Meredith woke. A key clocked in the front door lock. Her heart raced for a second. The kids shifted on either side of her. Both there.
"Hello? Meredith?"
"It's Fati!" Zola whispered. "And Aunt Sadie!"
Good. That was good. Meredith didn't have to get up. Didn't have to face down some new miserable situation. The kids would be safe, and she could just lie there until she could sleep again.
"Mkay. Go say 'hi.'"
The weight of Zola left the bed, followed by the weight of her brother. Meredith rolled over, putting her hand in the warm dip that would never be as deep as Derek made it.
"Hi, sweet ones. What are you up to?"
"We're watching Muppet Babies with Mommy. They're funny, even though they're from the super older days."
"Did you just call us old, Z?"
"Uh-huh. Hey, Bay, do your impre-sessions the one Mommy called you. Can you do the wooka bear?"
"'Hiya, hiya, hiya. Wooka, wooka!"
"Good job, B.B.! Can you answer a question for me? Is your mommy in the bedroom?"
"Uh-uh. Them sad. No boo-boo to kiss better."
"Yeah, because she's injured inside in her heart 'cause Daddy died, and it's invisible not fizzscicle so Aunt Cristina can't fix it. Injuries take a long, long time to get better if you can't surgery them."
"Very smart, Z."
"Oh! Aunt Sadie! She's been real-sleeping!" Zola did her own impression. Derek would be so proud. Derek is dead. Derek was dead to begin with.
"That's very good to hear."
"Tell me, Zola, if he's Fozzie, does that make you Miss Piggy?" In the bedroom, Meredith winced, anticipating the squeal of no way! that followed. "What do you have against Miss Piggy?"
"Mer?"
"S'a trap."
"Wrong franchise." Sadie's footsteps were small. Careful. She wasn't supposed to care. Being "care full" was a stupid way to live. Casting sucked. Professional opinion.
"She makes you defend Piggy. Next thing, you're ten links down on the Muppet Wiki."
"Been there, huh?"
"Bet Lexie coulda done it off the top of her head. Muppet Babies started in '84. Same as her."
"Z did send you down a rabbit hole. Think Lex remembered stuff from pre-k?"
"Never asked. Never told her.…" Damn it. Trying to keep things superficial was as successful as trying to distract herself with the freaking Muppet website.
"Hey, she knew. If Meredith Grey loves you, you know."
Did you? Oh, good, she could keep some quiet parts quiet.
The bed dipped under Sadie's weight. "Bad couple weeks, huh?"
"You talk to Beni?"
"I did not violate a patient's right to privacy, no. You haven't answered the phone or responded to a text in a week."
"Oh." It'd felt so much longer. It hadn't felt that long. "'m okay. Just sleeping. So…you can just…you can go."
"Nope, not happening."
"I'm eating, and taking the vitamin, and drinking the water." She pointed at the bottle on the bedside table next to the locked box of orange vials.
"Yes, and the kids are fed, and safe, and as clean as baby pizza-face gets," Sadie said, idly reaching over Meredith to pick up the box. Meredith pointed to the opposite side table drawer where she kept the key. It didn't matter; Sadie'd prescribed half of it anyway. "This isn't some kind of wellness check. Fati thought—what?"
Meredith lifted her face from the pillow. "I said, 'maybe it should be.'"
Sadie paused her scrutiny of the prescription labels—probably making sure I don't have enough to off myself —"Dea—Mer, the first few weeks on an antidepressant can be the hardest —" Ding.
"I don't suddenly have the energy to act on a plan, Die. I just… I can sleep, and he's there. It's almost always really him in my dreams now, and then I have to wake up. I don't want to off myself. I don't want to stay in the damn well, but every time I look up, I get punched in the chest by the fact that Derek is dead."
"Babe—"
"I'm not any good to my kids like this. I remember what it was like, being so afraid I'd set her off again that I stopped talking, tiptoeing constantly. Think Auntie thought I was creepy. It might've been hard being Dr. Grey's kid, but seeing Ellis fall apart…." Her voice, crackly from the time Sadie came into the room, broke. One more item on a long list of her broken parts.
Sadie inhaled loudly through her nose. Meredith felt a messed-up twinge of pride at finding the edge of Sadie's newly-steady patience. "Ellis sat you down and slit her wrists. I don't care what understandings you came to about her motives, she did that in front of a five-year-old."
The light in the room changed, a streak of sunlight falling over the bed. She turned away from it, pressing her arm against her eyes until it made the ache that lived behind her forehead surge as much as the sun would have. "I'm just like her! Back here wallowing in the dark after some man —"
"Your husband died. He didn't leave you. You have been adamant that if he'd done that again you—"
"Maybe I was wrong! I sure as hell didn't deal well the last time. But…if he was just alive, it might've been like losing a limb. An arm," she added, thinking of what she'd told Beni about her hands. "Everything would change. Seeing him, co-parenting, it would've been phantom pain. Real, and horrible, and-and manageable. Now…this… the baby…. I want…I want to be happy about it. I wanted another one. Not so soon with how things were, but Zo and Bay get along so well; it's a good age gap. But to feel anything about it, I have to think about how Derek won't be there…." Her breath hitched, and she curled in on herself, trying to force back the wave cresting in her chest. "Not when it's born, not at two in the morning for the next year, not the day it—he or she—graduates high school. I'm gonna have to do it all without him."
Sadie touched her arm where the shirt she was wrapped in had slipped off. In April when they'd reunited, Meredith had been submerged in panic, desperate for something to anchor her. This time, she had the rationality to jerk away. She couldn't trust Sadie not to disappear, adding another person's worth of power to the punch continuously slamming into her chest. She couldn't trust anyone not to do that.
All of her abandonment issues had rested on the premise that she wasn't enough to make anyone stay. Derek had. It took him time to choose her, but from there he did it again and again. They'd had the 'happily ever after.' She'd still lost him. The idea that loss was the only constant wasn't a false belief based on her catastrophic life. It was true.
She hated the sound that left her at that thought. Whimpering now? Pathetic, Meredith. Beni's voice swooped in to provide rebuttal, or have you just truly understood what it means that nothing is guaranteed? She dropped the tension in her shoulder. Sadie's hand was cool against her skin and expected nothing from her. All of the kids' pokes and prods were precious, but they were also a reminder that at some point she'd have to face a world that was much too bright for her.
"It's like someone finally put me in a bathtub and cut an organ out of me without anesthetic, like people used to say would happen if I kept going off with randos, and they did it yesterday." Meredith choked on the first sob, but the second followed too quickly for her to fight it. "It hurts. Sadie, it hurts so much."
"I know, sweetheart." Sadie stretched out to brace her as the rest of the paroxysm of sobbing hit, and Meredith's whole body heaved as she gulped for air.
"So bad…for…the baby…."
"Just breathe. That's all you need to do for you and for them, okay? That's all."
