Sadie adjusted the rearview mirror before powering out of the condo parking lot. "Death, here's the thing, and don't take this the wrong way: you've been a mess since you got here. A hot mess, a competent hot mess, but…I don't think it could all be horomones."
"You been pregnant lately?" Meredith asked, slumping against the interior of the passenger door.
"Not lately."
"Oh."
"Not everyone's in the ninety-nine percent. Plus, you know, I went through a period of not knowing what month it was. Let out the Depo shot too." Meredith wasn't sure she'd ever seen Sadie abashed before, but that was an accurate description for the way she cut her eyes to the side mirror.
"You never listened to me," she said. "Seven p.m. It's perfect. You're—"
"You're awake whether you went to bed at nine that morning or nine the night before. God, you're like a birth control evangelist."
"And I never had so much as a scare." Meredith stated. "Coulda been my hostile uterus, but better safe."
"Doesn't seem all that hostile at the moment."
"In the five years since we put kids on the table, we got one miscarriage and one Bailey. Trust me, that's disproportionate if you don't factor in hostility."
We're practically a condom commercial. They'd never been able to revive that diligence, or anything close to it. Her diaphragm took thought, condoms took time. Almost every time they'd planned on him pulling out, she ended up locking her legs around him, or clinging to him to hold herself upright while she came.
"You weren't trying this time? Or was it just like, if it happens, it happens?"
"We hadn't been. Actually, I'd just made an appointment to renew my prescription. I wanted to go back to not getting a period. Derek had barely been home for months."
Thinking it over, they'd forgone protection under the assumption that she wouldn't get pregnant at times where they absolutely shouldn't have. While they hadn't been speaking, but she'd come home from a late shift and had her nails digging into his shoulder-blades within minutes. A morning when they'd been in a supposed truce, but he'd brought her so close she didn't think it would matter if he stopped and then proved her wrong again and again, eventually moving on to teasing her with his cock until she'd grabbed and shoved.
"I figured whatever happened, we'd need time before we brought another baby into the mix. And then…."
"I am calling post-it. Zola and Bailey and tumors on the walls and ferry boat scrub caps. I thought D.C. was everything. And I was wrong. You... You. You're everything. I love you, and I'm not gonna stop loving you. Meredith, I can't live without you. I don't want to live without you. And I'm gonna do everything in my power to prove it."
"Then?" Sadie prodded.
"He came home. Whatever happened in D.C., however close he'd come to making the same mistake twice, he'd chosen me. I saw him 'try' with his first wife; I heard the pretty words. This wasn't the same.
"If he'd wanted to leave me, I would've let him, and I would've survived. I wouldn't have put up with him lamenting over some younger woman he wanted to save. I wouldn't have been the straggly, pining intern begging him to stay. But he wanted to stay. He chose us, and we…he said he wanted another baby."
"So, you jumped into bed to screw like rabbits?"
Meredith shrugged. "That'd already happened. If I'm…if this is a thing, I can give them the conception date within a week. Less sure about my cycle."
"I can't decide if that's bittersweet or pathetic, given your history. There was a time—" Sadie swung her car into the lot in front of the clinic. "—when pinning that to one night wouldn't be enough to ID the father."
"Bitch!"
"Fact! I envied your stamina."
"And benefited from it."
"True." The Sadie smirk returned, and she flashed it at Meredith as she got out of the car. Meredith followed, but then found she couldn't take the next step. She leaned against the car's red exterior, the office of DR. THEA ROGERS M.D. OB-GYN looming in front of her. "Oh no you don't. I pulled strings to get you in this quickly." Sadie grabbed her arm and tugged her to the curb.
"I had an appointment at Planned Parenthood."
"Because you were gonna get on the Pill. This is a little different, don't you think?"
"Probably not. It's probably a false positive. I knew about Bailey three weeks in, and the miscarriage at five. This is—"
"How long has he been weaned?"
"Since…since his birthday, about."
"Nursing bras still fit okay?"
"They're just all I brought! Most of the time…."
"Most of the time what?"
"I don't bother," Meredith said. "Milk supply dry, boobs unchanged, bra not comfortable, I get it. That's not proof of anything! It could…it could just be…All of it could just be…. Derek is dead. I'm not in denial about that."
"I know you're not."
"I never have been. Not for a second."
Opening the door to the office building, Sadie put her other hand on Meredith's shoulder. "I know. But you can't keep your head in the sand about this much longer. You won't be able to bend over that far."
"I hate you."
"But you're walking, so who's the winner here?"
"I cannot be pregnant."
"But you are."
"How? How am I pregnant? Derek is dead, and I'm pregnant."
"I was there. Saw the tiny bean, heard the heartbeat. Flashed back to my half-assed internship. Get it?"
"Yeah. Maybe they read the ultrasound wrong."
"Okay, jokes aside, you are preg—"
"Not about that! That—the end of December? That can't be right. I have to be more pregnant than that. My cycle's weird. Maybe—"
"Thea didn't use that," Sadie reminded her, patiently. "That wasn't a Naegele's rule estimate, Mer. She was looking at the fetus."
The fetus. The words didn't sit right in Meredith's mind. Bailey was the fetus, and he was a toddler. She hadn't considered there being another one. Not seriously. Not in a way that let her make sense of this.
"But…I wasn't pregnant. For that to be true, I couldn't have been pregnant when he died. His sperm just hung out in my uterus until I ovulated. I conceived from my dead husband's sperm."
"You did."
"How? How does that happen?"
"Well, when a neurosurgeon with immortal jizz and his slutty intern—Oh, fuck me. Jesus, don't listen to me.."
Ice formed in Meredith's chest, and she could barely feel her heartbeat. That was what this would be to people, wasn't it? Just another ridiculous occurrence in the "Ballad of Meredith Grey."
"Mer, I didn't mean to say that."
"It's fine."
"You weren't his slutty intern, ever. You think I don't know that? I'd never seen in love the way I did in Seattle. I was jealous of both of you, and I soaked in all the gossip. I guess it's still in my head."
"Yeah. Mine too."
"Meredith—"
"I said it's fine." She pressed her forehead against the window. "Can we just…can you just take me home, please?"
"Have you eaten today?"
Cereal, with Zo."
"Drop-off's at, what, eight-thirty?" Sadie glanced at the clock. Meredith's appointment had been at noon, and it was approaching one-thirty. There'd been a wait for the ultrasound, and while Meredith managed not to lose it completely immediately after the doctor told her to avoid physical and emotional stress, she hadn't managed to hold it off long enough to leave the exam room.
"Shit," she'd said, as Sadie handed her her clothes. "Maybe hysterics really is the appropriate term."
That feeling had rescinded. Meredith wasn't sure she felt anything, other than the start of a shooting pain over her eye.
"Let me get you something? This isn't just a you-thing now. Unless you're not going to have it. You're dealing with so much as it is, adding a baby to that—"
"No," Meredith interrupted. "They've managed to hang on this long; they deserve a chance." Shouldn't it feel like my chance? Some sort of gift from Derek? "We can go through that place up the boardwalk from the apartment. Not a Burger Stand. I like their milkshakes. Just…no ketchup in the car, okay?"
"Tomato sauce, but not ketchup? That's a pregnancy thing."
