The uniformed officer wasn't at the door. Derek started to run toward it before he heard the raised voices. The last time he'd come in expecting a crisis, the room had been still. This time, he found chaos. He almost crashed into Avery, who was nose-to-nose with Maggie. The uniform stood against the wall, Detective Moore one step closer, both watching, poised to intercede.

"—know better!" Avery was shouting.

"You do not wave your finger in my face."

It took Derek a minute to put together what was happening. His mind had already been split, half on promising Zola he'd figure out which window was Momma's window; the other half jumping between 1983, when Meredith might have dropped orange peels on the same area of grass. She'd probably already seen too much then. Richard had admitted that she'd been known to sneak out of daycare—"little Houdini"—and while taking Z and B back, he'd noted all the CCTV cameras and the locks far above child-height.

"Are you not the one who put wire cutters in here? Who popped her jaw last time breathing was an issue?"

"They're a last resort! She had an airway. She wasn't choking. There are alternatives you—"

"With them still in here?" Maggie gestured at the police. "Calming techniques did not seem like an optimal solution!"

Avery turned to Derek. "She could've undone weeks of healing."

In the lull where he was meant to respond, Derek heard it. Even muffled by the arm she had pressed against her face, Meredith gasping in the wake of sobs sounded remarkably like Bailey.

"She has been through enough! I wasn't going to prolong the time where my sister wasn't getting air!" Maggie insisted, the curls that'd escaped her clip bouncing around her face. Even they seemed angry. Weren't there other Gorgons? Sisters? Medusa and…? "I would have cut whatever was necessary to make that happen."

"Dr. Avery," Derek interrupted, making eye contact with Maggie before crowding Avery into backing up as far as possible from Meredith. "She has a history of panic attacks. Pierce made the right call."

Avery's scowl made those poster-boy dimples disappear, which was good. Punching him in the face in front of the police would be a bad plan; it'd end in Meredith keeping her promise to break his nose if he got arrested again—and that was without considering queasy sensation the thought of enacting that kind of violence, particularly in front of her, was giving him.

"You can go in tomorrow and fix it. For the interim, order a sedative; she can decide if she wants it," he determined. Avery let the door slam behind him. Derek turned around in time to see Meredith start to bite her lip and wince. He went around to the other side of the bed, stalking past the police. "Can I see, love?" She rolled her eyes, and then squeezed them shut as he studied her mouth. The split bands were hanging loosely, and several wires were bent. "Pierce? Go grab us some pick-ups and dental wax. And, as a gesture of good faith, see if you can book Avery an OR for the morning." Maggie's fury shifted into incredulity, but he didn't blink. She pulled the door carefully shut with as much drama as Jackson had slammed it. For just a second, Meredith's expression shifted-check you out, Chief Shepherd—He looked over at Detective Moore. "Did we not agree that I would ask her if she was comfortable with you coming in here?"

"We did, but we had a sudden change in circumstances. I sent Ravi to find you." Derek sighed. The one time he'd left the daycare through the back exit. "Dr. Grey made it clear that she wanted me to go ahead. I needed to confirm—" She hesitated, making eye contact with Meredith over his shoulder.

"Tell 'm." Meredith's voice was almost inaudible.

"All of it?" the detective asked, her round eyes focused on Meredith who nodded. "Okay." She glanced toward the uniformed officer. "Michelle, go track down Detective Chakrabarti, please? I'll meet you downstairs."

"Yes ma'am."

For the third time, the door clicked shut. Meredith shifted as far onto her side as she could. Derek put a hand on the gown tied to cover her back, covering her shaking fingers with the other. Her inhalations were jagged. Detective Moore put the folder she was holding onto the right-hand bedside table and pulled the glider closer. She sat on the edge of the seat, her hands clasped between her legs. "I told you a couple weeks ago about a flight Dr. Grey missed."

"You did. From what I've heard, it was a rough around here, and she deserved a break from being with the kids full-time."

"No arguments here. Unfortunately, it's still relevant. Whenever Dr. Grey failed to appear at the gate, they called for her over the loudspeaker, and a passenger waiting for his connecting flight to Fairbanks recognized her name." She flipped open her folder and handed him a picture. It showed a mugshot of a broad-shouldered man. His frame could easily fit the figure in the CCTV footage.

