A/N: I just wanted to write a little note to say that I hope people are enjoying this. I encourage readers to leave even a little comment, because... while the quality of the comments is excellent, the quantity is less so. I'm not one of those writers to bribe people to comment, saying if I don't get 10 comments I won't add another chapter. I get it. People are busy. I hadn't enabled anonymous commenting, and have now, so I hope that encourages some of the more shy readers to leave me a little message . :)
Even though my mom died over two years ago, I still get mail addressed to 'Dr. Ellis Grey.' Most of the time, I just flick through the envelopes and throw them in the recycling- after all, I thought all of the important people know she's dead now. We get those 'CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE WON $1 MILLION!!' or the book club subscriptions, or those invitations to go on a cruise for old people. Derek was going through the mail the other day at breakfast, and he handed me one that looked pretty official.
It was some crap to do with her life insurance policy, and they wanted validation about her Alzheimer's disease. I know my mom and I didn't have the greatest relationship ever, but I'd like to think that when I had to step up and be her daughter, I did my duty. I moved back to Seattle, I became her power of attorney, I acted in her best interests instead of my own. I thought once she died, that burden would be lifted off my shoulders, that I'd finally be free of that sinking feeling that my mother would have hated what she had become- dependent on others losing the one thing she held onto- her job, her will, her brilliant mind. Instead, I had to see my mother, the woman I didn't get on with but secretly admired wither away into someone who couldn't even make their own decisions. And now, she couldn't even be dead independently. I had to trawl through her medical records and prove that she had this disease that took away everything that made her who she was.
I flip on the light to the basement, and make my way down the old,creaking wooden stairs. I know there are thirteen steps, and that the fifth one down is the creakiest, and it feels like your foot will fall through it, but it never does. It's been like that in over thirty years. I can hardly believe I've lived in this house for most of my life. Before my mom got her diagnosis, I thought I'd live out on the east coast forever- and try and escape my mother's shadow, be my own person, find myself. But now, I like being in Seattle, it feels like home.
I don't know what's happened with Derek and the plans to build a house on his land. Our house on the cliff. We haven't talked about it for a while, actually. I guess we were just finding our feet, then Izzie got cancer, George died, things happened, and we found comfort in what we already have. It's one of the only things that is stable in my life- that I have Derek, and this house. Derek was right- I like being in my own house, having my things around. I suppose he's gotten comfortable too. If I didn't know any better, I'd suspect he brought those blueprints out of nowhere just to force me to make a commitment to him, to tell him that I definitively wanted a future with him. He's such a girl sometimes. At that point, I was scared though. Why can't things just stay the same for a little while? There are so many things that happen in life that we can't control, I don't think I'm a freak for wanting things I can control to stay the same. I guess that know we have signed our lives away to each other on a post-it, Derek's cooled off a little bit.
Sometimes, I allow myself to imagine what it would have been like if the chief did leave his wife and play happy families with my mom and me. Would my mom have been a different person? Would I have been a different person? I mean, I like my life now, don't get me wrong, but it's felt like a tortuous journey to get here…a lot of bottles of Jose, and a lot of meaningless men. If I had felt like I was wanted and loved and belonged when I was a kid, like I do now, maybe I'd have known it was ok to have that with Derek sooner. Shit happens though, everyone has crappy lives. Everyone has that darkness in their past that makes them appreciate the good stuff.
After searching, I finally find my mom's file that says 'insurance documents' on it. I smile, seeing her writing for the first time in a long time. It has that doctor's scrawl to it, that habit we all acquire because we just can't seem to write fast enough, so some letters are on top of one another, and some are spaced far apart. Suddenly, seeing that file induces a wave of regret to wash over me- I'd spent so long hating and resenting my mother that I didn't ever stop to think that maybe she was lonely and looking for something too. Who was there for her when she was told she had Alzheimer's disease? She had early onset Alzheimer's, and I know there's a genetic component to it, so knowing my luck, I might get it too. But if I did have it, I'd want Derek to hold my hand as the neurologist confirmed the diagnosis, to console me and hold me when I cry. But my mom did that all alone. She had no one, and I feel guilty to think while she was dealing with it alone, I was balancing the fine line of working hard in med school during the week and indulging in the heady mix of tequila and boys at the weekend.