Meredith didn't respond. She was never going to know. She couldn't swear to the end of her last cycle; there'd been too much else to worry about. Her streak of successful surgeries, the kids, Derek.
Sadie was right that she'd been a crying, exhausted mess who barely ate or slept since early April. Too early to have assumed she was having pregnancy symptoms, but it was possible. That she was pregnant at all made it hard for her to believe anything was impossible. Had she left Seattle because she knew somehow?
No. She hadn't known. She wasn't exactly like Ellis. She hadn't left to hide this. The possibility hadn't been anywhere in her mind.
Had it?
"And I want more. Of this, of us, of...I want to have more. Let's have more. I mean it."
"You're crazy."
"That's not a no."
"Another baby?"
"Sure."
She'd been sex-high, and happy, but she couldn't have been optimistic enough to believe it'd happened. Could she?
The concept of optimism, of happiness, felt foreign to her; especially compared to the other times she'd confirmed a pregnancy. "Glad" evoked a trade-off; a "well, at least…." There was no "at least." Derek was dead.
Hopeful? Maybe. Like the superball-sized creature inside of her ignited a single firework of possibility; one that faded too quickly for her to catch its color.
She feels him first, a hand slipped into her pajama pants. It's cold, but she likes cold. She pushes back against him, signaling for him to add pressure. He starts moving his fingers, opening his hand before folding them almost all the way into his palm, pulling her with him. She's moaning; a guttural sound that comes from somewhere deep and satisfying, when something drops onto her face.
She touches the spot and opens her eyes to grave dirt, or blood, or something small and wiggly. She knows she's in her bed in San Diego. Knows she's dreaming. She can't wake up. She can only scream and jerk away. He is Derek, and so he stops the second her "no" is firm. Horrifyingly, she wakes knowing she was about to tell him to start again.
"Reach, reach, reach. Good job!" Meredith praised, as Zola's books thumped into the book drop outside of the library. She wasn't entirely sure she could get through this, but they'd read and reread everything they'd checked out during the previous visit, and if it got to be too much, she'd have Zola to defend her.
This time Bailey was the one looking around the building with big eyes. "Book!" he announced, pointing to the nearest display. "Book, book, book! Lotta book!"
"That's right, there are lots of books. Let's go find the books that are good for Baileys and Zo-Zos, okay?"
The building was busier than it'd been on their last visit. She'd hoped that coming on a weekend afternoon rather than a weekday morning meant that the Children's Library would have different staff. She should be so lucky.
They didn't walk directly into the librarian this time; she and another stroller-wielding mom helped each other navigate the door. He was just the next person she saw.
"Regi," she blurted. Old buddy, old pal. Let's let freakouts be freakouts because I have a job for you.
"John Lennon."
"Pardon?"
The facial hair had to be a reaction to how pink his face went. "'Imagine there's no heaven?' Sorry, that was inappropriate."
"Don't worry, person's inappropriate is another person's hilarious. There's no risk that I'll report you to a higher power."
It took him a moment, but he laughed. "How can I help you, Dr…oh, I didn't catch your actual name. I know you signed a card, but…."
"Grey," she said. He glanced up at the windows. Fantastic. "Um, my name. It's Meredith Grey."
"But we're Shepherds," Zola added. "Like Daddy, and Grams, and Aunt Amy, and…all the other aunts and cousins."
Meredith swallowed a snicker. It'd taken her longer than four years to remember them all, hadn't it?
"Shepherd," Bailey echoed. "Sheeps go baa."
Excellent, now that that's settled…. "I'm sorry about last month it…well, it wasn't a good day."
"No, uh, I'm glad you came back. I have a couple more titles that might be good as read-alouds. They're on a higher reading level, but four tends to be the age where parents are getting tired of the same ten picture books."
"I haven't taught her about r-e-n-e-w-a-l if that's what you mean."
"Mommy, you spelled too fast for me."
"Sorry, baby girl."
"What'd you spell?"
"Hey, let's get you and Bay set up in the play area, okay?"
Zola sighed and flopped back in her seat, allowing herself to be pushed.
This time they weren't alone in the toddler room, so Meredith made eye-contact with a few of the other nearby parents, nodding toward Zola, who was a head taller than the average. None of them looked alarmed, especially not when Zola started sounding out words from her book and their kids gathered around her. Bailey loved the audience, getting into the act by pointing out details in the pictures. Meredith watched for a minute, worried that the distraction would frustrate her, but she got into the story-teller act, turning the book around to share his observations with the other tiny humans.
"Seems like your daughter is set to take my job," Regi said, as they retreated out of earshot.
"Librarian would be good."He tilted his head at her, and she wrung her index finger through the fingers on her other hand. "My husband and I are…were…I am… he was a surgeon, and I am one…I told you that last time. My mom was too, and I love my job, but I was kind of molded for it. We're…damn… darn it…I'm trying not to do that to them." Though if she retains her interest in what I watch on YouTube, we may get there anyway.
"Admirable. My parents definitely would've taken doctor, but they're professors, so…no room to talk."
"I guess not. My…my father—he's more my sisters' father—" Lexie, Lexie, last month, Lexie…. "— he's an English professor. Not that it…." She pulled the oversized cardigan she'd unearthed from a pile in her room tighter around her. "I have another challenge for you."
"Oh?"
"Mhm. Do you remember I said we did the book thing with Zola before Bailey was born?"
"I do."
"She wasn't quite two-and-a-half. The same titles should be good for Bay; I have a list. But she'll be five when…in six months. I want her to understand what's going on. I doubt there are books for our exact situation, with the…with their father gone, but…."
"Your situa—? Oh, uh, okay. Yeah, we've got a great collection for new siblings. Let me go track some of those down." He started down the aisle between tables, and then did a pirouette on one foot. "Do you have that list?"
"Yeah. Here." Meredith took the folded paper from her purse. Finding the old order on Amazon hadn't been as difficult as it might've been if she and Derek had ever gotten around to simply sharing an account, but there were still occasional purchases that made her stop scrolling—fishing equipment, hand-grip strengthening tools, a toy that definitely wasn't for the kids…
Regi jogged away, and she sat on the table again, watching Zola command story-hour.
The shriek came out of nowhere, but it'd barely started before Meredith knew it was Bailey's. By the time she'd crossed to the play-area, Zola was standing between her brother and the small looky-loos around them. "Leave him alone! He can be mad! He got overwhelms 'acause our daddy died!"
Meredith dove in to pick Bailey up. He didn't resist her, but he didn't help either, and his legs were flailing enough that she had to focus on lifting him clear of the other kids' heads.
"Whoa, bud. What's going on, huh?"
"I'm sorry, Momma," Zola answered. "A girl gave it to me to read. Bay-bird snatched and tried to throw it, and I wouldn't let him 'acause it's not ours."
Bailey shrieked again. This time, Meredith could hear the consonants in the wail. "No DeeCee. No DeeCee!"
"What was the book, Zo?"
With tears flooding her eyes, Zola showed her the picture book in her hands. The front cover was innocuous, if you didn't notice the word "Washington" in the cover, but there was a photographic rendering of the White House on the back.
"It's okay," she murmured in Bailey's ear. "It's okay, baby boy. C'mon, let's get out of everyone's way." She nodded for Zola to follow, wishing she could pick her up, too.