"Jesus." The man's eyes weren't blue, but shave the beard and add a significant amount of weight…. He could see the resemblance to Owen "Wait, Suffolk County?"

"Felix O'Grady was taken into custody at Logan Airport today, trying to board the same flight . One way."

A tremor coursed through Meredith's body, and he circled his palm on her back. "And he heard her name at Sea-Tac?"

"Correct. He works for an oil company and commutes regularly to Alaska. History of violence, couple ex-wives, the first of whom has sole custody of their children. His child support is paid in the form of tuition to Boston Preparatory Institute, which was called Boston Preparatory Academy up to about twenty years ago."

"Yeah. I know that." In spite of the remaining inflammation, he was surprised Meredith passed up an opportunity to provide her particular commentary on the place, like she did whenever they sent her letters asking for donations. "This…guy went to school with… there?"

The detective gave him a sympathetic grimace. "The family moved to Boston in the twins' eighth grade year. Several former classmates identified him as holding a grudge against Meredith. Apparently, he made no secret of it. Several years ago, there were a number of threatening posts on the Boston Preparatory Academy Facebook page.."

"I shouldn't'a…." Meredith rasped. Swallowed. Started to wet her lips and pulled her tongue back from the wires. He snatched one of the glycerin swabs from the beside table and rolled it over her lips automatically before thinking to hand it to her. "Got it at Da'muff." Her face twisted. "Agh!" She dropped the swab and pressed the heal of her hand against her lower jaw. "'uck!"

Drops of red dripped from a tiny hole on her upper-lip, a patch of red lipstick to replace the purple. The detective had already wrapped an ice-cube in a napkin, and Meredith took it, giving her the smile that lived only in her eyes intentionally, not because she wasn't sure smiling was allowed.

Derek reached for the call button. No one had mentioned painkillers in their heated explanations, and Avery should've had an intern running in ice-packs, if not immobilizing her in a Barton bandage.

"Duhn't."

The conditioning of six and a half years made him draw back. "Mer, you need—"

"T'tell," she insisted, her teeth clenched and lips held away from the wires. "Careful. Just…didn't like eet."

"Your voice?"

"Uh-huh."

"Do you want the white board?"

"Uh-uh. Duhn't wanna…. S'naht much else, Fazebuck. Gr'up for my class. Showin' off what we did. Been here a couple 'onthes… Uhctuber." Ah. October. That was why he couldn't remember even a preoccupation that could be explained by this. "Reported 'em bov."

"Both?"

"The messages, and a fake profile for his twin sister, Felicia," The detective explained.

Meredith shuddered again. He moved his hand to her wrist, a finger on her pulse point. She yanked it away.

"Mer—"

"Listen," she snapped. He'd already gotten too used to filling in her words; he could hear for once in your life in the rasp around the word. Once he had a baseline for her pulse, already faster than usual, he returned his attention to the detective, who was holding out another sheet. Numbly, he thought of all the paper in Maggie's bag. Secrets she hadn't even told him, revealed to the sister she hardly knew. Outing her to Alex. He'd spoken for her without thinking, and he wondered how long he'd been doing it.

This four-page packet started with an article from The Globe. '"Local Teen-agers Praise MGH Volunteer Program." July 9th, 1992. An inch-wide paragraph was highlighted:

"It's no secret that boys are intimidated by smart girls. This generation of brilliant ladies is using the time they'd spend dating to their advantage, spending Friday evenings in the library, and Saturdays bolstering their resumés. Many students from Boston Preparatory School are enrolled in volunteer programs. The job 14-year-old Felicia O'Grady fills would have been called 'candy-striping,' and the red-and-white smocked girls would be heading for nursing school.

"'I'm so tired of that assumption,' O'Grady complains. 'It's fine if that's what you want to do, but I'm going to be a doctor. It's not my fault if a dude can't get his head around that.' When asked if she thinks the 'dudes' will be less judgmental by the time she's a med student, she shrugs. 'It's not looking good.'

"''Don't listen to her,' says fellow 'Youth Volunteer,' Meredith Grey, also 14, whose mother is a pioneer in general surgery at the hospital. 'She was proposed to yesterday.'

