Chapter 8

Meredith carried post-ops from her appendectomy to the nurses' station for one of the nurses to give to her interns for scut. She grumbled as she realized this was the last surgery of the day and not one exciting surgery that day. Of course she was thankful no one was hurt or dying, but her day felt as if it had dragged on, even though everyone around her seemed nervous and edgy.

She had gotten used to some nurses whispering about Zola and though she hated the things they said, she rose above the drama, and knew there were still nurses who actually knew Zola that knew she wasn't actually a trashy girl, but a young, scared girl who made a mistake. But this particular day there seemed to be something else going on, and it wasn't until Dr. Bailey came alongside her with her post-ops that things changed.

"What are you starin' at, Grey?" Bailey asks as she continues writing.

"I was just wondering if you had anymore surgeries for me before I leave?" She sheepishly asks.

"Grey, I've had a long day and I'm sure you have too. But you're an attending and you need to ask me, a fellow attending, to assign you surgeries, when you're the chief of general? What is this, intern year?" Bailey snaps, seemingly more tense than normal.

Meredith dropped it until Bailey cleared her throat, looking up from her paperwork with sorrow painted on her face. Meredith was sure this was going to be a Bailey speech followed up with an apology, but it wasn't long until she recognized the look as something doctors often gave their patients after delivering bad news.

"Grey, there's also something we need to talk about." Her voice wavers nervously.

"Which one of them?" Meredith asks Bailey, jumping to conclusions immediately that it was one of her kids in trouble. "Were you just in surgery with them?" She suddenly catches her voice wavering and raising in fear.

"Zola." She replies flatly. "She was in a crash but she's stable and the baby is fine. They're both being monitored by Arizona and April. She has good surgeons on her side Grey. But if you'd like to go see her…" Bailey finishes but is cut off by Meredith who slams shut her paperwork and hurries off.

"SHE'S IN ROOM 2170!" Bailey shouts after her.

The nurses begin to whisper in shock, ignoring the fact that Bailey had snapped around to stare at them in disbelief.

"Do you guys have nothing better to do than rip on doctors and gossip all day?" She asks them, and the cower.

"Maybe if Meredith, a 'Harper-Avery award winning' know-it-all doctor had talked to her daughter, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant and she wouldn't be in this mess." One nurse remarked and the other nodded.

"Yeah, I hear she went psycho on her ex boyfriend. If you ask me, Meredith really isn't the doctor everyone talks her up to be." The other adds and Bailey begins to feel her blood boil beneath her skin.

"NO-ONE WAS ASKING YOU!" She rose her voice, then took a deep breath to keep from losing her poise. "Meredith Grey is only human!"

"She's a doctor and her daughter still got pregnant! It's awfully ironic." Nurse Cara pointed out.

"Meredith Grey is a fantastic doctor; I'd know because I was the resident who raised her. But being a doctor isn't a reflection of how she should be a mother to her child or who she truly is as a parent! You know as well as I do that people here die everyday and it's not always a reflection on us as much as it was out of our control. We did what we could! But being the fantastic doctor that she is, Meredith Grey can NOT be babysitting her kids all day, to keep the pregnancy from happening.."

"Well, Meredith could've done a little more to stop this from happening. Her daughter should be punished more than grounding. If it was my kid, I'd have her sent to a camp for pregnant girls."

"Well let's thank the good lord above that Zola was lucky NOT to have you as her mother then. And as for Meredith Grey, she handled it in a way that was good for her family and not anyone else."

The nurse rolled her eyes to the other, brushing off what Bailey had to say, and ignoring the fact that Bailey was still there as she continued talking.

"As if the pregnancy wasn't punishment enough, she had to have such a lazy and irresponsible mom. You'd think a doctor would have better resources to talk to her child about sex. She's never gonna get the proper punishment or talk for this." Betty, the older nurse remarked.

Bailey really wanted to rise above, but Meredith was her baby. The intern she had raised to be a resident that became the amazing, award winning surgeon and mother she was today. If you'd ask Bailey or not, she'd advocate for every one of her intern babies. She had raised them, witnessed their growth, went through loss with them, and now that only Alex and Meredith were left, she wanted nothing more than to protect them while leaving them room to still fend for themselves. And she'd do the same for their kids.

"Meredith knows that punishment isn't always what's best, or is better served with a life lesson. And I'm sure she knows that Zola knows what she did was wrong, but shaming the poor girl isn't going to do anything, because she already knows. It's redundant and mean to keep shaming her. She's a fantastic more by giving her daughter room to grow as a person instead of bringing her down!" Bailey turns on her heels, gathering her things and preparing to check on Zola.

Cara and Betty scuff, brushing Bailey off because of their annoyance towards her "momma bear" instincts coming out. Little did they know, she wasn't done with them.

