First, Do No Harm

by Chicleeblair

While Derek is at the NIH, an attack in the ER leaves Meredith with broken limbs, temporary deafness, and a wired jaw. She fears he feels obligated to be with her. He confronts the damage he's done to her. Is this a truce that will end before she can voice a protest, or will their skill at non-verbal conversation keep their marriage from shattering with the silence? CH6 FIXED!

8. Days Eighteen & Nineteen

"Avery isn't to the nurses' station, yet," Richard said, tugging the cord on the blinds. "You're not going to get away with playing opossum."

Why do you think you get to play Daddy? Meredith squinted until his shadow blocked the worst of the glare, the light blurring around his silhouette. Maggie and Jackson had both wanted to do incision checks, and with Thursday having been traumatic enough for everyone, she'd agreed to letting them shoot her up with Versed beforehand. The dose they'd used this time hadn't sent her down the rabbit hole—the universe must've believed she'd needed a refresher on why she hated hallucinogens. She hadn't.—It'd just turned her processor off. Kept her issues from absorbing the tension radiating off of the two of them. It wasn't difficult to read them as (potential) step-siblings.

Would Jackson be her half-step? Half-sister's step-brother, stepson to Richard, to whom Meredith was a daughter-of-convenience. Said patriarch of the hospital would've definitely heard that she'd:sent the rolling tray flying at Alex for startling her yesterday. He must've planned to be in and out in the twenty minutes it took the sedative to wear off. Spoilsport.

All right, so she didn't want to hurt Richard. Causing pain had never been her thing; whatever William freaking Dunn thought. Hell, it hadn't been years since saving Richard's life had her dragging her two-week-old around this place. Steak knife nurturing! Convincing an awake, rational person—Not her father! You have a daughter! Saying things made them true!—to let her put a tube in him—He was there! She'd been an intern, yes, but he'd offered to take over after she put a tube in—Hey, she'd given him plenty of—Grace at Seattle Grace, because of who her mother was. He hadn't even known what she'd been told to do, and would be asked to do again. But Ellis was dead, Adele was dead, and what did he want? For Meredith—"Do they know, Dr. Death?"—to be the one who'd Kevorkian him with her bare hands? She'd told Derek that she'd said that about Katie, and then, well, okay, obviously they weren'tactually connected, but…she'd coded. "Except, Kevorkian wasn't…all I'm getting is Burke and Hare; neither of them were doctors."—are you surprised I got that reference? Don't you know I was the kid who wrote history papers on resurrection men, and sometimes played gravedigger, when my classmates accepted only tunnels being dug to China—"Kevorkian wasn't killing unwitting people. You technically said you'd kill her if she asked."—She hadn't let her mother die, not at five, not decades later, but she was the woman Richard had expected to let him die while his wife—girlfriend?—partner?— pleaded with her not to?—"You were playing What You See is Not What You Get with your new colleagues. Saying, 'my humor is dark, adjust your expectations.'"—They wouldn't have gotten it if I'd said I'd Schraeder her. Do you know about Schraeder, Derek?—Who'd watch him starve?—Was I? Did they see Death? "And you were having to push a lot of history out of your mind to save an obnoxious teenage girl."—She paged me 911. You call 911 in an emergency. She'd called 911—"Do they know Dr. Death?"—Did he really think that after everything, Derek, and Thatcher, and Lexie, and Zola, and Bailey that she'd hardened that much?

Was that why he was here, to reassure her that she was only Ellis when someone wanted her to be, was mad, wasn't in their right mind, but she'dneverbe Ellis (outside of the OR where she was a chip, not a new block!), even if shewasn't in her right mind. It was that easy to get over how you were raised by the mother he'd left.

She just wanted to be left alone. She was a day out of having her jaw wired shut for the second time, and she'd had on freaking postpartum underwear for two days, because somehow all the meds and surgery and trauma hadn't affected her period. Everyone kept telling her not to blame herself for shit, but she'd been the one who kept putting off going to the gyno to discuss getting back on birth control. Not that she and Derek had talked about it. Not recently. Whatever, bleeding from her cu—Nope, can't do that, boss-teacher-Uncle- Richard-Dr. Webber—how did he avoid being called Dick? You'd think in a field that likes nicknaming that would've happened—va-jay-jay, pussy, "like a kitten," gross, gross, still gross—vagina—because I am a grown woman and can think like one— at the moment sucked, and if she wanted to pretend to sleep through it, she should be allowed to do so.

"He said your x-ray looks good. I heard him tell Maggie he may've overreacted, and she said to save the apology for you." She pointed at the box on the rolling tray next to an empty Ensure bottle and flicked the cap off her dry erase marker.

GUILT GIFT.

"APRIL" PICKED IT

Richard squinted at the text on the Magic Bullet box. For years, Meredith had thought that everyone was going on about a branded bullet vibrator, not an appliance. She had no idea how or why a blender advertised in TVGuide could evoke such excitement in people who weren't on a liquid diet. She'd appreciate it; downstairs was going through some sort of strawberry shortage, and Derek had made stocking the cooler Zola's job. Tasks like that kept Meredith real to her children, she'd never object to that. It was just.… Kids thrived on repetition, and orange (like Rawr, and Zoe Monster, and Gigi Giraffe) was (usually) Zola's favorite color. Being able to send him to a bodega for a carton would also help keep him from getting restive. Tasks like that kept him around. She wanted him around very much.