She couldn't do this with three. Three under six? With one parent? Impossible. Two was impossible.
Leaving the stroller for the moment, she took them out into the main hall and slid down against the wall. Bailey kept screaming, and she knew that the best option was for him to get it out of his system.
"Zo-Zo, if I hold B's leg, can you help me get his shoes off? I don't want him hurting himself…or us."
"Uh-huh!"
"Okay. On my count. One…two…three. Good. Okay, hey, hey, Bay, it's okay. Just let Momma…. Gotcha. Zola, you're up. On my count. One… two… three. Okay, All done. All done." Bailey let out a wail that made his earlier shrieks pale in comparison. "Yeah, kiddo. I know." She sat back, letting her head thump against the wall, before turning to Zola, who was watching her brother with her lip clenched between her teeth. "Zo, you are such a good big sister. You protected him from other kids and them from him to avoid an accident. You didn't let him ruin a book. You made a safe place for him to deal with his feelings."
"But…but I didn't know, and he's crying."
"Exactly. You didn't know. You were being so helpful reading to all those kids, and someone else picked the book, right?"
"Uh-huh.
"How could you know what it was?"
"Um…no how?"
"No way, no how."
"I coulda…I coulda read the title in my head."
"Oh. yeah?"
"Well, not yet."
"Didn't think so. I hope you'd tell me if you learned to do that."
"Yeah, I'd be proud." She shifted onto her knees, moving closer to her brother. "Hey, Bailey-bird, it's okay. You're safe, Bay."
Meredith put a hand on Zola's back, tugging slightly on her overalls to avoid an accidental smack. "He is okay. We've got him. Let him cry. I'm not sure he understands why he's so mad. All he knows is that Daddy kept going away to D—to Washington, and then he never came home."
"'Acause he didn't see the coffin. Does he remember Daddy?"
"I…" Meredith hesitated. "I don't know. If he does now, he might not always. Sometimes, you don't remember stuff from when you're really little." Like a whole entire sister. "But that's why we're going to tell him, right?"
"Mmhmm, like 'bout going fishing, and playing princess, and Daddy was so funny-silly, Mommy."
"He was, wasn't he?"
Bailey was squirming less, and his wailing had turned into sobs, which broke Meredith's heart a little more, but made it easier to hold him close to her chest, and stroke his hair, which had gone sticky with sweat.
"Everything all right out here?"
Meredith startled, and looked up to see Regi approaching, pulling their stroller with one hand. "Oh. Thanks, we were gonna come back for that."
"Thought I'd make things a little easier. I, uh, I also checked these out to you." He held up a stack of books all wrapped in a plastic bag, which would keep a certain little snoop from going through them before Meredith was ready. It wouldn't be long; not with the way Zola watched her these days., but it didn't have to be today.
"Thank you."
"There's —There's something else in there you might be interested in. Y'know, if you liked the Dodie Smith book."
"I did."
"Good. Uh. Did you know she wrote 101 Dalmatians?"
"We watched the doggie movie," Zola replied for her. "Bailey liked it. I didn't, the lady was too mean."
"Well. That answers my question."
"Yeah, it does."
"Zola Grey."
"What?"
Meredith couldn't think of how to explain why Zola's sincere response had sounded rude, so she shook her head. "I think we're going to get this guy home," she said. "If you push that a little closer, I can…There." She deposited Bailey in the back of the stroller.
"Uh, okay," Regi said. "I'll see you next time?"
"Yeah." She crouched again to dig the baby wipes out from the lower compartment. How was she going to do pregnant with two? "We'll try not to be nuisances, but I know our record isn't great."
"No problem. It was…it was nice seeing you again." Again, he turned, and then second-guessed himself. "I need to clear up…er…elucidate something. Sorry if I'm being a pedant, but my explanation of the May Grays was incomplete. I'd forgotten that the fog continues, and they call that the June Gloom."
"Huh." Meredith glanced at the window behind him. Sunshine poured through it. There was only so far you could take the pathetic fallacy. "Interesting."
He nodded once and retreated into the Children's Library. She balled the wipe up in her fist and then stroked a finger over one of Bailey's reddened cheeks.. "You ready to ride, baby boy?"
"Bad book, Momma."
"I know. They're out there. I'm sorry it made you sad."
"Yeah." He was still frowning, but his eyelids were fluttering.
"That wore him out," Zola observed, as Meredith lifted her into in the stroller.
"It really did."
She didn't she remember what it was like to not be worn out. That wasn't good for her, or the baby, or the kids, but she didn't know what she could do about it.
"Ms—No, I'm sorry, it's Dr., isn't it? Dr. Grey, it's Lena Adams. Vice Principal at Anchor Beach?"
"Right. I was hoping not to interact with vice principals for a few more years. Did one of them…?" Destroy a book? Try to operate on a stuffed animal?
"No, from what I've heard, Zola and Bailey are delightful. I'm making several calls today; they won't be the only ones who might bring questions home this weekend. It might not get much attention in the toddler class, but I know Zola's room will be doing a Father's Day activity."
"Oh. Crap. Father's Day. I'd….repressed that one."
"I'm so sorry. I know this year in particular will be difficult."
"That's okay. I guess I needed the head's up. I'll talk to her about it. Not that we haven't been …just…. The holiday."
"I quite understand. Sorry again, Dr. Grey."
Just get through the holiday. A-freaking-gain.
"We talked about how there are all kinds of people who can be like daddies," Zola explained to Carolyn on Sunday afternoon.
Meredith had forgotten the call the previous week and hadn't realized it until she was getting them ready for day-camp Monday morning. Every two weeks didn't seem all that irregular to her. It was more than she'd called her mother in college, more than she'd seen her over periods of high school.
Besides, it was better that she'd forgotten on some random June Sunday than on Father's Day, which probably hadn't been easy on Carolyn in the thirty-six years Meredith had been alive.
Derek had only gotten three Father's Days. One with only Zola, one during the blur of exhaustion that was Bailey's first few weeks, and last year, when things had only been starting to go sour.
If there were three of them in a year—if this pregnancy was really real, and even with the proof of the ultrasound, she wondered if it was some kind of psychosis—he'd never…. Maybe he'd know, but he'd never be there. What good was Father's Day if your father wasn't there? Bullshit was what it'd always been to Meredith. Derek had sweet stories about taking his mom out, celebrating her as both mother and father. Meredith didn't think she'd ever given Ellis a card that wasn't made in class, and those hadn't been appreciated—"Why are they spending instruction time on this kind of frivolity?"
Bailey had gotten bored with the video call five minutes in, which was longer than he retained interest in most things. Meredith's attention was split between the floor, where he was doing something with the animals that he found uproariously funny, and Zola's conversation.
"Like how Uncle Mark, who was best friends with my daddy, is my Sofia's daddy. My Sofia and I are best friends, because we like each other, but that made our daddies glad."
"It did," Carolyn agreed.
Did she remember what braggarts they were about the whole thing? Meredith had walked into more than one supposedly goodhearted argument about who technically became a dad first. She'd had to threaten Derek to keep him from playing the miscarriage card, and that was only after Callie had taken her aside in the lounge and told her that Mark was liable to volley back with Addison.
