Dr. Wyatt took the chair to Meredith's left, by the interior window. That almost never happened. Maggie needed to see her hand-shapes. Her hearing was better on the right side. Alex didn't want to jostle her leg. Up to that weekend, her fingers on that side had been too swollen and painful for Derek to hold her hand. Lots of reasons, and all of them meant she was either listening for footsteps or jumping at knocks on the door. She couldn't say that. It was silly. He was locked up in Boston. She didn't expect him. She didn't know what to expect.

She had pointed out that the last thing she needed to worry about was her circadian rhythm, and they'd stopped closing the blinds at night. They'd at least stopped closing the blinds at night. Whenever she was awake, she could watch something, regardless of darkness, blue light, or mood.

THEY THE FISH OR US?

"I imagine it's a matter of perspective. They're in public, which usually makes people behave as if they're being watched. But, being where we are I'd say it's most likely to be us, sitting here to be glanced at while they go about their business."

Meredith didn't reply to that. Being seen in public hadn't gone well for her recently, and she didn't like the reminder that her hospital wasn't really hers at all.

"You prefer puzzling out other people's problems than considering your own, would you say that's true?"

Meredith rolled her eyes. Wyatt knew it was.

"You're good at reading people, but communicating with them is part of knowing what's going on. I'm sure it's easier, now."

She raised a shoulder. This felt like a trap. Too bad Derek wouldn't come interrupt. He was at Amelia's lecture. Also, he'd probably sent the shrink. Not that she could blame him.

"You understand the neuroscience as well as I do, if not better, but let's go over it for the sake of communication. While a person is going through something traumatic, the limbic lobe is activated, igniting the stress response, particularly in the amygdala. You experience terror; the fight or flight response is initiated. And in a situation where it's successful, and the danger is avoided, homeostasis can be regained quite easily. If it cannot—if you cannot escape—the response keeps firing. The visual cortex is aroused."

Brodmann 19. Meredith wanted to close her hand around the ridiculous fox to remind her brain that that had happened, it wasn't happening. But, being on her left, Wyatt might be able to tell if her fingers had moved under the blanket. Instead, she closed the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, sliding them against each other in one of the ways Maggie had shown her to sign the number. 19, 19, 19.

"It registers images, and instead of those images being sent to other parts of the brain for interpretation, they are rekindled whenever we're reminded of the event. Other sensory perceptions are recorded similarly, away from your logical understanding of what happened."

Meredith waved her hand over the left side of her head.

"Exactly, activity in the left side of the brain decreases significantly." Wyatt paused. Meredith hadn't tried so hard to stay still in days; if there was anyone who could interpret a twitch of her eyebrow, it was her. "Remind me, how old were you the year you moved to Boston?"

Meredith held up her hand. You knew that. If she'd been sure Wyatt would understand, she could've signed that. For some reason, writing it would've been a little too obnoxious. She'd been the one to plop down at Wyatt's lunch table last September for a very anxious conversation about repressed memories.—"Do you think you repressed it, or did you just not understand?"—She had a feeling they were going to the same place here, but she'd let Wyatt give her vocal confirmation.

"That's right. Do you remember how you told me what you remembered last year?" she asked. Meredith's eyebrows went up without her permission; she hadn't expected them to arrive at exactly the same place. Freaking intuitive shrink. "You and your mother moved to Boston. You remember her getting big, and her crying. You knew not to make any noice. Her water breaking scared you, because it reminded you of her slitting her wrists. At the hospital, you heard your mother cry and a baby cry. Then, you moved into the home where you spent most of your childhood—you don't say you grow up there, do you?—She started her fellowship; you went to first grade. Is that about it?" Meredith tilted her hand in the air, indicating sort of. Wyatt quirked her lip. They both knew she'd quoted Meredith directly for most of that. "How old were you in first grade?"

She was proud of herself for holding up the sign for six, and then she had to correct it, opening that hand and lifting the index finger of the left. Callie had an OT coming by to give her exercises to keep her dexterity, and was going to cut the cast down a little so that she could manage more two-handed signs. She wanted to make an attempt at learning them correctly.

"Is that the sign for six?" Wyatt asked, mimicking her first motion. "I've always meant to learn. Interpreters have strict confidentiality standards, but I'd be uncomfortable counseling someone through a middle-person. What's three?"