"O'Grady's freckled cheeks take on a pink hue. ''We've been reading picture books to kids all week!' she objects. 'He was six!'"

The top half of the next page held a blurry yearbook candid: a courtyard full of kids who could've been extras in Empire Records. Toward the center of it, he found a familiar girl sitting on a brick wall, her ear held to one side of a pair of Sony headphones. The curly-haired girl next to her held the Walkman. A handwritten note below the image said "BPA Yearbook '92-'93." Detective Moore cleared her throat. Derek turned to find her holding her finger against the image. The boy sitting on the wall next to Felicia wasn't looking at the camera, but his identity was obvious. The resemblance to Owen was clearer; although, in this case Hunt was in the higher weight class.

"He was your friend, too," he murmured. Meredith tilted her head, more of her arm covering her eyes than her jaw, but the tears were visible.. She made a sound that was so annoyed, so Meredith. Sure she'd already cried enough this week, month, year.

He kept going. Another Xerox from a yearbook. It featured the second girl in a handful of pictures: sitting at a computer with one leg pulled up onto the chair; at Zola's age, a baby sitting between her and the brother who must be him, but was just a freckled toddler; one that screamed first day of kindergarten! where she and the brother held hands, their matching backpacks hovering at the same height. A family picture, taken in front of a tree that he would've bet matched her hair in spite of only having seen it in black-and-white; and a Sears shot, in which she stared at the camera in that all-seeing way some girls that age had. Like they were seeing all the darkness in the world. It reminded him of Amy. He didn't want to let the text next to it resolve.

In loving memory Felicia Shannon O'Grady 1978-1993.

Turning to the final page, Derek's hand slipped and the edge sliced across the top of his index finger. It didn't take away from the sting of the headline, this one taken off the Globe's website. BPA Student Suicide October 12th, 1993. Derek paused. October twelfth. Those messages must've come close to that date. It didn't directly coincide with any of his mental timeline from that first fall, but it would've been within weeks of the train crash. Mother of God, had she ever gotten a break?

"A teenage girl leapt in front of a train at the Park Street Station Tuesday afternoon. Felicia O'Grady was rushed into surgery on arrival at Mass Gen, but succumbed to her injuries Head of Emergency Medicine reports…."

Meredith turned her head, letting him see the eye ringed by purple. They were almost sure it had come from hitting the floor, the same as her dislocated jaw, but he couldn't stop imagining a fist colliding with her face. He couldn't imagine wanting to cause damage anywhere near those shining irises, the green closer to blue-gray right now. He couldn't imagine wanting to hurt her—except he had, hadn't he? He forced the thought away. Beating himself up had to wait.

"Did Ellis operate?"

She shook her head. "S'one's on me."

"Mer."

"Is. She did MGH aga'n freshman summer. Met someone. Older, I think. Said I couldn't get it. But…so'd'I."

So, die? Sadie? No. So did I. That summer. Huh. Sadie had been right. Sort of. "Layla was your age," he pointed out. "You had the upper-hand." He wanted to back-pedal as soon as he'd said it. Depending on who she'd been talking to, she might not have. Had this girl known what Karev didn't? She said she'd been more open in Boston, but starting when? At twelve, when Mer knew? Later?

"Teenage boys."

"Point," the detective muttered. When Derek glanced at her, she gestured to the first article in the Globe, and, yeah, thinking about it, his sisters had rarely dated within their grade; there'd been age gaps he'd never accept for a fifteen-year-old now. He and Meredith would've been scarily inappropriate. Far more than they had been when they actually met. Part of him wished he could've been there to give her the adult she'd desperately needed, but mostly he was glad she'd been an adult by all definitions—even her own.