"Seems like Kepner's style," Richard said, sitting back. "But you don't think so."

NO FRILLY CARD

RNS SAY HE'S SLEPT HERE

NONE OF THOSE R FROM HER She gestured toward the flowers and cards on her window-sill.

"You think she doesn't know?"

THINK I SHLD GET DER 2

SEND HER A THNK U TXT

C WHAT SHE SAYS

Richard chuckled and then drummed his fingers against the wooden arms of the glider. "Shame if that's the case. Having to hurt you that day was difficult on him. She'd be the perfect person to turn to with that. He should know by now that her sensitivity has nothing to do with her strength."

Meredith closed her left hand. She'd taken to maneuvering the fox under it, where no one noticed her fingers digging her hand into its fur. April had been with her through her miscarriage; through the whole shooting. While everyone else supported April and Jackson through losing the baby…fetus…Samuel…she'd been wrapped up in herself.

"Saw Derek having breakfast with the kids. You miss them." It was a statement. A stupid, obvious statement. "But you're not letting him bring them up." Meredith waved her hand at her leg, and almost at her face, but then remembered Maggie flipping through the sign book she'd found in the hospital library.

Beautiful. Hardly.

Derek hadn't stopped looking at her like she was. She'd never wondered how with as many reasons as she'd had this week. She'd been able to see the bruise on his jaw when he'd held her after hearing the truth from a bloody mouth full of jagged metal. He loved her enough to love her like that. Shouldn't that bring some amount of certainty?

"I'm sure it won't surprise you that the Schraeder case has come up in a few reports. More, on the grapevines."

She'd known there'd be articles about this. It wouldn't be the first time; she'd let go of her hope of being un-Googleable until she received her first Harper Avery, but that…. She swallowed; her rushing pulse making her think the tinnitus had returned for long enough that sweat formed on her face.

Richard's eyes were somewhere else. Somewhen else. "I never heard your name attached to it. News didn't travel as fast in those days. I keep remembering all the times I carried you down the halls here." He wound his hand in the air by his temple. Meredith couldn't help empathizing. "You were a hit with patients. In peds, the big kids wanted to impress you, and the little kids wanted to be your friend. Grumpy Guses lit up at your ABCs. Staid old ladies taught you nursery rhymes. The only place that spooked you was the film room. You thought we kept skeletons in there. I spent an afternoon showing you what an x-ray did. We had two radiologists breaking the science down to answer your questions by the end of it."

She wasn't sure if she remembered that; only that she'd had an x-ray of her hand on the wall where she'd later see classmates' tiny hands imprinted in clay. They'd need permission slips for the tiny amount of radiation, but that could be a cool field-trip for Zola's class. (Was her hand going to feel bigger when Meredith could hold it instead of a stuffed fox?)

"Ellis thought I was coddling you, but she had to admit, I got better results than dragging you in telling you not to be scared.

"She...we exposed you to more than Dr. Spock would've approved of, certainly, but she didn't let you wander. I'm not saying you were always well-supervised, especially off the floor. She'd give you a coloring book, put you in the cafeteria for hours, and pay the janitor to check in on you. There, you'd only take off if you spotted her. Up here, she was the only one you couldn't slip away from. That's true!" he added.

Oops. She straightened her eyebrows out.

"She'd tell you how far away you could go—at first using tile colors, later adding dimensions. Once, she parked you at the nurses station, and you said, 'I want my eye on you. No more than twenty squares past the blue line..' She laughed so hard at that. And she listened. She had round on the couple patients she had down the north hall. Said if you never felt in charge, you'd never learn how to be.

"But you were curious as an immortal cat. If you were given Imprecise directions, got bored, saw a balloon or another kid…. You could sneak away from nurses, and have interns chasing their tails. If Ellis didn't catch you sliding out of your chair in the first place, she'd stand wherever you'd last been seen, sigh, and then pull you out from under a desk, or out of a patient's room. I remember a particular resident running ragged thinking he'd lost Ellis Grey's girl for good this time. Ellis walked past the nearest supply closet, went into the next one, walked around a shelf, and there you were."

How high up? The third was her castle, but below that was a pirate ship, and above that—

"You were being a dog-sledder saving Alaskan children from diphtheria," he added. Meredith's jaw tightened reflexively. Did Mom listen to her in the car, then, the way she listened to Zola and Bay? "She wanted you to be comfortable with what people are made of," he said. "Made a good argument about how disgust in the face of natural functions may have served humanity when medicine wasn't available, but in a time where infection could be treated and bowels repaired, it held us back."

Meredith could understand that. Her kids had seen surgeries, mostly from her parents' laps, not the chair beside them. They used proper names for body parts, and make up stories about watermelon seeds or gum. Zola loved collecting "doctor words," and they thought their openness was why she'd potty-trained before two—Having Derek home might get Bailey interested. They could be a diaper free family. Shouldn't that be a more appealing thought?—Zola knew people died. She didn't know what death looked. Meredith had, long before she was investigating new vantage points at MGH.

"You have more right to curate what your kids experience than Jackson does for shielding April, and I understand why you're taking care. But there is a fine line between protecting and sheltering."

