TW: mention of suicidal ideation description of gore (a little more than canon)
"And that's where I panicked in front of the cute librarian. Luckily, our books were checked out because it could've been a bigger shit show."
"Cute?"
"No! I didn't…I guess I noticed, but I don't—crap."
"What's wrong with noticing? Or flirting, even? You found other people attractive wile Derek was alive, didn't you?"
"I did. We used to joke about it. I was the one who got a list, but not him, because of how we started. In real life, I was the one who felt slimy for thinking people were hot. Stu—Unexpected, since attraction isn't what made Derek different so much as the romance part."
"You mentioned last month that you would've considered yourself aromatic, once. Do you know that demi-romantic is also a possibility? Having to have a connection to someone prior to feeling romantically toward them?"
"I've seen the word, and I'll look into it. It's not so much that I didn't—I ran from romantic gestures before I knew what I felt about them. I needed trust, which does qualify as emotional connection, doesn't it?"
"I'd say so."
"Then I'm demi-everything-but-sexual. Demi-platonic. Demi-sororal. Demi-filial. Demi…not demi-parental. I was skittish about loving Zola, but I did. As soon as he made the suggestion, I could see her being our little girl. She reminded me of him, getting us out of the library. I don't like that she had to intercede to take care of me, but we talked about how I'd just realized it was a sad day, and we talked about Lexie and Mark. How it happened is something else I'll have to tell them without passing on my anxiety."
"Letting them see you rise above it wouldn't be a bad thing. You've flown several times, yes?"
"Eh. Couple consults, where focusing on the procedure helps. Panicked on a commercial. I've got anti-anxiety meds that I haven't taken, but I could. I wouldn't with them, though, if we were alone, and having both of them…. It's not something I'll be doing soon."
"I like that you prioritized your needs there. Am I correct in feeling that you don't want to talk to me about what happened?"
"Not today, please? The dreams have been awful, and I cycled through it all weekend. I can hardly…. Make me talk about anything else?"
"I can do that. I'm wondering, when the librarian mentioned the May Grays, what did you think?"
"That I'm not the only person who sometimes tries to make things less awkward with random facts…and it'd be nice if that meant it wasn't all in my head."
"What's that?"
"The fog. The…scrim. The way I'm seeing everything through a filter."
"And that's been the case since Derek died?"
"Yeah…or…I noticed it in April. The end of March is blurrier."
"Hm. You've said you had 'dark times' in the past. Can you tell me about that?"
"Why? This isn't—My husband died. That I've had…This is different! — I loved him!"
"I'm not suggesting you didn't. Not at all. Grief is ultimately behind the feelings you've been experiencing, but with your reported symptoms, I'm concerned that there might be something else in play. Humor me, please. What is this different than?"
"Than the times I've…I'm not a perky person ordinarily. Prickly, actually. You haven't gotten some shadow-Meredith here; Meredith is shadowy. There've just been times where I've…spiraled. Mostly, it's been situational. Who can untangle being miserable because your boyfriend is married from the exhaustion of internship, you know? This…this maybe does feel kind of similar—but why wouldn't it? It's losing him again on a larger scale. I was tired and sore, then, but I was an intern. The food aversion is new. And the migraine thing…I maybe see what you're saying. I have thought it might be… a thing."
"When have you thought that?"
"I don't remember ever being carefree, and everyone has their broody teenage period, right? But a bunch of stuff happened around my sixteenth birthday, and I stopped caring for a while. It wore off, or I was programed well enough that I got myself together in time for college applications. At Dartmouth, things were lighter. Mom couldn't breathe down my neck—thank fuck we didn't have cell phones. She must've thought my hallmates were amnesiacs, they 'forgot' to give me so many messages. It was good enough that I could feel the bad. I got close to going to Psych Services, but this was the 1-800-CHARTER era, you know? We were all crazy, but no one wanted to be crazy, and if I waited it out long enough, I'd wake up, and living would become life again.
"I had those couple years off, and I might've said I was depressed then, working temp jobs and partying. If I had been, I'd never have been able to make the med school decision. Really, I was bored. Getting accepted, I thought I'd finally proved myself. Then everything but that crumpled. I went in feeling like I'd been put through a centrifuge. In those four years, I can remember a few academic successes, but nothing high or low, personally.
"Truthfully, when I met Derek, I could feel it under my skin. Everything from my past was so vivid in Seattle. Mom ended up in the hospital within days of his wife showing up. Having him by my side would've helped, but I think…now I don't think he caused it. The sex and drinking were my go-to when I went numb, but I was also trying to find that connection again. I fucked a bunch of randoms from the bar. Slept with a friend, thinking maybe I could do the connection then sex thing, and because he was a good thing I didn't deserve. Same with the guy I actually dated. No sex, all romance, he had plans…I cheated on him with Derek. I love him; I think we were meant to be, but I was absolutely acting on the belief that I deserved to be the mistress.
"Derek left his wife, and we tried starting over. Things were brighter for a while, but I couldn't shake the sense of inferiority, my mom confirmed it, and I almost let myself die. I'd been hiding how much I was struggling, and I still didn't think it was fair to burden him with my issues. When living started being harder than wanting to live again; I ended it. My world was desaturated. Not gray. Colorless. Second year, I was starting to be more than Ellis Grey's daughter, or the slutty intern, but I couldn't…couldn't feel it. That I was worth it. That's when I went to Dr. Wyatt. Don't think I would've if I hadn't been getting better. Filling out her intake paperwork…. I met the criteria for a diagnosis, barely, and if I'd been doing it a few months earlier, the margins wouldn't have been there."
"But you weren't officially diagnosed. Did she say anything about SSRIs?"
"You think…? Yeah. Early on. I was so tired of being a mess that I considered it. but I didn't want a 'Meredith Grey: Crazy Pills' prescription anywhere in the hospital, and I didn't have the time to go anywhere else."
"Stigma can be an issue, especially in such a competitive field. You do have the benefit of distance from that while we're working through dosages; although, if this intervention is successful, we can discuss how you can deal with that when you return."
"It's not just…it's…. I trust your opinion, and not just because of Sadie. I can read all those medical Yelp equivalents. And Yelp. Don't know why effectively mostly being able to read the comments is good for my brain, but… the thing is, sometimes people see me as…. When we were trying to adopt Zola, I had to think about what might be said about me. My reputation, it makes me look actively suicidal. But that's wrong. Except for the ferry crash—no, even then I was doing my job; I didn't jump—but there was talk, thanks to my boneheaded husband going around saying I could swim…. It all made me look actively suicidal when I was trying to help people."
"For example?"
"Um. Not long after Christmas, intern year. I'd absolutely say I was self-destructing, the friendship-ruining sex happened like a week later, and th week before I'd had a breakdown in the supply closet about my mom dying. I wasn't okay. And that day I woke up feeling like I was going to die. At times, I'd have courted that. Tried to chase it. I refused to get out of bed. My friends saw depression, don't-wanna-live-today, and dragged me to work. I ended up on a case with a patient who had an unexplored ordinance in his body cavity. This first-day paramedic was holding it in place, and the bomb squad came to walk her through pulling it out. She panicked, and next thing I knew, I was the girl with the bomb. Everyone saw that as me being low-key suicidal. But I wasn't. It was hardly a decision. Turned out if I hadn't the whole room could've exploded. Without knowing that, I was…shit, Beni, I was so scared."
