A/N: Thank you all for the wonderful reviews on the first chapter - I was thrilled to see so many people enjoying this sequel as much as the first one. I'm so happy that I'm able to update this story so quickly - I'm having so much fun writing it!
Starting with this chapter, we're going to start seeing some of Meredith's therapy sessions. I was very hesitant to write these parts, because I really don't know much about psychiatry, but there are certain things that I want to bring up later that only seemed to fit in the context of therapy, so I'm giving it my best effort. The sessions will show up from time to time in the coming chapters, but we won't necessarily see every session, just the really important ones.
"I went on date with Derek on Friday," Meredith said as she walked into her therapist's office Monday afternoon.
Karen Harper looked up from her notepad and smiled slightly as Meredith took a seat. When Meredith had started coming to see her nearly four months earlier, she'd learned almost immediately not to expect 'hellos' or other pleasantries. Meredith seemed to be hell-bent on getting her money's worth out of every hour she spent in that office, and the pleasantries just distracted from that. Karen might have been annoyed if it were any other patient, but Meredith Grey was one of the more interesting cases she worked on in recent years, so she tolerated, and even grew to enjoy, Meredith's sometimes quirky behavior.
"Well, how did that go?" Karen asked, setting her pen down.
"I think it went well," Meredith said. "He took me out to see his new house."
"The one he showed you the plans for last year?"
"That's the one," Meredith confirmed. "He went ahead and had it built. It's a pretty impressive house, actually."
"Why do you think he showed you the house on the first date?" Karen asked.
"I know what you're getting at," Meredith sighed. "And maybe he was trying just a bit to show me what we can have, to remind me what our future could be. But I think for the most part, he's just really proud of the house. He wants to show it off, but Mark can only pretend to be interested in it for so long. He doesn't have a lot of other friends in the area, you know."
"So do you think he thinks of you as a friend?"
"No," Meredith rolled her eyes. "I'm not stupid, Karen. I know he still thinks of me as more than a friend. I think of him the same way. It's just going to take us a while to get back to the point where we actually are more than friends and where we can stay more than friends without self-destructing. We just need more of a base than last time."
"And you think you'll get there this time?" Karen asked.
"I really do," Meredith smiled. "He's waited this long for me, I think he's ready to make things work. And I know I'm ready."
"It sounds like things are going well, then," Karen said.
"I guess," Meredith agreed. "We're going to take things slowly for a while, but I'm actually optimistic. I mean, yeah, our conversation was pretty superficial, mostly just about the house and his family and people we know at the hospital, but it was sort of like a first date. There's time for more meaningful conversations later."
"That's an excellent realization, Meredith," Karen said. "Now, I want to switch gears for a moment and ask you if you've given any more thought to my suggestion from last week."
"I thought about it. I just don't see the point of it," Meredith said. "I mean, I get along fine with my sisters now. Why drag them into therapy with me?"
"I think it could be helpful," Karen said. "I don't think you've really dealt with whatever underlying issues were preventing you from forming a meaningful relationship with them when you first met them."
"You mean something other than the fact they're the family my father chose over me?" Meredith asked.
"Well, I think it would be helpful to get to the root of why you feel that way," Karen said. "Because rationally speaking, he didn't choose them over you. When your parents divorced, your sisters didn't even exist yet."
"I don't want to talk about this," Meredith snapped. "This is absolutely ridiculous. Let's talk about more of my mommy issues. Or even the daddy issues. I do not have sister issues anymore."
"You're awfully defensive about that," Karen observed. "Why don't you just bring them in for a session, then? If there are no issues, what's the harm?"
"I just don't want to do it," Meredith said. "Can we just drop it and move on to something else?"
"For now, yes," Karen said. "But this will come up again, Meredith, so please think about this, alright?"
"Fine," Meredith grumbled.
"Good," Karen said, flipping through her notepad to look at Meredith's last few sessions. "So, are there any particular issues you would like to talk about, other than your sisters?"
"I guess there are always the mommy issues," Meredith shrugged.