If this has been a matter of visiting another of their adults in the wake of an accident, she'd have brought them up earlier. She would have. She could have whisked them out at the sign of trouble, and helped Zola understand that grown-ups could be scared without making her feel unsafe. It would be a good lesson. But she wasn't a friend. She was their mom. She couldn't be their mom if she was freaking out. If she mistook the shadows cast by memory for reality, her desire to protect them might make her the danger.

U REMEMBER THE CAROUSEL

Unlike many other times they'd had similar discussions, he kept his eyes on her. "I do."

I GOT OFF & MOM WAS GONE

1ST TIME SHE LET ME WANDER?

"It might have been."

She hadn't expected that. She'd wanted him to argue; to say that event hadn't been as pivotal as she thought, so she could tell him that seeing her mother display sorrow had been like having Anatomy Jane come to life; something that broke the rules of her universe.

"Knowing...Knowing as much of the story as I do…. I didn't see how overwhelmed she was. I can imagine her thinking...if it was a conscious thing...thinking that she had to be sure—If she was going to be alone with you….She had to be sure that if she wasn't watching, you'd know how to find her. She'd taught you what to do, just like…. Well, just like she'd taught you what to do in an emergency."

Proof of concept? Or did it give her the idea?

"She answered a lot of your questions, Meredith, but she didn't explain very much. You treat your kids like pepole. Showing them the world on their level makes them prepared to understand far more than they would otherwise."

The door opened before she could figure out how she wanted to respond. Derek was alight with the after-buzz of interacting with BeeZ.. He spoke to Richard for a moment, something about Herman and Arizona, but they were too far on the left for her to make out what.

The glider squeaked as Derek collapsed onto it. He had a tuft of hair sticking up, exactly the width of Bailey's hand. "What are you smiling at?" he asked, tracing her lips gently with the pad of his thumb and then kissing her.

She ran her fingers over the spiky spot, tugging so he'd feel the clumping. "Oh, man, Bails!" He slumped in the chair. He reacted more strongly than he had to the bruise, now hidden under stubble. She loved him for it. "I let him feed himself eggs. Yeah, yeah, amateur hour gets the dimples." His eyes gave away more complicated thoughts than he'd had on Monday, too. He truly had been more excited about her hearing, and concerned about her freak out, than pained.

They'd been as unintentional. As uncontrolled. For much of her life, anger had come from her unbridled, made her feel like a whirlwind, a firestorm. It'd taken over her body, and wrested control of her voice. She'd done serious damage to friendships and relationships, and then turned the destructiveness inward, until she started letting people draw her out.

Derek kept making a show of prodding at his hair. She reached over, grabbing his wrist and letting her hand slide into his. "Hey. You okay?"

She shrugged. The model of brain dominance had been one of many ways Meredith understood the differences between her and her mother. Not on the pop-science level of handedness, but the differences that could be mapped on functional MRIs. Ellis's analytic, left-brained nature had been toggled all the way up. It'd been like she could access the contralateral hemisphere's visual and spatial functions, and otherwise behave like someone who'd had their brain bifurcated, in the way of early neurosurgery—the kind that Nelson, the Shadow Shepherd liked to brag about his father having done—She'd hidden a significant amount of her inner life to do it, but Meredith had been oblivious to that for decades. Every behavior Ellis had chastised her for was associated with the right hemisphere: making faces, swearing, singing, dancing, making decisions based on intuition—whims—even her lapses into silence.

If pushed, Meredith wasn't sure that she would've said anger was an emotion. How could it be, if her right-brained, detached mother defaulted to it? Angry—pissed off—had become one of Ellis's defining traits; it'd only been recently that Meredith had started to consider how that had happened. Regardless of Meredith's experience, she couldn't have been inanimate. Losing Richard had devastated her. She'd been overwhelmed; maybe tried to truly hollow herself out once Maggie was in the world, to become emotionless, but been left with the anger. A twisted telling of Pandora's box.

Her fury had been more than controlled before the Alzheimer's. It'd been control. Meredith hadn't seen true representation of it until she and Callie took the girls to see Frozen. It'd taken a lot not to spend the two hours in hysterics—Elsa with her carefully aimed icicles. She might've experienced passion as heat, Meredith couldn't know. By the time it'd transformed into fury, it'd been icicles that she could aim perfectly. Maybe the crying months had drained the heat.

That Meredith would fall into the traps her mother had and give up everything but cold anger was a worry that had been sitting on her breastbone since she'd railed at Derek, barely holding back enough to avoid torching her marriage. She'd been pretty freaking irritated fifteen minutes ago. At Richard. Was she on the same damn carousel as her mother, but riding a different animal? Was the fond warmth toward Derek the anomaly, not the fiery madness?

She didn't think so. She and Derek had both been part of the fighting. and the atmosphere during a truce felt truer. She hoped his understanding of her body language and expressions would be enough to tell him that, but if she tried to explain with a white board and a few signs he could easily jump to the wrong conclusions, or she'd prove her point: Expressive language was primarily a function of Broca's region (Brodmann 44, 45 and 6) in the left prefrontal cortex.

