the jazzy final note added, "Cabin fev-ah!"

"The really silly song," Meredith said, taking the other end of the couch, Zola coming to lean against her.

"The one you slept through, Auntie Sadie," Zola said. "On a big screen."

"Medicines change the way our bodies work, Zo. Besides, I think she'll appreciate it more this time around. Some things only get better with age."

"Whomp, whomp." Sadie made a face at her over the kids' heads, but the second look she gave her was softer. "You okay? I shouldn't have snapped at you after—"

"Nope. We're not letting me off the hook because of him. It's like with Mom. I get to learn from his mistakes because he's not here to do it."

"That's very mature. I joke about it all the time, though. If there's anyone else who should be allowed to do that, it's you."

"I joke about my dead husband. Doesn't mean I'd never get upset if one of my friends said something dumb. I'd understand why they'd assume I didn't mind. I'm gallows humor girl. Sometimes you can only get through pain by laughing at how ridiculous life is, but endorphins can't fix everything. They do help," she added, This was a reprieve, a stopover at a happy moment. Acknowledging that seemed to make it all the more powerful. It wasn't about numbing the pain—she didn't want numbness. She wanted to feel it. All of it. "Watch the dancing puppets. They're singing the song of our people." She mouthed the lyrics to the next line, "We've got cabin fever/ we've lost what sense we had! We've got cabin fever/ we're all going mad!" Zola and Bailey rewarded her by giggling, and she voiced the next part. "My sanity is hanging by a thread/ Since we're going nowhere/ I've gone out of my head…"

Making kids laugh was so easy. They didn't have to get the irony; they just liked the rhyme. They liked seeing their mom be silly. The first time Zola gave that baby belly-laugh at something she did had felt like a miracle. Through such fresh eyes, Meredith wasn't dark; she was the brightest thing in the world. That she could still look up at her and giggle with abandon gave Meredith hope that that hadn't changed. Zola had definitely returned the favor.

"If your parent and/or guardian is over there, green light!" Mariana Adams Foster pointed to a line of parents who'd come to the park to collect their offspring. She let those kids get to base before shouting, "Red light!" Eight of the fourteen were still there. "If your shirt has someone pretend on it, green light!"

Jesús, wearing a plain red shirt made a show of being disappointed, and the other unmoving kids were overcome with giggles.

"I'm pretty sure you sister is my new favorite person," Meredith commented to Cal, who was holding a trash bag open for her to dump the detritus left by fourteen—fourteen—four-to-five-year-olds.

"It happens," Cal told acknowledged, ruefully. "Weirdly, it doesn't bother me."

"Weird why?"

"With Sophia…my other sister…bio-sister, half sister… it's different. She's sweet." Her smile wasn't as soft as the one she got while talking about Jude, who was currently swinging Bailey and another younger sibling whose mom had hung around. He didn't show any sign of wearying from the repetitive job, which had him pretty high up on Meredith's list, too. "Complicated. I started out envying her, because she got our dad, and they're kinda…really…rich. She has her own issues. We're alike, but not the same at all."

"Believe me, I know."

Cal gave her a look that said, you say that, grownup, but you have no idea.

"I have three half-sisters. The two on my dad's side I met when we were in our twenties. The third, on my mom's side, I met last year. I've been 'round that bend." She took the bag from a stunned Cal and hefted it into the nearby trash can.

"Dr. Grey! I could've done that!"

"I'm carting a fetus, there's no muscle atrophy involved."

"But— "

"Bailey weighs significantly more." She turned to the picnic tables they'd staked out that morning. "I know it's horrible environmentally, but disposable everything was a brilliant idea."

"If you say so yourself?"

"Watch it, Buster, I'm paying you double for this shindig." Meredith sat on the edge of a bench, next to one of the bunches of purple and yellow balloons. She'd pick a likely looking bouquet of them to float around the condo for a few days and stab the rest while the kids weren't looking. Speaking of stabbing. She reached around to the back pocket of the one pair of maternity jeans she didn't hate and removed the phone that'd been digging into her spine. Zola had asked her to "hold Daddy" before running off to play Sardines—Bailey had taken too that far better than hide-and-seek. All he had to do was find the big kids and plop down on someone's lap—Meredith had accepted the phone, which had one of Derek's professional photos on the lockscreen to look as though he was FaceTiming in. They'd done that a couple of times for dinner or bedtime, but never an event. She was grateful for that; he'd miss so much, but he hadn't missed anything big.

Not then.

"You don't have to," Cal said.

"What?"

"Pay me double. You're paying Jude, Mari, and Zeús, too. And I'm sorry I was rude." She ducked her head, staring down at a knothole she'd started worrying at with her index finger. For a second she could've been one of the shyer party attendees, and Meredith would bet more of the kid who grew up too fast existed in Cal than her peers. She understood that too well.

"I was kidding. Paying you isn't an issue. And I'm not upset you talked back to me. That's what friends do."

"Really?"

"My friends, anyway. But my friends are horrible people!" she added, loud enough that Sadie could hear from the table where she was loading presents up to put in the car. Sadie flipped her off at the hip, out of sight of red light, green light players, three of whom had shadowed her most of the afternoon.

"We're friends? I'm, like, your employee."