"Got in t'Exit—Exetor for second semester. An'Andover, but Liss loved language. Exit Her was better'n And Over. Didn' wanna go alluva sudden. Didn' wanna 'im t'be angry. I tol' her it'd be wort' it. Wan'ed t'be a peds oncol'gist. S'what got 'er inta candy-striping. Ricky had…." Meredith swallowed. Winced. In spite of the way she'd shrugged him off, she worked her wrist out of his grip until she could grab his hand. "Gave her all Ellis's rants. Independen' w…fuh...girls. Love's a crock. Didn' help. I c'uld talk to him? No. Shouldn' get invo'ved in her stuff. Like I…I…. I got pissed…stupid to toss out…she'd tried s'hard! Coulda been…I told her parents...guy. Inappropriate guy. Couple days later, they visited Ricky. Let her call from a pay-phone. Said…" She swallowed again. "'I'll manage, Meredith. They'll see.'" She formed the syllables so carefully that the disambiguation had to be intentional. "I'll manage, Mer, death" or "I'll manage, Meredith." "They'll see" was a typical teenager threat, or a promise that they, her family, would see her manage death.

"Called 911. What I do, righ'? Ran through zuh park. Heard shouting from T. Close t' fell down those stupid stairs. Shoulda. Fraction of wha' Lissy wen' through. Shoulda kep' quiet." She might not. Meredith knew that somewhere; she'd been aware of that at fifteen.

She gasped, and her rib-cage jerked. It had to be painful, and that was with two of her broken ribs stabilized. To take some of the pressure off them, Derek slid his arm under her shoulders and lifted her without thinking of his own position on the edge of the bed.

"Here." Detective Moore stood and gestured to the glider that was highly impractical in any other type of situation. Without instruction, she unlooped a section of the catheter tube wrapped around the hook at the end of the bed, and then lifted her other leg using the pillow propping it up, arranging it on her empty chair.

"He's in custody?" he asked the detective as she put another pillow on Meredith's lap, although at the moment he was holding her arm, afraid her shaking might cause it to slide.

"Confessed. We made a tentative ID a week ago, based on an Uber pickup down the street from here. Not enough to take him in, but he was fishy enough that interviews with the ex and his landlord were enough for a bench warrant. DOJ will arrange expedition." She put a card down on the tray. "That's for the Victims Assistance Unit. I got the confirmation I needed for our report. The DA will press charges. This—" She put down another card. "—is for the ADA, my best friend from college. She's great. I can't say for sure it won't go to trial, but…" She shrugged. "If it does, we'll be called to testify. I'll check in a month or so."

"Thanks for all the work you put in. Pass it on to your partner."

"Will do. Sorry we had to do it." The door closed a fourth time.

Derek leaned back in the glider, and rested his forehead on the crown of Meredith's head. "You're okay. Just try to keep breathing."

She shuddered. When Maggie reappeared after a few minutes, bearing the forceps and a dose of Versed she'd held her IV out toward her sister before he could ask if she wanted it.

No more flashes of pale blue at the corner of the window. She checked the other side. Blue eyes, every time. More light blue, navy blue, white stopping in front of the blinds. All she could throw at the window was fuzzy and soft. She didn't want to risk losing that. She wasn't a cops person. She'd run from the BPD, red hair sweeping around corners in front of her, always almost out of sight.

"Meri-deth, Merry-deth, Merry, Merry, Merry death," the sheets whispered. What were they saying out there?

"She knew her attacker."

"They went to school together."

"What'd she do to him?"

"His sister killed herself."

"Secrets, secrets are no fun, unless you share with everyone!" Meredith recited.

Her mother laughed. "Who on Earth taught you that?"

"I did." Derek was holding one of the kids in each arm. "She never learned."

She did the right thing. She called 911. She ran, she ran. She couldn't run, couldn't move, couldn't get away, couldn't explain. Everything was white, was red, was black.

"My friend is at Park Street Station. Red Line, outward. She's gonna kill herself."

There was blood on the kitchen floor. (Again.) Mommy was crying. (Still.) She told her not to be scared; everything was gonna be fine. (Soon.)

Another girl ran. Meredith couldn't move. A man touched her boob. Inappropriate. She landed on the hospital floor. Her ears rang squealed buzzed. A doctor pushed a medication into an IV. Someone died. The monitors started beeping. They shot electricity through the body. Nurse! Clear! V-fib! Everyone sighed in relief.

He and Lissy got into it; their faces glowing red under their freckles. They'd wrestle, pinch, pull hair, give snake burns, and that's what siblings did. Meredith hadn't had one, but she'd seen the spectrum. She wasn't sure where to put them. Lissy had bruises. They told the kids that no one should ever, ever leave marks. (Meredith fought. Meredith had fights. Meredith was the fighter?)