Derek wasn't sure there was ever a good time to cross paths with Nelson, but on the way to spend a Sunday night with Meredith definitely wasn't one. He'd taken the kids to Karev's for the night, since Sofia was there with Robbins, and Amelia had her second lecture in the morning. Then, he'd ended up staying to help get three kids to sleep in the extra room. With Wilson on-call, they had one adult per child, and three under five was still a lot. It had been fun, though, and it gave him a good story to tell Meredith. They'd keep her smiling, until she thought he wasn't looking, and her guilt about not being with them would mirror his over not being with her.

He hated that he preferred guilt to the blankness. That even fear was better. He understood why she was afraid of panicking in front of the kids. He'd watched her talk about both of Ellis's hospitalizations, and the confused little girl took over. He just didn't think it was something she needed to expect. He'd been talking to them about accidents being scary, and that pain could make anyone very upset. He had a video of one of those talks on his phone, and he hoped that it might convince her that they'd be okay. If it didn't, he'd try something else. Once he figured it out, maybe he'd feel more deserving. He wasn't sure why it'd hit him this morning, but there'd been something about her smile this morning. The sunlight in her eyes while she teased him silently about the egg in his hair.

She wanted him there. She loved him. After all of it. It was incredible. Miraculoius.

That he loved her had never been in question. It was a law of the universe. He couldn't make her believe that, either.. He could only keep his promises; share their children with her; never make her feel like there was anything wrong with how she was dealing with this—any layer of it.

The sky was dark by the time he stepped onto the bridge. When the excessively jovial voice called, "Shepherd! Haven't seen your around lately," he stiffened. He was halfway across; if he just started running—A hand slapped his back.

(In the parking lot, years ago, about this same time of night, he'd heard the same voice. Meredith ducked into the passenger seat. "You just left me with a small talker." he'd accused, texting Lexie to get her to phone in the house's takeout order.

"Small talk for small minds."

"Is that an Ellis-ism?"

"Yes. I hate him."

He'd almost dropped his phone. "Did something happen?" They'd been in the period immediately after he'd ended his interim as chief, and the dam she'd built in front of all her observations and gossip was coming down.

"Does something have to have happened?"

"People irritate you. Frustrate you. Cause a deep-seeded irritation that radiates from your pores, but hate—?"

"So, when I tell you, I hate him, believe me!"

"I do. You say you hate me, or Alex, or an intern, all the time. You don't say it like that." The thought that her feelings might've been being influenced by the fertility medication had been batted out of the front of his mind by Addison, even without having spoken to her since he'd confirmed he'd survived being shot. Testosterone is a hormone! Does that make anything you say less true? "Why do you hate the Sha—Nelson?")

He'd understood being irked by the guy, and not all that much that she'd said had been new information, but getting her version had made him feel oblivious, at best. Now, her answer came back to him with every sentence that came out of the man's mouth.

"How's the wife? Couldn't believe when I heard. Karen and I were in Hawai'i. You ever been?"

("You're...not wrong. I try not to hate people. It's hard to let go of, and people can change in surprising ways. But he…. All of this is gonna sound like a personality conflict, or me being judgy in the background like always. He seems innocuous on the surface, but below that, he's an arrogant white man who doesn't give a shit and doesn't care who knows it.")

"Uh, no. Meredith is making progress. Still showing symptoms from the concussion, but nothing serious on the results once they brought in portable CT."

Nelson didn't blink. Derek wondered if he had a clue what he'd done. As significant as the detective's revelations had been, the change in her mood had started Monday. He hadn't manged to confront anyone about it; staying with her had been more important at the time, and Amelia would've just felt guilty. He'd definitely bring it up at the next board meeting. He needed to pull files; he'd be floored if there weren't other examples of him ordering textbook diagnostics or treatment plans without considering a patient's history or situation.

"Great, great. When Karen was going through chemo, she was always kicking me out of her room. She had her crafts, and visiting hours were visiting hours in those days. Wasn't a week on the beach, though, no sir. You really should consider it. Beauty everywhere you look, and the scenery isn't bad either. Heh-heh! Crystal waters, resorts have all the amenities you could want. Locals are welcoming. Of course they are, they're getting rich off of our money, am I right?"

("He acts nice, but he's not kind. He doesn't stick around to hear patients' stories, or if he does, he'll counter with something from his life, and it's not…. I'm not saying he's never been through anything, but… I rarely Alzheimer's-drop, because a patient's situation isn't about me. If I mention it, it's to…. He's not making anyone feel less alone. And he has this way of being, like…'the Good Lord will provide, billing will be down to speak to you; that's not my problem!' You know the ones who are always saying, 'would they rather be dead?")

"That's where your boss is supposed to be from, isn't it?"

"Hm? I think Owen grew up in Seattle. His mom lives here, she—"

"Aw, nah, humble Shepherd, your new boss! Bar-rack." Six years into the presidency, and he still pronounced the president's name like he would've said I-raq, or Derek's grandmother said I-talians, like the Catholic family on the next block with a brood of dark-haired kids was nothing like them. "Tell me, are his ears that big in real life?"

"Not that I noticed." The one time Derek had been introduced to Obama, he'd discovered that the dossier really had ended up on his desk—"Ah, Dr. Shepherd. The one with the cute kids"—He should've gotten over himself enough that arranging for Meredith and the kids to come out wouldn't have felt like bragging. It would've been worth it to have the picture for Bailey, and Zola would hopefully remember. Now, he'd suspected he'd end up hoping that she wouldn't recall the time Daddy worked for the president.

