A/N Thanks again for all the kind thoughts on this. I admit some more reviews would be nice. I never write specifically for reviews, but the feedback is always good. I've never tried to write before without the safety net of notes in front me, is it working? Does it make it sound natural, or as if I'm trying too hard? I don't know unless you tell me. Just a few words, whether positive or negative, would help a lot.

This could be the final chapter, though I have a feeling it will be 5 in the end, so we are getting near the conclusion. Stick with me through a bit more angst and then….well, that depends on Meredith.

It was just hiccups, Meredith remembered. It was just supposed to be hiccups. People don't die from hiccups. She'd even joked with her father – the idea of joking with her father was a bizarre concept even in itself – that Susan was fooling them, tricking them into thinking something was wrong with her so they'd be forced to talk to each other. It worked for a while. Then suddenly Susan deteriorated. She went downhill so fast it was like she was on a bobsleigh, racing faster and faster through tunnels of ice, slipping further away with each second, leaving everyone trying to help her standing in her wake. They took her to the O.R. but it was already too late. Susan died from sepsis.

Meredith couldn't believe it. She stood in the O.R. watching Bailey and the Chief fighting for her step-mother's life, until, in the end, they both said that they couldn't do any more. The Chief called time of death, his dark skin turning almost grey as he uttered the words.

The three left the O.R., Meredith's legs becoming heavier with each step she took. It was like she was wrapped in lead, covered in it. It made her feel heavy, awkward, and strangely cut off from everything. All she could think, all her mind was capable of grasping, was that somehow Susan was dead. Meredith looked up suddenly when the Chief grabbed her. She flinched and he loosened a hold he'd got on one of her wrists. He was saying something. Meredith forced herself to focus, push away the numbness that was beginning to settle over her. She was able to concentrate just long enough to make out that the Chief was saying that he would tell Thatcher the news. No one expected Meredith to do it.

For a few blissful seconds Meredith grasped at the words, feeling almost light-headed with relief. Then reality struck. The Chief was the man her mother had been unfaithful to her father with. He was the reason they'd divorced. There was no way in hell he could possibly tell Thatcher Grey that his wife was dead. She would do it, it would be better from her, after all, earlier they'd talked, just for a while. The gulf between them had seemed to become just a little smaller. So she had to tell him, explain to him what happened. It would be better if she did. Without saying a word, Meredith shook her head. The Chief and Bailey exchanged a concerned glance and then, silently, the Chief nodded.

Meredith left Chief Webber and Miranda Bailey standing in the corridor leading to the waiting room at the front of the hospital. She went on alone, taking careful steps, trying to hold off the moment when she had to break the news. Then Thatcher was there, he was standing waiting for someone to tell him. He looked literally frozen with fear.

It only took a moment to say the words. A minute, when, struggling to find any sort of explanation, she told him they'd done everything they could. She had to swallow the tears building up in the back of her throat as she watched Thatcher slowly beginning to fall apart. He put his hands in his hair, gripped it hard, like he was trying to wake up, as if this was some sick sort of nightmare. When that didn't work, he put a fist to his mouth, before taking it away, he began to sob and ramble incoherently. Then, without warning, his hand shot out and slapped Meredith across the cheek, hard enough for the sound to echo in the waiting room. Her head jolted round from the blow, she felt like she was on a merry-go-round for a second. Thatcher had blamed her for Susan's death. He'd blamed her and then, in front of the Chief of Surgery and her Resident, he'd slapped her.

Meredith knew now, it wasn't the slap that hurt so much. It wasn't even being blamed for Susan's death. Meredith was so used to blaming herself for things that someone else doing it just made a change. No, what hurt was that she'd just come close to Susan and now she was gone. She'd barely even begun to have any sort of relationship with her father and now that was in ruins. It was all too much. She needed to get out of this. She ran but found herself almost colliding with Derek, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere. He grasped her arms, tried to say something Meredith just couldn't hear at the moment. All she wanted to do was get away, lose herself, give in to the numbness that was slowly starting to consume her again. She pushed Derek away.

The day of Susan's funeral also happened to be on the same day as the test that would decide whether or not the interns would go forward to the second year of their residency. Meredith decided she was going to do both. She had to. The way her father had reacted, his pain, had begun to eat into her. She wanted a chance to put it right, make him see that Susan's death wasn't her fault, make him see that no one could have foreseen or prevented it. Even as she thought it, something inside was questioning her. Was her father right after all, did she miss something when Susan was admitted? Was Susan's death her fault? So she had to go to the funeral.