My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of someone walking around upstairs. Even though the door to the basement is open, Derek's voice sounds muffled as he calls my name. I shout back to him, and he carefully comes down the stairs, slightly apprehensive at the creaky sounds they are making. I smile as he nearly stops after the fifth step, wary of falling through it. I know better.
"What are you doing down here?" He asks me, watching me as I flick through my Mom's papers. His hands are tucked into his jeans pockets as he leans against the wall.
"Keeping some paper-pusher in a job." I reply wryly, finding the document I want and standing up from my crouching position. "Just mom's insurance stuff." I explain waving the paper at him.
"I never fully appreciated how big this basement is…" He says, looking around. I can see him trying to estimate the square footage, and if I didn't know any better, he's thinking about changing this place into something other than 'i-don't-know-where-to-put-this-so-I'll-put-it-in-the-basement.'
I shrug, and turn towards the stairs. If he's thinking about converting it into another functional room, perhaps I was right- he has no intention to move. I understand it- if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We are happy here. It's close to the hospital, to downtown, it's a good house. I think my dream house is right here. Balconies and hot tubs in the backyard and wrap around porches are something of a fantasy, and perhaps they should stay that way-things are rarely as good in reality as they are in your head. I can't even keep this place tidy, let alone a house three times bigger. We are surgeons, even when Derek is a non-resident attending on-call, he often gets called out to do some complicated surgery. It would be horrible for him if we lived an hour away. Really, we don't need anything more. It's already got three other bedrooms including the attic, and I have no intention of having more than two children.
I'm two steps up, and I hear Derek laugh softly. "Oh, 'Meredith's photos', I wonder what I'll find here…'" He says excitedly, and I virtually jump down the three steps and launch myself towards him to stop him from opening the box.
"You don't really want to bore yourself. Normal boring photos everyone has…" I say, cringing when I notice him look at me, noticing the embarrassment on my face.
"Oh, these MUST be good. What are you hiding?" He asks. I try pulling on his arm, but it's no use- he's got the box down from the shelf and he's opening it up.
Goddammit, he'll see everything.
It's not that I'm uncomfortable with who I was, I think that I wouldn't be who I am today if I didn't go through what I did, I'm just scared people would not get it, and judge me. I know it's only Derek, and that he tells me he loves me everyday, even when he doesn't say it. I told him that story about 'Death and Die' and he didn't run for the hills. But I'm uncomfortable with people being uncomfortable, and I think this defensive streak in me is more a force of habit. 'Oh, Ellis Grey may be great, but her daughter is trouble.' I know my mom saw me as her one failure- her one black spot on her glittering reputation. I was the obvious chink in her armour. She said as much one night- or should I say morning- when I came home after a party- drunk and with a guy that my mom would not approve of. I was a reminder of all her failures- her failure to be a wife, a mother, a carer, a lover. It was not only my behaviour, it's what I symbolised. And I have accepted it now, I have made peace with it. But at sixteen, it hurt. I don't regret anything. Truly. If the textbooks are to be believed, this makes me a psychopath. If the glossy magazines are to be believed, this makes me an independent modern woman.
I want to avoid. I bite my lip. It would be SO easy to distract him with sex, turn him on, rev him up, and watch him go. My fingers could lock themselves into the curls, and I could kiss him just behind his ear and put my hands where it takes his breath away, and he'd never know I was a messed up kid. A masochistic part of me wants him to know. Maybe I need him to. I need him to accept me even at my worst, so that I know the best is real. And so I just kneel beside him, close, but not touching-just waiting and watching for his reaction.