"I hear you. And it must've been hard to not have anyone acknowledge that."
"Yeah. Exactly. The ferryboats—that I can give them. The one that's hardest to explain, but honestly makes the most sense to me… I told a gunman he wanted me. That man wanted my husband, my sister, my pseudo-father figure. I didn't want to die, but I wanted to save them. To What would my life have been like…been worth if I'd just let him keep tracking them down? Derek, I just put myself in front of a gun. He'd almost lost me again, the way he'd lost his father, and I'd put myself in that position.
"It's funny, I guess, that I was the one who told him about that, but it took another month to admit I'd miscarried. Like, me doing that kind of thing wasn't unheard of; I could hope he'd get over it. Being willing to sacrifice a wanted baby; a baby, who was at that point, was still part of my body, but was also his, just by taking the gamble — Whether or not Clark had shot me, I knew how stress worked. I knew…I don't know that I thought about it, because what I thought was Derek, Lexie, Richard common denominator: me…but if Derek thought I'd wanted to die…, wouldn't he think I'd wanted the baby to die too? In the end, I think it changed his mind about the whole encounter. That I wanted the baby meant I didn't think I was worthless or expendable; I wasn't going to keep putting myself in those positions. I was so scared about being a mom and passing my genes on for so long. And…if I didn't have him, or Lexie, or however many others…He knew I didn't think I could've done it, and I wouldn't put that on a kid. I thought…no, I still think that if I've ever done anything heroic, wasn't it that? It wasn't…it was simple, but it was also the hardest choice I've ever made."
"I can see where it would be difficult to put that in terms a social worker or adoption judge might understand."
"Having my baby on the line again was a particular irony. That wasn't in my records. I got the D&C at a different hospital. What I've never been able to get across…all the stupid risks, and even in the Bay—I never actively wanted to kill myself. I spend my day doing everything I can to keep people breathing, the least I can do is do that for myself. Even as a completely insecure, worthless-feeling kid, I didn't, because I thought Mom meant it. I thought she'd wanted to die in 1983, and I saw all the people she'd saved, all she'd done after that. If she couldn't judge her own potential contribution to the world, how could I be sure I was right?"
"That's a very nuanced way to think of it."
"When eternal damnation isn't a deterrent…."
"Suicidal ideation isn't the only sign of depressive episodes, of course. Do you think I'm misinterpreting your situation?"
"Not exactly. No. I'm not saying it's not possible. Probable, even."
"What would Derek have said about you trying medication?"
"I don't know. We never talked about it."
"Do you think he'd react poorly?"
"No! Not after the plane crash. We were both messed up, a little. Everyone who…who came home…ended up with something. The anxiety meds, like I said. Sleeping pills. But I didn't…. If I'd—gotten dark again, after that, and been honest about it-which I would have—I think he would've been supportive, but at the time I saw Dr. Wyatt? Yes, I thought he'd be…. dismissive And I was very reactive to his judgement. He's…was a brain doctor, but… Psych stuff…. He just…he defaulted to light. It took a long time to explain that I didn't, I couldn't force myself to, and it wasn't ever as clear-cut as he thought. The Bay…. He'd let himself fall for my downplaying things, and when I came up trying to seize the second chance, he thought I wasn't taking it, or us, seriously. He told me that every time he closed his eyes, he was back on the dock giving me CPR, and he couldn't…he couldn't keep trying to breathe for me. He thought I was still messed up—he wasn't wrong—and he hadn't really accepted that…that being with the girl from the bar wasn't going to be less complicated than the life he'd left; the little sister he'd had to revive post OD. I get all of it now, but then…it hurt. Whatever I'd done, not being able to breathe was terrifying, and he'd been with me when I hyperventilated crying about Mom, so it felt mocking. Like he was throwing it in my face while he said you can't do that to me again.
"Never mind that right after he got shot and, to my eyes, died, my husband—the one thought I was suicidal—decided to test his new life, or whatever the fuck and became this speed demon for a while—out of nowhere. There was a thing with a motorcycle some time right before Amy OD'd, but it belonged to Mark, who definitely brought out his stupid side, so… whatever his need for speed had been prior to being shot, one accident ended it. He had a near-death experience, and he decided it was his turn to play with death? And he was such an ass about it. I left him to stew in holding overnight, and he came out…well, literally pissy, which, ew, sorry, but also in terms of pouty. I had to spell it out for him—that it scared me—and I really think what actually stopped him was that I was absolutely ready to have a family. The, um, the time before I told him, it was rough, but that was probably hormones. Right? They said I was five weeks."
"Potentially."
"There are other times—George being hit by a bus wasn't great, and while we weren't sure about Zola, things were pretty rough…but this year, I thought I might lose Derek, and I was okay, mostly. The…the difference in the last week makes me thing…maybe I wasn't great, but it's never been that bad again. Not even when Lexie…after the plane."
"Not everything that's upsetting will trigger an episode, in the same way that not every time you've felt it can be traced to an exact incident. The truth is whatever the cause, we're treating the symptoms. Surgery has had, what, a century and a half since ether was introduced? True psychiatric medications are far newer, and far less understood."
"So…can you say for sure…? I…I'm a realist. Sometimes I wish I could be more positive about the world, or at least less conflicted I'm aware it occasionally sounds like pessimism, but bad things have happened to me. It's not that I don't expect good ones; it's that I took Stats. That the universe trends toward entropy. That my neurosurgeon husband couldn't fathom the way my brain worked always seemed like a good reason not to go messing with neurotransmitters, whether or not he worked on the chemical side. My mind is all I have. Fine, I'm a surgeon, I want to cut. Usually. That doesn't mean it's all I can do. When he almost lost function in his hand, I wasn't going to let him give up until every option was exhausted. He had too much talent. The times he has…had… stopped operating were not good for him; even working in a practice made him check out. He needed to be innovating. So, yeah, I was his cheerleader. I also made the lists of all other things he could do. And I made one for myself, starting from scratch, because for most of my life it was surgery or nothing."
"You never wanted to be president? An actress?"
"Nope. When I'm irritating him, Richard points out I used to sound like I was saying I'd be a 'scourge-on.' 'A scourge on my patience.' When I started my phase of playground scuffling, Mom taught me to protect my fingers before grounding me, and she was never anything but sarcastic about drumming. If I hadn't inherited that 'completely skeletal' gene, she probably would've given up on me way sooner."
"Last I checked, piano player's fingers were considered delicate. Beautiful."