Meredith met Derek in the elevator. He told her he'd bought a black suit. She knew he was offering to go to the funeral with her. She wanted to take him up on the offer. She desperately wanted him to help her with the burden of this day. Just for a second she smiled at him, absorbing the comfort just his presence gave her. But then Meredith remembered the look on his face when she'd pushed him away on the night Susan died. A knot of guilt twisted her insides up. She couldn't let him offer help now, not when she'd turned him away. She didn't deserve it. So, thanking him, she said that she thought this was something she had to do by herself. She was saved from further discussion by Derek's pager going off. He got out on the floor they had reached. Meredith was just able to make out him saying 'Just let me know, if you need anything' before the elevator doors closed.

Later Meredith was getting ready to leave for the funeral. Christina was following her, asking questions for the test they would sit later. Then George caught Meredith's attention. Her father had shown up. He was a mess and he was drunk, very drunk. He ranted at Meredith, right there on the surgical floor, in front of her friends and people she worked with. He blamed Meredith for Susan's death again and told her she wasn't welcome at the funeral. He didn't want her there.

Meredith just let go. It was like being in the water again the day she'd almost died. The only difference this time was that there was nothing to fall into. The only thing that surrounded her was…nothing. As Thatcher Grey left, being coaxed away by one of his daughters from his second marriage, Meredith quietly switched herself off. She went and got changed, the other interns in tow, doing everything they could to make things better. But Meredith knew, nothing could make this better, so that was exactly what she was going to do….nothing. She went into automatic, finding peace in a world where there was only her. There was no dead Mommy, there was no dead Susan. There was no father who hated the sight of her. There was no hurt or pain, or crushing self-doubt. There was just a blissful nothing. Even when it was time for their test, Meredith blindly followed the others and sat at a desk. She wasn't aware that whilst the others wrote, pencils etching strokes into little boxes on multiple-choice papers, she hadn't even picked up a pencil to write her name.

Meredith looked back on all of the events that had led her to this point. She knew now that some of the things that had happened couldn't be changed. She couldn't bring her mother or Susan back. The relationship with her father had probably been too far gone for years to ever be properly repaired.

Meredith thought of the way she felt in those days immediately following the drowning. She'd been dead for over three hours, time when she had a strange experience where she saw people there was no way she should really be able to see. The things that had happened during those hours just wouldn't go away, no matter how hard she tried to tell herself it had just been her brain, halfway between life and death, playing tricks.

Meredith remembered Denny, Izzie's boyfriend, telling her what the realities of death were like; how you got the faintest sensation of the people you love. She remembered how, until then, she'd been resigned to dying. In death there was no more taunting words from her mother, there was no one to disappoint and fail. The pain stopped. It was only then, confronted by the reality of death, that Meredith became frightened. She imagined an eternity where there was nothing. There was no Alex, no Izzie, no George….no Christina…..there was no Derek…there was no Derek except just the tiny few seconds of him, the merest whiff that might happen if their paths happened to cross between the two worlds.

Meredith remembered being gripped by terror. It wasn't enough! Just a whiff of Derek would never be enough, she needed to go back! So Meredith went back. She survived and, once the immediate exhilaration of cheating death had worn off, she'd lost the sense of urgency she felt when she faced an eternity alone. She also realised now that she'd convinced herself that Derek would never know that she'd given up that day, he'd never know that even though falling into the water had been an accident, she'd chosen to stop fighting because it was easier.

Now Meredith could see that she hadn't fooled him, not one little bit. He knew exactly what she'd done….and it had broken him. He had been trying for weeks to get her to talk. He'd given her opportunities to open up to him over and over again, but she'd pushed him away. She'd been so scared of admitting to herself, let alone anyone else, that she'd given up, she pushed it away, allowed it to fester somewhere in the background as her own dirty little secret. She'd been so wrapped up in pretending everything was fine that she even managed to convince herself she was telling the truth. As everything fell apart around her ears, and Derek became more and more distant, she still told herself that everything was fine. Now he'd met a woman. He'd gone out and met a woman in Joe's bar. He'd told her it was nothing, nothing had happened. Meredith believed him, she knew she did. But what if she kept pushing him away? What if he just gave up on her? Would there be another woman in a bar, someone who would talk to him and let him get close?

Meredith looked at Derek as he stood, waiting for her to say something to all these people who were still sat waiting for someone to tell them what to do since Christina and Burke's wedding was clearly off. Meredith Grey made a decision. She'd lost enough already this year. She'd made enough mistakes.

It was time to start talking.

A/N There we go, chapter 4. The next chapter will be the last. I can feel this concluding itself. Please review, you know I like it.