Meredith's peripheral vision insisted a storm was brewing outside. Every time she looked over, she saw a bright blue sky, and Derek leaning against the window sill, his leg bouncing. If he noticed her, he'd draw his lips down. With her eyes off him, they'd scrunch toward his brow again. She tried to focus on Zola and the goings-on the daycare parents were calling "Tattlegate," but she couldn't help but absorb his agitation. Over the fifteen minutes he and the kids had been there, it'd coiled in her gut, pushing her mind to consider every other sound and movement in the room first.
"And I did it like you sug-guested, I waited to station change and talked to Ms. Tara to say I told him snatching crayons was naughty. I said I'd give him the red I was done, but he snatched Sofi's purple—"
CRASH!
Metal "B. B.!" cas "What—?"caded to Eeeeeee!" the floor."
Meredith covered her headwith the arm that wasn't being held. He was gripping her neck; pressure on the carotid could put her out, keep her there. He could grab any of the those instruments. The sharp ones were obvious. Trauma rooms had retractors; there was a speculum some--"Mama, Mama, Daddy pick'um up."
She wanted to jerk away from the grip on her arm, the tiny pricks, tiny pricks were...were Bailey's nails. She lifted her head and found his face in front of hers. Blue- blue eyes, the button nose, the ears that stuck out, asking to be flicked, activating the giggle that could brighten the darkest moments. She raised her hand to his chest. Becoming a toddler meant most of him had become solid with a little bit of baby chub on the side. His ribs were impossibly thin. They couldn't be enough protection for the strong heart keeping rhythm for them both.
"That was loud, Bay-Bay," Zola chastised. She'd gotten off the bed and was standing against Derek, her arms wrapped around the plastic box that held her brother's Thomas collection. "You scared Mommy!"
No, no, Meredith shook her head, but it didn't stop those incredible eyebrows from scrunching in dismay.
"Sorry!" he said, pat-smacking her arm. "Trains ah gone." She smiled at him and nodded.
"It's okay, Bails," Derek said, putting his hand on the baby's shoulder. "Mama knows. She can't use words, remember."
"Enember," he murmured. Meredith ran a finger over his poked out lip, and then his ear, and there it was. Brightness.
Before a the storm. "It's almost time for daycare."
"No go. Mama." Bailey's lips both stuck out again. Meredith pulled him against her, looking over at Zola as she did.
"I didn't tattle 'cept for the crayons," her daughter said, continuing their conversation liked nothing had happened.
Derek lifted Bailey up and moved out of the way, eliminating the whining that could become crying with a ziplock bag of Puffs. Meredith expected Zola to move with him, but she hurried to fill the space.
"It's okay you got scared, Momma. Daddy said big fear can make your brain anti...antis..."
"Anticipate," Derek filled in.
"Antipcitate it could happen again, and I was too, I screamed like 'eek!'" She put her hands to her face à la Home Alone, which she definitely hadn't seen.
"That's what happens when we get startled," Derek agreed, and Meredith's breath caught. Had she screamed? Tried to? The crashing metal was still reverberating in her bones, and she'd heard the kids-"We need to head out, Zoie. Give Mama hugs."
Zola followed Derek's instruction literally, hugging Meredith twice.
"That's good, Zo. You're Momma's love-bug, huh? There's Dr. Bailey in the hall. Go say hi and wait for me. Stay in front of the window."
Zola signed "I love you," before moving toward the door. Meredith returned it until she looked away. Her stomach clenched as the door closed behind her daughter, even though she was still in sight.
"That was my fault," Derek said, sitting on the bed and putting the back of a hand against her cheek. "I wasn't paying attention and it slid off the bed. I'm so sorry. They did great, though. You don't have to worry." He took her hand, blocking any possible protests, and kissed her, almost firmly enough to press her lips into the wires. She made herself pull away.
"You listened," she charged.
"I brought the box, and the album you wanted. I read the zine, too. Great ode to being an only child. I texted it to Maggie." His eyes crinkled, and she gave him the most disinterested shrug she could muster. So what if he had? Maggie had been an only child, too. A wanted only child. That must've been a good gig. Obviously had been, judging by her relationship with her parents.
Meredith had been kept. Maybe twice. She didn't know the circumstances of her conception, if it'd been wanted or accepted, but where she'd always thought of her mother taking her from her father, it'd also been keeping her. She'd had more opportunities to be rid of her than Meredith had consciously acknowledged for most of her life. That unspoken threat had always been there, whether it'd been of social workers or disinheritance, but no matter how hard she tried, she'd never done anything that made Ellis cut the strings.
"The tape…she must've thought she erased it. There's not anything explicitly damning. On the other hand…." Derek's eyes narrowed, but not before they filled with fury. On her behalf, not aimed at her. She hadn't thought...but she hadn't been sure."On the whole…he should absolutely be charged with a hate crime."
She snorted. HAD A MOTIVE.