"Surgeon's fingers, in my household. And delicate is not good. Not when you're catastrophe prone. Something could always happen. I've essentially got a world-renown ortho on standby who'd would work her ass off on a fix, but I've seen several surgeons go through manual injuries. It hasn't been pretty. I like teaching. I used to say I wished I'd wanted to be a teacher, so maybe at some level I did. Luckily, it's part of being a surgeon. I don't keep journals the way Mom did, but even after only three years as an attending, I could probably write something. My visual memory isn't Lexie's, but aurally, the Alzheimer's thing is ironic. That I've been prepared for. I will not put a single person in danger because I'm arrogant. I'd kick myself out of the OR the second I started showing symptoms, and there's every chance that'd be it. There are things I could do without hand function. Losing my mindterrifies me."
"I see. There are people who feel certain medications make them feel more of a lack of affect, or more dissociated. We'd discuss any possible side-effects in depth, and we would absolutely change tactics if they're untenable. The thing about psychiatric medications is that they're not surgery. No change will be permanent. If they're helpful, they will help your brain produce the chemicals it's lacking."
"Unless they don't."
"In which, case we try something else."
"What if I don't want to know?"
"What do you mean?"
"If I'd gone to Psych Services fifteen years ago, I'd have had a different baseline. Even if I'd done it in med school... We might have been happier."
"You might've been. That wouldn't have changed the external forces on your relationship."
"True. Look. Honestly, Beni…loving Derek the most powerful thing in my life. I…I want to experience losing him just as strongly."
"Part of experiencing something is processing it."
"You have an answer for everything, huh?"
"Hopefully one more answer than you have questions."
"We'll see. I am a one-woman scourge."
"Think of it this way, that loss was strong enough to overwhelm your brain, and it's blocking you from experience other emotions. Love is one of those. Think about it. Let's aim to make a decision by the end of the month. I'd like to try every therapy tool we can…what? Fill in your audience, Meredith, what's funny?"
"You could've called me, you know," Fatimah said, leaning on the kitchen island.
Meredith shrugged, flicking the pages of the library book she'd been holding when she opened the door. "It wasn't a big deal. Just freaked out and can't go back to the pretty book house."
Fatimah's cheeks were round when she smiled, and her eyes more mischievous than expected on someone so unassuming. "Something tells me you'll face up to it. But I'd like to know—" A beep came from the oven, and she loaded in a CorningWare dish from of the bag she'd brought. "Twenty minutes. That all right for you?"
"I not only took the pill before you got here, I ate one of Zola's pancakes this morning without taking one. And she's in no hurry to say 'when' with the syrup."
"I'm taking the W. So, that said, you could have just—"
"If you say put in the microwave, I'm taking it home with me."
"It's a fancy rich-people microwave!" she protested. "Guess I'm a fancy rich-people with the dead neurosurgeon money, but… so, how long have you two been together?"
Fati smirked. "Four years, give or take. She's been on a rough road. The last time you saw her was while she was in Seattle?"
"Yeah. Beginning of '08."
"I imagine she seems very different."
"Yes. And no." Meredith bit the tip of her index nail. "I was different, too," she said. "Any other time she'd showed up, I'd dropped everything. That didn't happen, and she got…vindictive. I might've been more aloof than I should, after what happened when Derek's wife showed up."
"I don't think she'd say that. I won't speak for her, but I will say that if you'd indulged her, she might not have gotten to this point from there."
How did she get here? What part did this woman play in it? She didn't seem like have been a match for the Die to Meredith's Death; the wildfire to Meredith's livewire. She and Meredith would never have been competing for the same spot in the Sadie jigsaw puzzle. They were too far apart. That wouldn't stop Meredith from trying to see which of the familiar pieces Fatimah connected to.
Did Addison wonder about her like that? At one time, it would've been unfathomable that the leggy, lipstick-y redhead might lie considering a messy-haired, messy mess of an intern, but she'd come to see Addison as a person, and that was what a person did. Meredith been searching the trailer for signs of Rose with the candles burning through the window. Hell, she'd Googled the research-fellow while he slept next to her, drained from taking a red-eye, spending a day with the kids, and satiating her need to claim him — "Say it again." "I was coming home, regardless. You're what matters. You're everything. You and the kids are everything."—She'd read every like on Renée Collier's profile. She'd kept up a sarcastic mental commentary, — you like 'being a nerd ;-)'? Name one of their songs—butshecould still feel the way her heart had palpitated when she read renée played "Do You Wanna Dance?[09/23/12]" on some music site. It'd felt like having the song come on at Joe's, and meeting Derek's eye across the room. Addison's gaze had followed. In a split second, Meredith had understood that the intense, on-the-beat way he'd fucked her to the song in the trailer; that'd felt perfect for them, had begun with Addison. For Addison.
She'd taken her next shot wondering if it'd driven Addison crazy in the same way. Did having the beat pounded into her, her clit rubbed in time, block every other thought from her mind in a way that felt miraculous? They'd left before she got drunk enough to ask. Was the track's play-count going to increase? She'd imagined Addison one eyebrow cocked, stating, "You asked the intern to dance, Derek." Her jealousy would've burned clean. She wouldn't have felt the complicated heat making Meredith squirm on her bar stool; afraid someone would read her mind and discover both envy and desire.
The research-fellow's post from before Derek started at the NIH had only reinvigorated Meredith's need to claim him. She'd tried to work the edge off herself, only increasing her frustration. She'd barely been able to let him wake to mount him and erase the space between them. "Say it again," she'd demanded. "Say it, Derek. Say it while I fuck you. Say it 'til I'm coming on you so hard you can't speak, and then tell me again."—"I was coming home, regardless. You're what matters…."
Sadie hadn't shown much interest in Derek; she'd sniffed around Cristina and Lexie. Maybe she really couldn't admit to herself that they hadn't been only sisterly best friends.
"I don't see Seattle Sadie in San Diego Sadie," Meredith told Fati. "But I see my Sadie in her, and I saw my Sadie in Seattle Sadie. I haven't seen Seattle Sadie in San Diego Sadie."
"Your Sadie, huh?"
"She wasn't letting anyone else hang around for more than a few months, let alone fourteen years." She swung her legs onto the floor and started toward the small dining room table to sit across from Fatimah. "We were…something. Many things. I loved her; I do love her. But whatever we were, we weren't good for each other."
"According to her you were — "
Meredith held up a hand. "Let me hear it from her. Please."
"Hey, you're not shaking." Fatimah leaned over the table and slapped it in a high-five. Meredith really did like her. "Want me to go with you to get the rugrats later? I can introduce you to some more of the counselors."
"That works. Thanks for getting them last minute."
"Ha, I was going apologize for springing that on you. I forgot I'd asked Lena about enrolling them, and then she said yes…You can take them out whenever."
"I can't keep them with me until college, they'll have neuroses. I should give myself a day-camp. Three days a week is a good start. They need to do something other than hang here with me. So should I. Apparently, I suck at full-time mourner, if I managed to forget…." She let the sleeves of the second of Derek's flannels fall over her hands and pressed the heel of her palms under her eyes.
"Sadie says your sister was a real sweetheart."
"Sadie can talk to me about Lexie her damn self." Meredith slumped forward, one arm under her chin, the other stretched out in front of her. "Sorry."