Nelson held up his hands, and he recalled Amelia saying that they got more use golfing than operating. "I'm not a racist man, Lord knows. You did a noble thing taking in that girl of yours, and I did my job for Webber, the same way I do it for Dr. Hunt."

("He doesn't respect Richard. It's all lip service. He made it obvious, but he does it sideways. 'Your husband has the right qualities for the job.' 'The stress of being an example like that would get to anyone!' Oh, and my favorite, 'I hope Dr. Miranda doesn't lose heart, that's the second since she got here!'

"I said, 'the second what, sir?' All sweet and naive, like he thinks a girl—excuse him, a lady, a woman—should be.

"'Well, uh, friend of hers that's, uh…let nerves get to 'em. Goes to show. Burke turned out to be as shaky as his hand! Now, Yang can take the pressure. I'm sure she's been under it her whole life. I can speak to some of it, as the firstborn of a neurosurgeon, but my mother wasn't the tiger, heh-heh-heh. I'm sure I'm as clueless about the cultural side as I am about the menu at Toshi's!' Then he looks at me, like I should be proud that he knows Seattle-style teriyaki is Korean. I'm dying to have an excuse to show him a picture of her movie-producer stepdad's house. Her mom would've been happier if she'd been a PA and married Brad Pitt.")

"I'm not all that political, either, but I can say, Ben Carson had me with his National Prayer Breakfast speech. He's one of us, you know. A neurosurgeon."

Yeah, he was, and personally, Derek wished he'd stayed in that lane.

"Too bad Clarence Thomas is appointed to the bench for life; I could tolerate him. I remember when he was being confirmed, I said to my wife, 'Sure am glad the ladies I work with aren't squealing on me,' and you know what she said? 'You'd like to make 'em squeal!' Heh-heh-heh! She knows who she married. You get it, you like a pretty one over your shoulder, don't you?"

"Uh, I'm more concerned with skill in my students."

"It's no bad thing when they're eager to take over for you. I'm an old dog, not doing so many new tricks. My wife would give me hell if I started holing up here at all hours researching. Not that she doesn't do it, anyway. Wouldn't mind having her jaw all wired up for a little while."

("I dreaded everything that came out of his mouth. He let me do all these procedures that I didn't expect; that you wouldn't let me do yet, and it felt messed up. Way more like bribery, or whatever you call the bullshit Richard pulled on me.")

"You haven't made up for losing us that one beauty. The flower? What was her name? Lily?"

"Rose."

"Mm, a rose by any other name, heh! I bet she scrubbed up very nicely. Sorry if that's offensive. Like I said, old dog. Old horn dog. I'm harmless. Just like to look. We can't all pick one or two to take home! God rest her sister's soul. IDidn't mind seeing her walk the halls. Even in scrubs, you could see why Sloan took a break from his other lady friends!"

("He's not the only one who prays before he cuts, but he isn't…. You know H.R. arranged for Shari not to scrub in with him? He's never said anything, but if she doesn't look down, he'll stare at her like he thinks she personally killed Jesus. He doesn't do it to Cristina. She told him she was bat mitzvahed, and it was like he just couldn't store that information. How can she be two things?")

"Seeing my name back up on the board was a bummer, but like the old lady says, every craniotomy is one step closer to aloha, Seattle! I told your little sister, you couldn't pay me enough to do what she's doing. I've crossed some lines in my day, but never the midline! Heh-heh-heh! You've smart bringing her in to take over; not going to outshine you if she's doing it in your name."

"I wouldn't…."

"Can't blame you for not wanting to have to compete with your wife, especially not with the way she stepped out of line. She could be doing worse than the shit squad, excuse my language."

"She chose—She's doing fantastic work. She hasn't had a loss since November."

"It's easy enough if you're only doing appys. Always something to excise or graft down there. We're not just taking out lobes. Not these days, anyway."

He wanted to keep coming to Meredith's defense. He'd spent more time than he cared to admit messing with her model leiomyosarcoma; it was incredible in itself, and it was a brilliant way of using the tools on hand to do something new.

She'd tell him not to waste his breath.

"I'm not saying anything, you understand. Someone like her can only add fresh blood to that department. If you don't look out she'll be running it, soon. She's a pistol." He mimed a gun. He looked nothing like Gary Clark, but the location and maybe the sheer tastelessness of the joke made Derek cringe. Nelson didn't notice. "What'd she do to that poor bastard, not ask him to the Sadie Hawkins Dance?"

Poor bastard. Poor bastard? God, until this week it'd been years since Derek had truly wanted to deck someone. Imagining Meredith's face when her cast had connected with his jaw only made it worse. He'd only be making things worse. He was the only one she didn't flinch away from. He couldn't take the risk. "All due respect, Dr. Nelson, what happened isn't something I'm comfortable with anyone joking about."

"Of course, of course. Just being a nosy Nelly. I missed the excitement, heh-heh-heh. Always causing a stir here, that wife of yours. With her history, I'd have thought you'd keep her close."

"I don't follow."

("Whenever he references women and blood, always followed by that fucking 'heh-heh-heh,' I can call him out, because I'm the daughter of a legend, and former Interim Chief's wife, and the sort-of disgraced former Chief's pet. I know what he said when I was your promiscuous little tart, but that's not news. What I hate, what I despise, is that I can't say anything.")