There's the usual toothy milk teeth grinning photos in elementary school, when I was brand new and unspoiled. I think it's my first passport photo, a few months before my dad left us. I look at the photo, and get the vague taste of strawberry ice cream on my tongue- the kind Thatcher used to take me to the mall for, two scoops, rainbow-coloured sprinkles.
He pulls out a scrapbook my friends made me in high school, and I instinctively rock back onto my heels, creating a distance between us, steeling myself. He turns the page. There I am in all my teenage glory. I think this is the Prom Rebellion- where we ditched prom, and sat around getting drunk. I look back at my sixteen year old self, with heavy eyeliner so thick that I look like a racoon, my hair an odd colour between pink and blonde. I have a bottle of coke in one hand, although it had more vodka in it than coke, and a cigarette in the other. I cringe at the photo. I thought I was so original and cool- but I realise that I was as cliché as the cheerleaders. I don't even know who I was trying to be at that point.
I look over at Derek, worried what his reaction will be, and I see him SMILING. Is he crazy?
"I look like a total freak." I complain.
"No, you don't." Derek insists, that stupid smile still on his face as he flicks through more horrors of my high school antics.
"So the pink hair, nicotine habit and drinking doesn't prove otherwise?" I scoff incredulously.
"Meredith, we all try and find ourselves during high school, and fail. Come on, I was a band geek, for god's sake!"
At any other time, I would have laughed at him for that- cool Derek, the doctor people drool over a band geek. But I'm too caught up in myself right now- I'm too concerned that Derek is saying one thing and thinking another- I know that he has the habit to do that. Sometimes he says things he thinks I want to hear, and then what he's really thinking comes out later, and it seems totally from left field.
He sees my reluctance. "With acne, and afro hair."
"Hmm…" I mumble.
"Look at you!" He says, gesturing to the photo.
"I am! That's what I'm saying…" I splutter.
"I love you..." he looks at me. The thirty-three (nearly thirty four) year old me.
Somehow, just by his look, I know he's not talking about me as I am now, but he's talking about me as that rebellious teenager who thought the world was against her and didn't understand her. He loves the girl who didn't know what she was looking for but searched for it anyway. He leans forward, and kisses me on the lips, leaning his head against mine as he looks back at the photo.
"You haven't changed much, you know." He says quietly.
I know he gets it. That I am tough yet breakable. That I build up this hard exterior but that I'm really very soft inside. He knows I don't think convention is for me. He flicks through the rest of the book, his other hand holding onto me as he laughs at my fashion faux pases. He understands why I'm the type of person to get married on a post it after seeing those pictures. I've still got a little bit of bad ass in me. I still have a streak of pink hair inside my heart. I'm not someone who cares whether it's a done thing. I wanted to get married, to commit, and I did it. It may not have been in a church, or in city hall, and even though at the time I wanted to, the legality of our commitment right now doesn't bother me. Because he loves me. There are so many people who have lavish weddings, and they last five minutes. I'd rather keep my post-it commitment forever than make it official and it last a few months.
Before Derek, I wonder if I was abnormal. Maybe I was a little cold for love, lacking in the sentiment of it. As soon as someone's interest flagged, my feelings went that way too- an element of hold on tightly, let go lightly. Don't make an attachment, don't care. Bye bye. I won't let you hurt me.
Maybe I didn't give those people enough chances.
Maybe I gave Derek too many.
I broke all my rules with him. I betrayed every promise I made to myself since I was sixteen. I was one of those doormat girls who took their guy's bullshit because I loved them. All romance is narcissism, that's something I heard once. Maybe it is. Maybe especially now I have Derek it is. But who cares? When it's with the right person, it doesn't feel ostentatious and self-fulfilling. It feels like you're the only two people in the world who feel that way. Love- maybe it's a chemical thing that our brains make up in a biological way to procreate- we fool ourselves that we have a unique and special connection with someone so we fuck like bunnies and bingo, a kid pops out in nine months time. Maybe my brain is fooling me that this love means forever with Derek. But fuck it, I'm along for the ride.
