Meredith was in the OR. She must've slept through transport. Hopefully. Or, she panicked, they sedated her, and retrograde amnesia could be a blessing. Someone grabbed her left arm—Why had they already taken the splint off?—jabbing a needle into it. That was wrong. She jerked away, and the grip tightened, hard enough that the friction of their latex glove chaffed her skin. No one at Grey+Sloan would be that rough outside of a trauma room. Where she couldn't be. Not again. She'd woken up in the ICU; seen Derek at her bedside. That was after the trauma room. She got out of the trauma room.
She lifted her shoulders and met the pressure of a strap. She froze, expecting the surging hurts-hurts-hurts in her ribs. Nothing. Fingers closed on her right leg. Wrong. She broke the other one. They yanked it straight, holding it against the table. Someone else worked below them, and it wasn't until the strap tightened over her skin that she understood. They'd belted her legs in place.
"What's happening?"
No one looked at her, but she'd spoken. She'd heard herself.
No one was wearing scrubs. How had that gotten past her? They weren't her friends, the ones who'd been darting in and out of her vision, haloed by bright lights, making her expect to see George, or Lexie, or her mom—Mom, please, help—She hadn't wanted them to take her with them. She'd only wanted to stop. It to stop.
She'd made it through. Derek had been there. There was no way, no reason for Gary Clark to be standing in the same place where Maggie had been while she sliced, while it burned, when she'd saved— Next to Clark was…Owen?— No, not Owen, a former colleague of her mother's she hadn't seen in decades. She turned her head and was faced with an observation gallery. Grey+Sloan operating theaters didn't place observers on the same level as the OR.
The glass was highly reflective, and the orange of her jumpsuit was clearly visible. Behind her reflection, were more familiar faces. Lexie. Susan. Adele. Reed Adams. Friends, families, colleagues, patients, a professor. Women. Dead women. She scanned the rows, sweat gathering on her skin. She'd gotten halfway through the rows by the time she noticed they were all holding a photograph that the window made too blurry for her to make out. Heather Brooks. Liz Fallon. Jen Harmon. There! There she was!
"Mom!" The word ripped from her throat. All of the figures in the other room stared straight ahead, except her mother, who'd already been looking away. "Mom, I didn't do anything!"
"'Tell Meredith not to do anything.' I don't think that was what she meant, do you?" A gag was wrapped around her mouth. "Don't give up and smell the lemons just yet, Dr. Grey. I can assure you, people have gotten through much worse." William Dunn's lips stretched in his creepily charismatic smile. "Your old pal has a message he wants to really pound into you. Personally, I would've just grabbed one of those nice, shiny knives. More finesse. You understand. Bashing your brains out takes so much effort." He winked. "Death just isn't as easy as people assume."
The leather of the restraints dug into her flesh, and the men surrounding her moved in, grabbing her limbs, holding her down. Under the muffled sound of her own thwarted shouting, she heard his footsteps approaching.
"You're right, you know," he said. "You didn't do anything. You didn't do anything! Push it!" The click that followed was the loudest she'd ever heard. "Nothing but run your mouth."
"Paralytic in." Even that drone was familiar. Nelson, the shadow-Shepherd, didn't question why a sedative hadn't come first, as was protocol for lethal injections in Washington at the time William Dunn was executed.
A hand against her cheek forced her to rotate her head to the side again. She wanted to use whatever movement she had left to get it off, but her hands had been cuffed to the bed.
The crowd behind the window had been repopulated. Cristina. Callie. Arizona. April. Sadie. Wilson and Edwards. Derek's mother, all four sisters and their daughters, her former teachers, former bosses, even Izzie. All staring at her, not seeming to notice that Dunn had his knife held against one of their throats. Meredith couldn't hear anything from the other side of the glass, but she could see her name on Maggie's lips.
"What's wrong?" he asked as he unfastened the highest strap. It wasn't needed to hold her down. "I thought you didn't want her."
I do! I didn't understand! Didn't remember.
"But it's not your fault, is it? No. It's never your fault."
Meredith's lungs were slowing down. She was dry drowning again. The first time her larynx had blocked the water trying to flood her lungs. Her ribs weighed down on them, and on her bradycardia heart. Without an analgesic, she could feel everything, including the movement of his hand.
"Does it hurt, Dr. Death? Like being hit by a train? You have no idea. You've never been hurt like that. You were in a plane crash, and you didn't break a bone. Where's the justice in that?"
She'd always been shaken by reading about cases of diving-induced spinal cord injuries; especially once she'd drowned. Nothing could be worse than feeling your body shut down. She'd never considered that successful CPR meant waking to having someone's hands on you out of nowhere. Unwelcome, unfamiliar lips on yours. Maybe it was tolerable, if life was on the other side, but that wasn't what was happening here. Her eyes closed. She fought to open them; fought to be able to move. To make her hands move toward the fist closed around her throat.
For just a second, she saw a sliver of sunlight. Every time she inhaled, it sent a shock of pain through her, but she was inhaling. There was cold air rushing into her nostrils, almost too much of it. The pressure on her throat wasn't tight enough to choke her. Someone was touching her cheek. Derek? No. Different eyes. Greenish. Bluish, but also greenish. Jackson.