"Alright, let's start there today, then," Karen said. "Now, the last time we talked about your mother, you mentioned that she pushed you to go to medical school."
"That's not what I said," Meredith said. "I said she didn't want me to go to Europe instead of medical school. If she'd had her choice, I never would have even applied to med school."
"What did she want you to do?" Karen asked.
"I have no idea," Meredith said. "I mean, she never said anything when I did all the premed coursework in college…but then again, I'm not sure she even paid enough attention to know what classes I was taking, and we weren't exactly talking much then, except when I needed money."
"But you didn't go straight from college to medical school, did you?"
"No, I didn't," Meredith agreed. "My senior year of college, I told my mother that I wanted to go to medical school, and that I was thinking of being a surgeon. She told me it was pointless, that I'd never live up to expectations and that I shouldn't even bother trying, because I just wasn't good enough to be a great surgeon, and that if I tried and ended up just being mediocre, it would be an embarrassment to her reputation."
"So you listened to her," Karen commented.
"For a while, I did," Meredith said. "I got an apartment in Boston and did a bunch of freelance writing for about four years. I loved the writing, but it wasn't steady work, so I finally got fed up with it, and basically just said screw it, I'm applying to med school. And lo and behold, I got in at a couple of really great schools."
"And how did your mother react?"
"She wasn't happy when I first told her," Meredith said. "She kept going on and on about how I was setting myself up for failure. So when one of the companies that I'd been freelancing for offered me the opportunity to travel around Europe for seven months on their dime and write articles for some new travel guides they were putting out, well, I jumped at the opportunity and I thought she'd be relieved that I wasn't going after all."
"But she wasn't relieved," Karen observed.
"No, she wasn't," Meredith said. "She told me it was completely unacceptable, me getting accepted to medical school and then not going. She said that obviously the only reason I had gotten in anywhere was because of her name, so she claimed it was her reputation on the line if I backed out and didn't go."
"So she made the argument about her," Karen said.
"I think you've heard enough about my mother to know that in Ellis' mind, everything was about her," Meredith said. "It's funny, in high school, and even in college, I was a troublemaker. I was constantly getting suspended in high school. With my record, I'm surprised I got into college at all, really, even with my grades. But in all those years, I never actually disobeyed my mother until that year."
"Never?" Karen asked skeptically.
"Hard to believe, right?" Meredith said, uttering a quick, wry laugh. "The girl who had pink hair, dressed all in black, smoked cigarettes, ditched class, drank tequila like it was water and slept with anyone who asked, never actually disobeyed her mother. I knew Ellis wouldn't have approved of what I was doing…maybe she'd even have been angry if she'd ever found out the full extent of it all. But she was never around enough to find out, so she never actually told me not to do those things."
"But she did tell not to apply to medical school," Karen pointed out.
"And I listened to her for four years," Meredith said. "I was 26 before I finally had had enough. I was 26 before I actually disobeyed my mother by applying to medical school."
"And then you did it again," Karen observed.
"I did, didn't I?" Meredith smiled. "I thought I was finally getting out of Ellis' grips. I deferred my acceptance at Dartmouth and flew off to Europe, ready for this grand adventure. I only stayed for two months, though."
"Because of your mother," Karen surmised.
"She called me and told me she had Alzheimer's," Meredith said. "I thought it was some sort of cruel joke on her part. I actually hung up on her three times before she finally had her neurologist call me up and tell me the news."
"Did she ask you to come home?" Karen asked.
"I wish," Meredith sighed. "Then at least I might have had the opportunity to say no. Instead, she ordered me to come home so that we could discuss her future. She said she wouldn't do it over the phone. So I came home. She resigned from the hospital she was working at and checked herself into a nursing home here in Seattle. She told everyone she was traveling, and she actually managed to get quite a bit of work done on several books those first few years, before she really started slipping away. She basically told me that I was either to move to Seattle immediately in case she needed me, or I was to go to medical school."
"So you chose medical school," Karen said.
"Obviously," Meredith said. "I couldn't go right away, because I'd already deferred, so I stayed in Boston for a year and then went to Dartmouth."
