A/N: The numbers tell me this is not as wildly unpopular as it seems, so for all you lurkers, here's part eight. I would love to hear from you, as always. :)
Part 8
Lexie tells him things about her new job. Lots of things, actually. It sounds like Lexie might be a little starry-eyed. The stories she relates are shining examples of Meredith The Surgeon. How wonderful she is as a doctor. Her intuition, her bedside manner, her innate knowledge of the human body and hofw it works. The ease with which she reads symptoms, her patience with patients.
Each word pierces him like an arrow:
None of these are things inherited from him.
*
Days pass. He drinks.
Weeks pass. He stops.
Months pass, and anniversaries arrive, and he is back down the rabbit hole.
Years go by.
A full revolution.
Something has to change.
*
Lexie is all gasps and tearful snuffles and wide eyes.
Meredith watches uncomfortably.
He can see her out of the corner of his eye as Lexie's arms wrap around him.
She doled out forgiveness, and her job here is done.
Maybe now there is not so much anger between them, but there is still not much else instead.
*
And then it happens.
Even though he stopped, it seems he was too late.
Now he's entrapped in a little room, thin blankets across his legs and machines humming around him. He hears alcoholism and liver transplant and suitable donor and all he can take in is that suddenly, though she does not need him, he needs her.
His eldest daughter.
And he does not want to need her, but he does.
*
The first time they re-met, outside his house in the dark night with the leaves rustling amicably above them—he had been the winner.
It was not truly a competition, but he had been the winner.
She was meek and small, a slip of a thing wrapped up and windblown. He had been solid, backed by his house, holding the answers she sought.
Yes.
He had been the winner.
*
This time it's her.
She's the winner.
She won.
He's now the weak dying old man and she's the healthy young woman who gives her liver away. Selfless. Kind. Not expecting—not wanting—a shred in return.
In fact, preferring that she gets not even an audience with the recipient. He can sense her hesitation.
The transfer takes place by her people on her turf, and afterwards, by some sick twist of fate, he's cohabiting in post-op with a patient under her care.
Distantly, he wonders if it's normal to feel this way. This uncertain, this uncomfortable, this uneverything. The opposite of what fatherhood should be.
He decides, pettily, that he doesn't care.
*
They let her out before they release him, and she is constantly coming by the room.
Not for him, of course. Not to see him, not to talk to him.
Each time, though, she is pleasant and polite, introducing herself as Dr. Grey as she checks on the other man.
Thatcher watches as the other man's wife brings their daughters by, surrounding him with handmade get-well cards and cheery bunches of flowers.
He looks across at Lexie, pale and exhausted as she perches opposite his bed for a five-minute chat before she gets paged away, and he wonders where he went wrong.
A better question might be where he went right.