"If those things were mutually exclusive, I'd be out a lot of people in my life. My little sister was my subordinate for a while."

"In Seattle? She must miss you, or… which of Zola's aunts do you mean? I get them mixed up."

"Maggie and Amelia—Aunt Amy—are higher up then me, in different specialties. I was referring to Lexie…. she'd be fighting Amelia for her job soon, but… she's the one who died." She'd just be finished with her fellowship. What if we'd both been neurosurgeons? Would we fight like Amy and Derek? Did he assume we would? Assume I'd resent her? Did he really think…? Would I have? I didn't want to switch specialties. I just….

Sixteen-year-old Cal watched her both oblivious and chagrined, nowhere near Meredith's thoughts. "Jeez. Sorry."

"Don't be. There are five more aunts she doesn't know at all. Four on his side. I get them mixed up, too. I don't know that Maggie knows me enough to miss me."

"I've known Sophia for less than a year, and I'd miss her. She went through a…a bad patch early on, and if she'd succee—if anything happened, it'd be horrible."

"Depression?"

"Borderline. Her story, but I was there, so…."

Sadie glanced up from the gifted picture book she'd paused to leaf through.

"It's the scariest thing," Meredith said. "And maddening. But it's not about you. Even if it seems like you did something, or she—they say it is. It's not. And it's not them either. It's bigger."

Cal squinted at her, and then nodded, Meredith hoped accepting that this grownup wasn't spouting platitudes. "I haven't had Mari long, either. We're more different, superficially, but it's like, living together, going to the same school, we share more. I mean, we share a room, but that's not… we get each other's references. Finish each other's sandwiches." She smirked, and Meredith rolled her eyes. Zola's movie pick had been Frozen for the past two weeks, "because it's winter." Meredith was going to let her discover how little that meant here herself. "Even then, it's work, understanding her. Being Jude's sister is easy. Moms are always telling me to back off. With Mari, she sometimes has to tell me who she needs me to be, but she didn't have a sister before me, either. We're figuring it out."

"And Sophia?"

"I don't live with her. We've grown up in the same city with totally different experiences."

"That's the same for Maggie and me, actually."

All they shared was that they were both remixes of Ellis Grey, and she'd always considered remixes to be entirely different songs.

A loud whoop startled her, and she looked over to see the twins throwing themselves down on the grass, Zola bent double with giggles, several of the ribboned braids she'd patiently sat for the previous night falling into her face. Meredith used the closest phone to hand to snap a picture, only noticing it was the old one once it opened the camera roll. It fit in perfectly, Zola in her bright purple overalls, the green grass matching the early spring scenery of the image next to it. Zooming out, Meredith could almost pretend it didn't belong to an entirely different era in their lives.

Almost.

"I DON'T WANT!"

Zola was no longer smiling. Her eyes were screwed shut as tightly as her fists were clenched. She'd slammed her foot down on the carpet hard enough that it'd probably hurt, but the rage coursing through her small body kept her from feeling it.

"I DON'T WANT PAJAMAS!"

"You want to sleep in your overalls?"

"No!"

"It's too cold to sleep without clothes, Zo."

"NO!" She lashed out against the pajama top Meredith was holding up in front of her, and Meredith had to dodge to keep her fist from colliding with her face.

"Hey. You can be mad, but be careful not to hurt people."

"I wanna…wanna hurt!"

Meredith sighed. Pressed up against her back in the bed, Bailey put his arms around her neck. "Zoie feeling mean, mean, mean."

"I am not!"

You are. You're so tired, and you're being mean because you don't know what else to do to make us go away. But you don't want us to go away, either. She knew the feeling, but she also knew how much she'd hated being told how she felt by her mother. "You're exhausted." "You're overwrought." "You're being emotional." She'd considered it the epitome of know-it-all-ism, since she didn't believe her mother had ever felt those things. It'd only made her madder, made more fury build inside her, until all she wanted to do was slam herself against something.

"Okay. Come with me." Meredith reached around, hooking her arms under Bailey's legs. Zola's headphones were looped over the bedstead. She swiped them and handed them up to Bailey. "Can you be a big help and hold these?"

"Yessa!" he said, and then yawned, his warm breath puffing on her cheek. He'd get cranky, too, if they pushed bedtime much later. She'd already bypassed baths, reasoning that most of tomorrow, Zola's actual birthday, would be spent on the beach.

Carrying Bailey piggyback pulled her in the opposite direction from the baby, and although he was heavier, it made her feel balanced out in a way she hadn't in weeks. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand—In thirty seconds, a long wait in four-year-old time, Meredith heardthe thump of sneakers, her need gift, which she'd been allowed to open early because they matched her overalls.

"What is it?" Zola demanded.

Meredith yanked out one of the kitchen chairs. "Sit."

Zola jutted her chin out, arms crossed. Oh, you want a stare-down? We can do that. In spite of the frustration born of her own fatigue, Meredith wanted to smile at the extremity of her daughter's stubborn streak. Meredith couldn't begrudge the trait. Zola had made it to them because she was a survivor, and then both of her parents had modeled the behavior. Bailey wasn't helping Meredith remain unamused. His head had gone heavy on her shoulder, and he was entertaining himself by flicking her earring with a finger.