"But…Sloane is what, eighteen, nineteen now?"
"Yeah, and have you met them?" Callie had demanded. "'Well, Meredith had a miscarriage. I think that's a bigger deal than a daughter you didn't know about!' 'Yeah, well Addie aborted our baby…wait, Shep don't—Fuck my nose.' "
"Your Mark impression is eerily accurate," Meredith had said. It would be like him—either one— to dig his own grave that way. Potentially literally. She'd been pretty sure that if Derek punched Mark again they were both going to get unlucky, and he'd end up breaking Mark's skull and his hand.
"I practice. It bugs the crap out of him. I wouldn't have said anything if I didn't think it was a possibility. He's an idiot when he gets competitive and getting Addison pregnant is something Derek never did."
Meredith backed up into the nearest chair. "Whoa, Grey, you okay? Wait—Oh! It couldn't have been Derek's."
"No, I…I mean, he's always said they weren't…. It'd been… but if…if she'd told him it was, he would've…."
"He would've been stupid and noble, and pretended he didn't know how menstrual cycles work? Yeah, probably, but he didn't. She wouldn't have, either. You know better than that."
"I do," she'd allowed, because Addison and Callie were friends, and she did know Addison would never have done that. She probably hadn't considered it. There was just the…the what-if.
"You have your McDreamy guy, and your McAdorable kid, and Addie's happy in LA, and Mark has us. It's all good. I'd just prefer that he not have his head busted in, so will you hint to Derek that he needs to shut his mouth? I don't care how—give him something else to do with it, whatever."
"Oh, he does that whether I tell him to or not."
"Too much information."
"Callie, you started this by telling me about my husband's ex's aborted love-child. Nothing is TMI for you until the girls are in college."
"…Fair."
She'd forgotten that promise in the aftermath of the plane crash. She wondered how Callie would respond if she texted her asking for advice about dreams where her dead husband became a zombie underneath her.
Probably not a great olive branch.
"And then I did a picture of Uncle Mark, because he is at peaceful with Aunt Lexie."
"That's beautiful, Zola. I think so, too."
"Y-you do?" Meredith cut in.
"Why wouldn't I? He never spoke to me about anyone the way he did her. Always said they were meant to be."
"Like Momma and Daddy. And me 'acause they found me."
"Very much like, yes."
Meredith lost track of the rest of the conversation.
She's kneeling on the step attached to an exam room table, and his fingers are raking through her hair. They feel thin, and it almost hurts, but that's what she likes about having hands on her scalp. The description "tender-headed" doesn't apply to detangling her hair, but the right massaging-scratching-pulling combination can turn her to goo. She drags her lips down his cock. The organ does not deglove in her mouth, but something makes her think it could. Her mind swims with med school jokes about dead bodies and settled blood, and the phrase "immortal jizz" comes to her like it's perfectly logical. She is almost prepared for what she sees when she grabs his wrist and brings his hand down to eye level. It's the right hand, because of course it is. She wonders what happened to Liz's nerve, because now there are only bones and ligaments.
"If she thinks that…if she's fine with that, then what difference would it have made?" Meredith demanded a few days later, after the kids had been put to bed.
Fatimah and Sadie made eye contact in a way that was way too coupley and cute. They were sipping glasses of the merlot that Meredith had bought hoping it'd make up for shutting down on Sadie at the OB-GYN. Maybe she'd also been daring them to look at her like they expected her down it, in spite of the risks she now knew she'd be taking. At the post-funeral reception, she'd caught eyes darting to any glass she held, like it might be full of tequila. Those were the people who'd think "slutty intern" without regret. She wouldn't blame Debbie for calculating the odds of her getting pregnant over ten days; but there'd be other pools.
You'd better come out looking just like him.
Lack of sleep was starting to hit her like beer goggles. It'd bother her eventually, but for the moment she almost appreciated it.
Initially, she'd been—what?—charmed by Carolyn's words. Maybe. They'd seemed sweet. The more she thought about it, the more times she came to the same conclusion: Cremating Derek wouldn't have made him any less whole to Carolyn and would've saved Meredith a lot of anguish, from the wolf thing, which she would have been fine not knowing, to the games her brain was playing with her newfound aversion to dead bodies…specifically to Derek's dead body. Her mom's ghost was in her dreams sometimes, but the key word there was "ghost." She didn't want to be Izzie, but, on balance, the ghost sex seemed a lot more appealing.
"You could ask your mother-in-law," Fatimah suggested.
"Maybe leave out the zombie sex part," Sadie added.
"Super helpful."
"Seriously, Death, I saw her from afar, but neither of us has met her. She seems like a stubborn lady who's maybe old-fashioned, but Shepherd was an old man, so—Ow! Your elbows are not allowed in combat!"
Fatimah chuckled. "You deserved that one."
"I knew I never wanted your paths to cross."
This time Meredith and Fati were the ones to make eye-contact, both equally clueless. "Why ever not, love?'
"Why would I?" Sadie took a long pull from her glass. "The woman there for my highest highs." She nodded at Meredith. "And who picked me up from my lowest low." Fati reached over from her chair to take her hand. "Seemed like a bad idea. No air of secrecy left."
Did I really think that she and Derek were nothing alike? That I didn't have a type?
"And I'd called you soft and boring for wanting this." Sadie held up their clasped hands. "I basically quoted Hellis Grey at you."
Fatimah snorted into her glass. "You called her mother Hellis?"
"Excuse me, credit where it's due." Meredith held up a hand. "I coined that one. Hell is Grey. Death and Die outwit Hell."
"She was fourteen. She got more creative."
"Cruder."
"Same difference. "
"Was Ellis a family name? Was Meredith?"
"Uh…. Ellis was her mother's maiden name. Mom could never decide if she liked it being a guy's name, or if she wanted people to know that she was a woman who was better than everyone. Mine's been a surname, and a boy's name, too. Maybe that's why she picked it. Who knows why she picked anything?"
Fatimah frowned, and Meredith looked down at her soda can.
"My point," Sadie said. "Is that I was horrible to you the last time we saw each other, right when you'd gotten settled."
"I could've done better, okay? Does that help? Mixing my past and my present hadn't gone well for me so far. I'd barely started accepting that Derek would be there from one day to the next. Work was cutthroat, and I'd only been really competing for a few months. Cristina and I couldn't stop it from affecting our friendship. We were all treating Izzie like she'd lost it, and she would've needed us just as much if that'd been true. We let George…." Meredith clenched her fist, feeling his finger tracing 0-0-7 on her palm as vividly as the day it'd happened. Maybe she needed to get her LDH levels checked. "We ignored George while he was reeling enough to idolize Owen Hunt. So. Yeah, I wasn't a great friend that year."
Cristina loved Owen, and Meredith meant her promise to look out for him. He was an amiable guy, a decent friend. She had some critiques of him as a partner. She'd never understand how he could come home with PTSD that led to having his hands around the neck of the woman he loved and then recommend that George follow in his footsteps. It didn't matter if he could've handled it. She thought Wilson could handle standing in front of a gunman, but she wasn't going to tell her to do it. First, do no harm—to your patients, but Meredith thought you should also try to avoid doing it to your students. Your family. Anyone.