"That doesn't negate anything. He called you a…." He glanced sideways at the baby, who was still popping Puffs. "D-y-k-e, and the other stuff he said wasn't gender-neutral." She almost wished she hadn't let him read what she remembered from the attack. Almost. "There's a line to that from stuff he was saying behind your back at fourteen. He was a homophobic, chauvinist—"
NO! She dropped the open marker to shove her words in his face. "I wouldn't see him, again! Didn't think. He hurt her. I didn't see. Years, how many? I don't know." She'd been wrong to think her actions-her inactions-her inability to understand what was going on-hadn't been his primary reason for this. If anything, he'd overestimated her. Assumed she'd put it together, and silenced her, expecting he'd get away before she snitched.
"You were fifteen! You didn't know you should be looking!"
She was on edge from the trains. That was why she flinched. It wasn't a big deal. She grabbed Derek's hand, hoping to mitigate the apologetic expression on his face. She didn't want him to think he couldn't freaking raise his voice around her. That wasn't a thing. It wasn't going to be a thing.
"Daddy! Aunt Callie says we need to move our tushes or she'll kick 'em."
"All the way downstairs!" Callie called from the nurses station.
"You wouldn't do that! You're messin' with me!"
"Try me!"
Derek's face had been halfway to self-flagellation, but when their eyes met again amusement was winning him over.
She held his gaze and tapped Bailey on the diaper. "You..." it took a little out of the joke when she had to spell "N-E-X-T," but she could hold his eyes while she did it.
Promise? he mouthed.
Zola squealed as Callie scooped her up under one arm.
"You wanna hand over Baby Blondie, or are you coming? Grey's not going anywhere. Er. Sorry, Mer."
"Eh." She picked the marker up and left a blot of red behind. They might have to buy the hospital a few new sets of sheets. TRUE.
Derek stood, and then circled his thumb and forefinger under pursed lips. "Soon."
"If you end up having to home daycare Sofi's Zola, you're gonna get her too!"
"Mother Mary, I'm moving," Derek muttered. To Meredith, he added, "I'm going to stop by Amelia's office. I haven't seen her since her lecture yesterday. I'll be back before your PT." He held Bailey down to kiss her again, and then they were gone.
She was never alone for long.
"Can I help you with anything while I'm here, Dr. Grey?" Adriana asked, once she'd jabbed Meredith with the heparin shot that prevented her from clotting while she was mostly non-ambulatory and marked the end of the morning routine.
She started to say no, which she almost always did. The nurses had enough to do, and Derek would be back.
She didn't want to wait. Couldn't. Knew herself better then to think she might not try something ridiculous if she didn't ask. She looked over to the bags Derek brought back and forth and clocked the newest addition. Inside, there was a shoebox full of concert tickets, folded notes sanitized enough for teachers to read aloud, and mixtapes—one of which held a conversation that should've been recorded over. At the time, she'd shrugged off the insults he'd aimed at her; it was shit everyone had said. She should've paid more attention to the way he'd spoken to Felicia. She shouldn't have sealed it all in a box for twenty years.
She pointed to the L.L. Bean tote. "Please?"
"Of course!" Adriana not only put it on the bed, she opened the shoebox and took out the photo album, arranging everything to make it possible for Meredith to access it with one hand.
She flipped open the album first, easing in with a page full of variations of her own face. School picture, Christmas tree. School picture, Christmas tree. School picture, school picture. It only took a couple of flicks to get herself aged up to double-digits. Christmas 1988. The suture-kit year, not that long after her first set of piano lessons had ended in a deposition. "Might as well build up muscle memory you can put to use," her mother had said. One of the last times she'd really seemed to believe surgery was in her daughter's future.
The point where she'd been gifted her own camera was could not have been more obvious. She'd begun to believe that guilt was one of the emotions her mother couldn't ignore. She didn't think it dogged her through surgeries, but coming home to find her daughter asleep on the couch, her birthday dress crumpled from slumping gradually as the hours went by, had meant something to her. Meredith m remembered being woken, and directed to bed. Remembered hearing, "I'm sorry, Meredith," seconds before her mother's door clicked shut. She'd thought it was just what you were supposed to say.
Contrary Meri never knew what to say.
The next day, she'd put on the dress again to try out her new present. She'd taken the first photo with her present the next day. in front of the mirror 1992's version of a selfie. Bought specifically for the ill-fated dinner, the dress had poofy baby-doll sleeves, a skirt that ended an inch above her bare knees—a fourteen-year-old's idea of dressing grown-up, and she'd worn it with the new Doc Martens that hinted at the style she'd take on more the less she cared about impressing her mother.. The mirror-frame said the most about the line she was balancing on. A science fair medal hung down the side. Taped to it were Sassy and Seventeen magazine cutouts, because that was what the other girls at school had in their bedrooms. An ad for the Go-Go's reunion tour. Stickers of cartoon characters. Sinead O'Connor. A print of an anatomical heart. A postcard of the Space Needle. Freddie Mercury at Live-Aid. In a week, Nirvana would play "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for the first time live in Seattle. In a year, her mirror would be completely different.
Sadie appeared at a First Night fundraiser for the hospital; the night they'd met. It turned out that the location she'd thought of as "some hotel ballroom" had been a Raddison near the Common. Meredith felt like she was playing Where's Waldo? with "flashes of curly red hair" It was strange that someone could be in the background of your life one day, and centerstage the next.