Zola climbed up onto the chair, and Meredith pulled the seven-pad electronic drum-kit from behind the couch, leaving the foot pedals that Zola's legs wouldn't be long enough to reach. She hadn't plugged it in, and she hoped the charge would hold.

The kids had asked about the kit a couple times while climbing the furniture, but she never took it out until after they went to sleep. She'd planned to share it with them, eventually. She'd picked the one with color-coded pads specifically in case either of —any of—her kids ever wanted to learn, but without external speakers, the sound could only be heard through headphones. Now, that would be a benefit. She retrieved a pair of sticks from the six-pack she'd stashed in the kitchen drawer that held the small collection of knitting needles, and the crochet hook she resented because needing it meant she'd be about to spend an hour fixing a mistake.

"Time to get down, Bay." She leaned over to let him tumble gently onto the sofa. He giggled and got on his knees to watch her settle the headphones on his sister's head. It was strange to not hear the obnoxiously cheery tone indicating the power was on, but the way Zola scrunched her nose up was proof it'd worked. She picked up Zola's wrist and adjusted her grip on the sticks—better to learn the good habits first—and guided her in an initial strike.

Reminding herself of one of those old-school surgeons who rejected robotics, she'd prepared to be disappointed by the stick feel of the electronic set. No offense to The Moody Blues, but her reintroduction to playing had been on a professional-level Ludwig set. Nothing in her living room could mimic that. She'd been right. No drum felt exactly the same, but this came surprisingly close. If she ever came across Graeme Edge, she'd owe him an apology. Zola had no point for comparison, and her eyes and mouth became perfect circles.

"Hit that all you want," Meredith instructed her. "I'm going to put Bailey to bed." She gestured to Bailey who mercifully came without complaint. "Say goodnight," she instructed.

He inched over to Zola like she might be liable to explode again. When she didn't move, he moved closer, planting a kiss on her arm. "Happy sleep," he said, presumably a variant on happy birthday. "Love you."

Zola tensed, but she didn't shrug him off, and as Meredith touched his shoulder to steer him toward his room, she heard a mumbled, "Love you, Bailey-bird."

The thump of the wood hitting silicon trailed them down the hall.

Meredith took her time with Bailey's bedtime routine, reading an extra book, and letting him spend longer debriefing her on his experience of the day. He tended to be more restless than Zola, but there were tricks to getting him to sleep. Running her fingers through his hair, and letting her fingertips brush lightly over his forehead and cheeks was a surefire way to make his eyelashes to start fluttering. Usually, she got up from his bed at that point and turned on the pale blue night light that played music in five-minute intervals. Tonight, she stayed until he was asleep.

Bailey scooted into the warm spot she left, one hand curled near his mouth, and the other on Tiggy. The floppy stuffed tiger had been singled out from the rotation of stuffed animals he carried around his first birthday.

Whenever she watched him or Zola sleep, she decided it was inappropriate for "sleep" to be the term used for the unconscious paralysis caused by anesthesia, or worse, as an euphemism for death. Every twitch was a reminder that their brains were working, processing the onslaught of new information they took in all the time.

She'd closed his door when she noticed the thumping had stopped. On a hunch, she turned left. Zola had put on her pajamas and was sitting on her bed holding Rawr. Meredith sat across from her, thinking Derek would've put way too much effort into encouraging the baby to settle on a bear as her lovey. Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!

"Better?" she asked.

"Uh huh."

"Is there a reason you felt so mad tonight?"

Zola shrugged.

"You seemed to have a pretty good time at your party."

"I did."

"Did something happen once we got home?" She was pretty sure she hadn't missed anything in the kids' interactions that night. Maybe while she fixed dinner? Kraft macaroni and hot-dogs didn't take much attention.

"Nuh uh." Zola slumped forward and crawled up to put her head in Meredith's knee, since there wasn't much space in the way of lap. "I'm sorry I was mean."

"Thank you for telling me that." Meredith put her hand flat on Zola's back, and she relaxed underneath it. "Today was a big, busy day. Maybe it was just a lot. That happens. Tomorrow it'll only be us, and we can do whatever you want to celebrate you being five. If you want, you can even open the rest of your birthday presents before breakfast." Zola shook her head. "You don't want?" She shook her head again. "Presents after breakfast?"

"No!" Zola's shoulders tensed again, and then released with a frustrated sob. "I don't wanna be five."

"Oh, Zo. There's a lot coming up, I know. But they'll be good things. The baby will come, and you'll go to kindergarten… And nothing's going to change right away. One thing at a time."

"Not things. No being five is all."

"You just don't want to be five?"

"Yeah."

"Can you tell me why?"

"'Cause…cause Daddy won't know me if I'm five." Her tears started coming too hard for words then, and Meredith rubbed circles over her pajama top. Aside from believing in letting her cry herself out, Meredith needed the time to figure out what to say. How had she believed putting the emotional stuff into words was hard back when she had time to practice? To debate syntax and gestures? She could ramble as long as someone let her, but the times she had to say something she needed someone to remember, she'd planned. Sometimes she still woke up thinking of what she could've said to Derek that day in the scrub room, in spite of trying to force that memory out of her brain within hours of it ending.

Zola's crying ebbed into sniffling. Time was up.

"Sweetheart, are you ready to listen to me?"