Jackson's hand was on her face.
No, no, no. She didn't want to do it again. Don't, don't, please. I'm breathing. His lips were moving, was he counting? Maggie stood next to him. Where were her hands? I'm breathing! She tried to find Jackson's gaze again, but he wasn't standing there anymore. Derek was.
Derek was here. It had all already happened; he was here. She hadn't missed anything about the second procedure. They were examining her, and she'd freaked out. Again. Fuck. Her face started burning. Derek shook his head and pointed to the three of them. Like it was their faults for doing their jobs. She looked away. What had felt like a restraint around her right hand was the PCA. She pressed the button grateful that she couldn't hear it click.
The meds washed the world out enough that she could signal for them to keep going. She fought of the drowsiness that followed the dose; she never wanted to go that deep into her mind again. Derek rested his hand on the top of her head where the frontal bone met the parietal, just about the only place on her body that hadn't been tenderized.
She didn't have a skull fracture. Definitely did have a concussion. Could that be affecting her temporal lobe? Eh. There really wasn't much of a possibility that her deafness was neurological. Brodmann's areas 41 and 42 were enfolded in the lateral sulcus. Damage there was usually the result of a stroke, or a Traumatic Brain Injury sustained during surgery. Bicortical damage was associated with higher-level acoustic processing: specific sounds, or temporal sequencing. If that was her diagnosis, she'd have reflexes, like the cortically blind patient Amelia had had in December. She'd react to someone coming in the door.
What about the rest of the auditory pathway? she imagined Derek asking, while Jackson opened a silicon foam dressing to put on her throat—laryngeal injury. That one hadn't taken deduction. It'd been obvious the moment she'd woken unable to make a sound—Two relays in the brainstem. The cochlear nuclei: duration, intensity, and frequency. Next two were both localization. Most fibers crossed the midbrain and synapsed at the superior olivary complex. Third relay at the inferior colliculus. Lastly was in the thalamus, where a motor response—a.k.a. speaking—could be prepared.
What does that mean? Maggie was touching the wrap stabilizing her ribs. That must've been the restriction she'd interpreted as straps. She was being gentle, but it hurt, which meant it'd hurt a lot more without the PCA. How much more? Fewer ribs than last time? There was an x-ray on the wall, but she couldn't look at the lights long enough to focus. Stupid concussion. Stupid broken jaw. Stupid…ear injury.
She'd probably injured the ear itself. That matched her symptoms. Full hearing loss, dizziness, tinnitus. A temporal bone fracture could be the reason. A break could happen with a fractured jaw. No. Potential cerebrospinal fluid leak. They would've gone in. Ruptured eardrum, they might wait, but there'd be eardrops to prevent infection. Were there eardrops? There was more pressure than pain there. Perilymph fistula? Hearing loss wouldn't have been immediate. Barotrauma? That'd usually be from drowning, or an abrupt change of air pressure on a plane—good grief—but the Eustachian could be blocked by swelling in the throat; fluid would've built up in the middle ear…yeah. She'd both drowned and been in a plane crash without…. Could that make her more susceptible? Crap. She needed a phone…no…a pen, maybe? Needed to remember to wonder later. Once the ailment was gone. Hopefully soon.
It was temporary. Barotrauma should be temporary.
Patients were always complaining about noise here. Their minds must not be as messed up. Her's was a labyrinth; the kind where you got eaten by a man-bull, not the David Bowie one. Other kids had those Muppets in their nightmares. She'd had them in her dreams.
Derek touched her shoulder. Now was the part walked away to talk, like they thought she wouldn't recognize concern on their faces. That'd have been wrong when she came in on Tuesday, and it was very wrong however many days later. She was kind of okay with not seeing it up close again, again directed at her. Not like she couldn't call up details. Had that zit under Jackson's lip cleared up? Turned out his pretty face wasn't perfect. That was mean. He had reason to be stressed. She'd recognized most of the scars on Alex's, wanted to wonder about others, not to be measuring the angle of Maggie's lips while she'd securing the chest tube. Callie worked with near-total control. Her reflexive flinch lasted only a second, but all of her facial features moved. Sort of like they did whatever she thought speaking to Meredith like she was a toddler would get past the whistling-buzzing-ringing.
Did they not know what was going on? No. That idea was too terrifying.
Good thing she couldn't be saying all this aloud. What'd she been thinking about? Labyrinths and ears. The labyrinth was the deepest part of the ear. It held the vestibular system, and the three canals responsible for balance, and the cochlea, which was the start of all the nerve-relay stuff. It looked like a conch shell. There was more division beyond that. She'd been able to label it on a chart in med school but couldn't pull it out of the archive. Jackson was the ENT. Wow, she'd brought it around. And it'd been distracting. Distraction was good. Giving her mind other stuff to make dreams about. Probably. She wasn't a neurologist, and even they didn't know how dreams worked. Why nothing caused pain, but it could hurt in a lot of other ways, and pain could bleed in. She wished Derek would come back over already. He was good at being a distraction. She could only come up with so much before it was pain, pain, pain, and the dreams didn't seem like such a bad gamble. They were. A lot of the time, they were.