"Horrible was everything in between Amsterdam and Seattle," she continued. "I spent that summer following Mom around to make sure she got home, and every day I expected to find you on the stoop. From that Christmas, any time we were out, you paraded your latest partners in front of me. I heard you'd applied to med school third hand! You acted like a bitter ex for years, Sadie, and then you showed up in Seattle, and you wanted the besotted pushover who'd do your homework. The sick thing is, a year earlier? I might've fallen for it all. I might've…Whatever. What-ifs are meaningless.
"I had the job I'd wanted forever, that I thought we'd wanted, and you treated it like it was a joke. Like I was a joke. Like the life I'd built; the people I loved, didn't mean anything."
Sadie hadn't moved while Meredith recounted feelings she hadn't delved into since telling Sadie she wasn't going anywhere, but now she looked up. She wasn't angry as Meredith expected; they were mostly regretful. That was fine.
"I-I didn't think…. Look, do you want the truth? I owe it to you. To you and Lexie. But it's not pretty, and most of it's not right."
Meredith wanted to say no, like she had in April. She had an urge, like a craving, like an itch that'd scar if she scratched it, to tell her to fuck off. Sadie didn't deserve that. It was purely self-destructive. She wasn't planning on getting in the car tomorrow and going to some elusive "further away." If she left, she'd be returning to Seattle. She wasn't going to do that until she was ready. Until this baby was born.
Or not. Eleven weeks wasn't any kind of safe point. Getting pregnant when she had was a statical anomaly, but it didn't affect viability. If Seattle—and it would feel like the entirety of Seattle—got invested in this baby, and for any reason she didn't bring a baby home, she'd only be hurting them all again. April and Jackson weren't over Samuel; Amelia had cried after telling her about Christopher, though she tried to hide it. Callie and Arizona had gone through a whole IVF round that been a big part of their divorce. No. She'd be here until something was certain.
She understood, in theory, that that meant she'd need to have someone in her life besides her children and her shrink. The idea of having to meet people cold was abhorrent. What was she supposed to do? Make small talk at day-camp drop off? Hi, in my other life, I'm actually a well-respected surgeon, but the love of my life died two and a half months ago, and now I'm a crumbling avalanche? No. Simply no. Sadie was who she had. And maybe for the sake of their history, Meredith owed her.
"Tell me."
Sadie nodded. "I was jealous of you, first of all. I was always jealous of you." Envious, Meredith thought dully. Desire for what you don't have is envy. "You're innately smart and good. Yeah, fine, you played at rebellion with me, but you never did anything that put someone else in danger. Not purposefully. By the time we met, I'd given up on trying at school—at anything.
"Ellis told you a lot of awful, heart-breaking things. She also told you how to be better. Discounting anything else that came along with living in his household full-time; I was told that I sucked. Period. But you couldn't be in my family and be anything other than a doctor. You were perfectly equipped to do whatever you wanted to do, just convinced that you couldn't live up to your mother's legacy. I would've killed to be as close to what was expected. But I had you." She tapped her nails against her glass. Was it random, or the rhythm of a song? Meredith couldn't tell, and she had to shake her head to stop getting lost in figuring it out instead of listening. Fati's eyelashes were pointed at Sadie, but Meredith could feel her watching.
"Five years out, you'd replaced me with three separate people. I showed up on your doorstep, because I never made another connection that was anything like what with you. Whether it was friendship, or love, or pure desire to…to possess a person I could return to—I suppose 'rely on' is the term I should use, but I'm trying to be honest about how it was.
"I used you. From the time we were kids, I used your desire to help, your intelligence, your calm, your independence, your friendship; the way you looked at me and to me. The way you loved me. For my homework, to have a best friend, for sex. I know you think you're complicit, because you knew I wasn't ready to settle, or because you humored my quirks about not being out, but I don't think you can really….
"I didn't know…how to love someone. Some of that is my whacked-out brain chemistry, but that doesn't mean it wasn't me. I guess—no, in Seattle I was trying to revive what we had, in any way possible, and my methods…." Sadie put her glass down on the coffee table but kept toying with the stem. "I wasn't trying to seduce you at fourteen. I get why you'd feel like I trailed you along for the first few years, but it took me far longer than you to figure out what feelings were, let alone that I might have them. In college…I could compartmentalize like nobody's business. While I was at school, away from you, you were less—you weren't real to me. That's horrible, but it's true. It's why I asked you to move in, after graduation. You were always there. And I did everything I could to keep you there, because I didn't think I could go as far as you. but you did. You believed in me."
"I did," Meredith said, slowly. At the start of the conversation, she'd been sitting next to Sadie, but she'd slid to the corner of the couch, pulling her knees up to her chest, the way Zola did when she was trying to make herself small. "And I left you in A-dam, I acted like you offering to come with me to New York was nothing. I told you not to follow, but shit, Sadie, my mom was sick. She wouldn't say how. She told me not to tell anyone. She needed me…no one had ever…." She shook her head and motioned for Sadie to go on. The back, or perhaps the side, of her mind was overly aware of the Kleenex box on the coffee table. Not because she thought she'd end up crying again. Because she didn't.
"I needed you, and I couldn't understand why that didn't matter more. I do now…or…I know it wasn't black and white." Sadie stopped and took in a long breath. The hand she combed through her hair was shaking. "I waited her out. I knew you'd be devoted to keeping her secret until the end; whether or not I understood why she deserved that loyalty."
"Is that why you showed up in Seattle when you did?" Sadie nodded. "You thought I'd be all broken, and shattered, and you could pick up the pieces?"
"No! You weren't going to let yourself be broken by her, Mer."
She wanted to laugh. No. She noticed that the hysterical bubble wasn't there even though the sentence was hilariously wrong. "I was. I did."
"No, Mer." Sadie sighed. "You did not. I heard when it happened, and I should've reached out, but I could've gotten into that intern class from the start. I really was trying to figure out who I was without you, I'd just never…. Wrapping my whole identity around another person is a BPD thing, yeah, but I knew I wasn't being normal.
"Himself hated that I was only good enough to work with the dead. God, the shit he said."
Maybe it wasn't bad to be too apathetic to roll her eyes, and care just enough to know it was a bad idea. Meredith had heard everything her mother could throw at her. She'd been cruel; she'd gotten physical a couple of times. Meredith didn't know it was worse. It hadn't been, in their adolescence.
"At some level, I did want to help people, but it came second to helping myself. I should've known better. Known you better. I should've realized it when I heard you'd matched with Grace —Grey Sloan, now? For Lexie?" Meredith nodded. "She deserves that."
"She deserved a life."
"Yes. She did. Far more than that. She and Sloan really were strangely adorable; I'm sorry they didn't get a chance. I'm sorry I hurt her. But you…you could've stayed in Boston or gone to fucking Alaska. You chose to stay with Ellis and face your history."
"I had a house there." It was a pathetic protest. She'd been ready to sell the house. It hadn't taken her long to go in search of Thatcher. If she considered she was working eighty hours a week, it hadn't actually taken long at all.
"Finding your father. The mess with Shepherd and his wife…. But you had Yang. You had Lexie. You had Shep—Derek. George. Even ghost-sex girl. You had this whole little family. There I was, still living in 2002. Being older didn't give me the upper hand anymore. You had that. You really were incredible. Hell, you saved my life."