The black-and-white photos the detectives had brought for Derek, and the yearbook photo attached to the articles hadn't captured her at all. In the six-picture spread from the summer their candy-stripping had overlapped, Felicia was vibrant, annoyed, tired, excited, goofy. A teenager, a girl, a kid getting glimpses of adulthood.
She was conscious of him behind the camera in almost all of them. "You girls always want to remember what you looked like." In the first one where he could be seen, the person she focused on was herself. It was one of the few candids in the album, and it startled her. She'd forgotten that with her childhood of hand-eye coordination boosting toys, she'd able to proudly kick their asses at—Meredith squinted at the TV in the picture—Mortal Kombat. There's irony—but that'd clearly happened. The scrotum sore was staring at the screen; he'd always protested over being beaten—ugh really?—by either of them. Felicia watching her with the wry smile she'd forgotten, and now recalled as the one reserved for when Meredith was being especially ridiculous. She'd been caught mid-triumphant crow: her legs kicking the air, her hands holding the controller up over her head.
There wasn't anything sinister about it. Just three kids playing Nintendo. There also wasn't anything else. It was one moment in two years of hanging out in their basement, but if she looked at herself in pictures with Sadie versus with Lissy, she could see. There wasn't some crush she'd misinterpreted on her side. Comparing this snapshot of her sitting on a bus stop laughing at Lissy-caught talking with her hands; she'd constantly knocked over drinks that way—versus this one of her at a restaurant with her eyes on Sadie, there was an undertone that wasn't in the other. Their relationships hadn't been all that different at the time, though the context had been. Sadie hadn't become so much as a girl she kissed sometimes for another couple years, and falling for someone over time happened, she'd seen it. She'd wondered what it'd be like with everyone, even him. Teenagers did. Adults did. The thought hadn't lasted more than a second, and she'd never gone there again.
The current wasn't there. What she couldn't force with George, and never wanted with Alex. Friendship was something you could start learning from birth—Zola and Sofia didn't remember life without each other—Ideally, so were relationships, but sexuality called for new behaviors. Different perceptions provoking different neurotransmitters calling for different hormones creating different patterns. Whatever her former classmates had seen, it hadn't been something she'd been encouraging, or known about.
She turned the page. This time, she did flinch. The zoomed-in picture of the three of them, with Ricky on the other side of the camera, should've changed. There should be something that answered her questions. Even being able to see every freckle on his face, he showed nothing of the man who'd pressed her against that gurney by the throat—except the eyes. He and Felicia had been said to have the same eyes, but it was the color and shape that matched. Not what was in them. They didn't hold the determination, the curiosity, or the engagement that were always in Lissy's, in every picture, even the ones where Meredith could see her starting to get wane, with extra cover-up underneath them.
The creases in their notes would've made it impossible for her to avoid ripping them if Derek hadn't refolded them loosely. She read them multiple times over, and copied certain lines into her notebook, hoping the action might release some memory she'd—Could she say she'd repressed them? She hadn't discussed this with Wyatt, but she'd been given a narrative this time. She hadn't had a reason to reconsider Lissy's story, or the conclusions she'd invited Meredith to jump to. The funeral was where she should've understood there was more going on; that he wasn't just a than a grieving teenage boy who'd picked apart his sister's interests, but been too lazy or shy to make his own friends. She should've told, whether or not she thought she'd be believed.
She'd been sure that her snitching inspired Felicia's actions; he'd confirmed it, while he literally had her back against a wall. Had something in her felt a larger threat? She wouldn't have bothered reporting those messages if she hadn't. Something had registered with her. How could it not have, when this boy—absolutely a boy to her—had listened to her and his sister discuss, rant, and yell about the sins of the patriarchy, but could take advantage of it that way?
Could try to take advantage of her that way.
"if you need to move for success, he should support you. Even my deadbeat dad did that."
"He went w/your mom, didn't he? He can't do that."
"No jobs in Andover? What's he do anyway?"
"Did you look your dad up while you were in Seattle?"
"Fuck you."
"I'm sorry. I'm just not ready for anyone to know."
"Fine, W/E. Come over tonight?"
"Told Mom I'd do laundry over the weekend & ran out of time."
"Lix couldn't do it?"
"He can't work the machine."
"TEACH HIM!"
"Easier to do it myself."
The notes were all like that. Seemingly innocuous, but any question Meredith asked about the secret boyfriend had been batted away. Felicia had been in charge of the household a lot during Ricky's illness, but she'd also been the responsible one, generally. Explicit mentions of her twin mentioned him mocking Kurt Cobain's hair, and being praised to high heaven by their grandmother for going from C's to B's, when Lissy had straight A's.
"Dr. Mom says that when she was growing up it was all Mrs. degrees. Must've been a LOT worse in that generation. She got married at 21. Hypocrite."
Her mother's two-faced opinions on womanhood had always bugged Meredith, but she could sort of understand how Ellis had gotten there. Maybe it would've been different, if there truly hadn't been a difference in the way genders were valued, but it wasn't like she'd never wondered if her father would've tried if she'd been a boy. Women were the ones who got cast aside, who were the butt of jokes, and grabbed by the ass. Their brains could work at ten times the speed of their brothers', and they'd have to prove themselves twenty times over. Hadn't Meredith absorbed the words, and dismissed her mother's way of playing along with both sides?