"S-word."
"Bullshit, I am. Lexie would give her the benefit of the doubt, too. I thought we were total opposites. She was sweet; I was sour, but the thing is…."
"It's never that simple."
"Not ever. Lexie…she showed up wanting nothing more than to know me, and I couldn't even… She died, and I was able to not think of her. I could shut it out. It took… wasn't until… um…Derek met…nope, shit." Meredith closed her eyes, which made the images she'd been bracing against all weekend worse.
"You okay?"
"Mmm." She swallowed. "Have you heard of Ironic Process Theory?"
"We're more likely to think about something if we're told not to, or we try not to? Like how you just made me lose the game?"
"Fuck you, yes. Now I'll lose whenever you're around."
"Sorry, not sorry."
"Why are you allowed to use that word?"
"Because I still know what it means."
"Fine," Meredith whined, her word choice as petulant as her tone, whether Fatimah caught it or not. "Derek met Lexie first, told me he'd flirted with a girl—he wanted a reaction out of me—and when we discovered who she was, I held it against her. Of all the stupid…. I was so insecure. If I'd known that she'd be…that she'd be… fuck." Meredith rested her head on her hand, trying to remember anything that'd happened further back than three years. "We're six years apart. She was the brunette, but I'm the dark one. Not unlike you and Die."
Lexie died. Lexie was dead when.… All she could see was the blood on Lexie's face. The hollowness in those lively eyes. Each breath smelled more like the fire that'd been such an achievement smoke still made her feel triumphant. She could hear the wolves.
"Lexie was…Lexie…in the woods…. Shit, I-I don't wanna start there…."
"We've got time."
"Not that simple. It's…it's, um…. I don't…. There's this part that I didn't know until…until two months and a few days ago. It's all I can think about. It's likely why half of Zola's breakfast may have been all I've kept down since lunch yesterday." Fatimah narrowed her eyes. Meredith held her hands up. "Not shaking, remember? I was better last week. I'm hopping up the well—this just... it's slowing me down. It's bad. Gory. I say that as someone who watches surgical recordings for fun. Present tense, I dunno about 'for fun,' but…isn't it crazy? Can't eat, can't study, can watch surgeries on YouTube…."
"Surgery is familiar to you. It makes sense that it's a comfort, or even just a good distraction."
"Too much of that, maybe. I'm sure it's hard to imagine having known only the shaking, crying mess, but if I'd stayed, I'd be in the OR now. Probably technically doing a hell of a lot better than I am. But I'd never…I wouldn't be dealing with it. Like I didn't really face what happened with Lexie. I accepted that she was dead, and I didn't have the equipment to have saved her. I couldn't really talk about her, though. I want to talk about her now. To think about her. But my mind goes to this horrible, gory thing. So, you wanna hear about her, and I wanna talk about her, but I can't skip it."
"Meredith, I've have been hospitalized due to PTSD. I had many privileges compared to most Palestinians, but I was there for Intifada. Try me."
"Sor…I get that it sucks to be underestimated. Just, if it's triggering, or…okay, okay. Um. In the woods. There were…there were wolves. There'd been five of us on the plane—we were going to assist on a conjoined-twins separation—and the pilot, Jerry. The legal people kept dehumanizing him—he was the company—but's bullshit, Jerry was one of us! So. Jerry. Lexie. Me and Derek. Cristina, who's been my best friend since day one of intern year. Arizona, one of the infamous Sofia's moms, and Mark, Sofia's dad, Derek's childhood best friend and Lexie's…her ex, but they were working it out.
"Jerry's paralyzed. Mark hung on for three months after we got rescued. Arizona lost a leg. Lexie died out there. Quickly. She'd been crushed under the back of the plane. Crush injuries are…. Out in the middle of nowhere, we didn't…we couldn't…. She died, and we couldn't stop. The others needed to be stabilized, and Cristina had dislocated her arm, Derek's wrist was smashed, so I did all the emergency procedures we needed. Wasn't much help from there. Slept a lot. Only me and Cristina were fully ambulatory, and I'd lost blood, lost Lexie. Derek might've been awake. I slept, and in the dark, the wolves…we had fire. We made noise. Were a threat. L-Lexie's body was…was a body."
"In'shallah."
"The…the fire had to be easiest to get the injured to, and the tail wasn't in the clearing. Their pack was strong. Ours was broken. But-but I would've…maybe it's good I wasn't conscious. I don't begrudge them not telling me. Not waking me. What would the point have been? For me to blame myself more? We couldn't get her out to save her. She was dead. We had to fight to stay alive, not fight the wolves. But she was my sister, not…not meat.
"I-I might've done something stupid. Derek, he would've been thinking about what it'd do to him, if it was his sister—she was. He could d-do that. Love my sister like that.…" Pack. We were. His family. Her family. "She was Cristina's student, and Cristina's like my sister, so biproxy, and now I think it's why the whole thing was hardest on her, mentally. Maybe she talked to him. I hope- I hope…I hope he didn't carry that and never tell…talk to anyone. He needed to talk to process. With his wrist, he wouldn't have been much help, and that would've ki—he'd hate that. They, um. Cristina got her…most of her…away. Her arm…it was already almost…they yank—" Meredith choked on nothing and buried her head fully in her arms. She was so tired of this. She saw—had seen—stuff every day that would be repellant to most people. Smelled things. Necrotic tissue. Putrid infections. Patients covered in their own waste. She was comfortable around dissected cadavers, knowing that they'd had identities. She'd been conditioned to see bodies as people. To attribute life to the inanimate because life was what they had to learn to respect. To protect.
She hated that she would continue to exist while nature tore Derek and Lexie—their bodies, not them, their bodies- apart; that no matter how hard you fought or loved; that was how it had to go for life to begat life, but it wasn't entropy or darkness tormenting her. It was rot. Putrefaction. The brain was an organ, and it could start becoming gooey gunk at any point, ending a life before the body died. She believed—wanted to believe—no, believed that the spark that disappeared or faded from the body might continue as energy, but the known reality was decayed flesh and bone. Memories were neurons firing in another meat sack until that disintegrated, too. If she could come to terms with that, maybe she'd want to return to work. When she could stop picturing rotting dead bodies on her operating table, instead of severely injured living ones.
A cup clicked on the wood. Meredith raised her eyes enough to see the bubbles shooting through it. Ginger ale. Meeting Fati's eyes made her feel both hollow and transparent, like she was doing her best impression of the spun glass she claimed not to be.
"Sorry."
"Nope." Fatimah tapped Meredith on the lips, like Sadie might have, but without the hint of anything but playfulness. "You only recently found that out?"
"I heard the howls. One of the nights I could hardly move anymore. Derek said we'd be safe." Shh, my love. We have fire. They won't come close. If they do, I'll be your knight in scratched up plane debris. "I let him. I should've put the pieces together. When her mother died, I was in the OR, I knew she wasn't fucking mauled, and there wasn't a viewing then. It might've been that they just don't do open casket, but I couldn't be certain. My…Lexie's father showed up at the hospital to tell me I wouldn't be welcome at Susan's service." Fati put a hand on the inside of Meredith's arm, but didn't say anything. Didn't make her explain or justify her attitude about her father.