"I try not to get caught up in the drama that goes on here. I do my job; I go home, have a beer, watch a game. You couldn't help but hear that the intern who'd been involved with the new boss was heading across the street to that dive bar. Never liked the place myself, especially once the management changed, if you know what I mean."

"You mean Joe? He's a good guy. He and his husband bring their kids to our July Fifth parties."

("We had an MVA who told us she was bisexual after she'd mentioned her wife, and picking her kid up from his dad's and at least one intern looked like she'd asked him to do Calculus. As soon as we got her under, Nelson says, 'I wonder if she was looking both ways when it happened? Is that not P.C.? Sorry, heh-heh-heh. The good Lord makes all kinds, I suppose.' It's obvious he wishes that the only time he had to deal with dykes and fairies it was to lobotomize us like his father, Terrance Nelson Sr., would've.. Of course, he'd never say 'dyke.' That could make a complaint stick.")

"Sure, sure. Not for me to say what happens to anyone in the next life. Just might have a little more elbow room!" He flapped his arms, like Bails imitating a chicken. Derek switched tactics, giving him the raised eyebrow he'd been getting from Meredith all week. Nelson dropped one of them and brought the other up to make it look like he'd been checking his watch. "Welp, I should let you get back to the little woman. We'll be keeping your family in our prayers."

"Don't go out of your way." Derek continued along the bridge, wishing see the expression on the other man's face without actually looking back.

(They'd reached the Italian place by the time she'd started detailing her most recent interaction with Nelson, and he'd watched her pull her Converse up on the seat in the light of their neon sign, only able to see her face in the reflection on the window.

"It shouldn't be that big of a deal. Or, it should. I shouldn't put up with anything he says. The other day, I was on Arizona's service. She got paged. Let me close. I was focused on making sure this little girl didn't have a scar to deal with on top of the brain injury, but you can't be near the Trio without hearing someone speculate on if they're a Triad, or if Mark will really stick around. I'm used to tuning in and shutting it down for Lexie's sake—and because it's no one's business. They always look at me like trying to get knocked up means I should expect my sister to want a baby, any baby. A woman! Making a choice! They can't do that! Especially Torres, heh-heh-heh. That's what I expected.

"But what he was saying was 'Seemed like Dr. Robbins knew her options, taking the Preminger Grant, but if she couldn't keep her head down and do the work, maybe it's for the best. That's not the calling for someone who can't blend in with the culture.'—like there are no queer people in Malawi.

"He implied that Arizona seduced Callie after George 'turned her over' for a model, and...and…I didn't say anything! I didn't defend Iz…Callie, or Arizona. I just kept making stitches. I didn't want the lamp to swivel. I didn't want the scrub nurses to carry it to the next OR. I didn't want him to think of me differently. To sully your reputation. I might need him to recommend me for fellowships. I hate thinking that way. My mother might've alienated everyone in her personal life, but she prided herself on keeping her mouth shut while 'prattlers listened to themselves speak.' We used to fight about whether she was doing harm, and I think she was. That I am. That I…I will."

Suddenly, it'd been as if they were standing at an OR table with their hypothetical child in front of them, and she was terrified of making the next cut. He used to berate himself for looking for every excuse to guide her hand. In that moment, he'd reached for it over the console.

"I'm not sentimental, but…if that girl came in for a follow-up wearing a Pride pin, he'd turn to her parents and say something like 'don't blame me, I didn't touch the temporal lobe!' Imagine discovering that the man who saved your life doesn't approve of it. He's praying for you! I'd out myself in a second. I should've done it to support Callie, instead of telling her in secret. It's not like I'd never imagined having my mom berate me for sullying her reputation, and she sure as hell wasn't religious. I've been in more churches in my adult life than she had."

"Oh?"

"Study abroad. Cathedrals. And...for a while, I wanted to believe in something. It didn't click."

"You believe in medicine. Nelson's no better than the cynical surgeons who don't engage with their patients because they've seen too many of the awful things people can do to each other. Maybe he has. Being self-involved, judgmental, and lazy lets him avoid responsibility. That's not you."

She'd scoffed. "The worst part is that I've done everything but tie Alex up and dump him in the basement restroom to get in on a craniotomy, and then having him as the attending on my shift made me avoid getting assigned to neuro.")

Derek had tried to get rid of the guy. He'd already been mentally drafting the report on his way into Noni Estella's. He'd submitted it; he'd followed through, but they'd been stuck with an H.R. department that read every report with a word-bank in mind. Derek's determination to sideline him had only improved him on paper, giving him higher survival rates, and a reputation for taking on patients who came in for relatively minor procedures. They'd needed someone reliable on the service to make up for Derek's wrist—baby, research, promise, quitting—Cristina had dubbed him the Useful Cockroach. By the time the board turned over, and they'd brought in the Foundation's H.R., Meredith had switched services. He'd let the matter slide off of the burner entirely, and she'd been the one affected.

Wilson was pacing outside of Meredith's room. At the sound of his footsteps, she stopped, sagging in relief. Taking out his annoyance on her wasn't fair, he knew, but his "Can I help you?" came out shorter than he intended. "No—shit—Sorry, Wilson. I just ran into the Co—Nelson."