It was good that Derek was here, because if he'd been at the Obama job, he also wouldn't be in her dreams much, because they took place somewhere that was almost here. On the edge of here. Here sucked. It sucked a lot. It would suck more without him. He should stay over here with her, and then there'd be Derek here physically, and more chance of Derek on the edge of here. Going to sleep might be an okay gamble. She wasn't going to be able to put it off forever. If they weren't making her thoughts so blurry, she'd remember the mechanisms there, and maybe she'd be able to fight them. Not totally. The sleep part. Not the pain-blocking part. Most of the pain. Not all of it. Sleep would be no pain. Maybe. It was a gray area. Derek was still talking, all concern-faced. Stupid, reality-twisting dreams might take her away, but he was here to bring her back. She pushed the button again.
Avery's voice resonated through the OR. "Last chance to avoid putting a knife in her ribs."
"This is what she wants," Maggie reminded him without looking up. Derek watched Avery shrug off Richard, who was trying to ease him away from the intercom.
"She's going to be on bed-rest for the next six weeks, that's the ideal for—"
"It's never the ideal, she will spend less time in excruciating pain, and—"
"And the airway you fixed won't do any good if she ends up with another hole in her lung," Derek cut in. The bickering between the two surgeons stopped, leaving the OR quiet, though it could never be silent. The machine keeping Meredith's breathing even was louder than she'd been in six days. He didn't have to look up to know Richard would be standing at the gallery window frowning at him. Callie was staring at him over her mask, her hands wrapping fiberglass around Meredith's knee, taking the opportunity to allow for further range of motion in the weeks to come.
Maggie stood on the left, prepared to stabilize ribs five and seven, which would help keep four and six from moving out of place. It wasn't a common surgery for someone as young and healthy as Meredith, without flail chest, but it would assuage unnecessary pain.
Avery didn't get it. He'd come on while she was on medical leave after the transplant, and not even the need to stand out in a bloated herd of residents had made her uncooperative when it came to her recovery. She spent the week of her miscarriage sitting at bedsides, she came to the hospital post-abdominal surgery to advocate for Richard, and she took shifts while still scraped up from the plane crash. She didn't refuse to acknowledge that bones didn't knit together overnight, or try to ignore the severe abdominal pain of an increasingly inflamed appendix. To him, she was a hard-headed woman, willing to endure if someone she cared about was on the line, but nothing too extreme.
Derek stared back at Callie. The day after her discharge with her fractured ribs wrapped, he'd gotten out of the shower to find Meredith trying to move the boxes sent over by Roseridge. He'd put them on the upper shelf of a closet. Two days later, Callie's voice had rung through the house, swearing in Spanish while she confiscated the step stool. When they noticed that she was abandoning ice-packs before they melted, Callie suggested that the cold might remind her too much of the water. Sure enough, she'd accepted having heating pads draped over her while she paged through textbooks or sat in front of the coffee table with a suture kit studying obscure stitches. She'd be "fine," chipper, mocking daytime TV, and then she'd go quiet, and everyone in the room would start doing the math: Had it been four to six hours? Was she moving too much? Or was the pain in her eyes something elset?
The night he was on-call she'd made pasta and gotten Izzie to drive her to the hospital. They'd had a quiet meal, and she'd sat on his lap on the roof, actually talking about her mother's death. She'd been really trying. Supporting her to the car, he'd taken in her jagged, narrow breaths and wished he could take over for her, like he did whenever she was past her limit in the ER. All he'd been able to do was hold her and tell her surgery stories to keep her from trying to clean the kitchen.
He'd thought she was willful, like all surgeons were, and maybe her near miss had given her a feeling of indestructability. He'd had no reason to think she'd accept that liver regeneration took time. She had. Her body told her to slow down, and she'd listened. He'd thought of the surprise in her eyes whenever someone else determined enough was enough, and handed her a pill cup. She'd take them without objection, as though needing them hadn't crossed her mind. It'd been like the pain was relayed to her brain, but something kept her from voicing it to them or even to herself. As though it mattered so little that caring wouldn't make a difference. Since then, whenever she so much as admitted to a cramp, he wondered how much she'd held in to avoid burdening anyone.
"Avery, we can have you thrown out of the gallery." Callie said, and Derek exhaled along with the whoosh of the vent. "If you don't let Pierce work, you're gone. Same as for Mr. 'I Won't Say a Word' here." She indicated Derek. He rolled his eyes. "You weren't in there, but Meredith was. She was informed, she chose this, all right?"
"She's doing fine here," added Dr. Nowicki, the anesthesiologist monitoring her nasotracheal intubation.
"Fine." Avery slunk away from the intercom. Pierce asked for a ten-blade and nodded to the fluoroscopy tech. Callie switched the intercom off.
"What's his deal?" she asked. "Even Yang was for this. No offense, Pierce."
"None taken because it doesn't matter. Things are rough enough for him, and he had to hurt her. I hadn't realized they knew each other as kids."