"I didn't feel welcome at Lexie's. They displayed her med school graduation picture, and it felt like they were mourning the idea of Lexie. Lexie before her mom died, before she became a surgeon, before I came into their lives." Meredith shrugged. She knew it sounded selfish. "I'm not their family, but Iwas her family. Derek, Zola, and I were her family."
She scowled into her ginger-ale.
"Derek never wanted to see it, but he had two families, too. Carolyn, his mother, believes in being whole and together in the afterlife, or whatever. That wasn't what he and I had decided, but my sister-in-law was working on me. She said Mark had agreed to be buried to humor Carolyn—he called her 'Mom.' Maybe he did do that originally, but I don't think…. Mark was really badly off by the time we got rescued, but he had a surge… this one day of being totally awake and aware…."
Saying that aloud made her think of her mother's one day of lucidity. Having to wake up and find out your life might as well be over would be torturous. If Mark had had a chance, it would've been one thing, but she abhorred the idea of having Derek for a short period, knowing he knew his life was over. He'd try to play it down, like Mark had, and she'd have been able to see how worried he was about her. in his eyes. I'm not falling apart, Derek. I'm not. She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she could literally hold herself together.
"'I pointed out that Mark knew we got Lexie's body home,' she continued. "And that she'd been interred. So, maybe he'd done it for her, not for Carolyn. Cristina had been in—in my room, keeping me off the ledge, and she goes…she said…'well, not her whole body,' and then she seized up, like she couldn't believe she'd let that out. Like she'd had it boxed up, hidden, specifically from me, and hadn't noticed the lock rusting.
"She…she tried to backtrack. She'd never rambled so well, but I am the queen of rambling, and I made her tell me what—what she'd meant."
"…they were fighting over Lexie. I tried so hard, Mer. I was heaving stuff from the plane at them. I tried to MacGyver out a torch…."
"And I was asleep."
"You were freezing. You have zero body fat. I told you to…you needed the energy."
"She was reading from her phone how it'd be okay, Catholicism-wise; they're not like the Egyptians who required the body to be whole. None of the saints would be whole with all the reliquaries…. Her family is Jewish, and she's a-everything. She didn't know, and Amelia didn't want to cut in and risk me saying 'no' for Derek.
"I suppose there was never a good time to tell you that truth, but that feels unnecessarily harsh."
"I don't think she meant to, really. At that point, there was ugly-sobbing than constant leak, and she had a history of PTSD, related to Derek dying, and me crying. Specifically. There was a shooting at the hospital; Derek got hit in the chest, and they had to make the gunman think he died. They tricked me, too. She couldn't operate for months, and she said part of it was hearing me…my wailing. In the woods, I hit the same place; where I couldn't hold the emotion in anymore. Derek wasn't dying out there, but he was injured, and his actual death; I think it all mixed together for Cristina. She loves me; she's just not great with emotional stuff—we bonded over that. Got better at it, but she also got burned. She thinks it's weird that I sort of believe in an afterlife. That I can. And it's not like it made me change my mind about where they are. That I don't think Derek and I will be together if I'm not buried beside him." She shuddered at the thought. "He's not there." Not there being eaten by worms; not there with toxic chemicals filling his veins; making a mockery of blood, fooling you just for a second… "I really do know that."
"You are a rational woman of science, yes. That you're having nightmares after finding out something so horrific while planning your husband's funeral doesn't change that."
"Thank you for saying that aloud. Um. Cristina offered to let us stay with her, in Switzerland. She's their godmother. She'd have put me to work, but she doesn't want kids. So, it wouldn't be me checking out in favor of our village it'd have been Ellis Grey 2.0: Addition of the German Nannies. Lexie used to be the one who'd take Zola if something happened. It's currently my sister-in-law, which pretty much means my mother-in-law, so if that's not motivation to get my shit together…."
"Mmm, I hear that. Obviously, Sadie tries to keep her family out of her life, but she does work for the company."
"Have you met Himself?"
"I have encountered him. He visited the clinic at the ribbon cutting. If anyone was actually watching the security monitor, they'd have banned the crazy Muslim girl who looked like she wanted to tear him apart being held off by two employees who happened to work on the psych floor."
"He's charming as ever, then."
"That's it, exactly." Fatimah threw her arms up in frustration. "To everyone except her. To her, he's a human piece of excrement. I hate it, but 'I'm a grown woman, I can handle it.'"
The oven timer beeped, and Fatimah got up to take the pasta out, and put a container of sauce in the microwave. Meredith fiddled with the ring around her neck, pinching it to keep herself grounded. She'd gone over the hardest part. She could move on. She had to. Lexie deserved that.
"Lexie surprised me. She was determined. Confidant. Selfless enough to give up a slot at MGH—one of the best programs in the country—to be closer to her family after Susan died. At twenty-three, the age I applied for med school, with mom breathing down my neck, she was an intern. She could seem young, but she wasn't some prissy little princess." Meredith couldn't help pausing there to see if Fatimah reacted. She didn't. Sadie probably didn't know that Meredith had those details of how she manipulated Lexie. "She was selfless, goofy. She could be naïve and jealous — Oh, hey, I could've helped with that."
Fatimah set the plates of spaghetti down and shook her head, "Just as easy. I know you're capable."
How did she make things Meredith wanted to take as patronizing sound that sincere? Meredith stabbed at her serving, mixing the meat sauce into the noodles. The squelching made her flinch. Since March, the similarity of the sounds and textures brought her thoughts close to surgery then skipped to death, and Derek, and Lexie. Before, she'd been able to compartmentalize more easily. Now, she had to remind herself of the differences, primarily the scents.
Didn't you once want your body to be left to nature when you died? Yeah, when she'd thought her mother would forget or predecease her, and no one else would bother to claim her. It was a valid choice, but Lexie hadn't made it. If she had, Meredith could've accepted that. Neither her sister nor her husband had had a choice.
She forced herself to wrap her fork in pasta and put it in her mouth. She could only keep trying. Either she would finally process it all, or the antiemetic would protect her body from her thoughts well enough to keep her from wasting away; or both, and the new connections would weaken until they broke.
"I resented Lexie so much, initially." Meredith relaxed her hold on her fork, letting it scrape against the side of her plate. "I'd only found about her a few months earlier, and the way it happened…. Have you ever heard the riddle: 'a boy and his father are in an accident. The father is incapacitated. The boy is taken to the OR. A surgeon walks and says, 'I can't operate on this patient, he's my son,' how is that possible?'"
"I haven't. I suppose, if we're discussing your family, the surgeon is the boy's mother."
"Ding! Could also be stepparent, gay parents—the solution changes with the times. It's not illegal to treat family, but it is…mmm, problematic. Here's another riddle, 'you have an intern who has seen her biological father once in twenty-three years. He accompanies his twenty-one-year-old -biological daughter when she is admitted to the hospital. If the intern says, 'it's fine, she's not my sister,' do you listen to her?'"