She started going through the album again. Jersey and denim at Fenway; flannel and jeans on weekends; the lace-sleeved party dress and ripped tights in the months her grunge had edged on Goth. She could see where someone who'd benefited from a binary might've been irritated by her. It certainly went the other way; she could hear Ellis's commentary on every outfit. Slovenly, slutty, brush your hair, less make-up, washed out. She been dressing for the occasion, not the eyes—unless the occasion was catching the eyes. What Meredith been after hadn't been non-conformity; it'd been conforming to herself. She'd been—she was—she would be—comfortable with where her body and brain fitted in. Somehow while she'd been jumping to grasp the bars and clear the hurdles her mother had set, Meredith thought she'd figured it out.
She still did.
That was good to know.
She kept paging through the album, which took her up to graduation. She spent a while with the summer in Seattle, and wondered if Layla still lived in the city or was off in some far-flung locale doing something amazing. There was pink hair. Chains and dark eyeliner. Scrubbed and shined for a hospital banquet. Mom bought the dresses and even the stuff to strip the dye. She needed Meredith at those things. Proof that she wasn't a robot. Meredith \ had loathed the rides there, interrogations about her grades, and she'd loved the rides home, laughing about the interchangeable old men who'd stare at her tits. Her mother called them out with chastisements like: Dr. Von Sleazen, let my daughter finish her meal you devour her; in fact, best if you let her finish med school not Hey, fuckweasel she's sixteen!, but the sentiment was there.
Graduation photos, taken by friends and their pitying parents, she skipped. There'd been a transplant surgery that couldn't have been delayed for the hour it took them to get to "Grey, Meredith."
She'd gotten into the class top ten—at #9, in fact—but "Why not valedictorian? Salutatorian would even catch some attention" had taken away most of the nascent pride the day she'd told her mother. The other nine had made her feel like she'd done something underhanded to get the slot, rather than what it was: buckling down, just because she'd had a life that wasn't NHS or freaking prom committee. She'd argue that her late nights full of distractions had made it easier to do her problem sets and essays. Otherwise, there would've been too much else in her head. Like that Lissy should've been there to knock her down to #10.
No, Lissy shouldn't have been there. She should've been at Andover; away from Meredith, and anyone telling her she shouldn't go. Away from worrying about anyone's future except her own.
If she had, would his grudge have been focused on her? Had wanting to stay been risk assessment? She'd had wavering moments; Meredith hoped she wouldn't have pushed if she hadn't. There'd been love, what Lissy had experienced as love, but fear, too. Maybe she wouldn't have believed that he'd be angry for twenty years, but she would've been tied to him unless she'd totally cut herself off from her family, or else it could've been her stalked from an airport
Derek had left a life behind in Manhattan; he'd been anxious over being found out, but he would never know the icy dread that she'd felt, seeing the look in the scrotum sore's eyes. The wrongness of knowing it should've been hot fury, and that the scrotal sore had taken over her voice before he'd touched her.
"Lixir? It's good to see you."
It was what you said.
"Pancakereus, liver, small bowl—"
"I think you mean bowel, princess," Derek murmured. The lump under Zola's quilt jumped, and he took an immediate step forward; anticipating the startle response he was used to from Meredith. His daughter's head popped out onto the pillow, followed by that of Anatomy Joanne.
"You made me lose track," Zola protested.
Miranda had been the one to tell Meredith the Anatomy Jane line had been revamped. Meredith had been appreciative in person, but there'd been an undertone of indignation in the retelling. She followed the mommy-blog Miranda printed for her, but just as she'd been getting used to the responsibilities of being an attending, she'd had morning sickness to deal with, and this far out he could see how his attitude about his upcoming surgery hadn't made those weeks easy on her. Meanwhile, Miranda had been planning a wedding, but "you think anything would keep me from finding out the second they made a Black version of that doll? Shoot, I'm getting one for my own self, and maybe I'll let Tuck play with it."
He'd thought it was funny at the time, but he'd been recalibrating his Meredith translator. She'd already been doubting her ability to be a mom and a surgeon, and she'd have wondered if Miranda was implying that she didn't know how important it was for Zola to see herself in (the repackaged) Dr. Jane Anatomy's sister Dr. Joanne Anatomy. She didn't know how it felt to not have most dolls on the shelves look like her, and it wouldn't have been hard for her to take the next step. Instead of laughing and moving on, he should've reminded her that if Miranda thought she was oblivious, she'd have said. She'd just been excited about sharing something she knew Meredith would also appreciate.
They'd gotten to that point anyway; Meredith had filmed Zola unwrapping Joanne specifically to send it to Miranda without having to wait for the memory card on the camcorder to be full. Zola had become as soundly attached to Joanne as Meredith had been to Jane. Last fall, when she'd gathered the kids stuff for the day pointedly around him, she'd always made sure he saw her put Joanne in a bag. He'd seen it as a reaction to his nagging, but how much of it had been her re-examining the time surrounding leaving Seattle? He couldn't go back to then, any more than she could go back twenty years.
"Are you supposed to be autopsying Joanne after bedtime?" he asked Zola.