Meredith's lips parted. Wyatt wasn't the type to pretend ignorance to buoy her, or whatever. She'd inherited a surgeon's tendency to dismiss psych, until denying her issues had proven to be more dangerous than marathons of ignoring her body. Going to Wyatt had been one of her better decisions, and she respected her, in spite of retaining some iffiness about the discipline. Obviously, Meredith knew things that she didn't. She could operate. It hadn't occurred to her that there'd be anything else. She demonstrated three, and then continued up to ten.

"I never considered one-handed counting. It'd be far easier while you're writing, or trying not to show anyone you can't add." Meredith smiled. "Okay. When you told me about that, you said that's when things 'went back to normal.' What did that mean?"

This time, a shrug didn't get her to answer her own question.

ME=KID SCHOOL

MOM=DR. GREY

HOME/HOSPITAL

"Why do you think you said that happened in first grade, not the latter half of kindergarten?"

To clean the white board, Meredith wiped her palm across it, and then grimaced. She kept forgetting the eraser.

MOVED. SWITCHED SCHOOLS

MOM STOPPED CRYING.

NEW HOSPITAL/PEOPLE/HOUSE

I WAS A KID.

"You were," Wyatt agreed.

Meredith pressed the tip of the marker against the board; she was waiting for the point where this segued to the way her children would adjust. Of everyone, didn't Wyatt get why that wasn't enough?

"Did going back to normal mean you could make noise?"

Y—her hand stalled on the stem of the letter. This time, she purposefully took the eraser off of the tray over the bed and wiped it away. HOME. SCHOOL LATER

"Young children who're affected by trauma tend to talk about the event quite a bit. They haven't developed the ability to stop voicing their thoughts. If they're punished for it, it's not uncommon for them to become unable to speak, or to do so away from a certain place or person. Your mother knew what you'd experienced, but in not bringing it up to her you were learning how to avoid saying something." Wyatt tapped her chin with the pen in her hand. It was a simple retracting, Grey+Sloan branded one, not one of the fancy engraved things most doctors had tucked into pockets or on their desks. She didn't usually do bedside visits, since she primarily treated staff. Maybe she'd grabbed it from the nurse's desk.

"Did you know that mandatory school age in the state of Washington is eight?"

Meredith shook her head. They were already having discussions about starting Zola at four. She was mostly sure they'd land on the side of keeping her in the same grade as Sofia, but she'd be ready academically. If they tried to hold off another year after that, she'd enroll herself.

"In most states it's six or seven. Why is that?"

AGE OF REASON

PREFRONTAL CORTEX GROWS.

LOGIC, COGNITIVE CONTROL.

LANGUAGE.

"Brain development is different in everyone, of course, and our understanding of what does what where changes daily—and admittedly, my field tends to be a bit behind your husband's. We can speak to trends. There's evidence that activity in Broca's Region decreases."

Brodmann 44, 45, 6. 44, 45, 6.

"You remember she cried a lot. You went to the hospital, both times. From your perspective the same thing happened twice. Then, you moved again."

CYCLE.

Wyatt smiled. "Yes. Ideally, a child dealing with that level of upheaval would have an adult to help them process what happened. Your mother didn't do that, did she?"

NO. I DIDNT UNDERSTAND.

"Has Zola started telling you stories about her day?" There it was. Meredith clenched her fists, and glared up at the ceiling. Daddy took me to Mommy's room, and she yelled. It was scary. "Think about one of those stories." Maybe she couldn't read minds after all. "And tell me what this sounds like: 'And I heard a baby cry, and I heard my mother cry. And then we went home.'" Maybe neither of them could read minds.

A KID.

KID'S STORY

"Yes, like a child telling a story. Once upon a time, a bad thing happened, and then the happily ever after—which for you was going back to how things were here. Telling oneself a story about what happened is a common way of dealing with a traumatic experience. It assigns words to something that was, to that point, emotion and sensory perception. It can help you put it aside. But you weren't able to process it fully. Why do you think that is?"

DIDNT HAVE ALL INFO.

"Didn't you? Or was it that you only had one way to examine it?" The carousel. The kitchen. The baby. She hadn't known about carotid arteries at five, but at fifteen? At fifteen….

I KNOW WHY HE DID THIS.

EVERYONE DOES.

"But is that all there is to the story you've told yourself? Have you expressed what you experienced in the trauma room another way? That's important, too." She reached into her bag and brought out a journal. "This is for you. Whenever you start to run through it again, don't just try to push it out of your mind, write it down. Get down the details, and your feelings about them. If you can share it, do that. With me, with Derek. It may seem like you're coming at it from all angles in your head, but it's actually a single camera shot."