It took everything she had to obey the instruction, to fight against the vice closing on her lungs. She was still trembling after she wave rescinded, and Sadie tugged her upright. Meredith pulled her knees to her chest and rested her arms on them, supporting herself through the shakiness of every third or fourth breath. Sadie held onto her wrists.
"The meds are helping, Mer. I know it doesn't feel like it, but I've known you since we were fourteen. We've been here before."
Meredith looked over to the image of Baby Gonzo on the paused TV, considering the times Sadie had let herself into her apartment, or dorm, or bedroom and stayed until the fog receded.
"You've powered through so many times. Maybe if Derek hadn't died, you'd have gone another seven years without an episode. Maybe you'd have had a couple dark days in April. But he did, and it sabatoged your incredible ability to cope. Now, you can put that to work."
"You sound like Beni. 'Sorry, Dr. Grey, there's no surgery for this one.'"
"There's not. But….Having an organ taken out always comes with a recovery period, right? Not to mention the possible damage the failure caused."
"Yeah, so?"
"So, I think you need to let yourself recover. This isn't what that looks like," she added, gesturing at the shadowy room filled with the detritus of two kids camping out for—had it really been a week? Possibly. "It's getting your strength up gradually and dealing with the pain as it comes. Not pushing yourself far enough that other systems in your body compensate, but not giving in, either." She squeezed Meredith's wrists, letting her nails bite in just enough that Meredith met her eyes. They were deep pools of ocean blue, not unlike what was out the window, but it didn't make her flinch away. "Can we reconsider the deal? For a week or two, and see how you feel? Fati and I won't take over anything with the kids that you don't want, but we can entertain Z if B's napping with you, or take over castle-shaping duties while you get actual vitamin D."
"I…I don't…. What if I…?"
"Gay Aunt Sadie will not let you become Ellis Grey, Meredith. If she'd worried a fraction as much as you do about… I know she loved you, okay? I see that. But she sure as hell didn't explain things on your level and watch The Muppet Babies at her lowest point."
"You think…you think this is the lowest point?"
"I think we can make that the primary goal of our treatment plan."
Meredith bit her lip. The exaggerated professionalism of Sadie's tone reminded her too much of schemes she ended up taking the fall for.
"Death. I have never been the friend you were to me. I made you feel like you were ditching me in Europe, and I showed up at your place with basically no warning, wrecked hell on your job…and then who changed my dressings, after taking my appendix out? This is the least of what I owe you…I want to be a good friend, but mostly I have seen you go through this since we were fourteen and this time maybe I can actually help. I just want you to feel better, okay? No motive."
I don't have a better plan had been Meredith's response to far too many of those earlier plans, but, well…she didn't have a better plan. She nodded.
"Good. I'll go see what Fati and your munchkins want to eat. It won't be pizza."
"Then don't ask the kids."
"God, you're creating clones." Sadie swung herself off the bed, picking up one of Zola's dolls in the process. "And I actually put effort into giving you a palette."
"That's why I didn't call you."
"Because I couldn't get you to like salad?"
"I eat it, it's enough. The other night…no, crap, last month." Meredith rested her head on her arms, unable to watch Sadie's face as she spoke. "I was listening. I heard you. I saw. I hurt you, and I…. I wasn't…I couldn't feel it. And that's…I know how much of my darkness you were there for. How many of the detached times. But… I always felt everything you said. So, I didn't call because I wanted to feel better. To feel it better."
There was silence, and Meredith expected to hear Sadie head for the front door, letting Fatimah catch up with her. Instead, the footsteps approached her again, and then Sadie leaned over, kissing the top of Meredith's head. Her retreat was paired with a loud proclamation about dinner, like she knew exactly what Meredith was thinking. Maybe she always had.
It took a minute for Meredith to be sure she wouldn't dissolve again, but from there she slid to the side of the bed herself and followed in Sadie's wake. Getting up and moving was always step one of a successful recovery.
Meredith woke. The room was dark, due to the blackout curtain she'd overlapped to keep any light pollution from coming in. She probably didn't have to worry about that as much now. Her circadian rhythm wasn't perfectly regulated, but had it ever been? Case-in-point, it was five in the afternoon, and she'd fallen asleep during Bailey's nap. There was still an indention in the bed. Possibly his vacating the room had been what woke her, which was good. The last thing she needed was to start sleeping through the kids' movements, whether or not they were on their own in the condo.
They weren't, though. She didn't have to get up.
I brought the kids into the bed so we could all sleep together.
How long would it take her to be able to easily sleep alone again? When she'd told Amelia she used to prefer being alone, how true had that been? She'd never made the anonymous sex partners leave before dawn. There'd been roommates, and alcohol, and Sadie. Nights on the floor of the neighbor-boy's bedroom whenever his parents thought she'd gone home to emptiness too many times. Before that…
"I've only got one spare bedroom, Ellis."
"It's fine. She doesn't take up much space, do you Meredith?"
Was that real? There had been times she'd been moved into Mom's room; the times she'd been sick enough to be more of a patient of Dr. Grey's than a daughter, but Dr. Grey didn't stay in a patient's bed.
Maybe once. During that bout of pneumonia. Meredith didn't imagine it was anything more than wanting to monitor her cough. She'd sought out baby-sitters for comfort after nightmares, but never her mother.
Who knows what I've forgotten. I forgot Maggie.
She hadn't been told about Maggie. She hadn't had playdates whose moms were pregnant with their siblings. Anatomy Jane had been long gone. But whether or not she'd been sharing a bed with her mother, it still felt like a lapse.
She fingered her watch, following the second hand as it made its round, once, twice, thrice, a word Zola still adored. She hadn't been a ring bride, but she was a watch doctor. While everyone around her switched to phone timers, she'd kept it on her wrist.
"You've managed not to fail out so far?"
"No, Mom. I'm here in your study every weekend, for fuck's—Sorry. No. I haven't. I won't; my match results should come soon."
"You're that close to graduation?"
"Mmhmm. Don't worry, that's…I know you can't come."
"Of course not. Is Yvette Farnsdale still there? I did my residency with her. Horrible gossip. The whole world would know I'm deteriorating. Besides, if you aren't going to humiliate yourself, you hardly want me there to do it for you."
"You never cared about my graduations, or what state I attended them in, but I'm also not going to be stupid. This…this one matters."
"My opinion shouldn't define how you comport yourself, Meredith. Self-respect is…."
"Mom?"
"Buy a watch."
"What?"
"My father promised me a watch for graduating from medical school. Use my account,t and buy a watch. Make sure it's easy to remove, but get it sized. Otherwise, it'll slide right off your wrist, like that ridiculous charm bracelet you got so worked up about."
"You remember that?"
"The whole hospital was searching for it, of course I do."
There wasn't an 'of course' about any of it. The bracelet had been a gift from Layla. She'd sworn never to take it off, and Meredith hadn't been able to imagine it sliding off without her feeling it. A link had probably broken while she had headphones on or was otherwise distracted. She could remember teal-painted nails fastening it on the furthest possible loop, to keep it on your stupid-skinny arm. Losing it, even—especially—after "letting Layla go," had devastated her.