"So why did you move to Seattle?" Karen asked. "Your mother survived almost five years in the nursing home without you. Why come back at all?"
"She was getting worse," Meredith said. "And yeah, I could have handled it long distance, but I wanted to be there for her, even though she'd never really been there for me. I resented it, though. I mean, I really resented being here…I wanted to be anywhere but here."
Karen nodded. "So why are you still here? When your mother passed, what kept you in Seattle? From you've told me, you certainly weren't happy here at that point."
"I guess I'd made connections here," Meredith said. "And even if they weren't always happy ones, I couldn't just walk away from that."
"Pretty flimsy reason, don't you think?"
"And I'm sure you have some deep, subconscious reason for me staying here?"
"I do," Karen nodded.
"Well, please, I'm waiting with baited breath," Meredith said sarcastically. "Do enlighten me."
"You know, excessive sarcasm is just another defense mechanism designed to keep people from seeing deep-rooted emotional pain," Karen pointed out.
"Are you going to tell me this secret subconscious reason I stayed in Seattle or should I just go?" Meredith asked.
"When you were 30 years old and graduating from medical school, when was the last time you could remember being truly happy?" Karen asked.
Meredith sat in silence for a moment before dropping her head in realization. "My fifth birthday party," Meredith sighed. "In Seattle."
"So you weren't ever really happy after you left Seattle," Karen said. "And then when you came back to Seattle, you met Derek."
"And I was happy again," Meredith interjected. "For a while, anyway."
"You were away from Seattle for 25 years, and you weren't ever truly happy," Karen pointed out. "Then, you're back in Seattle just a few weeks, and you meet someone who makes you feel truly happy for the first time since you were five years old."
"So you're saying that I stayed because I can't be happy anywhere but Seattle," Meredith said. "That's sort of depressing."
"No, that's not what I'm saying," Karen objected. "I'm saying that you're afraid that you can't be happy anywhere else. Not that you actually can't, just that in your head, you're afraid that you can't be."
A short beep from the timer next to Karen's door interrupts Meredith's thoughts on Karen's observation.
"Well, I suppose that's as good a place as any to pause until next time," Karen said. "I'll see you same time on Wednesday."
"See you then," Meredith said, gathering up her things and heading for the door.
"Oh, and Meredith?" Karen called after her. "Please don't forget to think about why it is you're so resistant to bringing your sisters in for a session, okay?"
Meredith sighed heavily as she slid into the front seat of Molly's car after leaving her therapy session. Sometimes therapy rejuvenated her, but other times, like today, it just left her emotionally exhausted and completely frustrated. In the beginning, the only reason she kept going was because Molly drove her there twice a week and she was too stubborn to tell her sister that she wanted to quit. Now she kept going back because she knew it was actually doing some good, but that didn't mean on days like today she was any happier about it.
"One to ten?" Molly asked as she pulled away from the curb.
"Nine," Meredith sighed as she looked out the window.
Molly nodded. "Ice cream it is, then," she said. This was their routine every Monday and Wednesday afternoon when Molly picked Meredith up from therapy. Molly would ask Meredith to rank how distressed she felt after the session, and depending upon Meredith's answer, they would either go straight back to Molly's house to play with Laura, or they would make a detour for a small – or, on a day like today, a very large – ice cream sundae at a shop down the street.
"You want to talk about it?" Molly asked as she set the sundaes down on the table, knowing that Meredith would say no.
"Not really," Meredith said. "How much time do we have before your appointment?"
"About an hour," Molly said. "I don't know why I'm so nervous. It's not like I haven't ever done this before."
"Sometimes a bit of nervousness can be good," Meredith commented.
"I suppose so," Molly agreed.
"I don't think I ever asked, but how far along do you think you are?" Meredith asked.
"Um, okay, don't laugh, but I don't exactly know," Molly said sheepishly. "I've always been pretty irregular, but based on when Eric was home on leave, I could be anywhere from six to ten weeks."
"You're kidding, right?" Meredith asked. "You didn't notice anything?"