Zola nodded against her leg.Wearing scrubs eighty percent of the time has made Meredith a poor judge of wardrobe necessities, and she had a sinking suspicion that only getting one pair of these jeans was a mistake. She'd washed them a shade lighter in a month.

"Good girl." She traced the fine hairs along the nape of Zola's neck. "The day Daddy and I met you it seemed like you'd appeared out of the air. We'd wanted to add a baby to our family for a little while, and we couldn't make one. That happens sometimes. Bodies don't always work the way they're supposed to."

"That's why doctors."

"It is why we have doctors. We tried medicine, but that doesn't always work. That's why doctors do research to make things better."

"Were you sad?"

The question transformed the wet patch on Meredith's thigh into blood, and the weight of the living baby was the weight of disappointment and guilt she carried during the months of failed fertility treatments.

It'd felt like an omen to have the side-effects of the medication manifest while she tried to read the blueprints for their house, as though maybe her reaction the first time Derek presented them to her had been the correct one. She'd only been wrong about why she'd never have the home and family he offered. She'd broken down in Beni's office imagining the life where Zola didn't become theirs, admitting her fear that she and Derek wouldn't have made it, but in the kitchen, not knowing Janet's car was minutes away, hearing him tell her they'd be okay, just the two of them, had been the reassurance she'd needed since the miscarriage.

"Some, because other ways of building a family usually take a long time."

"Like Cal got moms when she's a teenager?"

"Sort of. We hadn't decided what we were going to do next—" And we were busy with the trial that nearly wrecked it all. "—we didn't know that our baby had already been born. She was very far away, and it was going to take a little time for us to meet her."

"She's me."

"That's right. We were already connected to you. We just didn't know it yet. We had to wait for Aunt Arizona to visit your clinic and find out that were kids who needed surgeries we could do, and Alex to arrange to bring them to us. Do you know how many things had to work to make your story happen?"

"Lots?"

"Lots. And none. You were ours from the day you came into the world. Just because we didn't know it yet doesn't mean it wasn't true. There are lots of true things we don't know. Lots of people we haven't met yet who are gonna matter. We can't see those connections, but they're there. Your daddy didn't know you were his baby girl before he walked into your hospital room, but you were. You can't see how you're connected to him, but you are. You always will be. Daddy will always know you."

Zola had shifted with each comment on the story, so that now she was looking up, her eyes rimmed with red and fixed on Meredith's face. "And you will."

"I will," she agreed. It was the first time she remembered lying to Zola about something that mattered. "In our hearts, we'll always know." That was true, wasn't it? Ellis's brain hadn't been making the proper connections, but Meredith had been in there somewhere. Could that be enough? If Zola remembered this in twenty years, would she think she'd been misled?

Meredith might never know that.

"You're gonna wake up tomorrow and be five, and Daddy and I will know you and love you just the same. More, because we'll have more moments to love."

"Like my pictures on the phone?"

"Exactly."

"Okay." Zola yawned with the back of her hand pressed against her mouth. That was new. Meredith believed what she'd told her daughter, that some part of Derek remained with them, but she wasn't sure if he got to have all these things, or if it was like when he'd come home from D.C. and discover Bailey's vocabulary had doubled. She hoped it was the former. "I can go to bed and be five."

"Okay."

"Um, but, can I go to your bed?"

"Absolutely. That way I can be the first person to see you as a five-year-old."

"And can I have a cupcake for breakfast?"

"My cupcakes were that good, huh?"

"Cupcakes can't be bad."

"I see." Her batches of trial and error begged to differ.

Zola scrambled up on the bed. By the time Meredith got changed into her pajamas, she figured she'd fallen asleep. She was considering sneaking out to continue the tradition of stacking presents in front of the birthday kid's breakfast chair, but as she crept out of the en-suite, Zola's eyes were on her. Getting up from Bailey's bed had been hard enough, Meredith was pretty sure insomnia wouldn't be on her side tonight. She could do it in the morning, or not. She didn't think Zola would mind getting her presents a few minutes later than Bailey had gotten his. Traditions couldn't be directives. Not in this version of their lives.

"Mommy?"

"Yes?"

"I liked banging my mad out."

Oh, holy crap, it wasn't fair for her to be the only one to hear these things. Meredith could only bury her face in the pillow for a second to avoid attracting Zola's attention.

"Drumming is a good way to do it. And if you want you can try again when you're less mad."

"'Kay. Momma, do you hafta have piano fingers to play piano?"

"No, not at all."

"Maybe I'll do that."

A few less monumental questions later, Zola drifted off. Meredith tapped banging mad intoa note in case pregnancy fog decided to swallow that gem.

"Banging out her mad? She takes after you, Mer."

Whatever, mental Derek, like you never —

"Contrary daughters certainly can be trying."

Meredith pulled her pillow over her head, as though it would block out her mother's voice. That tactic hadn't even worked while she was alive.

An ambulance careens into a bay she's only seen once and will never forget. Is it the baby? It must be. No, she's not lying on the stretcher being bumped out onto the pavement. She's above it.

"John Doe broadsided by a semi-truck. Blunt-force trauma to the head, chest, and abdomen. Persistent hypotension after two liters of saline. Pulse is thready at 130."

You're not dead. Just breathe.

Derek. That's Derek's voice. Why can she hear Derek's voice?