Meredith thought of her mother again, and the narratives she'd written down—only details, no examination. Only hints.

& I'LL STOP FREAKING OUT?

"I'm not a soothsayer, I'm afraid. I can't make guarantees to my patients any more than you can. Well—" She put the journal on the tray by the bed with a smile. "Maybe you could, but it's one of the few risks you won't take." Meredith inclined her head in agreement. "You've made a lot of progress since you came to me held together with tape and glue. This might take some time to heal. We're trying to treat the infection before it abscesses."

Why had it gotten infected, though? Meredith wondered while Wyatt was walking past the window. She'd been through worse that'd been sutured, stapled, and healed. She'd woken up knowing she was safe, and she have support. What'd happened to her was—"What happened to you?"

If she pushed the call button now and started writing GET WYATT BACKcould they catch her at the elevator? She could explain why Meredith could hear Derek's actual voice, and her mind kept producing that. The other things, the lemon thing, and the breathing thing, they made some sense. Shouldn't being attacked in the hospital make her think of being in Gary Clark's sights, and freaking barotrauma make her dream of the plane crash? Just because she and Derek had gone through those together didn't meant they weren't traumatic. Last night, he'd said her whacked out brain might not be totally unique for treating her past like a grab bag, and that whatever had happened wouldn't cause him to change what he thought about her. What about their past? Would hearing her side change it for him? Or the other way around?

She'd saved her mother. That was a good thing, but she'd been too young for nuance. She'd been told to call 911 by the version of her mother who was familiar, and not scary, and….

Scary had been better than gone. She hadn't had anyone else. Her children had a family beyond her and Derek.

Did Zola feel abandoned anyway, deep down? She didn't have to remember her first year for it to affect her. She'd been separated from them each twice now, and ultimately they were all because of Meredith.

Zola didn't have that information. The story she'd been given highlighted how much love she had, and all the care that'd gotten her to them. She was, as she reminded them when given a chore she didn't want to do, "only four." Being open with her didn't mean giving her reasons not to trust them. They also didn't pretend to be perfect. If Meredith lost her ability to regulate her emotions to Alzheimer's, her children wouldn't be astonished to discover she had them. They had feelings books, and she admitted to being frustrated on rough days. She knew that poor emotional control was the flip side of suppressing them, and she'd done that to model her mother. She didn't want to react to them in a mood they could assume they'd caused.

When Meredith had stood on the threshold of that trauma room—Hey, Mom, sometimes you should linger in doorways— her mother had been screaming "she shouldn't be in here!" That hadn't made sense. She'd always been allowed to be where her mother was. Had that been what had scared her? Having another "always" twisted on her? She'd definitely been afraid of the social worker in Boston; not able to understand that the child being taken away was her sister, not her. Her mother fighting had meant that she was alive, and not weirdly tranquil like she'd been at home—and if the memory belonged to Maggie's birth, seeing Ellis upset would not have been new to her.

Ellis had kept her. For all that her mother's whole life had been about proving herself, she wasn't good at facing failure. Failing in the realm society expected her to succeed would've been doubly painful. There would have been shame. That'd been what made Ellis reject showing emotion, even to her daughter. She'd been ashamed about letting herself get swept away, and not being enough, of failing with with Richard, with Thatcher. She would've been shamed if anyone had known about Maggie.

"She shouldn't see this," had been part of not wanting anyone to see; especially not the girl who'd be with her for the next thirteen years. Who she wanted to be better than her—"Do you know how easy you have it? Be better than this!"—It might've also been realization. Guilt along with the shame. Whether or not she'd wanted to die, she'd been willing. Her goal had been to show Richard that her life wasn't worth living without him, and her plan had required another person—not just a witness, a person.—Meredith was the only one she'd had. She hadn't been totally rational, but she had believed that either everything would fail, or she'd have Richard to help her put everything back into place. That moment might've been the one where she'd understood that she'd be dealing with the ramifications of her actions alone.

What if Meredith known that in the moment she'd felt the most unwanted, her mother had been experiencing the same thing? If she'd understood that she wasn't being yelled at, and that some of Ellis's pain had been about hurting her; maybe she'd remember the moment as an ejection; not the cherry on top of a rejection sundae. It didn't matter. What Ellis might have felt didn't change much, since it hadn't been communicated. Not now that Meredith knew what it was to be valued, and how deeply she felt every part of being a mom. Ellis had been afraid of that depth. She'd been a mother twice over, but being a single mom, had been too much. Giving that much love to one person had almost destroyed her. Any passion she hadn't invested in Richard had gone to surgery, in small doses, over decades.