Shit. How had he not considered that? He wanted to spring from his stool and to interrogate Avery. But the police would've gotten to that right? Meredith always said they didn't exactly grow up together. Not long after she'd returned to work post-liver donation, she'd sworn him to secrecy before revealing the truth of Jackson's ancestry, and saying, "He got to be the cute kid in a bowtie right around the time the medical bourgeois started using other adjectives for me. He went away for high school; must've hit puberty there. I wouldn't recognize him if it weren't for the eyes."
Derek had said he preferred hers, which had made her giggle, just on the side of believing him. He wished he could see them, now. The tape on her eyelids gave him full view of the dark purple on one side. The speckled bruising on the other continued down her face almost aligned with her freckles. God, would there ever a point where he wouldn't be finding new affronts?
She'd been squinting at the iPad by the time she'd gotten through the simple PowerPoint Maggie had made that morning, but that she could tolerate it at all was an improvement. The five-minute timer he'd set had finished while she was arduously typing "do it" onto the blank slide at the end, but he'd still reached over her to swipe out of that app to the photos. The smile she'd aimed at the image of the kids had pulled the split on her lip and pushed some of the pain from her eyes.
He'd told them the picture was for Momma, but he had not directed the sign Zola was flashing. "I'm doing 'I love you ''cause so she can hear me," she'd explained, not catching on to the fact that he already felt like a bozo... or perhaps absolutely catching on; she had picked up a lot from his wife and sister.
They hadn't had much chance to use baby sign with Zola. Her spoken language had blossomed as soon as she'd been home for good. Bailey had been a slow talker, though, and his hands still moved to clarify certain words. Derek had confirmed "more," and "all done" a score of times over the weekend, and yet "signs" had not been a word that came into his head around Meredith.
"You'd recognize the ones she knows," Maggie had pointed out while he'd given Meredith a minute to swipe through photos. "It'd be a good way to communicate with her now, for sure, but hopefully her hearing will recover before she needs to understand much more than 'eat' and 'bye-bye.' Once she can hear, it'd be good for her to have more expressive language. Only having a hand and a half will be an issue we can work with, but at the moment she barely has either."
"You can sign?"
"Our next-door neighbors were Deaf, and I'm a kinetic learner.'"
"Oh," he said. "So..."
"I'll send you some links." Maggie had put her hand on his shoulder and handed him the consent paperwork. "We all have our specialties."
"Thanks. Uh…one note, if the police ask about this, we didn't get anything from her with this."
Maggie's eyes had widened while her lips thinned. "What? Why?"
He'd pressed the pen down hard enough that it almost slipped. He had the wrong sister for this. Maybe the wrong surprise sister. Could Lexie lie to the police? She'd been able to be as secretive as Meredith. More. Her illegal medical procedures had been for her gain, not a patient's; not in the moment. But Lexie was white and wide-eyed; anything she said to anyone was usually believed.
"She's safe here," he'd told Maggie. "Safer than anywhere else, and whatever she knows, it's Meredith. If she wanted to tell them, we'd know. Am I going to let them try once she's not concussed? Once we can communicate with her consistently? Absolutely. But I'd rather not have detectives trying to get me to upset her before another procedure. My signature is on this. If they ask if we were able to talk to her, you say…say she isn't able to give consent. That's true, right?"
"Technically, but if she'd said no—"
"She didn't."
Maggie sighed. "I'll avoid them. They've interviewed me pretty throughly. I think they're stuck on the whole 'half-sister who came out of nowhere' thing, but they asked a whole lot about whether I resented her 'resemblance to our mother.'"
"Jeez." He ran a hand across his face.
"How do I feel about her having a Black daughter?"
"Christ."
"If I give you another example, do you move onto Mary and Joseph?"
"Uh…potentially. My grandparents would've for sure."
"Lotta Irish Catholics in my part of Boston." She smiled, wryly. "I'm not— I won't pretend this is all how I imagined things would go here, but I also imagined a lot worse. My parents could tell me my birthmother was white, a doctor, and she said I wasn't…." Maggie started to cast her eyes down, and then raised her chin to meet his more firmly. "That she hadn't accused my birthfather of anything. They didn't know if her family knew about me. If I was why she'd moved there. If she was ashamed of me. Chances are I would've been relinquished if I'd been pale as the packed snow, or what have you; and if not, that's because I'd have reminded her of a man she loved deeply. That was far from a guarantee. Meredith hasn't totally accepted my existence yet, but none of her issues have to do with race. I can deal with cops who've read The Bluest Eye a few times too many."
"Ah. Yeah. Sorry..."
"Because you're responsible."
"No. I know. Just... Uh, it's 'driven.'"
"Huh?"
"It's 'driven' snow. Not 'packed.'"
She'd wrinkled her nose. "That doesn't make any sense. Packed snow is pure. Smooth. If it's been driven on, it's not."
Derek was pretty sure that wasn't the etymology for that analogy, but he'd had a feeling it'd be a fruitless correction. It always was with her sister. She only cared about words when she cared about words.
When her eyes had closed on the table Derek had signed that he loved her. For just a second the fingers on her uninjured—unmarred—hand bent down.
"Dr. Shepherd?"