"I need four units of blood. Scalp lac. Probably multiple fractures. Try to hold still."

"GCS of ten. What's your name, sir? Can you hear me?"

Yes. Yes, I can hear you.

"Loss of verbal skills."

That's not true. Why can't they hear him? She tries to call out to him, to them. She can't. There's the redhead. She got through to the redhead. She needs to get through to the redhead.

"Hang two units of blood on the infuser. I need a trauma panel and X-ray and cross him for four. And somebody page surgery again."

She's smart. I like her.

Not enough. She's not going to be smart enough.

"I'm sorry. This is gonna hurt, but we have to do it."

He jerks at the pain. Motor response, four. Vocalizes at the pain. Vocal response, two. She's put in chest tubes. She's been the one reassuring the patient who can't respond. They have to do it, the redhead is right, but it's Derek. Derek in pain, and she can't feel it, but she can feel it, and he felt it, and Derek, I'm here. He felt that, why can't he hear her? All she can do is follow. Follow, and hear the would-be quitter suggest a CT, and freaking Costello not listening.

Arrogant… because she's younger than you and probably because she's a woman.

Derek. She said…. She told Beni he didn't…. Did he…? Was she wrong? Did she not…? We only had a week. We should've talked more while you were gone. Hear, please, hear.

You have this. Come on. Don't back down.

She does. Meredith knows she does, but it's happening, so maybe she'll follow through. Don't quit this time. Didn't she tell this girl not to quit?

"His GCS hasn't changed since he got here. The C.T. can wait."

A GCS of ten. Four, motor response. Two, verbal response. Four, eye-opening. They're numbers. Numbers she saw all the time, especially on neuro. She learned from the best. She didn't consider what it meant; she didn't think of his blue eyes staring at her, not seeing her. Not recognizing her isn't the worst. It was never the worst. She'll take the look over this. C'mon, Derek.

I'm stable. Guys, I'm stable. Take me to get the head C.T.

I'm going to die because these people aren't properly trained.

No. No, he didn't know. He wasn't…no. He isn't…. Eye opening, four. He's conscious. They might've gotten a C.T., otherwise. She knows that. She doesn't want to know that.

I can't feel my arm.

There it is. Brain bleed. He needs a craniotomy, now, and maybe they'll be back to getting his hand online again, but she can do that. They can do that. Page Neuro.

"Ready to put him under."

No.

No, I have a head lac.

"The colon's avulsed. We'll need to resect and create a temporary colostomy."

Well, it's better than being dead, I guess.

That was what she said! Why can she still…? Derek!

"He's got a grade-two splenic lac."

Meredith would leave it.

Yeah, she would. She would've ordered a C.T., She wouldn't have argued on this one. She wouldn't have challenged her. They should've checked the head, first. This time he's right. Why does he always have to be right?

"Let's leave it. Check the four quadrants."

And she'd double check the retrohepatic space.

"Make sure to check the retrohepatic space."

Not bad.

Yes, bad. Bad, bad, bad, because you are hemorrhaging, Derek. You are hemorrhaging, and they are idiots. They are all idiots, and where are you, where are you, why can I hear you?

"He's not bleeding in his chest. This makes no sense. We're missing something. Set up for a T.E.E."

Not that. That's not what you're missing.

"Persistent bradycardia."

Check my head.

Too late. They're too late. He's dead. He's dead. Why can she hear him? He's dead.

"I don't understand what the hell is…"

Meredith hears.

"His right pupil is blown."

Derek is dead.

"Page neurosurgery right freaking now."

"We did."

Then page them again.

Then page them again.

Derek? Is he here?

"Then page them again."

"The neurosurgeon was at a dinner."

Dinner?

Meredith can hear him, so he's here. He can't be here, here is Dillard, he cannot be at Dillard.

"Dinner?"

"He said he'll be here in twenty minutes."

It will be too late.

Go back, Derek. Just, go back. I did it. Go back. Come back. Comeback. Comebackcomebackcomeback. Just come back to me.

Meredith woke with the scent of lemon in her nostrils. I need to go back. Derek. I have to find—Derek is dead. She slammed her fist into the pillow. She couldn't catch her breath. Maybe she was dying, too. Maybe she could just—The baby. The baby was pushing against her ribs. She sat up, gasping. Blinking brought back the bright light of the Dillard ER, and Derek's eyes. Derek's pain.

Her head swam. The clammy queasiness wasn't the nausea that'd come with her other nightmares, but it kept her there on the bed when she wanted to run for her laptop and search his chart again. He couldn't have been conscious that long. They'd sedated him to intubate. She'd blended her own experiences into what she'd read, and her guilt over things she'd told Beni. It wasn't like she didn't think Derek recognized sexism. He'd identified as a feminist. That didn't mean there weren't issues around the way he acted toward women.

She'd been an intern that Thanksgiving, the time he listened to her about Holden, the patient with PVS whom they'd woken, only to have him die. She must've been thinking of that, subconsciously. She did every November. He'd been one of the first patients whose funerals she'd wanted to attend. She hadn't been able to switch out the shift. Maybe if she'd told one of her friends why, they would've done it. She'd just tried to guilt them by pointing out that she'd worked Thanksgiving, which hadn't gone over well. In their minds she'd:

A. Abandoned them (Cristina, Izzie),

B. Crashed through the house drunk with some random guy (Izzie, George)

C. Done that again four nights in the next week (George, mostly.)

She'd preferred that to answering questions about the day she spent identifying too much with a PVS patient and trying not to imagine what Thanksgiving would've been like in the life she'd been imagining two months earlier.