If she'd died this time, would Lissy have been in her underworld hospital? Would she be sorry that she'd left Meredith behind? Would she be mad? Had she wanted to be saved? (Was that what he asked himself?)

A baby was crying. Meredith followed the sound through the hallways of an unfamiliar hospital. She had to find her before the Goblin King, or the social worker would take her away forever.

Lissy was dead. Lexie was dead. Meredith came back to life. She hadn't been crushed.

"She got totally crushed."

"She hung out with Grey, a lot. Maybe she had a crush."

"Dude, that's sick!"

Ms. Watts told her that her fingers were made for playing the piano. Mom said surgery was all muscle memory. Meredith could never make her finger muscles move correctly on the keyboard. What did that mean about her future as a surgeon? (She almost let Steven slam the wood down on them.)

"Sir? You shouldn't be in here."

"I was waiting for you, Dr. Death."

"That's not…Lixir?"

"No one's called me that in years. I knew seeing you would bring back memories. Maybe it'll give me the closure all those shrinks talk about. Did you ever get that? Did you ever learn to close your mouth?"

The door opened. Edwards called for Dr. Shepherd.

The door opened. Wilson called Dr. Shepherd.

Wilson and Edwards had stood in front of the window staring at Cristina. Meredith stayed with her on the OR floor, and Izzie on the bathroom floor, and her mother on the kitchen floor, and Sadie on the dance floor. (Alone on the trauma room floor). Whenever Alex said he attracted crazy, Meredith wanted to ask if he thought she made people that way.

"No one's worth giving up your dreams like that."

"I can't have new ones? Not everyone has to be Ellis Grey when they grow up!"

She ran over the brick sidewalk, following a trail of red. A man followed her. He opened her chest, and used her ribs as a knife (scalpel) to puncture her lungs. When he asked why she could watch while everyone else looked away, she said she was already a lemon.

"The redhead wearing our shirt. Get up on the stage, bitch! What's your name? Really? That name means luck, baby doll! Lucky Lissy, Lucky Lissy, Lucky Lissy!"

It hurts it hurts it hurts it-hurts it-hurts-it-hurts-it-Alex-it-hurts Alex, pain pain it hurts it don't touch me don't touch me don't stop stop no Maggie don't don't blue eyes Alex blue blue-green Jackson pain in Jackson's eyes pain what are you one what are two no no no no

Another girl ran, Meredith couldn't move. A man touched her boob. She landed on the hospital floor. Her ears were ringing squealing buzzing.

He tossed her away down the stairwell. Bailey was in a baby-carrier strapped against her chest. She knew that she was going to land on top of him, was ready to land and take on the consequences; she kept falling, falling, falling.

Shoes passed along the crack below her door. He'd held his heel over her hand before he walked away. It would've taken a second to end her career. She wouldn't have been able to scream. She couldn't imagine him holding that back. (He'd used the time he'd had too well.)

She and Sadie were crossing through Mt. Auburn Cemetery. It made her think of doing homework in the Central Burial Ground. "Death's everywhere in this city," she said. "Girl I went to shows with while you were gone died."

"Lucky her," Sadie said.

Meredith couldn't stop laughing.

The code started at almost the exact second the hands had closed around her neck. He hadn't done more, gone further because the patient had died. That was a debt she'd carry for the rest of her life.

He was holding her down; she needed to get away, needed to run. She couldn't run. No running. Three—She startled awake, and turned her head immediately. Derek smiled at her. Behind him, the sky shone a bright, safe blue.

"I can't do anything about it, Ma," Derek said, pinching the bridge of his nose. The fluorescents in the hallway were incredibly bright compared to the dimmers in Meredith's room. "It's news to someone, and it's not exactly untrue. We were having issues. Any kind of suit would be pointless. I asked the lawyer."

"They should have to tell you who's telling tales out of school," his mother insisted. He almost made the monumental error of laughing at her. Sure, he'd like to know who'd been quoted to as "a source close to the couple" in the article that'd referred to Meredith as "the estranged wife of the director of Obama's Brain Initiative with the NIH." That one made it sound like she had "encountered" O'Grady during "a stay at an airport hotel." That wasn't as bad as the one that'd called him a high-school flame.