"Her organs didn't get put up for being a choking hazard."
"That was an oversight on my part," he acknowledged. "Next time, it'd be very responsible of you to bring them to me."
Zola tapped her lip, which meant she was thinking, a trick she'd picked up since November. "The thing is," she said. "Bailey isn't gonna get out of his crib and swallow them up his nose."
Derek felt around her covers, retrieving the Tupperware box and unearthing the organs he'd heard her list off over the monitor. "If these are loose in your bed, and you roll onto them, they could hurt you. You'd have intestine-shaped bruises all over." He touched one of the pieces of plastic to her arm.
She kept staring him down. "Like Momma's?"
"You don't need 'em. You're like her in a lot of much better ways." He pictured the way the fading bruises had dappled Meredith's clavicle and cheeks. "And hers are healing."
"And her bones?"
"Those, too. What's a bone doctor called?"
"A Aunt Callie." Zola grinned.
"Oh, that's funny."
"I'm gonna make Mommy smile lots."
"I think you will, too. Your mommy has a very pretty smile. Like you and your brother. You know, he might be a little confused about some things when she first gets home. You can be a good example for him by being calm and asking questions if you get nervous. She'll still have her casts, and the wires on her teeth. What do those do?"
"They hold the bones that hold your jaw. The here." She reached up to his cheek. "Where your beard grows."
"Yes." He took her hand. So small, but it felt like it'd been yesterday that had fit in his palm. He'd been teaching her to give a high-five when she first came home. When she'd smacked it soundly on her return had been his proof that she'd gotten more than basic care in at least one of her three foster placements.
He didn't think of that time very much, but he knew it'd been at the front of Meredith's mind. Had he used that to try to convince her to let her visit? Maybe. But if she'd been afraid of passing down her abandonment issues, couldn't he worry about it, too?
She'd had another memory to weigh against it. He'd seen Ellis agitated; he couldn't imagine being Zola's size and having to face that ferocity, let alone have it aimed at her.
She'd been smaller. He'd known Meredith had been small, but in all the pictures he'd seen, either someone was crouched beside Meredith or she'd been alone. Yesterday, they'd passed Richard outside the hospital, and while she hugged him, Zola had said. "We saw pictures of Mommy little. You knew her my size?"
"I knew her at your age, peanut," he'd said, and as he put her down Derek had caught his eye. He'd put his hand on top of Zola's head as she moved to climb into the car and then lowered it to the next button down on his coat, a good six inches or more. Zola was almost a full year younger than Meredith had been the last time Richard had seen her as a child,
Later last night, he'd been referencing her chart to fill out order forms, and sure enough, the digitization had connected it to scans of thirty-year-old notes. According to an April 18th, 1983 well-child check, she'd been in the third percentile. Zola was in the ninety-eighth.
At one point, he might have wondered at Ellis being the parent to accompany Meredith to the pediatrician, but the more parenting he did, the less he could see Thatcher had taken on. Derek hoped the other man had never seen the tendency for mania Ellis fallen into once he'd moved out; that what happened in June had reached him once he'd waived any right to custody. Having been divorced with no children involved—and willing to sign away property that valued far more than the house on Queen Anne's Hill had—he doubted it. It took ninety days to divorce in Washington State; Susan had implied that they'd been married when she'd convinced Thatcher to let her stepdaughter go.
God. It wasn't on level with being the one who'd signed, or been able to imagine the laughing child while rejecting her, and she'd done more to make amends than Thatcher ever had. Derek still bristled at the way he'd pushed Meredith toward them. Hadn't he considered that she'd been pushed enough that month, that year, her whole life?
Was he pushing her, now?
If the crash of those trains had made her call it off, he would've let her. What happened had been exactly what she'd been afraid of. What she couldn't see, and any way of showing her would be cruel, was that her anxiety didn't resemble Ellis's agitation in the slightest. The only sound she made was a muffled whimpering. Her movements were defensive; protecting her chest and head. It wasn't impossible that she could accidentally connect with a quickly-moving child, but they'd both been careful, moving with the care he'd been coaching, not fearful hesitance. It'd been obvious to him, watching them, but all she had for that was his word. Two weeks could make a huge difference, but they wouldn't change everything. Better for them to master it, and her to adjust to them, before the limiting wires and casts came off.
He'd never present it to Meredith that way.
"Daddy?" Zola's tone was quiet, but not sleepily so. "What does it mean 'snitches get stitches?'"
There it was. This would be the line of questioning he'd anticipated at every bedtime, through every ferry-ride where she climbed into the passenger-seat to "conversation," while he was changing the baby, and heard a contemplative "Daddy?"
"It's a saying."
"Yeah, they say it at day-care."
Great. He'd undoubtedly been the most obnoxious parent in both their classes this month, and it didn't seem like that'd be changing.
"What do you think it means?"
"It's about tattling. And stitches are what you do with sutures. Or on clothes. The needle pokes, pokes, pokes." She poked his arm to illustrate. "If you poke it's an'noyance, and a using hands. That's a telling 'fense. And it's…telling too much is an'noyance; that's being a tattletale. You get told on. Um… Is snitches like snatches? Snatching is a gray spot. It's bad if you don't say sorry quick, if you do it again and again, and…I don't think I know."