"I don't know," Molly said. "I always get kind of sick when Eric deploys, so it isn't like I didn't have anything to attribute it to. And Laura keeps me so busy, I just didn't think about it. I've always been so bad at keeping track of my periods."
"Well, I guess we'll find out for sure this afternoon, right?" Meredith said. "I can't believe I'm going to be an aunt again. And this time, let's not do that whole dramatic emergency delivery thing, okay?"
"You don't think that could happen again, do you?" Molly asked anxiously. "I mean, the whole thing? Everything that was wrong with Laura?"
Meredith smiled reassuringly at Molly. "Look, I won't lie to you, there are always risks," she said. "But what Laura had was a very rare abnormality that was not in any way genetic. Your OB/GYN will probably monitor more closely for things like that just because of what happened with Laura, but honestly, the odds of it happening twice are so astronomical, you're more likely to hit it big in the lottery."
"Hey, I sure could use that money," Molly said, causing both sisters to burst out laughing.
"Seriously Barbie, you live with her and she didn't tell you anything about her date?" Cristina asked as she cornered Izzie in the cafeteria.
"I already told you, she wouldn't tell me anything except that she didn't sleep with him," Izzie said, ducking out of Cristina's grasp and sitting down at a table. "And no, I didn't ask her that, Alex did."
"What about you, Little Grey?" Cristina asked. "Got any dirt on Meredith's date with McDreamy?"
"So now he's McDreamy again, is he?" Alex asked, laughing as he joined them at the table.
"Not now, Evil Spawn," Cristina said. "So, let's hear it, Little Grey."
"She didn't tell me anything," Lexie said, taking a bite of her salad. "All she said was that they had a lovely time and would probably do it again soon."
"Why are you so curious anyway, Yang?" Alex asked. "Living vicariously through Grey again? You really need to just go get yourself laid already. I could help you with that if you wanted."
"Alex!" Izzie admonished, throwing a tater tot at him from across the table. "You're a pig, you know that?"
Alex shrugged. "You love me anyway and you know it, Iz," he smirked.
"Do not!" Izzie protested, throwing another tater tot, which Alex proceeded to pick up and toss right back at her.
"Do too," he laughed.
"Okay, seriously," Cristina groaned. "You two need to grow up and stop acting like ten year olds with a crush!"
"Eight weeks," Molly sighed as she and Meredith walked back into Molly's house that evening. "I can't believe I'm eight weeks pregnant."
"I still can't believe you didn't notice," Meredith laughed. "When are you going to tell Eric?"
"He's supposed to get some time on the webcam tomorrow, so I guess I'll do it then, when I can see his reaction," Molly said. "He's doing things in reverse this time. Last time, he was home when I found out I was pregnant, and gone when I delivered. This time, he's gone when I found out, but unless the army extends his deployment, he should be home by the time the baby is born."
"I'm sure he'll be glad to see that," Meredith said.
"Yeah," Molly said as she sifted through the cupboards in her kitchen. "You want pizza or Thai tonight?"
"Pizza," Meredith said. "But I do love the fact that every time I'm here, you dutifully sort through your cabinets, as if you're actually going to cook something."
"I think we've firmly established that neither of us should be allowed near a stove," Molly laughed. "Remember when we tried to make lasagna?"
Meredith grimaced at the memory. "I think your ceiling remembers, too," she said, pointing up at the smoke stains on the ceiling of Molly's kitchen.
"Do you think we should paint over those before Eric comes home again?" Molly asked.
"He probably wouldn't be too happy to find out we've been in his kitchen," Meredith agreed. "Seriously, though, how does he think you feed yourself while he's gone?"
"Um, I'm pretty sure he thinks I live off a steady diet of pizza, Thai food and cold cereal," Molly said. "Which, in all honesty, isn't too far from the truth."
Meredith laughed, causing Molly to grab a pillow off the couch and toss it at Meredith's head.
"You're one to talk, Mer, I've seen how you eat," Molly laughed. "You're not any better than I am, you know."
"Am too," Meredith protested. "I at least throw cheese sandwiches into the mix."