Had she asked Alex? He'd been with her that day; it'd been the first time she'd been fully aware of the bond growing between them, one that would last regardless of what happened to him and Izzie. Izzie, who hadn't come to the funeral. Izzie, who hadn't called. Izzie, whose name had not been on any of the cards she'd seen in USPS emails. Was she still family? Meredith didn't know.

If disappearing on people meant you weren't family, then she didn't have one left. Except Carolyn. Great. Then again, she did read messages, whether her friends knew it or not. If someone died, she'd be there.

Well….

"No one better die 'til you get here, huh, baby girl? No offense, but I'm not driving a million hours back like this. And I'm really not flying." She still hated flying. That hadn't been why she didn't go to visit Derek that weekend, but it had been one of the reasons she thought do I want to do this? "He didn't want forty-eight uninterrupted hours, anyway. He wanted you, and Bailey, and Zola. I did, too. I was just scared. Even the mamas get scared. I bet you know that right now. Sorry you'll have to learn it again one day."

She checked her phone and sighed. Five-fifteen. It wasn't like she was going to be able to go to sleep again, or that she wanted to. What she wanted was not to be alone. To have something to think about other than if her husband knew he was going to die.

He wasn't like Holden. By the time she arrived, there wasn't a chance that he would regain consciousness. That didn't mean that she hadn't sat there for seven hours wishing he'd open his eyes.

Meredith should've skipped Thanksgiving. Frankly, she thought Thanksgiving should simply be skipped. She'd grown up in a city and era that romanticized the hell out of a story of colonialists fleeing religious oppression to oppress Native Americans, with a mother who didn't spare her from the truth. Taking Christmas off was a sufficient nod to the idea of the family holiday, in Ellis Grey's mind. No one in Meredith's childhood had had the kind of Thanksgiving where you took in strays. It was out-of-town grandparents, or formal dinners, or she-didn't-know-what but even the house next door cleared out. She decided young that if you had a life to be thankful for, you should live it, and not force socialization on the less happy.

She couldn't tell Fati that.

We'll eat early, she'd been texted on Saturday. Noon or so. Watch the parade, come over and eat, and you're free to make your Black Friday shopping plan.

if i have to buy anything in a store the internet has betrayed me.

Bring a pie.

Yeah sure.

You serious?

What kind?

Ok shepherd's pie it is.

She expected to be called on the joke and told what kind of freaking pie. Tuesday she'd looked up Shepherd's pie recipes and determined that was too complicated for a bit. She could mix pumpkin and spices. She didn't have to do the crust. No one made crust. Google promised that no one made crust.

"Elmo, Mommy! It is Elmo!" When did he stop saying Ahmo? Meredith wondered. Her phone chimed for the first time in two days.

Sadie left for Lima early, so you know. She won't be here.

"Happy Thanksgiving," she mumbled to herself before tapping Fati's picture to call her. "What's going on?"

"Nothing."

"You know who you sound like? Me. And what you would say to me right now is: 'Want to try again?'"

"And what you would say to that is 'balls,' but fine. I don't know the whole situation, but leaving tomorrow wasn't going to get her in on time for her meeting."

"Isn't her meeting on Saturday?"

"I think so."

"You could—"

"Maro is in Ohio. I'm not going to intrude on their holiday. It's fine, I just wanted to you to know because you'd have expected her. Oh, the oven timer is going off, have to go. We're on schedule, see you in a couple hours!" The phone beeped. Maybe Fatimah had a less obnoxious oven, but Meredith hadn't heard anything in the background.

In thirty-six years, Meredith had absorbed one thing about Thanksgiving that the annual themed worksheets hadn't covered. It never ran on time. That was something to be thankful for, right? She got the kids dressed and over to the beach house by five after twelve, only to discover discovered everything was ready for them to sit down. Them was: two guests whom Meredith recognized from the cookout but hadn't met, a few people from Fati's graduate program—perfectly nice, but Meredith would definitely be glad when there were doctors everywhere again, not social workers—along with Tatiana and Wanda.

She would've called it a normal holiday meal—a little strained, but when weren't they?—until she took Bailey the bedroom to be changed, and came out to find Wanda waiting for her. "Drummer girl, do you know what's going on here?"

"A really colonial interpretation of a harvest festival."

"Points for that. I got here early. I don't like sitting around my place alone on a holiday, figured she could use another hand. Things were done, and she looked like she'd stayed up all night. No kidding, I don't know how she got her hair as sleek as it is, it was out to here." She gestured.

"It gets frizzy when she's cooking. And flustered. With me, usually."

"I've seen that. This was different, and she could've just worn hijab over it, too, except you just put a clean diaper on the only male-leaning person here, and it'd have been noticed. Plus, Sadie has been quiet lately. She's never quiet. Maro says it's usually the Sadie Harris Show, and she's changed the channel."

Meredith bit her lip. She'd seen Sadie go silent. A couple of times. Plotting silence. Never anything good.