"Ew. I'm sorry," Wilson stepped back and stopped shuffling. "I mean…he's an attending, and—"

"He shouldn't be." He should've tried harder, for the sake of their patients, the hospital they wanted to be running, and Meredith. "What's up?"

She waved the book in her hand. "She's asleep, but earlier she said she wanted the chance to finish something, and you're an iPad despot."

"She did?" He'd added five minutes to the timer this morning. She'd gone through the pictures of the kids, and then watched a video from one of the surgical channels she followed on YouTube. She'd been receptive to ASL Hangman for the first time in days, pityingly drawing a lab coat, stethoscope, and a head mirror on his stick-figure as he guessed.

She'd gotten quiet, a state so different from silent, again when he'd held up the jigsaw puzzle Maggie had brought—"one of my favorites!"—He thought he might be pushing his luck by bringing out the speakers he'd brought for her phone, since headphones were going to be verboten for a while, but she'd lit up, tapping rhythms out on his hand, and making the face that meant she wanted to go on a spiel that couldn't be summarized in a handful of words.

He'd opened an e-mail from Liz, and when he'd turned back to summarize it for Meredith, she'd been gone. There, still moving her fingers to the opening beat of the Alanis Morrisette song. It'd only taken saying her name to draw her into the present, but she wouldn't let him guess what she'd been thinking about. To get him to stop asking, she'd written RICHARD. MOM. KITTEN on her board, relishing in his shudder. He'd once made the mistake of telling her she'd purred, and when she'd completely lost it, he'd asked why. He'd regretted it. Later, he'd insisted that he needed a feline-related word for her. She'd provided the Italian word for kitten—"Actually, it's closer to pussy cat," she'd admitted. "Perfect right?"—He didn't regret that.

"Thanks, la micina,"

NICE NOT 2 SUFFER ALONE

I wish you didn't have to. He'd held back from saying it, but it must've occurred to her. The mischievous smile hadn't lasted, and he'd had to go take the BeeZ off of Amelia's hands.

"Tried to get me to override the parental controls this afternoon," Miranda commented from the nearest terminal. "I'm surprised she hasn't gotten the passcode out of that one."

"Hey!" Wilson objected. "Why me?"

Derek held up the book. "This. She's your boss, and you've only gotten more susceptible to the stare. She can get frustrated enough to shake the thing like an Etch-a-Sketch, I'm calling it a win as long it's not being flung at a wall,." He'd considered leaving the thing unlocked but out of reach, letting photos appear in the Camera Roll as he took them. He hadn't been sure she could tolerate it; whether it strained her eyes or not.

"She does that, you run, because she'll be Etch-a-Shaking you next," Miranda advised. Thin lines appeared on either side of Wilson's mouth. "She's a volatile woman. We're not denying her that."

"There's a difference," he put in. "Between the rough-housing Meredith and Alex do because neither of them are great at emotional regulation, and hurting someone unprovoked. If anyone needs that kept in mind right now, it's her."

"Yeah, that's fair."

"Besides, it won't go that far," Miranda insisted. "She'll have that passcode before she's up to it."

"How much are you willing to put on that?" he asked.

"How long are you keeping her on a time limit?"

"Can't she just watch someone put it in?" Wilson cut in.

Miranda got sucked back into the screen in front of her. So, Karev must not have told Jo about seeing Mer get the pharmacy code. He couldn't judge. Maybe, Karev didn't want her to think of him as a snitch. Publicly blurting out what he'd seen had been the bottom of a backslide for Alex, and he'd made it up to her by making sure Zola got home—Maybe that was why he hadn't told Wilson any of it; the morale of the story was that he was upstanding to a fault.

Derek had thought that's what he was; ignoring calls from his wife who'd occasionally still had nightmares about his car wrapping around a tree; missing his daughter's first night home; almost costing them endless nights—all for what? The rules? His job? He'd told her it was for her, but what good was ensuring the future if he ruined the present? Hadn't that been what he believed after the plane crash?

"I guess you're not unlocking it in her sightline," Wilson answered herself. "Just sometimes, I'd swear she can see a full three-sixty. Like an owl."

Miranda snickered. "She has ways, and enough time on her hands to start putting in a hundred thousand possible combinations."

"Apple got there first. It gives you five attempts before it starts locking for minutes at a time." He held his hand up and ticked off: "Zola's birthday, her adoption day, Bailey's birthday, mine, our anniversary."

"What do you even count as your damn anniversary?"

"Exactly. She'll have it locked for days before guessing her birthday."

"Sometimes it's like you do know her."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Brought the kids up yet?"

"She keeps telling me not to."

"Uh. Respectfully, Dr. Shepherd, I think you should stop listening," Wilson interjected. "It's just…I talked to Alex about this. They're only going to get more confused and shy the longer they don't see her. Three weeks is a long time for an eighteen-month-old."

"Twenty."

"Derek," Miranda said, her tone scarily similar to his mother. "She can't do anything in there. You could use your phone while you were one-handed, and plenty more than that. She's eating mush, listening to us blather on about nothing, and reliving every horrible thing that's ever happened to her in a mind that's tad overactive at the best of times. Meanwhile, you've got the kids taken care of, and she's providing milk for a bottle my sweet Bailey doesn't actually need."