"Hm?" He glanced up from Meredith's face, which was smooth, if not as pale as usual. If he memorized this placement of her features, with every muscle relaxed, maybe he could spot them tensing before the lines of pain got too deep. How many of them were there Monday night?
Wilson indicated the tray holding their phones. "It's the childcare center. Um. Bailey bit someone."
"Was it Harry Rees kid?" Callie asked. "Rumor has it, he deserves it."
"Rumor from the toddler room?" According to Callie, Wilson had asked to be on her service today, and he'd noticed that she wasn't saying anything about being given tasks they'd usually give an intern. Maybe she'd clued into the fact that they hadn't been letting the interns do much at all.
"I can't reveal my sources."
"I don't care who it was," he cut in. "That's the third time in three days. I…." He eyed Wilson. He'd sent her the first time and Amelia the second. Looking at Meredith, he could hear her on the night Bailey was born, telling him to stay with the baby. She wouldn't let him forget it if their kid got kicked out of daycare within a week of him being in charge. This was the third strike, and he couldn't count on it being ruled a foul. He stood, slipping his foot under the stool to keep it from sailing into an anesthesia resident, and hovered over Meredith, finally kissing on the forehead, and backing away.
"Go take care of that," Callie said. "We got her."
He swiped his phone off the tray on his way through to the scrub-room. "Thanks, Wilson. Text me every half-hour."
He ran into Richard on his way into the hall. "You'll sit with her?"
"I will. She won't be truly awake until tomorrow. You could take them home for the night."
"Maybe once she's in recovery."
Richard nodded; he knew Derek was lying. Except, was he? Depending on what he could do with Bailey—and what could he do? Did they make a baby muzzle?
The irony didn't hit him until he was typing out a text to Arizona on the elevator. Meredith's jaw was wired shut, and the baby was biting. He leaned against the bar at the back of the car and stared up at the ceiling. Meredith's gloomy observations about the universe's sense of humor were ringing more and more true.
Ten minutes later, he stalked past the door of the preschooler room feeling like a spy with a very bad cover story and hoping that Zola wouldn't recognize her brother's cry. There was a warble in it that let on how long he'd been going, and his bright red face belonged to the tail of a squall, not the beginning of sobs.
He should've taken Bailey down to his forsaken office, but the surgeon's lounge was right by the fourth-floor elevator, while the admin wing was across the labyrinthine basement.
"Wow, we have this big room all to ourselves, bud," he enthused, dropping the diaper bag on the table. "All the other big doctors are helping Mommy, so you and I get to hang out. You have more words than she does right now. Think you can use them?" Bailey gulped, and the dimples in his chin deepened. "That's okay. 'No words' is her choice sometimes, too." He found a cloth in the bag and wet it, sitting Bailey on the counter to wipe off his face. "Are you getting more teeth? Is that why you're using them to bite? Biting hurts people. We don't put our teeth on people, bud. Keep it up, and we'll get Dr. Avery to close your mouth up like Mama's."
"Mama, me?"
"Probably shouldn't have said that aloud. We won't do that. I wish we didn't have to do it to her. God, I don't think she even had braces. Definitely don't bite if you get those."
"Boo-boo?"
"Yeah, it makes a boo-boo. Do you have a chew toy in the bag?"—The first time he'd heard Meredith say that about one of Zola's, he'd wasted breath pointing out that it was called a teether. "That's dumb. The toy is made to be chewed on. Chew. Toy"—"Most of this is stuff Momma packed. We might find a kitchen sink in here."
"Mama? Go, Mama me." Bailey thrust a fist toward Derek's face, and he moved it away, digging through Ziplocs holding extra outfits, a bib, the box they kept Anatomy Joanne's organs in any time she left the house….
"Not today, bud."
"Boo-boo me."
"No, not you, Momma's hurt."
"Hurt Mama. Go me," Bailey insisted, waving, his fingers bending into his fist.
"We're not going anywhere right now."
"No go," the baby repeated, waving again. Hadn't he started waving toward the computer screen in the last few weeks? "Mama me, me doos."
"You want juice?" Derek started digging through the bag again.
"No! Ma meuh no doos. Ma-me, Daddy. Ma-me."
Mommy? No. Meredith had been so sad when Zola switched to Mommy, and his milestones were something they'd discussed often, because it was safe ground. She'd even admitted to feeling like Bailey's babyhood was escaping—although she'd said it first when he'd started walking early, and that'd been over a year ago.
Derek stared into his son's inscrutable, wide blue eyes. They'd debated whose color he'd ended up with early on, but the pale blue was all his own. It really stood out encircled by bright red. He was gulping hard enough that Derek was going to go with juice anyway, and he felt around for a sippy cup. At the bottom of the bag, he touched the nipple of a pacifier that must've been missed in the purge. Definitely wasn't going to let Bailey see that...yet. He reached further, past Zola's straw cups, and there was another….no, wait, not a pacifier. A bottle. He'd been drinking from a sippy cup for almost a year, except...
Except at bedtime. Ma-me. Ma meuh. Ma miyuh. "Mommy doesn't give you a bottle, does she?"
Bailey sniffed, a bubble of snot falling onto his lower lip. Of all the times not to have an aspirator within reach. "Boo-boo."