The watch had done a better job of staying in place. To get her mother's money worth, she'd let them engrave the back with the date of her graduation. June 4th, 2006. Twenty-six days before her life changed in ways she could have never imagined.
"Mommy?" Zola stood in the door Bailey must've left open.
Meredith waved her in, encouragingly, but she didn't move. Meredith's heartbeat skipped, and for that moment she was the child peeking through a crack in the doorway, trying to judge whether or not she'd be welcome. "Come in, Zo."
"Um, but I need t'ask you a question." She sounded so uncertain. So small. Exactly like Meredith would have sounded.
"Zoie G., my meant to be, you know, you can always ask me anything."
"Yeah, but it's an asking for thing, and I don't wanna make you sad."
"Baby girl, we've talked about that."
"Yeah, but you've been lotsa sad."
It would've been really great to have been in the not-crying place at that point, but with the depression dams breaking down, she had to fight off the heat building behind her eyes. Frankly, it was a lot easier to not give into nausea than to hold back tears, but for all that she told the kids there was no shame in it, she didn't want Zola to think her compassion was an upsetting thing. She was a smart four-and-a-half, but there were adult emotions she couldn't comprehend.
She went over to the door to pick Zola up. From the living room, she could hear the commotion of Sadie playing airplane with Bailey, an activity that would keep her occupied for as long as it did him. Meredith closed the door and sat on the foot of the bed, settling Zola into her lap.
"All right, kiddo, I want you to listen to me, okay?"
"Yeah-huh."
"I have your complete attention?"
"Yeah-huh."
"Every neuron? Every bit of that busy Zola brain is focused on me?"
"Yes! I told you, yes!" Zola twisted to look up at her, grinning, giving Meredith the angle she needed to kiss her forehead.
"You are not responsible for whether or not I'm sad. I know the past…while… things have been kind of rough. I'm very sorry for that."
"S'okay. You always keep care of us."
Meredith swallowed. "Take care."
"Mmhmm. Fati says sad can be like sick, sometimes."
"That's true." Of all the people she let around her kids, Amelia was the only one who understood, and matched, how blunt she was with them, but Fatimah came in second. Meredith wished they'd had a chance to discuss what they should hear, but if Fati had addressed it, it must've been necessary.
"Is that why we go to the play-care at Dr. Beni's?"
Meredith smiled. The supervised playroom at the clinic had kids coming in and out constantly, but it looked so much like the hospital's 24-hour-daycare that Zola had dubbed it 'play-care.' "It is."
"But she doesn't do surgeries."
"No. She…she listens. Talking about big feelings helps you understand them better." She hesitated, with Zola watching her face, the sweet scent of her kid's shampoo and the cocoa-butter she always wanted to put on herself 'like a big girl.' "She also gives people medicines."
"To make you not sad?"
"No, there's nothing that can do that. Not for real. It's…you know surgeons fix stuff you can see; sometimes very small things. But there are other things that can happen to your body, and those need other kinds of doctors."
Zola twisted one of the buttons on Derek's flannel thoughtfully. "Like Spina Bifida?"
"Kinda, but that was something you could have surgery for, remember? Daddy operated on you when you were a little baby, and so did Aunt Arizona."
"Oh, yeah. I forget that part. Maybe since I wasn't a Zola Grey Shepherd, yet?"
"Maybe because you were a baby." Meredith tightened her hold around her daughter. There was a world where Zola's diagnosis meant more than possible future shunt revisions. It wouldn't have affected how wanted or loved she'd been, but Meredith had encountered so many kids who could tell her every detail of their diagnosis because it was such a huge part of their lives. She was grateful that wasn't Zola's experience. "So, not Spina Bifida. Germs are one thing that can happen, and those pass between people. Viruses are a form of germ. Remember, you, Sofia, and Bailey all had cold viruses last year?"
"When Bay was getting his molars, and he was all drooly and snotty?" she asked, clearly relishing the memory.
"Mmhmm. There are also some illnesses that don't go between people. They're a part of how you're born, and a lot of times you don't know it. Like an allergy. They are different words doctors use, but 'disorder' is the main one. Those affect how different parts of your body work. Including your brain, and your mind. What'd Daddy tell you about those?"
"The brain is the organ. It does chemicals and electricity to make your body do stuff. The mind is...uh, I need to think…is thinking!"
"Clever, Zo-Zo."
"Daddy taught me that," she admitted.
"That sounds like him. The mind is also emotions, and memories, and it…it happens in the brain, but there's more to the brain than the mind. He'd always say too there's more to the mind than the brain, but they can't be both true."
"In a physical sense, you're right, but what Daddy meant…. It's sort of like what we've said about the soul; the mind happens in the brain, but it's also all the energy it takes, and all your imaginings…it feels bigger."
Zola kept spinning the button, and the thought of it snapping off made Meredith want to yank her hand away. She did that with Derek, she reminded herself. From the time she was a baby, Zola's hand had closed over his buttons the way it would close over Meredith's hair.
"Mommy? Does Dr. Beni give you medicine for a disorder?"
"She does." She sighed. Might as well start saying it aloud in front of one of two people she could be sure wouldn't judge her. "Major depressive disorder."
At various points in her history, it would've been dysthymia, but far from having symptoms for two years, it'd been more than two years since she'd had symptoms, beyond the occasional gray day. Immediately after the plane crash, sure, there'd been some PTSD symptoms. Right after the miscarriage was probably her last real episode, or whatever, but it'd been secondary to taking care of everyone under her purview. By the time Derek was well, she'd been fine to operate. That shrink had been reaching.
"Does your brain got a disorder? Or your mind?"
"That's a good question. It affects both."
Zola nodded; her forehead still furrowed in thought. "But, um, the major disorder won't make you die?"
"Absolutely not! I promise that, baby." Never. Not from this. "It makes it hard for my brain to deal with big emotions, and the way it gets confused meant the wrong messages out to my body. Making me tired, and… other stuff." Maybe. Could be your littlest sibling, who's to tell?— Okay, not a textbook definition of depression, but it would work for a preschooler.
"Is the disorder why you had the dark room headaches?"
It surprised Meredith that that was what resonated with her daughter. The migraines had only happened a few times, but they'd have been the most obvious symptom for the kids. "Probably."
"Because of Daddy died?"
"That's part of it."
"Could Daddy fix it?"
Meredith shook her head. "The brain is a complicated thing, baby. Your dad worked on the system that carried messages between the brain and the body, that's true. But just like any other part of the body, there are some problems that can be fixed by surgery; whenever something is torn or blocked. If there's a lump or bump that affects someone's life. If they need a device put inside of their body. Sometimes we do inject medicines somewhere a doctor who treats disease couldn't get to, but for the most part, it's not what a surgeon does."