-X-
I fish my shoes out of my cubby and shrug my coat on. It was dark when I left the house this morning, and now it's dark when I'm going home. But I wouldn't have it any other way. Not really. Not when I don't know any better.
I make my way to Derek's office, walking along the hallways slowly. He said he'd wait for me, that he had paperwork he needed to catch up on. Research grants, conferences, presentations. Since the tumor thing- both of them- our tumor thing and his thing, he's been in demand. I know what that's like all too well. Mom was always gone to Italy or France or somewhere to present something. Once you get into that world, it's hard to get out. She was a chaser. Wanting to find out more, be better, invent a new thing. I understand it better now, I'm a doctor now, I think. It was shitty for me to grow up with her as a mom, and she ruined my childhood, but she made a difference to so many other people's lives. I guess I can live with that.
After all, I didn't end up so fucked up, did I? I have a husband now (ok- not a legal one, but…I was the girl who dyed my hair pink, chain smoked, just packed a bag and went around Europe…) , I have a job that requires responsibility, I have friends…Maybe I should be indebted to my mom, because without her being the way she was, maybe this wouldn't taste as sweet- it would have been something I expected and just fell into rather than earned like I feel I have now.
It's not been easy with Derek. We've had to forgive each other for a lot. I've had to forgive him for Addison, for calling me a whore, for the whole thing where he jerked me around with the 'I don't want to breathe for you—but won't tell me anything' bullshit. I can't even understand the rest up until the candlelight house… I try not to think about it. But I guess it cancels out, that I drowned and never told him anything. I thought I was too fucked up, and it drove him away. But anyway, it's over now, and remarkably, I am truly content, despite that history.
I walk down the hall to his office, and I swear I hear giggling. But maybe I'm just hypoglycaemic…no, there it is again. It's like a child. One of those innocent happy giggles. It makes me smile. I stop infront of his door, and it's coming from inside his office.
I open the door, and I find Derek on the floor with little Tuck, pretending to be some kind of tickle monster. There are toys all over the place, crayons and paper- it's a mess. But seeing Derek smile and Tuck laugh like that- I swear I heard an ovary burst.
Let me just say, I'm not that girl. I want children but I don't want to be just a mommy. I don't want to fuck them up either. But there's something in seeing Derek with a child that turns on a biological switch I have no control over. I love him even more. I've never seen Derek with a kid like this before. They've been patients and there's been a distance he's had to maintain, and we haven't gone to be tortured by his sisters yet. I've not seen this unrestrained Derek with a little person, just having fun. Is this what he was like with his nieces and nephews in New York?
I almost feel guilty I'm keeping him away from being Uncle Derek. Because he's pretty fucking amazing at it.
Derek notices me standing there and has this grin on his face. It's slightly sheepish, maybe a little bit embarrassed. But it's also a 'we could have this' kind of grin. That grin makes me want one even more.
"Hey Tuck. Say hi to Auntie Meredith…" Derek says to the squirming kid in his arms.
"Hi…" Tuck giggles, giving me a slobbery kiss and a little wave.
I just heard my second ovary pop.
"Bailey had an emergency lap chole gone wrong." Derek explains. "I was around, I saw Bailey in a panic trying to get hold of Tucker. So I thought I'd help out and take this little guy."
I sit down on the ground with them, joining in with the tickle fun. This is all new to me. I didn't have siblings, I wasn't surrounded by babies. But seeing Derek with Tuck, makes me think it's doable, and that there's no one I'd rather have a kid with than Derek. I don't think, in this moment there's anywhere else I'd rather be.
Even the pink haired parts of me.
If I was 17 I could find it in between
The cushions of somebody's couch
I could find it. I could find it
If I was 17 I could find it in a dream
A dime a dozen kind of love
I could find it. I could find it
But I'm not 17 and I lost it in between
The birthday cakes and fast mistakes
That roll on by.
Ingrid Michaelson- Locked up.