"However, this in no means means that Meredith is lazy or bad parent. Zola is plenty old to make choices for herself and Meredith heard her out, heard her side of the story, and is helping her find the right path. You don't know what goes on in that house behind closed doors, or what happens, so you have no right to sit here and judge her parenting when you know only a little gossip about their family issues."

Bailey begins to walk away, but remembers one more thing she wanted to add, stunning the nurses and hopefully scaring them into line.

"So you, nurse Betty and Cara, can take your fabulous parenting skills that you think you have and go tell Zola and her mom what you think they should do, but remember that I have the authority to fire you for harassing patients. So, I'd suggest you keep it to yourself, and if I hear of you harassing others again I will have you out on your behinds." Bailey finishes, smiling as she walks away.

Chapter 9

"Dr. Shepherd? You have someone here in the waiting room to see you? She says she's an old colleague." Andrew Jameson approaches her in the CT room, watching as she runs over scans of a brain again.

"Tell her to come up to CT. She'll know where to go." She informs her plainly, too invested into her work.

She runs through the pages on the computer, searching every angle of the brain; The frontal lobe, the right and left hemispheres, anything that would indicate that the tumor had returned. As she searched she prayed to God that it would be benign, and that if it wasn't the brain, the liver on the patient hadn't been ruined from all the drinking. But before she could worry about going downstairs to the machine in the pit, she heard a subtle knock in the doorway.

"Dr. Shepherd? It's been forever!" She hears the familiar voice exclaim, relief almost in it as if they had been forcefully kept apart.

"Edwards!" Her concerned, down turned frown becomes a genuine smile as she stands, embracing the black girl in a hug.

She lets go of Edwards in surprise, feeling a hard lump and quickly realizing in excitement that Stephanie had a well kept secret.

"NO?! You're pregnant?" Amelia gasps in excitement

She was surprised, knowing that Edwards' mind seemed like it had always been occupied by neurosurgery that kids seemed like a distant, maybe even not possible thing for her. She was focused, newly married, and she had made it clear that kids was something she might consider down the line. She was serious about her work as was Cristina, except Edwards thought that eventually she'd hit pause to start a family.

Cristina didn't want to be a parent because she believed she would've been a terrible parent. She was so focused that she felt that it wouldn't be fair for the child, that she would be like Ellis and the kid would probably feel like a burden.

She didn't want that life for her children, and Amelia respected her for knowing what she wanted. Even if the pro-life and pro-choice thing held differed for each of them. But like she told Edwards, she had nothing but respect for the both of them as surgeons and the choices they would make for their careers.

"Congratulations! I'm ecstatic that the baby neurosurgeon I once mentored is now back in the medical field and is going to be a mommy!" She gloats, feeling happy but a familiar disheartened tug in her chest.

They sat in the chair and Amelia began clicking through the scans, showing Edwards what exactly she was looking at. What was the deal with these scans and why was Amelia looking for help from Stephanie? Maybe it was because Meredith had a lot going on that she felt another tumor would be a burden on her too. That Meredith would say "I told you so" when Amelia found a tumor that had been causing a behavior change. Or what if it wasn't a brain tumor making her sick? What if she was in early stage liver failure and she didn't show common symptoms yet?

"Edwards,even if we don't find something, I don't want you to tell anyone! Do you hear me? The last thing I need is for Meredith to have another reason to get me a psych consult."

"No offense Shepherd, but you do have a lot going on right now and Meredith does have valid reasons to worry. You've been drinking again and Lord only knows what else you could have in your system."

"Edwards, are you accusing me of doing drugs? Did Meredith put you up to something? Did you talk to her?" Amelia begins to ramble and Stephanie laughs.

"Not at all. I'm just worried for you! You're worrying yourself over what looks like is probably nothing. Why don't we go over your symptoms?"

"That's the problem! I didn't realize my brain tumor was there until I had a scan, because I didn't realize right away that there were any symptoms until I thought back over my behavior."

It was true; She hadn't realized that her impulsive behavior was a problem. She had always been head strong and determined. To solve inoperable tumors, to take on cases that seemed just like her charity cases. It was in her blood to want to help. It was a good impulsive behavior until it wasn't. It became daring and dangerous, risk taking. But even with all that, she still hadn't cheated. But this time was different.

She craved alcohol like it was narcotics. It made her sick, the hangovers in the mornings sucked. There were headaches all day and blurry vision. Nausea, stomach aches. The blurry vision and the headaches were what made her wonder if it was a tumor, not her sudden impulsive decision making. And the more she thought about it, it wasn't a rash decision to leave Owen. If anything, he already was emotionally gone years ago. Shortly after Leo and Betty were placed in permanent care.

"Dr. Shepherd? Nausea, headaches, dizziness, all of those things don't necessarily mean another tumor. It could be something more common. Do you think there's any chance, any chance at all, that you could be, I don't know, pregnant?"