"I'm an idiot," Derek declared. "Daddy is an idiot."
"Daddy eedyot?"
Derek's hand closed on something furry. He pulled it out. "Hey, it's Tiggy."
Bailey squealed, yanking his stuffed tiger into his arms. "Eedyot."
"Oh good, we found a fun word," Derek took out his phone, and three rings later asked, "Is Bailey weaned?"
"What?" Amelia demanded.
"Is…Does Mer still do his nighttime feeding?"
His sister exhaled into the phone. "You've done bedtime since day two!"
"Amy, give me—"
"I am giving you an answer. Yes. Until his birthday. You know that."
"I thought…'by' his birthday. Crap. What do I…? I need to call Robbins. And... God, I don't know, she's in with Pierce. She…. The rib stabilization."
"It won't hurt her to wean—"
"No." He absently patted the stuffed tiger Bailey was holding out to him. "This is important to her Amy—Amelia." He didn't have time to tell Amelia about the articles Meredith had poured over before Zola came home; the supplements he'd found in the trash midway through the months of waiting to hear from Janet; Meredith's certainty that she wouldn't be able to feed Bailey, because "why do you think?"
"Okay, okay. I'll track down Herman. Robbins follows her around like a puppy. They'll know who to have consult on Mer. Someone who won't just tell you it's easier to take the opportunity. Once she can pump enough—"
"What about the medications?"
"Just because I have breasts—This is not my specialty! Other sister! Other wife…! Sorry. Sorry…. I think it mostly filters out. Like the placental barrier. What's frozen at home might last a week. And…. Where are you?"
"Why?"
"Derek."
"Surgical lounge."
"Great. Check the freezer. If you don't find a cooler in there, it's in your office. I'll talk to Herman."
The phone beeped. Derek stared at the screen until Bailey grabbed for it exclaiming, "See B!"
"Yeah, that is you. You want to look at pictures?" He flipped to the photos and handed the toddler the phone to hold while he picked him up. "What are the chances your mama milk is in here?"
"Mama miyuh?" Bailey squeezed his fist in the baby-sign for "milk."
"Milk. Luh-luh-luh."
"Yuh-yuh-yuh."
Great job, Shepherd. Forget how your kid says "milk."
He opened the freezer. A Yeti cooler was in there, labeled in familiar handwriting. "Boob milk, go ahead, help yourself." Derek thumped his head against the side of the freezer door.
Bailey giggled. "Daddy eedyot."
"Let's hope Mommy hears that one." Derek yanked the cooler out. "You want a bottle? And maybe a nap?"
That Bailey hadn't been taking those had been another thing the toddler-room coordinator had reported, but it wasn't an offense worth kicking him out for. Getting him to do it this late in the afternoon would probably backfire, but while things were this bleak, Derek could think of worse things to do than sitting down and holding his son. He was sure this was why Meredith was waiting to wean, and he'd almost taken that from her prematurely. He couldn't let something like that happen again. He had to give her reasons to keep going, and, so far, he'd barely managed not holding her back.
Derek took Bailey and Zola home, and then returned to Meredith's bedside in the ICU by nine. She'd be there until morning, and from there no one could tell exactly how long she'd spend in a private room on the floor, while everything moved through the proliferative phase, rebuilding connective tissue—and hopefully other connections to the world—In a bed, he thought—Zola had had so many new ways to ask him how long it'd be until she could visit her mom, she must have spent all day coming up with them.
Patients generally looked worst post-op with new, intentional injuries, but although the injury under the bandaging on her ribs wouldn't be fully to hemostasis, Meredith had visibly improved. As much as they'd stood out in the OR, her facial bruises were better. This was the longest interval she'd spent without the jaw-bra, likely thanks to the higher-powered drugs she'd been given in surgery, and he kept mistaking the NG tube for a piece of her newly dark hair.
On the laptop, he'd attributed the shadow to winter striping the highlights that made her light hair into spun gold, but this was the most consistent color he'd seen her take on. A choice. Did she like it? He felt it underscored her. Maybe it looked different with her weekend clothes. With the dark plaids and Docs she'd stored on the top shelf of her closet, thinking they weren't "adult" enough. While she'd been dumping most of the belongings sent to them by Roseridge into a donation box, he'd realized she'd modeled her work-wardrobe after Ellis's. Not shocking, Ellis had probably told her hundreds of times that her clothes were too slovenly for a surgeon, or some other derisive adjective that didn't matter considering how much time she spent in scrubs. In his opinion, it'd be impressive if she allowed herself to let her skill and style coexist. Like she'd finally closed the circle.
He'd brought one of the two rolling trays they'd collected to the recliner; it killed his back to sit up straight in it with no support—Meredith would say that was what he got for being old—where he could watch her sleep, grateful for the pain control or dregs of anesthesia keeping her dreams placid. It was obvious that they weren't, generally, even if he couldn't always tell if they were about this, or they were the other nightmares that plagued her. Memories of tragedies stacked on top of each other, and sometimes woven into horrendous tapestries. She needed the sleep; she'd be awake and complaining about it soon enough. That didn't stop him from wishing she'd open her eyes and make faces at him, nagging him to get back to whatever he was doing on his laptop.