"Ah…. That's okay. You did a good job trying to reason it out. It's true that you poke to suture, but what do sutures do?"
"Close up skin? People don't click."
"They do not. Momma had stitches, but most of those places are healed up. You've had stitches here." He touched her forehead, where the scar was visible only if you searched. "To hold a hurt together until it was better."
"Stitches means you have a hurt," she concluded.
"That works. If someone uses hands, do they want you to tell?"
"No way. They get in big trouble! That could get stitches?"
"It would be big trouble if you hurt someone enough to need stitches," he said, laying groundwork. "What do you feel if someone tells on you?"
"Sometimes," she admitted. "I don't like it. I'm mad."
"What do you do when you're mad at someone for telling?"
"Say, 'I'm mad at you.' Maybe not always be nice."
"Do you hit?"
"No!"
"Why not? If you're already in trouble?"
"Because I don't want to do hurt. Like, um, B.B. did biting because he wasn't understood, and it got 'tention. If you do an anger mistake like this—" She held her hand out and tapped the back of it, miming a slap. "—you say, 'so sorry,' but to hit 'ntentionally you have to think, and can know better."
"Good," he said, taking her hand. He'd gotten plenty of those little slaps. She had a lot of words for her emotions, but they were still a four-year-old's. "If someone is mad at you for telling, they might call you a tattletale, like you said. That's not super nice. Saying someone is a 'snitch' is meaner. Saying snitches get stitches means someone is so mad about being told on that they'd make that person need stitches."
"So…so that they'd hurt them? Or…tattling can be trouble."
"It's not tattling if something is important. You don't do it in front of everyone, to shame someone, right? You do it because you're all learning behavior."
"Yeah. So it's a mean say-it? I think probably other kids don't know. They're copying. 'Cause friends don't want to hurt."
"They try not to."
"I'm so sad Sofia gets hurt," she proclaimed. "So, I'll uh-splain. No giving sutures for telling. We're not doctors for real life. We just pretend. And dreams."
"That what you and Joanne were up to? You were sleep-autopsying?"
"I'm awake."
"Is it time for pretending?" he asked, looking pointedly over at her nightlight, which displayed a clock, and glowed to match the color of the sky.
"It's dark," she said, evasively. "Can I get in your bed, now?"
"Forgone conclusion, huh? Grab your guys."
She picked up Rawr in one hand, and Anatomy Joanne in the other before holding her arms up. "You think one day you'll be too tall for me to carry?"
"Nah, you're my daddy." Like it was the easiest answer in the world. He didn't understand choosing to let that go, or not fighting to get it back. "Daddy?" she repeated, as he set her down in the middle of the bed. "A bone doctor is an ortho-pee'ist."
"Tell Mommy that tomorrow, okay? You'll absolutely make her smile."
"Yeah. I'm smart." Zola nodded into her mother's pillow. "Mommy loves I'm so smart. She loves I'm funny. She loves all about me."
Meredith's pediatrician had noted, "rejects directional eye-chart. Has known her letters 'forever now.' Dresses self, begins self-directed play w/doll. No tears vaccines, says, 'children getting old diseases blocks progress of medicine.' Mother will complete general surgery residency ~2mos; nonetheless, child is kindergarten-ready, bright, and confident in skills."
What he wouldn't give to find her next physical in a PCP's basement in Massachusetts.
AM I A TERRIBLE PERSON?
"Philosophic today?" Alex sat cross-legged on the bed across from the recliner where Meredith had been sitting since Callie and Wilson had left. She should've been doing daily hall laps with the PT. Maybe a nurse. Not the Head of Orthopedic Surgery. That was one thing. Once she went home, they could go back to their real jobs.
Alex had come in to ask her what she wanted from the cafeteria while they were still there, and the thought that'd occurred to her while Callie told Jo she should go grab something before they went down to the pit had made Callie give her a very knowing smile.
"Did I ever tell you she hit on me?" she'd asked. Meredith hadn't been able to stop the huffy laugh, and Callie had sat on the end of the bed, grinning. "Yup. Sorta reminded me of me back when your ex was around, except Wilson was only terrified. Not terrified and turned on. So, while it creeps me out a little that I know what you were thinking; yes, Wilson and I were the only ones in here who hadn't seen each other's bits, and I don't plan on ever dropping a towel in front of her." She'd pushed the sleeves of her coat up and added, "Took a while for me to realize; you were impressed."
NEWSFLASH, UR HOT.
Meredith couldn't imagine being attracted to Alex, but she'd noticed Callie around before knowing she was Callie. Except for occasionally blatant flirtation, it didn't affect their friendship. It could be acknowledged and ignored. Leading her on had never been the worry. Kind of the opposite.
WE WERE MEAN TO YOU.
"You made me feel like a loser for ten minutes. I always say residency is high school with scalpels. No time to mature."
I TOOK TIME OFF B4.