"She's not going to read it any time soon. I'm monitoring her screen time closer than the kids.'"

"How much does she that?"

"Hates would be great, actually. Until that fiasco of an update, she…she was miserable, but consistently more engaged. The Versed hit her hard. It can cause agitation. I'm not sure if it was that, or if that was better…. Point is, she was far more sedate today. This afternoon, I swear I was going to ask for a new audiogram before PT came, and she did everything they told her to do."

"Well, didn't she have another procedure this morning?" his mother asked. He heard a car pass by in the background and let his head fall back against the wall. It was after ten o'clock in New York, and his seventy-seven year-old mother was still calling them while she walked home down dark alleys—"so someone knows where I am."—Mostly, it worried him. At the moment, it felt offensive.

"Just redoing the wires. She was in her room by ten."

He could still see how wide Meredith's eyes had gotten going into the hall, and he'd realized she hadn't left the room since her move from the ICU. "It's okay," he'd said into her good ear. "I'm going to be monitoring Magic Eyes."

She'd smiled. In the OR, she'd relaxed, long before anyone from anesthesia had been visible. "You would be more comfortable in here," he'd said. "Can't believe Wilson spilled the beans."

"When're you gonna tell?"

"I'd have found an opportunity." He'd winked at her, taking the last opportunity to hear her laugh for another month. Too soon, Dr. Nowicki had connected a syringe to her IV catheter. "I'll be there when you wake up, okay?"

She'd been almost asleep when she'd said, "You could go."

He hadn't been able to move until Nowicki's nurse needed him out of the way to intubate. He'd told himself she'd been out of it, but Meredith spoke decisively, even when she rambled. And whatever she'd been thinking, it'd been with her when she'd come around.

"I don't know, Mom," he said. "I just wonder…. Maybe I'd be doing more good in Bethesda."

"Derek Christopher Shepherd, don't give me that bullshit."

"What? That coming from the woman who always told us it was noble to serve our country?"

"I wanted someone else to pay for one of those five MDs! You cannot tell me that you'd respect yourself if you went back there."

"I didn't mean now. I just…. She was right. Her work is here; her family is here. Fifty-one successful surgeries in two months…one and three-quarters, taking out Christmas. The kids are happy, except when they want her."

"And you are tired and miserable."

"That's what happens when your wife—"

"You have been tired and miserable, smartass. More than I've everseen. You need to take a good, hard look at your life, figure out what not's working, and fix it."

He pressed the heal of his hand against his forehead. "It's not that simple."

"If that job is what you want, go do it. If you want your family, stay with them. I'm not telling you you'd have to do what her father did, God knows, but flying in and out whenever there's a disaster is not being a reliable husband or father. She needs more than the half-assing I did."

"You…You didn't…."

His mother sighed, and then he would've checked to see if they'd been disconnected if he hadn't heard the jingle of her keys. "Do you think that I couldn't hear you all washing Amelia's sheets in the middle of the night? That every time you and Liz should've been slamming doors and sulking with that guitar, you put a lid on it for me? Mark wasn't the only one who still had adolescent energy, but he'd had his chance to work through it. I suppose it's for the best that you and Addison didn't have children, but I was always afraid it was because you said you'd watch out for Amy, and I let you."

"Mom—"

"You were trying to fill in for your father, while Kate, Lizzy, and Nan tried to take up my slack. Thirty-six years later, you're still trying to parent each other, and to you that means not bothering anyone whenever you're going through something. That's not what siblings do, it's not what your father and I did, and I don't think it's what has worked best for you and your wives in the past."

"Ouch."

"Am I wrong? If you have a partner, you have to let her be part of your life. So let me tell you something else I thought you knew: what looks like the smart choice is not always the right choice."

"I.…Yeah."

"Give her my love, and send me more pictures of the kids. All of my other grandchildren are too old to show off."

"Sure thing, Mom."

Meredith is always the right choice. But I am an eed-yot.