"I'm assuming your superior did not."
"Correct." She could only think that Addison was sticking to her unusually classy policy of treating Meredith like a person who knew her own mind. She appreciated it, but she hadn't known enough about family for that to be the case. "Our…Lexie's youngest sister, Molly got transferred to us due to pregnancy complications. I met my stepmother, and I saw how much of a mom she was. She wanted to know me."
Family says that. until they do.
That wasn't fair. Susan died. Her mother lost lucidity before she stopped presenting happy, normal girl. Lexie did; it wouldn't hurt so much otherwise.
"She had me convinced Thatcher did, too." In his case, it felt fair. He had every chance, and she hadn't seen him since that funeral. "Situation: 'Your stepmother comes into the ER with hiccups that won't stop. A. You treat her, but do you buy into your father's belief that she's contriving situations to put you in the same room? B. She continues to appear with obscure complications. Do you admit that something is going on and ask to be off her case? C. When she goes septic, and the surgeon operating on her was the man your mother had an affair with, do you insist on telling your estranged father?"
Fatimah shook her head three times, and Meredith held her mostly empty glass up to her.
"Caveat one: you are Meredith Grey. Caveat two: your real mommy died approximately six weeks prior. Caveat three: your boyfriend-boss thinks you're in more pain than you're showing him, and he thinks having family will help. He's wrong about one, and right about the other. Considering the above, your answers are, A. Obviously. She keeps buying you groceries and making dinner plans. For all you know, this isn't that different. B. You do not. Reassuring her gets you praise from a mommy, a daddy, and your boyfriend-boss. C. Absolutely! If you hadn't shown up on his doorstep, Susan wouldn't have been at this hospital. You set up the dominoes; you owe it to both of them."
If Susan had gone to Mercy West, she could've had an entirely different Bostonian doctor's kid operating on her. Jackson's eyes were great at winning over moms. That'd be a weird universe. She'd have outed him as Harper Avery's grandson if she thought he had anything to do with her stepmother dying, but if she hadn't known Susan, she wouldn't have cared that she did. Would Lexie have come back to Seattle, or gone to MGH? She might be alive, but Meredith wouldn't know her.
"For all the marbles." She picked up the reheated garlic bread on her plate and broke off a piece of the crust. "You tell your bumbling, meek, soft-spoken father that 'we did everything we could.' When he slaps you firmly across the face, are you: A. Your mother. B. Nothing more than a stranger. C. Five years old, and Daddy hit you; twelve years old, and disappointing your only parent; sixteen years old, and not worth loving; twenty-two years old, and a failure; twenty-eight years old, and running, from him, and from two men who actually love you; D. All of the above?
"He…? Meredith…he hit you? At your workplace? Shit. You did the right thing."
"I didn't. I was totally unprepared…. I knew I hadn't done anything to make him do it, but… I'd just started to understand that maybe Mom…maybe I was worth something to her, and she was gone, and I was a fuck-up as a daughter, a fuck-up as a doctor, a fuck-up as a girlfriend. Derek was right there. I should've gone to him."
"Would that have deescalated the situation?"
Meredith shrugged. Thatcher had retreated. She could remember him turning away, and Derek reaching for her. What would he have done? Decked her father? He'd hit Mark twice with her as an excuse. This would've been on her behalf, and…she would've been pissed off. It'd have been punching down, and she couldn't abide that.
"If you're in physical danger, and you can leave, leave," Fatimah continued. "My father was not a nice man, but if he'd ever laid a finger on me…I can't imagine it."
"I couldn't either. I don't remember Thatcher ever being anything but soft. He wasn't the person I'd imagined, but he'd made sense as the man who was intimidated enough by Mom that she could take me across the country with no objections. My memory for that time is sketchy. Maybe I was completely better off with her—safer. I wonder, now, if she saw something in him. She never talked about him, and so all this is speculation, but nothing about my parents would surprise me at this point. Not unless someone told me they were actually in love." Meredith had delivered the line before, but even as she said it this time, she thought of some of the flash-pan couples she'd known. George and Callie came to mind in particular. She couldn't imagine it, but maybe. "I assume she'd have told Richard, the man she was cheating with. Richard is decent. He stayed with his wife, and lied to my mother about why, but he would have.…Well, he's a meddler, not an idiot, and he was a Black man in the eighties, so he'd have made Mom report Thatcher, and hopefully found an opportunity to punch him in the face away from CCTV."
"Within two weeks, Lexie showed up." Meredith looked down, and realized her plate was covered in pieces of garlic bread. Bite-sized, not shredded. She'd take it. ""I told her…I told her I didn't want to know her. She…she'd had our daddy her whole childhood. She got the piano recitals, the birthday parties, the visits at college. I figured she was going home at night to complain about how horrible I was to her. It turned out that Lexie also got our father. That, she didn't deserve." Fatimah's expression said she wasn't going to ask. Meredith kept going anyway. Filling the silence made it harder to think. Easier to keep swallowing. "He ended up in the ER, trashed. I was sort of on my way to putting myself together. Faking it, at that point, but, y'know, in therapy. Everything between Mom and me had been somewhere between complicated and horrible for years, and I missed her every day. There's, um, there's a version of me that would've done the same thing with tequila, not scotch—although Derek drank scotch. I might've decided it was symbolic. She picked up a bite of garlic bread and added, "And I was really defensive about that, for a number of reasons. It made me predisposed to sympathize with someone getting drunk and being stupid."
"You and Sadie have some stories."
"We were the epitome of stupid. Climbing shit, jumping in random bodies of water"—that I kinda miss—"wearing heels in squats with narrow, broken staircases. We did it together, though. Looking out for each other, or if one goes, both of us go. Depended on the day. Even just some of the shit we drank…." This time, the shudder was entirely fake, and she returned Fatimah's smile. "I felt for him. And he told me… He told me he was proud of me. A lifetime's worth of proud. No one had ever… If you praise an intern too much, they're going to get cocky, unless they've had a surgeon tearing them down their ego for twenty-eight years. During med school, I had to worry about said surgeon's home-health care, arrange appointments with specialists and make sure they'd keep their mouths shut, research long-term facilities—I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not sure I got it right at all, but I got to graduation. Iwas impressed with myself, but I hadn't given my professors a lot of reasons to be. In undergrad, I wasn't the most engaged in class; my test scores and essays kinda mystified them—like you can't listen while hungover? In grade school, I was too quiet or too mouthy, never in-between.
"Hearing my dad say that was…incredible. At a point where strong wasn't how I saw myself, he told me I was stronger than Lexie. It was like we really were sisters—which at that point we were not—and I'd been shown favoritism. I went off on Lexie, told her to look after him better. It wasn't really about him. She'd done what I did, and I was so insecure about how I handled Mom's care; guilt is still a thing I'm dealing with there. Lexie told me he'd called her an ungrateful bitch two days earlier, and the week before he'd told her he was proud of her. A lifetime's worth of proud."