He wasn't sure what she'd think of Form WH-380F, which he needed to fill out and submit to request leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Would she say, is that what it took? Or would she assume he was doing what people do? She could never take admiration for going to her mother's side at the words I received a diagnosis, but she'd also say, "I wasn't beholden, or whatever. I don't resent it. She was my mom." Sometimes, he wondered what Ellis would think of her daughter's devotion. It didn't seem like she'd make much of it, but she'd done something to reinforce it. Not everything about Meredith had been shaped at five, and truly…truly, he had more sympathy for Ellis than Thatcher.
The family member is your _Spouse _ Parent _ Child, under 18 _Child, age 18 or older and incapable of self-care because of a mental or physical disability
He clicked the appropriate box. They'd been so arrogant, not getting legally married until it'd popped up on a different form. Washington State didn't recognize common-law spouses, and would they have even been able to claim that at the time he'd been shot? He had no idea. He'd been spoiled; he'd owned his workplace, or at least been in charge, for longer than he hadn't, and in between, he'd reported to a man who saw both him and his wife as…well, what? He'd considered Richard his mentor, but that'd felt sour after that race for chief. Whatever the case, Richard backdated and bent rules, particularly for Meredith. Owen didn't but considering that that letting things slide past his desk had been a link in the chain that'd led to the plane crash, he'd was lenient enough. They'd still never taken the full amount of leave they were entitled to. Not until Bailey was born and having a positive reason to spend that time with their children had been such a gift.
Months…weeks later, he'd pushed that away. He hadn't seen it like that. Hadn't let himself. Had joked about being federally mandated whenever Meredith had mentioned his promise, because he had known, once she'd learned to trust him that trust had been whole-hearted. His word had meant more to her than the paperwork. "Had" might be the operative word there.
He wanted to close the laptop and not open it again until Meredith could snap at him for working for too long. But even once he'd let Callie, or Owen, or Avery fill in their "best guess" for how long she'd be "incapacitated," there were projects he'd have to delegate, reports to finish. Legally, he supposed he couldn't be held liable for them, but realistically, he'd have to send out the emails unless he was the one under sedation. Maybe then.
Maybe you just want to pretend this isn't happening. You're not the president, Derek, and isn't there a rule, even for him? He was sure there was, but come to think of it, he didn't know what, exactly. He toggled away from the form to Google. The twenty-fifth amendment, apparently, had only been enacted three times—two colonoscopies, and colon cancer surgery for Reagan—oh, she'd love that. Makes you wonder what qualifies as do no freaking harm. He shouldn't get used to putting words in her mouth, but he already missed her voice.
An advantage of the glass windows of the ICU was that you could angle the blinds so, you got an opportunity to see someone coming before they could see you. That gave him the chance to intercept Detective Moore in the hall. He stood in the same place Wilson had Thursday night.
"She's not—"
"I'm here to see you, Dr. Shepherd. There's something I'd like your opinion on."
"Can it wait? If she wakes up, I don't want her to be alone."
"We can go in. I won't bother her, I promise."
He hesitated, but the fact of the matter was that Meredith wasn't going to hear them.
The detective stopped a few feet from the bed. Instinctively, Derek stood between her and Meredith, but her expression was soft, and she didn't show any sign of wanting to get closer.
"Her face is clearing up," she murmured. and the shift from her usual authoritative tone made Derek remember that she was younger than Meredith. "She had a rib stabilization?"
"Yeah." Putting his hand on Meredith's leg only brought him in contact with fiberglass.
The detective nodded, her lips pursed. "Dr. Pierce is skilled. Her career trajectory has been incredible."
"She's incredible," Derek said, thinking of the anxiety he'd seen in Maggie's face underneath everything she'd wanted him to see. "She's driven. Confident. She cares about Meredith."
"She shouldn't have been allowed to operate on her, should she?" The detective looked at him sideways. "I'm not saying it wasn't the right call; it's a new procedure, and she'd have had to walk anyone else through it. Just, it's against the spirit of your hospital policy, if not the legality."
"You're that familiar with Grey+Sloan policy?" He emphasized the hospital name. That rule had been retained from Seattle Grace's regulations, but if her knowledge came from preparing to work there, her information was out of date.
"I'm on a case without much movement, in spite of CCTV footage and a witness who could likely give me a name. I've read your wife's college thesis on the progression and significance of gendered hormonal changes in the adolescent brain. Made me surprised you don't have three neurosurgeons in your family."
The exhaustion Derek had been holding off seemed to hit him all at once. He leaned against Meredith's bed, moving his hand to the railing to avoid putting too much weight on her leg. "We might. My daughter is four, and some time since Christmas she learned to pronounce hippocampus. Used to be 'hippopoticampus.'"
"She has that many opportunities to say 'hippocampus?'"
He shrugged. "There are picture books about more niche topics than the brain, Detective." Amazon would be bringing them four about not biting within a day or two. "What is it you wanted my opinion on?"