"Tell him that."

"You tell her about the biting?"

"No."

"You haven't?" Wilson demanded. "Does she know you've had any issues with them?"

"She knows Zola thought she was in D.C."

"That's it?"

"I haven't had major issues. A few bad nights, a lot of asking for Mommy—ow!"

Miranda had left her work to slap him with the back of her hand. "Stupid. Did she tell you about the month of teething?"

"Obviously. We talked about his—"

"The day Zola decided Sofia hated her drawing? When Bailey stepped on her Toothless figurine?"

"Oh," Wilson exclaimed. "That day Zola colored both their nails with neon sharpie?"

"Zola told me about most of it, but yes. I told her Mark and I didn't always like the same things, and uh, what Dad said when I broke Nancy's Viewmaster—"

"Her what?"

"Oh, no," he said, holding a finger up at Jo. "My niece is your age, and she had one of those. Google it," he added in defense against the expression that said she was about to play the I Lived in My Car card. Probably not P.C., Shepherd. But hadn't those tings had been cheap? The kind of toys that were purchased for kids you didn't know well. Birthday parties. Charity donations. Okay, that was Meredith-level deflection. "So, I tell her about the peanut butter hair? And the tantrums? When she's still weeks from being home with them?"

"Yes! You make her feel necessary." Miranda slapped the back of her hand against the other palm in time with the each syllable.

"She's essential! All I'm doing is keeping something close to their routine going!"

"She's...I don't think she's feeling that." Wilson said. "The PO… The piece of shit found her by coincidence, but to her? It's her fault. His anger is her fault. His sister? Her fault. I'd...If it was me, I'd probably think it was my fault that he couldn't get past it."

Miranda was eyeing the resident again, probably coming to the conclusions he had. "She went from showing us all up in the OR, and raising two smart, good babies to being more helpless than the little one. She was supporting your dream, while only living half of hers, and this sure as heck isn't why she wanted you to come home."

"I came home—"

"Because to you, that's what family does. For her, it's what family has to do. And that shouldn't be your reason for sticking around."

The image of a pair of flats in a property bag came to him again, along with his assertion that his sisters would be there if something happened to him—if he'd let them—and his assumption that her mom would send in specialists from Peru. She probably would have, had she been lucid, but she wouldn't have stayed by Meredith's bedside if anyone else could do the job. That wasn't Ellis Grey's nature. This was his. Meredith might still see a truce, and he didn't know—

"You have got to talk to your wife." Miranda interrupted his thoughts. "I don't care if she can't talk back. Talkative as she gets; some days all I can get from her is 'yes,' 'no,' and that look that says I'm her superior, but otherwise she'd be telling me to go to Hell. You want her to get better? Treat her like she is. You feel bad for the past six months? Good. Tell her that."

"I-I want to. I do. Just, she's letting me take care of her. Reminding her of all that…."

"She remembers," Wilson out in. "But she missed you anyway, sir."

He wasn't currently her boss, so he waited for Miranda to chastise her. She didn't, and in the interim he heard the muffled sound through the door: Meredith trying to scream through the wires. He plowed inside. She was flailing, asleep, not conscious of her injuries. Pinning her arm without hurting her and avoiding being kicked by the leg was instinct at this point. Monday hadn't been anyone's fault, but letting it happen again would set her back too far.

"Meredith, you're safe. Let me see your eyes, sweetheart. I'm with you." A refrain based on what she'd needed to hear in the past. What did he need to add for the future? You're needed. You're wanted. You're everything. I know what happened to you. The last thought made him cringe, made him want to run as he pulled her closer. He hated thinking about how she'd looked when he'd said that. It was only more selfish to think that her injuries were a logical progression; they forced him to relive the same time he'd made her revisit.

The way she looked at him now was equally bad. Sheer relief. Her whole body relaxed, except for the lines around her mouth. Discretely he pushed the call button. She'd slept past the three-hour mark from her last dose of pain meds, and while she wasn't taking them around the clock, he could see she needed them. He could see she was in pain. He always could. There'd been times he couldn't do anything about it. Times where he hadn't.

"Felicia?" he asked, stroking her forehead. She looked at him for so long that he wasn't sure she'd heard. Then she held her hand up, letting it rock in the air. Sort of. "This…This has brought up a lot, hasn't it?" He sat on the bed, easing her leg back onto the pillow. He hadn't told her about his failed investigation. It felt like more of a betrayal then it would've been if it'd prepared him for the truth of what bad happened. "I dreamed about Clark a lot after the woods, remember?"

Slowly, she nodded. Her eyes held wisps of suspicion, like she wanted to understand what he was saying but couldn't let herself.

"But when I was shot, it was all variations on that. Never my dad. Never…. Never pulling you out of the water. Dreams are weird like that. Brains are. You're a web-spinner when you're not stuck here like this. It's going to be worse here. It would be for anyone.

"I love you, Mer. That's not going to change based on stuff that happened before we met, no matter what you think they say about you." He noticed the fingers of her left hand moving; grabbing the stuffed fox instead of biting her lip. She was considering it.

Adrianna came in with medication that didn't take away the pain that'd drawn Meredith out of sleep—he wasn't sure he could truly say it'd woken her from her nightmare.