Fatimah sucked her teeth.
"Yeah. I'm sure they had their own issues; I really can't imagine he was supportive of her being a surgeon. But he'd been around her whole life, so…was he really seeing her? Was he, maybe, talking about me when he called her ungrateful? Because she should be grateful that he'd been there for her. Such a selfish thought. Except, there's no way she didn't wonder, and she didn't hold it against me. She didn't." Meredith got up and went to the refrigerator to refill her glass as she continued. Fatimah was watching; she wasn't hiding anything, but she felt less observed. "He was rough with her. I didn't see it happen, but I have sources.
"I say Mom would never have hurt me, and I mean it. Never before her diagnosis. Patients with Alzheimer's get confused, and they get belligerent. Not just physically. I took more shit from Mom in those five years than the previous twenty-three, and eventually, Lexie understood more than anyone." Meredith dropped back in her chair. "Thatcher did the program. Had a liver transplant. Molly's husband is military, it's not her fault that they weren't able to be in Seattle, but I got the sense Molly didn't believe Lexie about how poorly he treated her. That she blamed her for the way their family unraveled, even though Lexie came back. I'm not sure they were ever close. They were different, and something the way she wanted to know me—I could be totally wrong. We were similar in ways I didn't expect. She was competitive to a fault. Loyal. Nosy. Not coy in the slightest. Ambitious. And…she loved me, long before I deserved. I wasn't ready to be a sister; I'm not sure I was ever a good one, but….
"The shooting happened in her second year. A bereaved husband came in with a gun. Derek had been the one to take his wife off life-support. Lexie had been on the case. I told the guy that if he wanted to hurt them, I was the one he wanted. I wouldn't have said that if I hadn't believed it would hurt her. For me, that's a big deal." Her conversation with Beni was pushed forward in her mind, in a way that was almost a relief after a weekend of wolves. "Lexie didn't deal with the aftermath well. She lost it in the ER. She was living at my place—" because her roommate had died…. Maybe I should stay far away from that hospital. "—I noticed she wasn't sleeping much, but I didn't think of how much she'd seen, would remember, the blanks she'd fill in. She could be morbid. I loved that about her, but she got obsessed. She hadn't been sleeping at all. Psych snowed her under, and she slept for thirty-six hours. I stayed with her, and that's when I really accepted her as my little sister. Caring for her was my job. Protecting her. Loving her.
"We were trying for a baby; I'd had a miscarriage, actually, but I was still afraid I wouldn't be able to be nurturing, or maternal, or whatever. That day and a half watching Lexie sleep…." The bottom buttonhole of this flannel was already wearing; it wasn't as well made as the last one, or maybe it'd already been older. She wasn't sure if any of them had been around since he bought the trailer, or even longer. "She didn't remember I was there, but that didn't matter. She already…."
"She knew she loved you," Fatimah suggested, collecting their plates.
"Yeah. Put those in the sink. I'll get them later." Fatimah's eyebrows settled right between her glasses and her hijab. "I clean when I'm stressed. Just, lately, the not-moving instinct has been stronger. I'm working on it."
Fatimah jerked the lever to turn on the faucet. Good call. Way to be useless, Mer. Like you were when Derek was on that OR table. When Lexie was under that plane. Maybe you couldn't have saved her, but you didn't have to leave her. You cried over her because you knew. You knew you weren't there when she most needed it. You couldn't even protect her once she'd died. You were a terrible sister who left her to the wolves. Derek's sisters wouldn't…the wolves…Derek's sisters….
"Meredith? Meredith. Meredith!"
"Huh? Sorry. I'm fine. Isn't it time to get the kids?"
"Not quite. Besides, we're not leaving until you tell me what just happened."
"What?" She tried to stand, but Fatimah had her hand braced on the table, and Meredith couldn't get around her. "Let me go!"
Social worker.
"All rights to your daughter…"
Meredith's panic was excessive but knowing that didn't make it easier to control.
"Your mother is very sad, Meredith. We'll take care of you for a few days."
"I'm not…I'd never…. You can't keep me from my—"
"That is not what's happening here! I don't think you're a danger to the kids. I think you're a great mom, actually. You've been through far more than anyone should, and they're sweet, smart kiddos who adore you. We are going to go get them. I'm not keeping you from them."
"Now and in the future."
"Tell me you hear me."
"It's important you fully understand."
"I…I…"
You can't go back.
Meredith blew out a long breath. "Yes. Yeah. Sorry. Can we—?"
"But I did just turn around to see you look like you were actively being struck in the face. As your friend, you can imagine why that's concerning."
"It's not…." She looked over toward the toy farm the kids had left set up on the floor. It currently housed the entirety of Zola 's Zoo: a massive collection of jungle animals, and a none-too-shabby farmyard collection.
The sheep were front and center.
"'cause we're Shepherds, right Bailey-bird?"
"Yes, we's Stepurds."
"Please, can we….?"
You are no shepherd.
"I stayed with her. In the psych ward, I stayed with her, because Derek was recovered. B-but in the woods…I knew…Crush injuries…. T-to save her we'd need hands. I didn't… I told myself that looking for Derek was helping. She'd be fine. But I'm the general surgeon. I'd passed my boards and everything. And-and he was ambulatory. Headed right for us. He found me. He would've found me. He always found me. If he hadn't, they'd both have been gone, and I still …. He didn't need me. He'd u-used a rock to free his hand. That damn freaking millions-of-dollars-a-year hand. I spent months supporting him through getting it fixed—C-convincing him it was worth it. W-when my sister…I hadn't told her….
"I'm not being fair. I sh-shouldn't…. He lost his best friend. His brother…." Meredith's voice was shaking, but she wasn't sobbing this time. Her lungs weren't seizing. She could breathe, but it still felt wrong, like there was something combustible in the air, or in her, causing a strange reaction that made her blood boil. "He didn't want to ask the…his sisters for a nerve donation. Didn't want them involved, and he always, always acted like I didn't get it. I gave Thatcher half of my fucking liver for Lexie. We didn't have forty years of ups and downs, but I knew what it was to have a sibling. I knew his sisters would come through, because when you love someone, they're worth it. His hand was worth it; he was worth it.
"Lexie was worth it, and I was so focused on him and his damn hand that I didn't…it took me months to even…. He got to be with Mark, and I was so envious. I-I let him think I couldn't do it. The emotional stuff. I could've, for Derek. I liked Mark. He was my brother-in-law. He was gonna be my sister's…they were meant to be. Hell, I should've stayed with him for her. I didn't. I couldn't. Derek got to be there, and say everything he needed to say. I didn't. Thanks to him. Not that it was his fault… Then, after everything…Lexie, and all the work on his hand… He died. He was a big, dammed hero, and he died—I was with him. I sh-should've been with her! I should've told her that I loved her!" Finally choking on her words, Meredith clenched her hand around her glass, and then releasing it to quell the urge to fling it at the wall. "Derek was in an accident. I shouldn't be…. He didn't do anything. That sham of a hospital…."