He'd have tried. There are physical interventions for PTSD. We eliminated a tumor with a virus, and we were injecting an Alzheimer's treatment into brain matter. He'd have found a trial done on two people in Slovakia to fix me. That's what we do. But how far is that from unnecessary electroshock? From well-meant lobotomies? Did I fight more against a pill than I would've fought against something more permanent?
Zola's fingers worked the button faster, and her bottom lip was trapped beneath her front tooth. Meredith tipped her chin up and met her eyes. There were plenty of times she could tell exactly what was playing out behind them, but there was something amazing about the times that she couldn't. This sweet little girl, who trusted her to help her navigate the world, was a totally separate person from her, and like every other human, could be totally inscrutable.
"Do you want me to try to give you a better explanation? You might not understand it all right now. That can be frustrating."
"I know, um, but sometimes then it later makes sense, and you say, 'Oh my gosh! That makes sense today!'" Zola put her hands to her head, imitating an eureka! moment. Did Derek teach her that, too?
It didn't matter; she'd made it hers.
"That is a pretty great feeling. All right. Our bodies and our brains are always sending messages back and forth. You know how the skeleton is like the boards that make up the frame of a house?"
"Yup! Auntie Callie showed me with a nex-ray."
"Well, your nervous systems are like the wiring. Whatever information you get from your senses is sent up to your brain through cells called neurons. Your brain figures out how you need to react and sends instruction back down to your body. For example, if you touch a hot stove, that information is send through your neurons up to your brain, which tells you to move it ASAP. Or if you see a ball coming toward you, your eyes tell your brain, and you move your arm. They also help your brain monitor the actions that you don't have to do on purpose, like breathing, or your heart beating. So, if someone was walking alone in a jungle, and they heard a tiger roar, what would they do? Or a lion in the streets of Seattle? If they're not safe in Daddy's car?"
"They run."
"Why do they run?"
"Because a wild tiger isn't going to be nice like an animal ambassador at the zoo. It could give someone bad injuries they'd need surgeries for."
"That's true, but they wouldn't have time to think of that, would they? Before you decided to be brave and go down the big slide, how do you feel?"
"Scared. They'd be scared!"
"What happens when you're scared? What does your heart do?"
Zola held a hand above her chest and imitated an increasingly racing heartbeat. "Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom!"
"Very good. Your heart speeds up, and so your blood moves faster, so your muscles are getting more oxygen, and. you can run, run, run far away from the danger. All of that happens too fast for you to be aware of it, but there's a lot going on. Your senses turns the information in each neuron into an electric impulse, like a little shock. That tells the neuron to release a chemical that will give the message to the next neuron over, and that keeps going until it reaches your brain.
"It sends its messages back with more electricity and a different chemical, and that tells them which chemicals to create to keep the message going. Those chemicals are called neurotransmitters, which just means 'neuron messenger.' It takes the messages between neurons. All of that keeps going, until we're away from the tiger, or not touching the stove anymore. Then a different signal from the brain tells your neurons to stop making those neurotransmitters and take away the ones they're already made.
"There are a lot of steps involved in that, right? All of it happens in seconds, without us having to make a single decision. But that means there are also a lot of places for things to go wrong. Sometimes, the clean-up doesn't work correctly. Either the neurotransmitters don't get absorbed—like if a vacuum cleaner is full and doesn't suck up the dust bunnies—or they don't get the 'stop' message.
"Having too much of one message can mean other messages don't get read, or somewhere along the way, a neuron assumes the next message it gets is going to be the same and passes that on. Like whenever Bailey says 'no' to everything, regardless of what he wants, because he knows we'll pay attention.
"Sometimes brain starts blocking the message on purpose to protect the body from experiencing the same thing for too long, but it can block the good ones, too. If one message starts building up, the brain can get confused, and it sends them to other parts of the body where they mean other things. That's what causes the other symptoms."
"That's what you got? A lotta the sad messages from because Daddy died?"
"Mm, my experience is kind of a mix. I think my brain has always had trouble with certain neurotransmitters—what's that mean?"
"Messangers to the neurons."
"Yup! So, whenever they build up, it's harder to clear them out and move onto the next experience. When your daddy died, that was the main thing I was feeling, and eventually my brain stopped listening to most of the emotions messages. There was less sad, but I couldn't always feel happy feelings either, and that's very no good, because you and Bailey give me lots of happy feelings."
"And Daddy did."
"True." The word came out higher in pitch than necessary, and she waited for a minute before going on, rocking Zola a little in response to her snuggling closer. "You're right. We have so, so many happy memories, huh? That's very important. You know what's the most important?" Zola shook her head. "That I love you. I always, always feel that. I always will. Whether I can tell you or not. Whatever you do, wherever you are, wherever I am. I love you."
"I love you too, Mommy." She hadn't lost the contemplative expression, and Meredith was about to ask her what questions she had when she blurted, "I wanna do a drawing of Daddy with my Family Day colors, but I can't…I didn't wanna ask for a picture and make you sad, but, um, my 'magination's not working right, and…and, um…." Tears were about to spill over the edges of her eyes.
When did she last see his face?
Meredith had been determined to keep showing them pictures, but at first thinking about it felt like stabbing herself, and then it hadn't, which was worse, and keeping that phone off kept her from having to confront the life she'd left behind.
The first breath she took was shaky, and Zola probably wasn't buying her smile, but while she understood the picture might make Meredith sad, she didn't need to think she was responsible. "Every artist needs a good reference."
"They do? I mean, yeah! I do. Need a ref-or-rinse."
"Let me see what I can do."
Meredith stood up, still holding Zola. The baby, happily hanging out in the pelvic cavity immediately reminded her that she hadn't peed since waking up. Crap. With one hand, she opened and dug through her sock drawer, which was full of unpaired but clean socks. The phone was easy enough to find but pressing the side button to turn it on did nothing.
"Crap. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. I'm going to plug this in." She carried Zola around the side of the bed, and unconnected her current phone from the charger. "And you're gonna watch it while I use the bathroom. But don't touch anything until I get back. Can you do that?"
"Uh-huh."
"You sure?"
"Mommy, you are doing the potty dance. I can watch a phone."
Meredith shook her head at her daughter.
Alone in the ensuite, she let her forehead rest on the heels of her hands. The ache building there wasn't anything like the "dark room headaches," or even the constant vise of sleep deprivation and not eating enough. She couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was, but she could dismiss the voice in the back of her mind trilling brain tumor. There wasn't a neurosurgical fix for her situation. It was just because of a neurosurgeon.
"Um, Mommy? I think Alex made your phone break!"
Damn it, Karev. "Coming, Zo!" She washed her hands and ran a washcloth over her face, steeling herself for the next part.
Zola had moved the phone onto the bed. "It was gonna fall. I didn't touch the screen."
"That was a good call," Meredith reassured her, watching it buzz itself across the comforter. She lifted Zola up and then let her bounce down on the center of the mattress, making her giggle. The buzzing was still going strong when Meredith took the spot next to her. "I should've turned this on a while ago, huh?"