"I handled a non-standard appy—"
"Not that. Maybe that, I guess. I didn't know enough to recognize if it'd burst inside of me. No, seeing you the way you were…all grown up and competent.… I kept chasing the rush for a long time, there and after. That's definitely what the whole cabal thing was. I dunno, if I was desperate, or addicted to it; if I wanted to impress you, or if part of me knew I had so much to learn—God, your little sister was five years younger, and—"
"Six. Lexie skipped third grade."
Sadie's laugh sounded a lot like the one Meredith would've expected to hear from herself. "Of course she did! Brilliant fucking Greys. The rest of that group was a shit-show, but they were all better than me. I killed people."
"You missed stuff," Meredith cut in. "We all miss stuff."
"You do all you can. I was…people were hardly real to me, and every time I fucked up…. You know how I get—got. I dug my heels in. O'Malley offered to help me. He said he knew what it felt like to fall behind. But I wasn't…as far as I was concerned, I'd failed in what I came for, and I wasn't ever going to catch up to you, or impress you, or whatever I wanted. I took off."
"Habibi," Fatimah murmured.
"Right. Honesty. God." Sadie leaned forward. Meredith recognized the pointed head tilt. Sadie never let anyone see her cry. "I hung around Seattle, living in a way that should've ended me up in your ER. Wanting to, maybe. Last person I talked to from the hospital said you were planning a wedding. Dunno if I thought I might storm it or what, but I hung around until I was sitting in a bar, and what happened to O'Malley came up on the news. That's when I left. I couldn't have faced any of you after that."
"He told you he'd fallen behind?"
"Wasn't he redoing his first year?"
"He was, but it wasn't his fault. It was mine. We took our exams the day of my stepmother's funeral."
Fatimah held up a hand. "Wait. The day your father—?"
"Yeah." Meredith bent the tab of her aluminum can back and forth. "I, uh, I didn't…I didn't do mine. I couldn't move. Got in my head. Dissociated. I can remember being there but not there. Trying to just…just write my name, but I didn't know who Meredith Grey was, or if I was her. Not like, I didn't know who I was, but my identity…." She shrugged.
It was strange, returning to that memory and knowing she'd been panicking, knowing the thoughts that'd been cycling through her head, how wrong they were, and not having the sinking feeling that came from knowing what came next.
"He spent the whole thing trying to get my attention and take the test. All that he went through that year; his dad dying; the Vegas marriage with Callie; living with my chaos; whatever the heck he and Izzie had going on…." Georgie-boy really got it on that year. "He had all that, he spent the exam freaking out over me, and he barely failed. Barely. But Richard…I hadn't started it, so it wasn't the same."
"You got a re-take?" "What about George?" "What about O'Malley?" "O'Malley was watching you the whole time."
"I asked," she added, like she was defending herself to her cohort, still. "A doctor needs to focus. But we were…."
"You were all up each other's asses," Sadie said. "Shepherd wasn't wrong about you being codependent. I could see that, even with George with us, and Izzie going cra—"
"Izzie had Stage IV Metastatic Melanoma," Meredith interrupted. Fati and Sadie both winded their eyes. The tab on Meredith's can broke, and she sank against the couch cushion. "It'd spread to her brain. You…."
Hadn't she just reassured Sadie about making mistakes? She kind of did me a favor. If Izzie's cancer had been found earlier, you'd have had to get married in the churchy-church. Better that—No. No better. Nothing about Izzie getting so sick was better. It was rare that Meredith's thoughts truly disturbed her, but that…. The disturbing dreams were upending everything. She didn't regret a second of how that had gone, but she would've married Derek there happily. She'd been ready; she'd even loved the damn dress.
"Tell me." Sadie demanded.
"You mislabeled her blood-draw. When she had you guys practicing on her? She wasn't anemic."
"She…She had cancer?" Sadie jerked away from Fatimah, and let her head drop into her hands. Years of instinct made Meredith want to reach for her, but she couldn't make herself move.
"It turned out okay. She's in remission. As far as I know. She left, not long into our third year, so. Didn't need anything then." The anger was there, behind glass somewhere. She could feel its existence, but she couldn't quite channel it. Exhaustion. Who knew I could get too tired to be mad? She couldn't. She'd have gotten to that point last year. She was. Must be. Never, ever had before. "And…and after Jen…your ultrasound patient?" Sadie didn't move, but Meredith took the sharp inhalation as assent. "Her case, it got…things got heavy. She didn't make it, and there was a whole thing about it… Derek had a breakdown. He could let all the personal shit roll off him but facing his professional failures…it hurt him."
Meredith paused, seeing him standing in front of the trailer slamming beer cans with a baseball bat, hearing the crack, the shouting. You're.a lemon, Meredith Grey. Usually thinking about it brought on an ironic, sour feeling; the biting-into-a-lemon wince that wasn't quite pain, but wasn't nice, either. This time, her mental response was more of a shrug. He might've been right. If death had a smell, why wouldn't it be the smell of Death?
He hadn't meant a word of it. He hadn't. He wasn't right.
He might've been.
"Since he'd move to Seattle, started taking the impossible cases, he'd amassed more losses than saves. Surgery is about the risk and the rush. You just have to give a shit about the outcome. He gave a lot of a shit about each case, individually, and then he put it away. They stacked them all up in front of them, and he had to face them. He had a lot of trouble doing that. About anything. It took Izzie's brain tumor to make him synthesize it all and get back to work. So, hey, maybe you're responsible for all the lives he saved in the next six years."
Sadie turned to her; her hands clasped under her forehead. "That's a stretch."
Meredith shrugged. "It's all dominos in the end, isn't it? Better than the hokey-pokey." Both other women were staring at her now. Whatever, she had preschoolers. "Look, the way you dismissed—"
A cry interrupted her. Fatimah and Sadie startled. Meredith unfolded herself from the couch with no signs of the paralysis she'd experienced in the face of comforting Sadie. Bailey hadn't thrashed himself all the way awake yet, and if she could calm him enough, he wouldn't.
"Shh," she murmured. "It's okay, buddy. You're okay."
His face creased; his eyebrows drawn in far more than they ever were in the daytime. She stroked his forehead with a finger, letting it trail along his hairline to his temples.
"Aunt Lexie would've loved you, but you know who really would've loved you? Uncle Mark," she whispered, in the same tone she used for nonsense words in moments like these. "Another Derek? That would be so funny to him."
Enough so that Derek wouldn't have agreed to it? No, that would be the argument that could've been ended with the words, Sloane Riley, even if Mark hadn't named her.
She kept talking to her little Derek about how Mark would've played with him, and been determined to give him a cousin, a Mark Jr. or a Marceline. He was sleeping quietly a few minutes after she'd come into the room, but she stayed on the foot of his bed, tracing circles on his pajamas until she could hear her guests speaking at normal volumes, not low murmurs.
"Everything okay?" Fatimah asked as she came into the kitchen. She'd loaded their glasses into the dishwasher. Meredith wasn't surprised to see Sadie was already on the other side of the living room window.
"He's been having night terrors. The internet says it's a normal sleep regression, but who knows? He's still tearing books out of my hands."
"He doesn't do it at camp?"