He waited for the phone to beep before letting his head fall into his arms. There wasn't a reason to move right away. He'd been expecting Cristina since she'd responded WTF will call 2nite to the text he'd run by Mer. Her response—SHE'LL KNOW BY NOW—was disheartening, as true as it was.

Maybe he'd ask her for advice. She'd been there for Meredith in times he hadn't. He couldn't. They were making it work long-distance; they'd done it twice. They'd fought, too. Fine, they had a friendship, not a relationship. But it was the closest comparison putting aside the physical stuff. —"I'm not into Cristina" had been the immediate follow-up to "I'm bisexual," and his had reply been, "duh." Her eyes were different when she was attracted to someone; he didn't know how anyone missed it—It was a friendship that might have fallen apart if Cristina hadn't left. But why did he think that? Why didn't that feel true for them?

She and Cristina had been competing for the entirety of their friendship. Yang had been the envious one, in his opinion—"…if I'd ever given a crap about her, I wouldn't tell." "…I didn't give a crap about Lexie." "…that if Sadie had given a crap about me, she'd have been here…."—Professionally, they'd had a fairly normal level of cohort competition, until Cristina had left for the first months of her fellowship. Meredith had spent half of that year had been encouraging him, and the second pregnant. She'd struggled with research that was tied to her mother's; Cristina had been nominated for a Harper Avery.

When they'd had it out, Meredith had said she was angry enough to set things on fire, which sounded a lot like what she'd reported Richard had saying. "Not like healthy competition. A hateful, hopeless jealousy. too far ahead to catch up to." To Meredith, wanting to catch up had felt like wanting to unmake her choices, like her mother had, or like she'd thought her mother had. He'd known that. He'd broken his promise to support her. He'd told her to shine, and then been a storm cloud around her.

She'd accused him of looking at her and seeing the wide-eyed he saw was what she hadn't. Literally. Long before "Meredith Grey" was a name that meant anything to him, he'd skimmed the interns' files in one of his first department head meetings. She'd had only four letters of rec, but they'd been impressive.

"I have long considered Ellis Grey to be a snake. If there is any of that in her daughter, it is that her brilliance strikes when least expected. She is punctual both at arrival and dismissal, and not overly chatty, but when she is passionate, the change in her demeanor is marked; as though she is stepping out from behind a shadow…"

"Meredith has proven to be a fierce advocate for clinic patients and families. She frequently volunteers for skeleton shifts (holidays, weekends, etc.) and has admirable patience for patients have nowhere else to go. Multiple times she has made herself available on cases without being instructed to do so.…"

"If nothing is amiss, Ms. Grey knows to keep herself from becoming a hindrance, and in disaster, she quickly intuits how to help. She is always watching, and has impressed my team with her ability to 'do' after having 'seen' in stressful situations. A superior who has grown accustomed to overlooking either the 'impossible' or the 'obvious' should be prepared to be challenged!"

If anyone should've been unimpressed by her performance on her first code, it was him, but it would've been terrifying, regardless of her childhood experiences. It wasn't as though she'd managed some phenomenal bond with that girl, but by the end of her first shift, he'd known, she'd be the one to watch. As the year went on, she'd continued to prove it. The father with Parkinson's. Bonnie. Anna Chue. That she'd never said no to working with Addison. The firefighter who'd been considered PVS for two decades. Allison. God, Allison. She'd seen her case through to her discharge, taking shifts that weren't hers because of a pair of shoes—that one didn't even challenge her capacity for empathy.

Her mother's refrain had been, "you'll never make it through your internship." She'd only gotten better. Even in death, Ellis would never be silent for Meredith, but getting past that year turned her volume down. Internship was meant to flatten out the egos of med students who thought they knew everything. She'd known more than most in anything that could be memorized and was quick to learn hands-on; but if asked, she'd say she'd been treading water, and then drowned.

He begged to differ.

By the time he'd accepted interim chief, she'd been the stand-out. Winning that silly sparkle pager, coming up with a clinical trial, treating two of her best friends. He'd been sure she'd become an incredible neurosurgeon, and she'd impressed him more as a mom. She'd had to hit the ground running after the plane crash, and whatever she might say about her maternity leave, he'd say she hadn't stopped.

Forget fifty-one successes in a row; she'd been on a streak since the day they met