"You got a lot of notif'cations, and I saw Alex Karev a lot." Zola eyed the phone like it was a particularly disturbing insect. The vibrating finally died down, but neither of them reached for it.
"Okay. Let's just…." Meredith picked it up gingerly and navigated past the lock-screen. The badge next to her Messages icon said she had two-hundred. A quick scroll suggested Alex had texted her a bunch the first week, and once a day since. The rest were a mix. Mostly Callie, until early May.
You're a grown-up. Do what you need to do, but if you don't bring my kid's best friend back at some point, I will break you. The rest of the thread held pictures of Sofia.
"My Sofi!" Zola exclaimed. "Can I see?"
"Let's look at the first few," Meredith suggested. "And we'll open the rest later, okay?" Thank goodness she'd decided that, because Zola was still pointing out details about Sofia's "such a pretty pink" Easter dress when a new text from Callie came in.
CALLIOPE TORRES: Look who's alive.
Read receipts exist.
Tell me you're not gone forever, and I won't say anything to Karev.
Panties.
"What'd she say about Alex?" Zola asked.
"Nothing important." Good grief. It hadn't been a big deal for her to catch the occasional word of messages from Fatimah or Sadie, but she was going to have to police this over-shoulder reading before they went home.
They would go home. It was home. What would it hurt if Callie could reassure Sofia at least that much?
MEREDITH GREY: Not forever.
I don't know when.
But if she could read any better, my daughter would be on your side.
Tell Sofia that her Zola misses her.
"There's my name! What'd you say 'bout me?"
"That you miss Sofia." Meredith toggled over to the settings and turned off the read receipts. Before she went to clear out her missed calls, Callie replied:
CALLIOPE TORRES: Deal, then.
People love you, you know.
Meredith cleared the screen quickly, grateful that the tear she couldn't stop fell on her left, where Zola couldn't see.
Alex had called twenty times the first week in April, and about once a week since. Cristina seemed to be aiming for the end of the month and had called both the 27th and 30th of June. Maggie's calls were sporadic. Amelia's stopped the first week of April, and that worried her more than she wanted to admit. Her voicemail was full, and she was going to let it stay that way. A few of the names on the call log surprised her—Addison, Sydney freaking Heron, Erica Hahn? She'd never tell Callie that—and some of the names that weren't there, too. No Greys. Nothing from Izzie, though Alex admitted to texting her. She didn't delve into her email. It would keep.
"All right," she said, her thumb poised over the photos app. "You ready?"
Zola nodded. Her eyes were big and apprehensive. Hold it together. She needs that.
"Three, two, one." She tapped the Pictures icon. It surprised her to see him on the first spread but there he was with both kids right after he'd come home, and not one of them—her or the kids—had wanted to move out of his orbit. "Look, Zo, you're in your St. Patrick's Day dress?" His smile was definitely for them; he hated that holiday.
Zola didn't say anything, and in spite of seeing almost every expression she'd made for three years and eight months, Meredith couldn't read her face. "You wanna hold it?"
Zola nodded and took the phone carefully with both hands. It would've been so easy for Meredith to turn away from the glowing screen, ignoring the pixels that were displaying the image of her husband. When Zola started to swipe to another photo, Meredith took it and moved back to flick between spreads. And flick. And flick.
"There. From…from right after the new year." The words made her throat hurt, but she got them out. Ten weeks. "I think Alex must've taken this one since it's all of us."
"Bay's so little." Zola's voice was quiet, and Meredith shifted, putting her arm around her.
"He is. Little kids grow fast, huh?"
Zola nodded, and then sniffled.
"It's hard, huh?"
"Yeah." Before Christmas It took a couple of swipes for her to find him again.
"My butterfly cake!" Zola swept through those photos happily, but this time Meredith had to let her eyes lose focus. He'd taken a red-eye in to be there when Zola woke and left that night. She didn't count it. The week for the holidays hadn't been as horrible, but he hadn't been home. He hadn't been home for seventeen weeks. The same amount of time that'd passed since he died. A blur of pink pajamas and a baby-teeth smile behind her birthday waffles, and they'd rewound through it.
The first (last) pre-D.C. picture came from a spontaneous park trip on a Saturday with insanely gorgeous weather. Derek was standing between Zola on a "big girl" swing, and Bailey in one of the bucket-seats. Both kids were giggling. Derek wasn't quite facing the camera. If he had been, would his dissatisfaction have shown? As it was, his eyes were alight, entranced with whatever Zola was telling him.
Just before Zola swiped, Meredith remembered what came before that, and barely stopped herself from flinching at the sight of the play button on the screen. Zola looked up at her, and Meredith reached over her to tap it.
Derek's laughter was the first thing she heard, before Bailey squealed loudly enough to make the audio crackle.
"Who wants to go higher?" His voice was both familiar and different from the one she'd heard only in her head for three months.
"Me!" film-Zola declared. Derek drew her backward high enough that Meredith heard herself gasp behind the phone. Then he let Zola go. She swung toward Meredith, and Derek cheered her, he stepped to the side, and got whacked in the side by Bailey's swing. The video ended with Meredith doubling over with laughter.
The bedroom was suddenly silent, and it took her a moment to detach her gaze and turn it to Zola. She caught her scrubbing her hand across her eyes. "Oh, baby." Meredith reached over to the nearly-empty tissue box on the bedside table, and then mopped Zola's tears with a Kleenex.
"It should be funny, Mommy." Zola sniffed. "Maybe, do I got your disorder?"
"No, Zo. You're feeling things just right. Your sadness is just bigger than the funniness right now."
Zola held the phone up to her. "I don't wanna look anymore."
"That's okay. I'm gonna put it right here, okay?" Meredith thumbed the power off and deposited the phone in the bedside table drawer. "We'll try again soon."
"'Kay," the little girl clung to her, lying almost across her chest, like she had as a tiny baby, home for the first time. "You should show that video to Bailey," she murmured as Meredith rubbed her back. "He'd see the funny."
"You are so right."
They stayed that way until the boy himself came barreling into the room. Sadie followed about twenty seconds behind. "Sorry! He tricked me."
"Throw ball," Bailey agreed. "Run and run!"
Meredith had been a victim of that ploy herself. "He's a little trickster, huh. Aren't you, bud?"
"Yeah. Zo-Zo boo-boo? Zo-Zo boo-boo, Zo boo. Zoo bo," he repeated, like he felt something similar about the words, but couldn't quite identify it.
"I'm okay," Zola said, sitting up and letting her brother pat her face.
Meredith could feel Sadie considering her and hated it as much as she appreciated it. "I have an idea. Why don't B, Z, and I take an evening walk up the beach? I'll let you handle bath-time," she added, relieving Meredith of the guilt already creeping up on her.
"Sounds like a great idea," she said. "Zo? That good with you?"