"They don't have many books out in the two-year-old room; they've met two-year-olds. Or, I dunno, maybe they've all been destroyed by the camp part of the year. The aide distracts him at the start of story-time, and once it's going, he does all right. I don't have that option, so." She shrugged. "I'd rather see a reaction now than have it hit him in however many years. It's just hard. I don't know what he understands."
"I'm sure it'll pass. The brain is plastic at that age."
"I hope so." Why could she wish that so easily for the kids, and not herself? "You heading out?" Obviously, you are, but I'm playing the role of a normal person, and that's my line.
"Figured we should leave you to the zombie sex."
"Just when I think I like you." Meredith tried to smile. It was better for it to seem like a joke. It was a far weirder thing than the wolves-thing, which had actually happened. Those were the nightmares that'd infiltrated her daylight life. They didn't freak her out nearly as much. "You'll keep an eye on her?"
"She looks out for herself these days, but I'll be there."
"Can you be here?" Meredith murmured. "I…I'm probably not in a place to renegotiate the deal, or whatever, but she's…she's had years to process. She can give me a few weeks."
"I'll come by."
"Okay. Thanks. Tell her…" Tell her I'm sorry. Tell her I'm fine. Tell her I'm just tired. "Tell her I'll text her."
"Sure thing." Fati kissed her on the cheek and then she left.
Meredith watched her link arms with Sadie and head off toward their car. She felt like she'd just lied to her mother about a test grade; like she'd gotten away with something that was only going to come around and bite her in the ass.
Meredith dropped the kids off on the nineteenth of June as though it was any other day. Then she read the text from Sadie.
Call me if you're having a rough time today.
Call Fati if you don't want to talk to me.
Had she really lost track and it was the thirtieth? No. It was another day; one that had been dark in her mind long before she met Derek.
It'd been thirty years last year, and she hadn't hated it any less. She'd always been grateful it fell during a transitional period in the medical world, but wasn't that why it happened? Why she did it then? The in-between times, the lull. That was why her mother had chosen it.
Meredith had passed this day in all kinds of places. A beach in Cancun, a beach in Tuscany. There'd been a hypothetical beach on Cristina's honeymoon, but Meredith hadn't gotten out of bed. It'd come before she'd determined to make her first resident year what she'd wanted her intern year to be.
When the trick of waving a tequila sunrise under her nose hadn't worked to coax or force her up, Cristina had downed it herself. "This isn't a Derek thing," she'd deduced.
Meredith had nodded, because it hadn't been, and then shrugged, because it hadn't been lost on her that her mother's death, and her almost-death, her aborted-death had come exactly two months prior, and some time between the two she'd had the thought that she'd have someone with her for this; someone who didn't dismiss what happened as fucked up, Grey.
Then again, Sadie had been the first to tell her it was fucked up at all.
Sadie had never called her Death in the last half of June.
Sadie had always remembered the date. She'd woken Meredith up from a nightmare the spring she moved to town and being comforted had thrown Meredith off enough that she'd told for the first time in eight years. When she'd found her slamming bottles against a wall—letting the glass fall into the recycling bin, because Sadie was right, she'd never wanted to hurt anyone—a couple of months later, all Meredith had had to say was, "Remember that dream?"
From then on, on June nineteenth, Sadie took her cues. There weren't many other times she'd done that.
Derek wouldn't have done anything Cristina couldn't do; it was the one day she'd never been able to escape through sex. She'd planned on having to tell him. She'd had to tell her. There really wasn't anything different.
She didn't cry every year. Between the gift day, and the death day, she'd been able to let herself off the hook for crying during-after telling Cristina. It wasn't because she'd expected Derek to be the one holding her that year. It hadn't been her certainty that she'd never have a reason to tell him, and if she did, he'd never hold her that way.
It was not a Derek thing. Entirely.
A year later, Derek had been told. In the spring, it'd been so close to the front of her mind, but even Meredith on morphine didn't trust him not to think it was some kind of admittance. After building the candle house; it'd felt necessary. I thought my mother tried to kill herself wasn't the same as my mother tried to kill herself, and more importantly, Meredith wasn't the same
It'd come within two weeks of George dying, and the Post-It, and she hadn't bothered putting her shirt back on the night before. He'd woken to find her sitting up on the bed and slid his knuckles over her back.
"What do you need today?" he'd asked. She'd looked over, trying to remember if she'd mentioned it the night before. "It's the nineteenth," he'd added. Like she was the one who might've forgotten.
That would be the case for so many things involving dates—so fucking many things, she thought, yanking the curtain in the condo living room closed—but dates that had to do with them. This…the way he'd said it…. It'd mattered to him.
"Are you going in?" he'd added, and that was another difference that came with a year. He hadn't asked ahead of time, but he hadn't assumed she wouldn't.
"Had it off already." He'd waited, and she'd rolled her eyes. "It's not like there are all that many people I could've switched shifts with."
"Do you want me here?"
"Who are you, and what have you done with my husband?"
The face he'd made whenever she said husband made her smile every time. That was okay; it was the same the other way around.
"Seriously, I appreciate how subtle you tried to be on the anniversary of the whole Mom-and-I-died-thing, but it was hard not to notice you walking by Izzie's room twenty times more than usual."
"Forgive me for wanting to check on my patient and see my fiancée."
"Mmhmm. Somewhere there's a woman who'd buy that. You didn't Post-It her."
"I wouldn't have wanted to. Anniversaries are weird. They're never the same. Not year-to-year. Not for the same two people. Did your mom ever acknowledge it?"
"No. She wasn't the only one…Sadie knew."
"And Cristina?" he'd prompted. She'd shrugged, not wanting to think about the previous year, and he'd moved his knuckles to one of her shoulder blades. "So, you haven't always been alone. If you want to be, that's fine."
"You don't have anything today?"
"That's a trick question. I did not schedule anything. I am not the only neuro attending on-call. I will go in if you want me to, and I'll take consults. If you wanted me to come home, I would."
"You're head of the department. If you think you might not be available, you have to set it up. I get it. I…." Her throat had locked up then, and he'd curled his fingers over her shoulder. She hadn't looked at the clock, but it was morning twilight in June. He didn't have long to call in. He didn't move. "Can we go out for breakfast?" she'd finally asked. She could've left it there. He would've let her. "I've never been here for it. In this house."
"Sure. Pike's Place? Market Diner? We could go to Left Bank afterward?"
She'd gaped at him. Yeah, she'd gotten through a few of the few real-person books her mom left around last year while everyone got over the whole Meredith can't go to work, she drownedthing. Enough for him to put together that her childhood method of escape was the one she defaulted to when booze and sex weren't on the table? Come to think of that, had she told him she might not be into it for the first day in a month, or…? No. He read her.
He'd hooked his index finger through a piece of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. "You really weren't the only nerdy kid out there. I know you don't want a big deal made about anything, ever. But with Karev and Stevens at the trailer, if you want to get a room at the Ashfield tonight, just to sleep somewhere else, we can do that."
"I don't know."
He'd started to shrug, but she held up a hand.
"I'm not saying…I'm not saying anything. I really don't know. No one's ever…I've always just…done whatever I felt like doing, sometimes with someone following me around."