"Mer, the boyo is out here ready for his dessert, so I don't know what you're doing," Fati called.

"If she thinks he's going to eat anything but whipped cream she is deranged," Meredith joked, heading back to the dining room. Wanda raised an eyebrow. Psych people. She got another pointed look an hour later when they were being graciously shoved out the door. She'd all but yanked pans out of Fatimah's hands trying to hang around and help clean up; she didn't know what else she could've done. Did she?

Driving back to the condo, she tried to convince herself that she wouldn't have pushed harder with Callie or Wilson. Fatimah wasn't Callie or Wilson, though. She was Meredith's friend's partner…which was exactly what Jo was. But Fati was… okay, Jo was an adult, but between them, she and Alex were one functioning adult emotionally. Fatimah was definitely a functioning adult. Sadie….

Was she surprised to find Sadie sitting outside her door when she came around the corner?

"Aunt Sadie!" Zola tugged at Meredith's hand. Meredith let go so she could run over while she wrangled her keys and Bailey, who had fallen asleep in the car. Sadie's transition from slightly forlorn to thrilled to have Zola leap into her arms was skillfully invisible. Acting.

Meredith hadn't inherited her mother's x-ray vision. Meeting Sadie so young should've made her more in tune to the way she switched skins. Instead, she'd been enchanted enough to overlook them, and by the time she 'd realized they existed, they'd been grafted together. It'd made her more aware of façades like the one Derek had had at the beginning, but it hadn't taught her to see through them. She'd started chiseling away, never considering there could be another wall behind it.

"I made a pie!"

"She was kidding about that you know. Let me take him."

"You can't take him, you're in Peru," Meredith said, handing Bailey off. "Your lie or hers?"

"My flight is this evening."

Meredith narrowed her eyes. Evasion had been the only way to get things past her mother, and catching patients' omissions had become her skill. She recognized the drawn-out vowels of an equivocation, the quick "but" of a justification, the defensiveness of a qualification.

"Weren't you the one who doesn't do Thanksgiving?"

Doesn't she know not to deflect a deflector? "Obviously not."

"Yeah, you're all Suzy Homemaker these days."

"Is putting my kid on his bed too Donna Reed for you?"

Sadie looked away. This time Meredith saw the shift from bravado to softness as she cupped the curve of Bailey's head. She couldn't tell if one was more genuine than the other. Sadie didn't do soft. That'd been a core belief for most of Meredith's life. That didn't make it accurate. Did Sadie know that?

"Zo, do you want to read and play quietly in your room during Bailey's nap or watch a movie in mine?"

Judging by the sigh, her daughter definitely saw that she hadn't been given the option of staying in the living room and listening to the grown-ups. "Would the movie count as using my turn to choose?"

"Is it your turn?"

"No."

"Then, no."

"Movie." Zola grabbed Lilo and Stitch from the shelf under the TV without looking. She was already trying to swear Bailey to Halloween costumes for next year.

"Are Aunt Sadie and Fati fighting?" she asked as Meredith snapped the bedroom power cord into the laptop.

"I'm not sure. What has you thinking that?"

"Last year, Sofia and I trick-or-treated with you ant Auntie 'Zona…is her being Sofia the First a pun?

"Uh, sort of, I think."

"We can research it. But then, Aunt Callie had Thanksgiving with us, and then Aunt Arizona came over after, and you gave her leftovers, and they got a divorce. That's a little like Daddy being in D.C., except everyone stayed in Seattle."

"Hm. A little. In a divorce the couple decides they can't be married any more. Daddy and I stayed married."

"You loved each other."

"We did." Callie and Arizona's split had more to do with love not being enough, but this wasn't the time for that conversation. "All set for Stitch?"

Zola flopped onto her side with a sigh. Maybe five was just a normal age to learn that growing up didn't give you all the answers.

Sadie was sitting on the couch, leaning forward over her clenched hands. "Is it really not her turn?"

"Uh, no, it's not," Meredith said, sitting next to her. "She chose a Sesame Street DVD last night. She keeps track."

"Just seemed like an easy way to get two picks. Or you were testing her."

"Lying's like anything else, obvious because she's learning how it works."

"See, I suspect everyone. I didn't think of that. I know nothing about kids."

"Neither did I. I don't know much about kids. I know my kids. Is that what this is about? Kids?"

Sadie shrugged. "She keeps pointing out that I'm good with yours, and we haven't really…. I know she's goingto bring it up, and I kept saying all these stupid, bitchy things to stop her. I had to go. I had to, before I really…I'm not a family person. Not a settling down and sharing her with the two-and-a-half sprogs, and the nice holiday. I've made her think I am. Maybe I made myself think I am. I'm not. I don't understand that. I'm selfish, and lazy, and inconsiderate. I tried to convince you not to go to your sick mom, because I didn't want to share you."

"You offered to come with. I shut you out because it was easier."

"Come on, Death, we both know I would've bailed on you the second that got emotional. I would've said you were being soft, and she was manipulating you, and I would've been manipulating you! That's what I do!"

"Is that what the past eight months have been? I don't think so. Sadie, you're my friend, and I love you, but you encouraged my spirals over and over again. The closer I got to self-destruction the more stupid shit you could talk me into, and when everything blew up, you could convince me you were the only one who cared. I let you do it. I believed you. The girl I knew might've gotten me off the floor of that hotel room. That's why I called you. But sticking around? Dragging my depressed ass out of bed, and taking my kids to Easter egg hunts? No way would you have put up with the sheer amount of shit you've put up with from me this year.