Zola nodded, and then threw herself across Meredith again. "Love you," she whispered. Meredith kissed her and wondered when she'd learned to whisper properly.
"Can I bring you back a milkshake from Not Another Burger Stand?" Sadie offered.
"We both know you're not asking."
"Nope, I'm bribing. That's what Gay Aunt Sadie is for."
Meredith rolled her eyes, and then got up to help squish Bailey's feet into his shoes, which Sadie hadn't yet mastered. She smeared sunscreen, followed up with bug-spray. They wouldn't be out long, but in the interest of enforcing routine she ignored Zola's protests and spritzed her hair. Two hats went on, the smaller one came off and went on again. Finally, she pointed Sadie toward the car keys.
"Take the stroller. Trust me."
She didn't lose her grip at the click of the front door. She held it together until she'd closed herself in her room again—Just like Ellis—and curled up on the bed, hoping Sadie would put whatever she brought back in the freezer. Knowing she wouldn't. As the waves she'd held off with Zola in her arms washed over her, occluding her vision, she glanced at her watch. Six-fifteen. An hour and fifteen minutes made her feel like she'd worked a whole shift.
She'd underestimated power of her kids' voices, though. As soon as she heard them approaching the condo, she managed to sit up and be in the living room when the door swung open.
Maybe she'd get out of the well this time after all.
Meredith woke. The sun was spilling into the room from the curtains she'd fallen asleep without closing. She'd flattened her hands over her eyes before she realized the light didn't feel like too much. The balls of pain behind her temples weren't there to explode.
She didn't linger in bed. Neither kid was there, and she needed to investigate that, but the weight that usually represented the first fight of the day had lifted. Derek is dead. She pressed a hand against the wall and swallowed until the hot lump in her throat dissipated.
Fatimah had stayed on the couch after they ended up watching old episodes of Buffy on Netflix, and according to Meredith's texts, she'd taken Zola to pick up breakfast.
Bailey's door was closed, and behind it she could hear him singing to himself, "Guhd mornin' to you! Guhd mornin' to you!"
She opened the door, and he squealed as she sang, "Good morning to Bailey…."
He giggled and held his arms up. Only once she'd lifted him off of his bed did he scream, "GUHD MORNIN' TO YOU!"
"Who needs hearing in both ears, huh?" she joked. He blew a raspberry at her cheek.
She changed his diaper, and wrestled him into most of his clothes, except the shirt, which he insisted on doing, and she only rescued him from. His face popped out of the neck hole with annoyance already replacing the anxiety he'd voiced while trying to push through an arm hole.
"You look just like your daddy," she informed him. The sunny room glistened around her. Bailey came over and patted her cheek.
"Sad, Momma?"
"A little. Proud of you for trying with your shirt."
He nodded, but his eyebrows were drawn together, emphasizing the Derek in him, and then he stood up, extended his arms and did a sort of floppy shimmy. "Wadies and gennelmens, yaaaay."
The clips from The Muppet Show she'd shown him had been a hit. She'd considered searching out actual episodes, but she worried about the seventies sensibilities in an adult show. She couldn't count on anything going over Zola's head. "Are you Kermit?"
"Muah muah Kermie!" he continued, doing his practiced piggy nose-push. "Scusay-mwa? Hi-yah!" He took the Miss Piggy karate kick out on the nearest stuffed animal, his favorite. Meredith caught it out of the air and stroked the top of its head before he quite processed what he'd done. "Tiggy got boo-boo?"
"He's okay," she reassured him.
"Yeah. Momma fix boo-boos."
I can't fix him, because he is dead.
"Wocka, wocka!" Bailey thwacked the top of his head with an open palm, mimicking the way Fozzie removed and replaced his hat. "Funny Fossie, wadies and gennelmens!"
"Funny Bailey," Meredith corrected, and then grabbed him, kissing his cheeks until his giggles filled the room.
"Mommy, I did the key!" Zola came bowling into the room, flinging her arms around Meredith's neck almost too quickly for her to brace herself.
"Wow, good job, Zo! You did it so quietly. I didn't hear you guys come in."
"We got doughnuts! And we got you a strawberry Starbuck."
"Lead with that next time," she suggested, taking both kids hands. In the kitchen, she swiped the pink drink off the counter. "You're a goddess, Fati."
"Mmm, you're easy."
"Who've you been talking to?"
Fati snickered into her own drink.
"What's funny?" Zola demanded, midway through climbing up on the stool to grab a doughnut.
"M'em funny!" Bailey responded, popping up and running over with a rubber sheep still in his hand, so thrilled to be able to offer the answer that his eyes were wide, and his grin revealed all twenty of his teeth. "Mommy say Bay funny! Wocka, wocka!"
"You are," Meredith agreed, swooping him up. "You want a doughnut?"
"Yeah, mine." He did grabby hands at her drink.
"Oh, no, mister."
"Oh 'es, mister!"
"Ohhhh, no." She managed to hold the drink out of his grasp until she could deposit him in his booster seat. When she turned, she found both Fatimah and Zola were staring at her. Monumentally, Zola's hand was hovering over the doughnut box. "What?"
"Meredith," Fatimah said, carefully. "You were laughing."
"I…I haven't been…?"
"Not in a lotta time, Mommy," Zola said. "You want a sprinkle doughnut? It's rainbow."
Meredith rested her hand on the back of the chair, Bailey's hair brushing against her fingers. She could feel Fati doing her watching-without-watching thing, waiting for her to react to the blow. Bailey's silliness wasn't anything new, and the morning wouldn't have made it to long-term memory in any other circumstance. Those were the types of moments that had been making her fall apart.
Seeing their son's antics without Derek flooded her with a mix of misery and guilt. No matter how strong the happiness, contentment, and amusement were before, she hadn't been able to process that flood. Now she could. Derek will never have one of these mornings again, or mold Bailey's sense of humor. That brought all the same vestiges of devastation but didn't take away from the way Bailey's eyes and cheeks were shining. She wasn't dead. She was glad that she didn't want to be.
"Hook me up, Zo," she said and went to get Bailey's PAW Patrol plate from the cabinet.
It got much warmer in the living room with the curtain opened, which made it slightly frustrating that Meredith no longer wanted to leave it closed all day.
"Look," Sadie said, unpacking the bag of subs she'd so spontaneously brought by after forty-eight hours of Meredith being on her own with the kids again. "I understand Seattle doesn't have summer, but you're going to get Vitamin D deficiency in here."
"We go to the beach," Zola said.
Meredith, having already bitten into her sandwich—deciding to table the fact that Sadie remembered her preferences when logistics had so often been Meredith's job—jerked her head at her kid.
"Whuht-eshe-sed," she offered, a hand in front of her mouth lest Bailey decide it was okay to play "see food."
"Charming. So glad your manners have improved since you were this one's age." Sadie nodded at Bailey, who'd peeled the top off of his PB&J to smear the PB on his face.