"You may've noticed, I'm very good at following you around."
She'd shoved his hip, which was the only place she could get at while he shrugged on a shirt and grabbed his phone off the bedside table. "Actually," she'd said to the inside of her closet, trusting that he wouldn't hit the hospital number yet. "Can you keep giving me choices? That's…. It might not be what I need next year, like you said. I could tell you to knock it off by noon, 'cause I can see how it'd get annoying. But for now?"
"Not a problem," he'd replied. He hadn't spoken a breath off the beat of the conversation, but his voice had been one or two tones deeper. She glanced over. He'd seen it. How much really had changed for her in a year.
From that point on, it'd been that way. The next year, she'd chosen to have breakfast at the house. It hadn't been like any other day, but she'd gotten through it. And for several years—a finite amount, an amount she'd be able to count on one hand if she tried— when she wanted to ignore it; when she'd insisted she couldn't get off work; when it was one of the few gray days she couldn't shake; if she cried; if she didn't; if she didn't say a word about it—she'd known he knew from the second they woke up, and it mattered to him.
Staring at the living room ceiling, she ran through the greatest hits of June nineteenths with Derek without feeling much of anything, except vaguely envious of the Meredith who'd spent that afternoon reading and wandering in the Arboretum. She hated the disconnect. Whenever she closed her eyes and tried to think her way out of it, she saw the date behind her eyes. June 19th, 1983. The day she a little girl with divorcing parents became Meredith Grey, whose mother could be staring at her and still want to die.
She didn't have anyone else.
She didn't want to die.
She knew I'd disobey her.
Didn't she?
Didn't she?
June 19th, 1983. She could see it printed on the paperwork she'd found twice in her life: once on a bedside-table as a five-year-old who could read one word out of ten, and again at thirty, clearing out her mother's desk. How the packet got from Seattle to Boston and back, she'd never know.
There was so much she'd never know.
"Meredith, don't touch that!"
"It's only papers. It says you went t't'ho'pital. See?"
"To the hospital. You're a big girl. No more baby words."
"But you know I mean Seattle Greys."
"Grace."
"I said that."
Her mother had pursed her lips and swiped an orange bottle Meredith hadn't noticed off the table.
"What's that?"
"Medication. You don't touch it, do you understand? For you, it'd be poison. It would kill you."
Meredith had thought that if the medication could kill you, her mother shouldn't be allowed to touch them either.
She'd never seen her mother take more than an Advil after that point, and if there'd been anything stronger around during her late teenaged years, she'd have found it. Whatever pills they'd given Ellis on her discharge from the hospital, she hadn't kept taking them.
What does that mean for me?
What did that mean for me?
What should that mean for me?
This time, Meredith was the one who woke up knowing her first trimester was over. It was stupid. It was a stupid milestone. If it'd only been morning sickness…. Not that it was ever only "morning" sickness; obviously, but if it was morning sickness affecting mourning…. No. That wouldn't mean anything about how much she loved him. How deeply she was…. Everyone mourned differently. She could've been in the same place hormones or not; equally wrecked with or without the damned nausea.
It took a week for her to really convince herself. She toyed with her triggers, and she knew Fatimah would hold her down while Sadie killed her if they knew, but she had to be sure. Nothing was as bad as it'd been in April, but even though the pick-up hour nausea was gone, she could barely force herself to eat the leftover pasta in the fridge. Her nights were restless. Her days were foggy slogs. That shouldn't have meant anything. Those should've been bad signs. They could still have had more to do with the pregnancy. But they did, and they weren't, and they didn't. She had to believe that.
She should consider tracking her meals the way her mother had. There was a lot she should be doing. She couldn't ignore the shoulds anymore; What she did to her body wasn't about her. Not entirely.
She sat on the rock outside the condo on the last night of June—that night, eight years later. Her daytime exhaustion hadn't transferred to nighttime sleepiness, and it was too late for her to knock herself out and wake up in time to get the kids to the start of the last week of their day-camp session. There were three over the course of the summer, and she thought she might keep them out of the next one. She spent too much time doing nothing without them. Feeling nothing. It hadn't improved, the fog, the gray, the numbness. If anything, it had solidified, weakening only with the kids. What if it shut them out? Hadn't Ellis's depression shut her out?
The waves were strong, but she could hear them without the frisson of fear. She'd sat here frequently enough to adjust. That was all there was to it. It would come if she got closer.
Sliding off the rock and walking out to the water wasn't something she could do without thinking. That wasn't a luxury she had. Only once the monitor confirmed that both kids were soundly asleep—she'd installed a third camera in her room; there were too many nights they were in there, and she was out here. If someone hacked into her wi-fi, well, they weren't going to see anything interesting—did she get up start across the beach, clutching Derek's flannel over her chest.
She understood that the tides affected distance to the shoreline, but it still felt shorter without the accoutrements needed to take two kids within three yards of it. In almost no time, her feet touched wet sand, and then a wave lapped at her ankles. The pull of its withdrawal should've made her freeze. So many times, getting water for the kids, in the daylight, she had,. When did that stop?
She kept going. When flecks of water were hitting the hem of the shirt, she stopped, twisting the ends to tie it up. The next rush made her knees try to buckle. She stayed upright. It wasn't bravery. She defined bravery to Zola on top of the big slide at least once a week. It took being afraid but doing the thing anyway. It was offering your life to save the people you loved. It was staying with your sister while she died. It was desperately kicking in freezing water. She was not afraid.
She didn't have a patient to shove her in this time. She'd have to make the choice. If she kept walking out past the sand bar, out into the water, there would be no Derek to pull her out. How long would it take exhaustion to wash over her?
Derek is dead. Derek has been dead. Derek will always be dead. Not even that brought the stab she'd come to expect, and…there. There was the fear.
I'm not gonna do anything. I won't. She tightened her grip on the baby monitor clipped to her waist, the physical representation of the two innocents who had only her. She'd ensured that they had only her. Suddenly, the warmth of the night meant nothing. She was shivering hard enough that she thought she might lose her balance after all and be swept away into the ocean. That was exactly the opposite of what she wanted. But if she did….
She turned and ran, bypassing the rock and fumbling with the key to the apartment. Not caring about the water and sand on her legs, she stumbled into her bedroom. The kids were there; safely where she'd left them. Zola had one arm splayed across Bailey's chest. He woke less frequently at night if he had someone there to hold him.
Meredith slid in next to them. They were still small enough that she could stretch one arm out and hold them both.
"Mommy?" Zola murmured. "Y'okay?"
"Go back to sleep, baby. I didn't mean to wake you up. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Sorry, sorry, sorry, Mommy's sorry. Mommy's here. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere, I promise. I'm so sorry.
"M'kay." She nuzzled against Meredith. "Love you."
Her child would never say that without hearing it back. Meredith had pledged that to herself the first time she'd taken Zola home. But just this once, she stayed silent; unable to speak without sobbing in a way that would've scared a little girl, even one who'd gotten too accustomed to seeing her mommy cry.
A/N: Today 6/30/22 would be sixteen years since Mer/Der met; eight of them have passed since he died. That idea more or less brought me back to writing Grey's fic. "Beginning to Feel the Years," my one-shot about that went up today.
July will be back to two parts, posted on the 15th and 30th.