She took a folder out of the bag she carried and glanced around before heading for the rolling tray that held a basin full of glycerin swabs. "We've been going through your financials. Most of your accounts are joint, apart from your BNY account shared with the Boetchers, correct?"
"Yeah. She knows about that," he added. He should've told her years earlier, but it'd been one of those things; one of so many that had been part of the warp of his life in New York. It was possible that he knew more about Meredith's adolescence than the reverse. That accident had been formative for him; he was aware that it was a thread other people would have prioritized. He would've, in another life, with another wife, but the truth was that he'd avoided it. Meeting with her mother at Roseridge had reminded him of the nursing home in Queens he hadn't visited enough. Michael had been youngest person there, and even as they approached the age Ellis had been diagnosed, he might still be.
You didn't think I could deal with it? Didn't think I could compartmentalize? The context in which she'd found out hadn't led to her making those accusations, but trying to explain himself would. And for all that he didn't want her to have to think about a situation that would've hit so close to home, his reason for not telling her had been the same reason he almost had the day she'd discovered that the firefighter, Holden McKee, had been minimally conscious. It would've given her a reason to judge him. He hadn't dared to expect her absolution.
"This is your wife's MasterCard statement for November. For the past year, the charges have been the same; a dozen or so subscriptions that are paid off every month."
"She's had that since med school; it rewards in frequent flyer miles."
"Right. That number is here." She pointed it out with a pen. "But this is the current statement." She swapped the paper for one below it. This one had several lines highlighted. The number in the milage box was still huge, but it'd gone down.
"She got a plane ticket?"
"She was booked on a flight to Dulles the night of the ninth, a Thursday, returning Sunday night. The Monday was—"
"The thirteenth. My birthday."
"Mmhmm. She cancelled the return flight, but she simply wasn't on the flight out. Maybe she missed it; although, from her records she would've been finished for the day by seven. Then there's this." She tapped the pen against a highlighted line on the statement. "It's from the Sea-Tac Doubletree."
"Meredith and I were in a plane crash," he pointed out. "This wouldn't be the first time she chose not to take an optional flight, and she wouldn't have been easy on herself about it."
"Yeah, this is from an airport bar," the detective said, matter-of-factly, pointing. "I don't blame her; it being that late, and your place being so far out. But look at the date on the hotel." She tapped the hotel charge again. "The ninth. We called over, they run the card at checkout. And you'd have to rack-up the pay-per-view to amass that charge in one night. The itemized bill they sent over puts her there for all three nights." Her voice was regretful. "It's the only similar charge we can find, but we've requested their security footage to see if anyone joined her."
"You think she met someone there?"
"We don't know what to think. None of her room service charges make that a certainty, but we've seen that in the past with a spouse trying to cover their tracks."
"Wait, you think she was cheating?" Derek didn't realize he was fully laughing in her face until her eyebrows went up. "I'm sorry, it's only…Detective, I was the oblivious husband in my first marriage. I know as well as anyone that it happens, but Meredith…. Her mother cheated on her father. You know that, I assume, at this point. She… internalized it. She wouldn't—I was cheating on my wife with her, whatever I told myself, and Meredith didn't know. If she had, she would've left me at the bar the night we met. She doesn't do adultery."
The detective's doubts were perfectly clear as she collected her papers to return them to her folder. "I admire your faith in her. You understand that we'll still be following up on this?"
"Yeah. And I'm not saying she didn't meet someone. I don't know who that could be, or why it'd happen because Meredith panicked about getting on a commercial flight, but with her it's never the simple answer. You ought to keep that in mind." The detective's jaw clenched. "Not that I'm telling you how to do your job," he hedged. "But I've been the one trying to figure out something about Meredith. It's always complicated."
"People generally are." She put the folder in the bag and touched his arm. "Get some rest, Dr. Shepherd. I didn't see out my residency, but I was a surgeon long enough to know that it's once the procedure's over that the family's work begins."
He watched her walk out and speak to the door guard before he turned to Meredith. "I wish you had come to see me," he told her. "It would've been a much better birthday weekend than I had. I missed you so much. I didn't have a tumor in my bed. That thing's pretty impressive, by the way."
He moved back to his chair. It'd be easier, in some ways, if the police were correct. There weren't many people in Meredith's life he'd suspect. More than they would, since he didn't think he'd mentioned that Meredith was bi—wouldn't, not unless it somehow become relevant, which it wasn't—and anyone else who knew…who did? Callie? Callie…. Nope. He knew for a fact Mer thought Callie was attractive; her face did a thing, whether she believed it or not, but even split from Robbins, he didn't see it. Not with Callie being able to look him in the face.
Detective Moore meant well. If she'd actually worked at Seattle Grace, she'd get it, but who knew what version of the story she'd gotten from interviewing the staff. Meredith relished in sharing variations the interns picked up every year, after she was sure she could still scare them into submission. The detective would have been in Lexie's year. What would she have thought of the Intern Cabal?
The Intern Cabal.
Derek opened a new Google window and had to retrace twice when his fingers fumbled the search. A few clicks later, and he was grabbing his phone.
"Yang."
"Cristina." Derek ran a hand through his hair. "How long would it take you to get to Berlin?"