"Grow up a lot partying with Harris? Relax, Grey, you and Stevens teasing me like thirteen-year-olds sucked, but it wasn't new. I didn't fit in anywhere. I wasn't a good future Cubana housewife. Went to college a Catholic, went to Botswana a hippy. No one in the Peace Corps is in a hurry to be an adult. Came out of med school all 'Rebel Yell,' and I was so miserable at the hospital where I did my internship that I gave up sports medicine. Here it was super cut-throat. Your weird little crew was the most accepting I'd come across."
NOW UR DANCING WITH URSELF?
"'Nothing to lose, nothing to prove,'" Callie had quipped. "Except, you know better. You've kept me after both divorces. My dad and I are speaking again, but it's hella awkward. If anything…Aria laughed at me plenty, but I didn't see her anywhere after my car accident, or when my wife cheated on me. Sofi couldn't pick her out of a line-up. You're Aunt Meredith. That tell you something?"
"Mmhmm."
"Hey, careful. I'm not above turning you into Avery. That's part of the family thing."
Meredith had returned her smile and let her go check on the patient an intern was prepping for her—her actual job. She'd had the question written by the time Alex returned. She'd almost wiped it off before he saw it, but he'd read it over her shoulder while handing her the mug he'd poured her tomato soup in. She held up three fingers with her thumb and forefinger pinched. He hadn't had time to pick up many signs, and in the middle of the night she was grateful enough for what he knew.
"Nine?"
In daylight, that gratitude could be harder to summon. She had to uncap the marker again, because the sign involved the index finger of her left hand, which was currently being blocked by the board.
"Oh, 'F.' Eff you…. Oh, 'friend.' Friend person. Why didn't you say that?"
Meredith snatched her soup back, and then rook the finger that did mean 'fuck you' off the handle. Alex popped a potato chip into his mouth. Frustration sparked her to consider the reasons why her situation sucked as routinely as the techs checked her vitals. She aimed the anger it caused at herself as much as anyone else. Not that she was to blame. None of them were. That she could take it out on Alex was why she'd written the question. Well. Broadly.
"This have anything to do with why Shepherd and I are middlemen between you and Yang?"
Indicating her arm was an eye sweep at this point. Technically, she could use her phone; if it was on a surface, and she poked out one letter after another on the keyboard. She hated it.
"Excuse. You could manage on the iPad. And if she opened FaceTime on a computer, your board would be legible."
Meredith balanced her cup on the arm of the chair; eventually, she'd spill it, or he'd shift the tray over, one or the other. "D-Y-S-L—"
"Having to work a little to decipher your printing wouldn't be a big thing for her."
The soup was close to a thinner variation on the cafeteria's tomato sauce, which she could've drunk on its own—would've convinced Alex to bring up, if ground beef could've fit through the wire—Normally, she wouldn't order it without bread or a sandwich; something that could be chewed. Soup was boring. Dangerous, if her mother sat across a table ready to snap at any drip, and then it'd at least have been chowder, or bisque, or whatever the hell the difference was.
"I can wait you out," Alex commented. "It's not a big thing, you're already burdening all of us, yada, yada. You asked the question."
That'd been hard enough; didn't he get that?
"You shutting her out like she did to you any time she lost her shit?"
Meredith shook her head. That wasn't how it'd gone. Cristina had broken down in her arms over Burke, and then Meredith got all whole and healed, got on her staying-in-Seattle high horse, stood to lose everything in the shooting and the plane crash, and Cristina thought—
"When we got here, you were on your own with your mom, but you'd had who's-your-nutcase…Harris; you'd had…other friends. Once you opened up, you opened up, and, sure, you fucked up some, but…. You ever hear Yang talk about friends at Smith or in Cali?" Meredith shrugged. There was the professor, but he was a convenient screw, according to Cristina. "And she was, what, nine when her Dad died? I don't think she was getting support from other fourth graders in Beverly Hills." Funny, objectively he had it worst, but he was the one of them—her, Derek, Cristina—who hadn't watched a parent bleed out as a kid. "She told me about that whole thing after Jimmy croaked. Must've been the scariest moment in her life, up to having Clark come into her OR."
SHE'D HAVE STOPPED
IF I WASN'T SCREAMING&SAD-EYED.
BEGGING HER TO SAVE HIM.
"Bullshit. I'm sure Yang loves her folks, but letting people matter wasn't her thing. Burke did, he got shot. You did, you—did all you did. You both watched Shepherd's showdown. Hunt was shot in front of her. And it happened in surgery; where she'd never been anything other than confident.I froze in that elevator with O'Malley, and that sticks with you. Yeah, she pushed you away. Doesn't change how much you wanted to be there for her. Same thing after the plane. You were in her room all the time."
Agitated, Cristina had screamed and fought, and Meredith had been afraid she'd never be Cristina again; like Mom had never been Mom. She'd tried to get through to her, but she never could. It'd been Owen. Not Derek, that time. Meredith had had him. Cristina had kept them alive, and they were a reminder. She'd talked to Owen. Cristina had told her what he'd said—Something about chicken? Her working her magic in the OR, him taking care of patients and families—Like she was a robot. She'd left to avoid being like Ellis.
Meredith shuddered.