"Everything you're really angry about happened before that, didn't it?"
"Oh, I'm angry that he's dead. I'm angry that I never talked to him about it," she admitted. "He loved her, too. He would've been devastated if he knew I resented him for that choice—He would've somehow convinced me I didn't make a choice, I'm sure, which I didn't wanna hear…. We talked about a lot after the crash. More than…we'd gotten a lot better at communicating. There was just so much. I didn't even…it didn't hit me until I had this crush patient…he was traveling."
"D.C.?"
"No. Not yet. A consult. But then I found out I was pregnant, and his sister showed up, and my surprise sister, and if I thought about Lexie too much I compared them, which wasn't fair to Maggie, so I didn't. There was always something. Maybe I would've, eventually…the day he died the E.R. was full of plane crash victims." She hadn't forgotten that, exactly—no, she had. It'd been too much. Richard and his exaggerated near miss. Her terror that something had happened to the plane Derek hadn't even boarded. "If he'd come home…but he didn't. He didn't, and I didn't tell her, and I forgot the day she died."
"Psh," Fatimah said, and Meredith drew back like an intern had backtalked her.
"What's today's date, Meredith?"
"It's…the kids started day-camp Monday. It's the first Wednesday in June, so…" Last week was another month without Derek. "The fifth?"
"Fourth."
"I wasn't that far off."
"Habibi, the way you lost your sister was tragic, and traumatic. You only just discovered something that made the whole thing more horrific. You lost your husband in a different kind of crash, but a crash, after a day that must've been triggering in all kinds of ways; ways that would definitely cross wires. The fact that you can disengage them enough to tell me all that, with that much insight? You lost track of time. It was one thing too many."
"Always is. The carousel never stops." Ix-nay on the crazy talk. "Sor—I apologize for panicking on you."
"I'll allow it. Still want me to come along to get the rugrats? I don't have to"
"Don't be stupid. Let me change out of my dead husband's fishing flannel. You can tell Sadie I brushed my hair for drop off this morning."
"And lie to her?"
"I did!" Meredith turned indignantly to see Fatimah grinning. "I see. Make fun of the hot mess of a widow."
"You said it."
"Lexie was great with Zo," Meredith added, digging through the basket of clean laundry sitting on top of the washer-dryer unit in the hall. If she put their clothes on every night, she kept on top of it. She'd learned the hard way that planning to run it once a week led to a quick lack of underoos and toddler socks. "I tried not to make her be a live-in sitter. Babies were a touchy subject. I think Molly got onto her for never visiting her kids in first few years, before they got deployed to Bahrain.
"And Sofia…that wasn't exactly a sperm donor situation, but he and Callie, Sof's bio-mom, weren't dating. The 'Sofia Has Two Mommies and a Daddy' situation was coparenting. He and Lexie would've been back together sooner, but she wasn't ready for 'and a Step-Lexie.'"
"Mark was—"
"A man-whore. His words. I know it's not appropriate. I dropped out of pop culture in 2003, and just rediscovered the internet, so…promiscuous?"
"Yes, okay, but my question was going to be more … you said he grew up with Derek? Were they the same age?"
"Mark was younger by like…eighteen months? Lexie was twenty-seven. But he…a few years ago, Carolyn said he had the emotional maturity of a horny fifteen-year-old, which—" Meredith stuck her hand out of her open bedroom door to indicate 'eh.' "—he's the one who ended up in the meaningful relationship with Derek's ex-wife. During their marriage."
"Inshallah, I thought queer women were bad."
"You have no idea. For a verystraight institution our hospital is insanely incestuous. Saying that, their damn mess started in Manhattan." With a t-shirt pulled over her tank-top, Meredith folded Derek's over-shirt and placed it on the dresser. It was the only thing folded in the room. She wanted to fix that, but once she got in the door with the kids, she'd sit on the couch, they'd bring her books, or ask for certain movies. The next thing she knew it'd be supper, bath, and bedtime, and either she'd pass out, or she wouldn't. Either way, tidying her bedroom would lose its appeal. In a way it was all part of the damn Manhattan mess.
"Mark wanted kids, but it's not like he'd been ready for them very long. He'd have waited for Lexie. Men don't even have to worry that they won't know who the mom is or feel like they're in a race against some poorly made biological clock."
"Bit hard to become a single dad by accident."
"There's probably a universe where that happened to him. Some I Am Sam shit. He had a sixteen-year-old by-blow show up a few years ago. Maybe her mom was the only one who his contribution toward 'taking care of it' as a baby-raising nest-egg, but it can't have been the only one he doled out. He was happy being single, until he wasn't. And, yes, I did enjoy teasing Derek about how similar we were, once the whole affair thing was long in the past.
"Lexie ended up loving Sofia for being Sofia. There's a look you give a random baby, and one you give a baby you want to know for the rest of their life. Lexie gave that one to Sof." Alone in her room, Meredith sat on the end of the bed and pressed her hands against her face.
Derek had dragged Mark by Zola's room within two days. Meredith had been more hesitant. Cristina had taken it on herself, coming into the locker room before rounds one day and putting a hand on Meredith's shoulder. "Your kid's cute, and don't worry, there's enough Godmother Cristina to go around."
Lexie had waited, never giving off any hint of envy or impatience. The day after her meeting with Janet, Meredith had tracked her down at lunch. She'd tried to be casual, but as soon as Lexie saw her approach, her smile made it obvious she knew what was happening. All Meredith had to do was nod toward the elevator. Lexie pushed the button for the peds floor.
"Zola? Hey, happy girl. You ready to meet someone special?" Picking the baby up from her crib already felt natural, even allowing for her bandaging and IV. "I think you two are going to get along. You're both big on smiling and pen-lights."
Lexie had taken her a bit more awkwardly, and if Meredith found that heartening, well, her sister's biggest drama was that she wasn't ready for kids. Then Lexie smiled, and Meredith knew, Lexie loved Zola, too, and she would love her as long as she could.
It took Meredith a moment to pull herself out of the memory, but enough time Fatimah came looking. "She was Zola's favorite," she said, grabbing her wallet and keys. "She would've adored Bay, too, but he gets along with Amelia so well. I don't feel too bad assuming Lexie and Zola were always going to have something special."
"You shouldn't. I'm sorry she didn't get to know her longer."
"Me too. Um, if you want to tell Sadie about…about what happened with Lexie…" She inhaled and realized that at some point the tickle of saltwater in the air had become familiar. Reassuring, if not relaxing. "I think I might be able to stop fixating on it. Thanks for letting me intrusive thought on you."
"Of course. And you ever do get stuck somewhere…"
"I'll call you. I may let you take over library runs, since I'm never facing the children's room again."
Fatimah shook her head. They both knew it would take longer for Meredith to be ready to relinquish additional time with her kids.
A/N This is up a little later than I wanted, because this month is in three parts, so the timing is off. Expect Part II around the 20th and Part III on the 30th, as well as an related June 30th/July 1st one-shot.
This fic can also be found on AO3. Find me on tumblr chicleeblair and twitter chelseyblair