"Did you know Mommy then?" Zola asked at the same time Meredith protested, "I wasn't raised!"
"Z, what are the grown-up word rules?"
"Don't say them 'til you're as big as Momma, and you gotta use them correctly."
"Excellent, cover your brother's ears."
Zola reached over. Meredith expected squeals, but Bailey seemed more curious at the silence.
"You cannot fucking bullshit a bullshitter. All set, thanks, Z." Zola removed her hands. "You had very little supervision, but that would not have passed at a meal with Ellis."
"Zo, we met when we were thirteen—"
"—fourteen—"
"—I was getting there, thirteen and barely fourteen. It was the last week of December, and Sadie's birthday is Christmas."
"Really? That's so cool! You get Christmas and birthday presents."
The shadow that passed over Sadie's face told her that while she might not have given the spiel in twenty years, it thrived in her mind, ready to be given at the slightest provocation. To her credit, she toned it down for Zola. "In some families it's probably like that. Mine got one set of presents, and that was it."
"That's sad."
Sadie shrugged, directing her frown at her to-go cup. "I wasn't deprived, or anything."
That was beyond true, but Meredith remembered how it felt to be given cash or a check and hearing, "you know what you need better than I would anyway." The same thing on Christmas, birthdays, first days of school. Always "need" never "want," with all the implications that brought. The pointed hints about saving—"Where's the money I gave you in September? You can't tell me new uniforms took all of that"—and never having the experience of opening a gift and discovering the giver understood you better than you knew.
There'd been exceptions for her; the set of children's reference books she'd gotten for sixth birthday stood out, and her mother would've done that for any kid. Some Christmases were shows for her aunt and could bring very pricey guilt gifts; undoubtedly the result of her mother handing an intern a catalog and a credit card whenever she noticed holiday decorations. 'My daughter is ten/twelve/fifteen, get it wrapped and make sure it'll get here in time for then holiday.' The suture kit had been a high, a low, and an inside joke, which summed up the feeling of living with her mother.
She wasn't sure Sadie had gotten gifts that were thoughtfully chosen for her until they met. All the skull-studded bracelets, mixed tapes, and volumes of Plath had been the result of significant consideration.
"My birthday is in Novendber," Zola offered. "And uh, Daddy said that if I didn't get what I wanted, it'd be easier to make my list for Santa." Zola glanced at Meredith who made a point of smiling. She'd only recently gotten timid about mentioning Derek, when it seemed like the opposite should be the case. "And I get a want and read on Family Day."
"The day we met her," Meredith explained to Sadie's eyebrow.
"Shockingly wholesome," Sadie said. "But Gotcha Day is kind of controversial in the adoption world, right?" Meredith's eyebrows were now the ones to pop up. "My partner is a social worker; you pick up a thing or two."
"Huh. Yeah, it's questionable. The day a kid is adopted can represent lot of things. It's the start of a family, but it's also the end of a family. But we got so lucky, and we wanted to celebrate that, right Zo?"
"You did marry a sappy man."
"Uh. Actually, this one was me. I'm not a fate person, but we'd barely started considering adoption, and then…"
"There I was!" Zola exclaimed. "And we had a family, not a couple surgeons in a boarding house."
Meredith laughed.
"You never do anything by halves," Sadie said.
She shrugged. There were places Sadie had gone during their partying years where she didn't follow, but she'd tried everything once.
"Which is why this going out to sit on the beach and be equally as hot as you were in this oven thing needs to stop. It's the peak of summer, and you have an oceanfront condo."
"I didn't ask for that," Meredith snapped. "You own this place, remember?"
"And I decided on it for you because you were never happier than on the Italian beaches."
Meredith put down what was left of her sub. Sadie noticed that? "That…that was before."
"Before?" Sadie had been beside her for the sunbathing and for jumping off ledges. All the things they considered to be near-death experiences. She had not been there the time a patient's arm slammed into her chest, the worst priming for a plunge. The time Death died. "Oh. Is it open water? We could start with the pool."
Start with. Like she was a project. A problem to solve. How many of Sadie's projects and problems had Meredith been the one to take on? She'd done homework for a school she didn't go to and made calls to professors at a university she didn't attend. Moving in together post-grad meant Meredith would make sure the bills were paid. It prepared her for taking care of his mother, as much as anything could. Sadie hadn't been responsible for herself until med school, and the gossip suggested it didn't go well.
She'd come through for her more in the past few months than she had in the entirety of their ten-year friend…relationship, and the awkward five that followed. That weekend, for the first time in months, Meredith had turned her phone to the Music app without immediately opening a kids' album or playlist. A newer Garbage song had come up on shuffle, and it'd made her think of the track she'd dubbed Sadie's Song back in 1995. Sometimes, she'd told herself the chorus didn't apply; Sadie wasn't a stupid girl. Other times she knew it did; all Sadie had had, she'd wasted. But the verses had made her sure someone in the band had met her.
"You pretend you're high
Pretend you're bored
Pretend you're anything
Just to be adored
And what you need.
Is what you get
Don't believe in fear
Don't believe in faith
Don't believe in anything
That you can't break."
The thing was, at the time a lot of them had applied to Meredith, too. And Sadie had believed in something she couldn't break, or waste, or tame. She'd believed in Meredith. Somehow, after twenty-one years, she still did.
"Open water is worse," she allowed. "I…I'll need a new bathing-suit."
"Didn't bring that…? Oh." Sadie grimaced.
"You brought the bathing-suits," Zola said. "I see 'em with the sunscreens. Bailey's is so small. Did you outgrow yours, Momma?"
Meredith and Sadie exchanged a look, and neither managed to hold it together. "Well," she offered. "Not yet."
"What's funny?" Zola demanded.
"I'll start the clean-up," Sadie said, gathering the paper their food had been wrapped in.
Meredith turned to her daughter. She hadn't started to show in the cut-off jeans she'd been wearing, but she knew that with a second—third? Did it count in this instance? It hadn't gotten far enough to show—pregnancy, she'd pop sooner. A bathing suit would reveal enough that concerned, observant Zola would notice. She might not remember a time before Bailey, but she'd been asking for a few of the books until they'd left behind in Seattle.
"C'mere, Zo," she said, pushing away from the table to make it easier for Zola to clamber into her lap. "We've talked about how we got you differently than making Bailey, right? And both ways take a long time?" The time until her due date wasn't all that different from the gap between Zola being taken from them, and the day the doorbell rang for a delivery that was so much more important than a pizza.
Zola nodded; her eyes already shining.
"Okay. So, let's go over why again. It takes pieces…a certain type of cell, not any old piece… from a grown-up male body, like a daddy, and a grown-up female body, like a mommy, to make a baby. Then, it stays in the mommy's body for nine months to get big and strong enough to live—"
The question burst out of Zola. "Are we getting a baby?"
"We are."
"We are. It'll be—"
"But how did you get the pieces—the cells from Daddy? Did a doctor do it or the coffin guy?"