I DIDN'T SEE. HE WASNT SEEING HER I SHOULDVE I WAS DISMISSIVE SHOULD'VE BEEN ME ALREADY MESSED UP MY WAY WASN'T THE END ALL I MOCKED PSYCH STUFF LIKE IT DIDN'T HELP ME; LEXIE HADN'T NEEDED IT MADE HER FEEL WRONG WASN'T LISTENING TO HER JUMPED TO CONCLUSIONS ACTED LIKE SHE SHLD WANT WHAT I DID WANT TO BE MY MOTHER SAID TO GO I WAS SELFISHJUDGEYSELFINVOLVE_
She lunged for the marker Alex had plucked from her grasp. The sling kept her from being able to lash out with her casted arm, which she knew was good, but she wanted to, to smash it, to break Alex's hold on her shoulder to show him how easy it'd be; he was holding her so delicately like she would shatter.
"Torro, torro," he muttered as she tried to buck him off, fury coming out in trumpeted huff. He countered by wrapping his arms around her. "Stop and breathe, Mer, c'mon. I'm not cutting you out, you got this. You're all up in your head, I get it, but think: Yeah, your humor is dark, but you don't mock what matters. You didn't act all uppity about her breaking down. You let her deal. You wouldn't have cared if she'd been going to Wyatt; you were worried about the drug-happy psych unit we used to have, and you changed that."
He loosened her hold on her wrist, releasing it when she didn't do more than flex it. Her board was covered in letters; it looked crazy. Another of Alex's crazy girls. She slashed her hand across it.
"Your friend was fifteen. You were fifteen. She told you about her sick brother, the plans her family didn't know about, and the secret boyfriend. If there'd been more time, maybe she'd have told you more, but, if you're right, the threat was inside the house. You did all you could for her. You did all you could for Yang—Agh, hey!" He jerked back as she tapped his mouth with the marker. "Amazing how you being obnoxious is never the problem. 'Cause it's not, and yet, you are."
I MADE HER FEEL TERRIBLE
LIKE A MONSTER
Alex pushed up on the arm of the recliner, his legs hanging awkwardly to the side of the extension hers were propped on. "I had all the Jimmy and Jo stuff going on. What I saw was more of the competitive shit you two always had going on, and I clearly missed a lot. Still, I think that was her more than you. Yeah, I think you see her as what your mom might've been in another life, and maybe that made her think you thought that was a bad thing to be? But…. To you, monstrous would've been having a kid for Hunt to raise, or being to be the wife...ex-wife...whatever, holding him back from the kid. I think it was more… She felt that way comparing herself to you.
"I was thinking plenty about how you handled your parents. You're a good example of making the best out of a mess. I know you sort of looked up to Yang; that she was more like your mom without being the Wicked Witch of the West, but you have to see that it was true the other way around."
She raised an eyebrow. She didn't have to see anything, because she definitely didn't. She'd turned into one of those stupid breeder people who made child-free women feel inferior without even—
"You always mirrored each other. Burke broke her confidence; Shepherd helped you find yours. Shit like that. You were used to being cut down, and scared, and turning things around. Hunt was the second fiancé she had shot here; you think she'd have married him, not run for the hills, if you hadn't taught her a thing or two? Messing up hit her harder, and she never wanted to give you more pain. I dunno that she ever got that hurting for someone is different. Maybe it's not, for her. She wasn't constantly guarding someone as a kid."
U SAT UR MOM'S DOOR LISTENING 2 HER CRY 2?
Alex's chuckle was low and understanding. He was the only one who understood what the entirety of childhood had been like. "Knowing you couldn't have done more sucks, but you couldn't. Even if you're right about what was going on in your friend's life, you're working with way more information. It's not that you judged Cristina; you were scared for her. Ending up alone is, like, your worst fear. Hers is—"
HELPLESSNESS
HATES NEEDING ANYONE.
The day of the shooting, part of Cristina had been nine years old, on the side of the road. Maybe she'd screamed. Been sad-eyed, telling paramedics to save her dad. She'd gotten through the psychotic episode because Owen, who'd once said, "take care, now," three words acknowledging her capability, was willing to let her be done caring.
"She said you were something we didn't expect, right?" Alex continued. "That's true. But where you are? It's not something you didn't want, back then. It's something you didn't believe you could have. She was made to think she was supposed to want it. It seems like she changed and you didn't but—"
I FREEZE PPL, as she wrote it, it felt like an epiphany. All the ruts she and Derek cycle back to; what she'd accused Cristina of that night, and when she'd left of but really, being overwhelmed by loss, and making choices for the better of a hypothetical kid—loosing out on that personal gain—that was more like the old Cristina.
"The Medusa thing?" he murmured. "You've got a stare, but you don't stop people from changing. The opposite. You measure potential. In people, in procedures….The meds my mom and brother are on have improved so much just since I moved out here. Without people who can see what's possible, we'd all be screwed. So, maybe you had to be told that was a potential Yang didn't want to embody, but she was jealous of you, too. You don't have to want something for that."
Meredith took a long pull from her mug. Seeing potential, giving second chances, wasn't that why she'd walked into that trauma room? Alex put his hand on her head, mussing her hair with his fingers, the set of his lips telling her he'd followed her thoughts. Later, she'd show him those pictures. He could tell her if she'd missed the monstrosity in the scrotum sore, or if that'd been the potential she couldn't see.