"I get what it's like to have to change how you think about yourself. And I've tried to be someone I'm not for someone who wants to love me. It doesn't work, and it isn't what either of you want. Letting someone know you is scary, and there are always going to be parts of each other you don't understand, but the more you tell them the truth, the closer they get."

Sadie's face showed so many emotions Meredith had worked through over the years. Fear, hopefulness, disbelief, defensiveness. Meredith waited. Sadie was staring at her. And then, she was kissing her, suddenly enough that Meredith thought she'd blinked out; that she was lost in a bizarre product of her memory and imagination.

She used to say Sadie kissed bossy, and that hadn't changed. Her lips were thin and firm, and she went in with so much force that returning the pressure was barely a choice. Barely a choice, but a choice. Meredith made it.

Kissing Sadie again wasn't familiar. It wasn't right. It was new, and it was wrong. Wrong in the way that'd been a strange thrill during the time Derek had been off-limits. It put her brain in direct conflict with her body, which didn't care nearly as much about things like love and loyalty. Not when it'd been so long since she'd had anything but dreams of what was right, and she might never have it again. Her brain didn't have to be part of this.

No. It wasn't about what she might or might not have. Sadie had someone. Sadie kissed her for that thrill, to give herself a reason to say she was faithless. Meredith had to be the one to think this time. She should've done it in that exam room, years ago, and she'd failed. Derek had left her at the candle house, to show her he wasn't going to make her a party to that again.

Her hand found Sadie's shoulder, and she pushed her off.

"Mer, it's okay. You're not dishonoring Derek. He's gone, and he knew about us, right? That it was a timing thing?"

"That was over ten years ago, and we weren't only a timing thing. We had a lot of issues, separately and together. Fatimah loves you. I loved you, and I do love you, but it's not the same. You can't use me to sabotage yourself. I'm done being used. Done being patronized, or toning parts of myself down, or thinking I need someone to tell me what's normal. I took it from you. From Derek, plenty of times. But I'm done. I'm not gonna let someone treat me like that around my kids. They are worth everything, and they will never think it's okay to accept less. Neither should you. You're incredible, Sades. If Fatimah doesn't listen to you, then she doesn't deserve you."

Sadie shook her head. "No. I'm not you. I'm not strong like you, I…"

"You are. Hell, in a lot of ways, you're stronger."

"If you think that, maybe you don't get me." Sadie stood up. "I have a flight to catch. Tell the kids I said bye, and I..I'll see them."

"I try not to lie to them."

"Yeah. Maybe don't, then." She opened the door, and then paused. "Meredith? Your hair looks really nice today."

Meredith reached up to one of the French braids she'd secured before getting the kids dressed. Then, the door closed, and she ripped out the elastic.

Two hours later, she was on the beach. They hadn't been out as much in the lead-up to Zola's birthday, partially thanks to her slight paranoia at the idea of seeing the creep with the dog again. But she refused to let some asshole chase her off, and she'd needed to get out of the condo. She'd let the kids keep on the nice clothes she'd bought specifically for the holiday, because why not?

They built their castles together, now, him happily filling buckets, and her carefully placing, flipping, and lifting them. Meredith watched the construction, wishing she'd taken them out here this morning, and hadn't tried to get through this stupid holiday. She was not a Thanksgiving person. She was a miserable, pregnant, widowed ex-mistress who spent this day hiding from the happy people.

Was Alex one of them, today? She hoped so. She hoped he wasn't thinking of her. That he didn't think of Thanksgiving as an anniversary for them, like she did.

She dug the "Daddy phone" out of her bag, and turned on the network connection. Four missed calls. All Alex.

There weren't many pictures from last Thanksgiving. It'd been in the middle of too much. Derek going to in D.C., Callie and Arizona officially splitting up, April and Jackson finding out about Samuel. None of their people had had much to be thankful for. She did have a decent picture of Alex and Jo. She wasn't sure if she'd taken it, or someone had using her phone. Not having Derek there had made her think of that first Thanksgiving, and she'd been pretty heavy-handed pouring white wine into her own glass.

She hadn't really known what it was to think too much of their first Thanksgiving, and every Thanksgiving after. She'd been scared that the crack in the Post-it meant they weren't going to make it through that separation, not that he'd be —

Alex's face popped up on the screen. She hit "accept" without considering what she'd say to him, only that it was fucking Thanksgiving, and she missed him.

"Hey! Hey, you're alive!" He sounded so surprised. Of course, he was. He'd been calling her for eight months, and she hadn't answered. It wasn't like he really thought she was dead. Did he?

He'd been calling her for eight months, and she hadn't answered.

"Alex, listen... I'm fine. The kids are fine." Crap. He wasn't going to accept that word from her, but she couldn't think of what else to say. She couldn't tell him any of what was happening. Couldn't bring Zola over and be sure she wouldn't be bursting with news about the baby. She couldn't do this. "We're okay. I'm…fine. Please stop calling." She disconnected and turned the phone off to keep herself from calling back and telling him she wanted to come home.