Meredith glanced at Sadie again, but apparently her social worker wife didn't prepare her for that one; she turned back to her daughter. Curiosity was the only thing showing in Zola's eyes. Child of doctors. Best friend of child of doctors. What had Sofia picked up last year? She might need to revive that text chain with Callie earlier than planned.
"Sometimes the pieces are put together by doctors, so people can have babies if they have the same types of bodies, or if someone dies. But nine months is a lot of times. We knew Bailey was coming for most of that time, but you don't, always. Daddy and I…we weren't planning on having another baby, and…well, sometimes things happen that we don't expect. Like meeting you."
"Yeah, and Daddy dying, and coming to Sun Day-go, and day-camp, and so, we're gonna have a baby brother-or-sister?"
"You are. Not until after—"
"Baby brot'er?" Bailey's curious repetition gave Sadie a chance to wield the dishcloth he'd been squirming away from for most of the conversation. "M'em baby brot'er."
"Yeah, you are. Can it be a sister this time? We have a brother."
"You have a brother," Meredith reminded her. "Bailey has a sister."
"Yeah, but…" Zola's eyes crossed in her desperation to come up with an argument, but then excitement overtook her again. "We're gettin' a baby!" She did a ridiculous, limbs akimbo dance in place, her arms flailing.
Bailey watched her, and then an expression of recognition came across his face. "Yaaaaay." He cut himself off by bopping his forehead with his flailing fist, and then looking at his fingers like they'd betrayed him.
"See, Momma? Bailey's excited!"
Meredith was 99.99% sure Bailey had been about to follow up with "wadies and gennelmans" but she wasn't going to defuse Zola'shappiness.
As if able to read her mind, Zola stopped her chant of "baby, baby, baby," and put her hands on Meredith's knees, peering up at her. "Is that why you've been happier, Momma? Because Daddy gave us a baby?"
It felt like a clump of her sandwich had gotten caught in her throat, except she'd swallowed the last bite she'd taken five minutes ago. Zola's reaction was the one she should've had; the one she'd wanted to have. Without Meredith knowing she was behind her, she felt Sadie's hand come down on her shoulder.
"I-I am happy about it, Zo-Zo," she replied, willing it to be true, but not entirely sure
"Yeah, but some of it's sad." Zola wound down a little. "Daddy won't meet the baby. But we'll teach about him, like you taught me about Malawi, and being brave, and kind like George Amalley, and Bailey about Aunt Lexie, and she was so smart. And we'll read them books, and-and…are there gonna be more blow-out diapers?"
Meredith choked back a snort. "I can assure you there will."
"Ew. But, um, maybe Bailey won't do them anymore? Because it's gonna be a long time?"
She started to agree. To a happy four-year-old, it would be. Things you were excited about always took forever to happen. That she could sense that it would go faster than she cared to acknowledge made Meredith all the more uncertain about her own feelings.
She was at eighteen weeks already without having fully processed the fact that she was pregnant, let alone the possibility—she couldn't see it as more than that. She couldn't let herself. Not yet—that that would lead to the existence of a baby. A child. A third child. To raise. To care for. To care about. To worry about. To teach. To keep track of. To love. To keep something of Derek alive.
To lose. Everything Derek had left with her—and left within her—represented another potential loss. Babies, sisters, legacy, their home, their hospital, their friends. A path of wells for her to tumble down like the unlucky frog she was.
To forget. It'd been a little over two weeks since she admitted to Beni that somewhere in her was the wish that if she ended up with Alzheimer's, it might pull a specific thread out of the fraying tapestry of her mind. Like everything in her life, her situation was a slant rhyme of her mother's. Richard had been there for Ellis to see as twenty-five years younger. Her flashbacks hadn't been full-on ghost-Denny hallucinations. Meredith didn't want to project Derek's image onto some poor nurse with blue eyes. She'd played parts for her mother, who couldn't help whom she'd been seeing, but she didn't want to inflict the awkwardness of it on anyone. Especially if she was seeing that person as a man with whom her sex to conversation ratio was about 1;1 early on, depending on how you counted the sex. To the Meredith who existed now, it felt like a form of betrayal, in spite of the fact that she knew Derek would insist that he didn't—if in your mind you're with me, then isn't that what matters?—and it wasn't like she'd be screwing the hypothetical McDreamy stand-in.
Before Richard had started haunting the Roseridge sitting room, her mother had already been reliving her residency. Whatever had triggered it, Meredith's internship, the return to Seattle, she'd returned to a time when she was with him. Meredith would take that. If Cristina couldn't manage to OD her on morphine immediately, she'd take calling a Korean neurologist assigned to her case "Cristina" and blathering on about Derek. If he was alive to her, and she lived with the expectation that he would be there any minute, she'd take it. If she spent time in her intern year, she wouldn't know that it was better than really losing him, but it would be.
However.
However, if she returned to any time when Derek would be waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, or had left for a shift before she woke, this baby would not exist to her.
Zola could. The idea of re-experiencing the time she was in foster care filled her with more dread than the internship possibility, but the next six months—after Zola came home, before Lexie died—wouldn't be a bad period to inhabit.
Bailey could. She might be pissed off at the Derek in the wings, and chances were she'd think he hadn't been around because he was in D.C., but she might hit the sweet spot between the Ides of March and the accident. Ten days out of just over twenty-eight hundred—sometimes knowing the date they'd met sucked.
A third baby could not. Wishing to return to a period where Derek was alive would become wishing to return to the life she'd had prior to this child being born. It might not be something she could stop wanting, but she would never admit to it again. She would know it was there, deep inside her, and she would hate it. She would hate how much she wanted to experience having him alive again; that she was effectively willing to wish she didn't recognize her child, the possibility that made her skin crawl every time she said "always" to Bailey or Zola. Would there be something in her that resented this child for putting her in that position? It wouldn't be their fault. Blaming a child for their own existence was abhorrent to her. It would not be their fault that she and Derek were arrogant; believing that getting her pregnant took more than not using condoms, and having no reason to think that if she did conceive both of their lives wouldn't intersect with a baby's.
You couldn't take life for granted.
She couldn't take this child's life for granted.
If the crash hadn't happened, this baby would feel equally unlikely. She might have separated herself from the reality of it, the way she had with Bailey, but deep down, in the moments she allowed herself to hope, she would've been ecstatic.
She wasn't holding out for ecstatic. It felt as remote as happy, or irate, or anything else had a month ago. It would be nice if, by the time she had to acknowledge this pregnancy to everyone she saw, she could get to hope.
A/N: song lyrics from "Stupid Girl" by Garbage
No corresponding one-shot today. I have one in revision, but I just got home from the disability leadership camp I've attended since I was one of the students, and I remember using my friend's sidekick to post a chapter of my Grey's fic on schedule. For years, I lugged my laptop there. This year, I left it home. The words I got on my phone during my few breaks, and it's already synced.
Time is a flat circle, etc.