Amelia's jaw dropped and she stared at Edwards in disbelief. Stephanie felt slight embarrassment and somewhat bad that she had even asked because she knew Owen was gone. She had seen the Facebook posts and everything, she had seen him with Teddy in the snow in Germany. She figured by deductive reasoning that the two weren't exactly on great terms. And it was then, in the awkward moment of silence that Amelia broke down, laughing hysterically at Edwards.

"Dr. Shepherd, this is inappropriate. Maybe we should look at the little girl's scans instead? Take your mind off of this for a bit?" Edwards face burned a rosy red on her cheeks.

"No Edward's, I want some peace of mind. And if that means ruling out all of the possibilities, then we'll do it. And we'll start by ruling out pregnancy since I had a blood test a few months ago and it was negative."

"False negatives happen. Even with our standard tests." Steph insists. "Haven't you ever seen those shows where women don't know they're pregnant until birth?" She adds sheepishly.

"Are you taking medical advice from a fake reality show over our actual medical practice?" Amelia begins to chuckle.

"Just think about it; It's called 'cryptic pregnancy'. Sometime the HCG hormone isn't strong enough to show up because it's too early or your body isn't or hasn't been producing enough. C'mon Dr. Shepherd! You know weird cases happen all the time and we can't rule anything out until we're sure!"

Stephanie persists, watching Amelia sigh and give in, and watches as Amelia begins to scribble out a list of everything they can think of to rule out.

"We can't do millions of dollars of tests, but we can do the all the obvious things. And if we still don't find anything, then we'll hit the books. But don't let me down Edwards! I didn't call you because I thought you'd be great company." She assures her firmly, sarcasm dripping from her lips.

"Yes Ma'am." Steph responds, standing and heading down to run labs, given special permission already from Bailey to have privileges in the hospital.

"I'm not pregnant; It's gotta be a small, microscopic tumor. Because there's no way I can be pregnant or I'm going to mess up my baby from drinking." She whispers to herself, feeling very guilt all of a sudden.

-XXX-

"How is she?" Meredith slides on a trauma gown as she enters the ICU.

"Her vitals are stable for now, she sustained minor head and chest injuries but we put in a chest tube, took out her intubation tubes and she is now breathing on her own. Her head injury is mild so most likely she'll regain her memory and then the police requested to speak to her since the accident looked most likely purposeful."

Jameson flipped through the chart on the table, getting ready to administer another CC of Lorazepam to help with the anxiety she had came in with earlier and would most likely still be fearful when she woke.

"What makes you say that Jameson?" Meredith asks as she snatched the chart from his hands.

"I don't think she would purposefully go out into the middle of nowhere just to crash her car unless it was intentional. They have reason to believe it might have been attempted homicide or suicide."

"What?!" Meredith asks in alarm, even more confused. "Who was she trying to kill? Who came in with her?" She demands to know.

"Amelia informed me that she was with her ex. I think his name was…" He began only to be interrupted.

"Arnice? That bag of trash was with her? Then this couldn't have been planned or intentional. He kidnapped her!"

Meredith paced angrily back and forth, slamming the chart down and not minding the fact that her daughter was sleeping. Thoughts began to burn in her mind, things that scared her and she feared, but they hadn't much information and couldn't only help so much because they knew the police and psych would be in to question the kids.

"Actually Dr. Grey, Zola was the one driving, so they believe she was trying to either kill them both, or they had gone out there to you know, 'Sneak around' ? And maybe they had just gone out there to be alone, and maybe knocked the car into drive."

"STOP!" Meredith snaps, sudden fear and anger in her voice. "This was totally purposeful and I think Zola may have been protecting herself and the baby."

"By driving into a tree?" Jameson asked, clear confusion on his face.

"NO! She was smart, so smart! She purposefully did it because she didn't want 'it'! Jameson, we had a case years ago where this young girl was found half naked. She and her boyfriend seemed to have "accidentally" driven off a cliff while getting busy. But she was protecting herself from him."

"Why?"

"Because he was a rapist that would later attempt to burn down our hospital!" She snapped, trying to catch him up to speed as her heart raced.

She knew if they had more proof, that once the kids gave their stories and they looked at the evidence, once Meredith had presented her case, that Zola could be scott-free. Zola was innocent, she entirely believed that, and if anything, Meredith was proud of her daughter's sense. Even if it was a little bit of an unconventional approach, she and the baby were so far unharmed.

"Jameson, go upstairs and pull Alison Goodman's case file! And print out any articles you can find! There were lots of news articles at the time so there shouldn't be any trouble."

"Dr. Grey, doesn't that break the patient's confidentiality!" He points out.

"Do you second guess all your attendings' orders?" She snaps sassily at him. "Go!" She demands, watching him exit in obedient fear.