At Roseridge, before the heart attack, she'd asked, "Did I have a breakdown?" She had been that scared of being left alone. She also must have loved Meredith, if losing her had felt equal to losing Richard. Maybe it'd been receiving love that she'd feared; in which case, she had passed that on. But Meredith had gotten over it—was getting over it. She wished Ellis had had that chance.

If that wasn't the section those pieces matched with; if "she shouldn't see this" came from her water breaking? In those tattered flashes of memory, Ellis wasn't as strangely calm. She hadn't made Meredith wait to call; had made a different noise in the background when Meredith said, "kill herself," protesting that it was just blood. That was the one time Meredith had been able to say it to her face, once she'd fully understood that there was no way it'd been some sort of accident. What had actually been going on hadn't resonated. It'd been lost in not having to go with the social worker, Mom's face still looking a lot like it had in Seattle. She hadn't said anything, leaving Meredith to determine that this was a "pay attention to the world, or you'll never learn to figure things out for yourself" time, not "ask questions, or you'll never understand."

She shouldn't have had to make that determination. Her mother should've given her the words; should've been giving her the words the whole time. There were surrogates who had biological children. Whether she'd been considering keeping Maggie or not, she'd been a highly-intelligent woman; she could've explained enough to save Meredith from believing that the social worker would take her away, for good this time; that calling 911 a second time was bad enough that she was being swapped for a baby; that Mom had tried to leave her again.

Her mother hadn't wanted her to remember any of it. Tell Meredith not to tell? There must've been a point where she'd thought she'd have to. Where she'd considered that Meredith might recognize that shape of Anatomy Jane's pregnancy attachment. They'd used Anatomy Joanne to explain her pregnancy to Zola, which had led to her learning her organs alongside her ABCs. Meredith had worried, a little, that it was taking an imaginative play opportunity away, but she'd had most of them after the first or second repetition. Her brain had been mapped for learning words more than three-year-old Meredith's. They both got them in the end.

Meredith didn't remember her mother correcting "twosh" or "jelly pouch." She knew she'd been told the correct names and not remembered. How many times had Ellis tried, though? Had she not cared? Had she thought it was good imaginative play? Didn't seem likely. Eventually, she must've been glad that Meredith hadn't fixated on the real terms. Glad that….

Meredith's stomach dropped, and she pressed her face against the pillow until the brackets pressed into the backs of her lips. Her mother hadn't let her leave her doll on purpose, had she? She could've just left the stupid attachment. No attachments. No. No, her mom had been packing them to fly across the country, arranging for a fellowship she wouldn't start for months, to stay with the sister she ended up chasing from her own apartment at the end. She just hadn't thought she had to tell Meredith to grab the doll she'd carried everywhere for two years.

And if Meredith had realized? If she'd cried in the car en route to Sea-Tac? Well, sometimes you had to leave things behind. You had to be strong. There'd been no one telling her that breaking down wasn't weakness. No one had helped her reframe her narrative.

Seeing Meredith lose it wouldn't be normal for her kids, but they'd have Derek. Not that having one stable parent was a guarantee of becoming stable, he'd say. Look at Amelia, he'd say.

Amelia was giving a lecture about the once-in-a-lifetime brain tumor she'd be removing before Meredith could be near an operating room again, and that was if these wounds healed far more quickly than the old ones had granulated.

Getting something past Zola was no easier than keeping a secret from her mother. Derek knew that her asking if they could see Mommy over lunch was practically routine, not suspicion, but somehow her expression had still felt accusatory. His heart pounded as he stepped to the right of the preschool room doorway rather than continuing to the toddler room, and he hadn't dared to move until she was engaged in the block corner, almost out of sight.

" You know that she doesn't have X-ray vision?" Callie quipped.

"Know t'at?" Bailey echoed.

Derek shushed them, not speaking until they were through the glass doors of the child care center. "Okay, buddy, you ready to go see Momma?"

"See Mama!"

"That's right! And you're going to be...?"

"Gentuh," he chirped, patting Derek's face with an open hand. "See Mama, be gentuh!"

"Very good." They boarded the elevator, and Derek covered all the numbers except four to ensure that was the one Bailey pushed. "We've talked about being soft with Mommy, and practiced with Rawr and Tiggy. They've seen pictures, and the bruising is better than it was then. I talked to Robbins yesterday morning, after Amy's lecture. It could go horribly, and he should be okay by the time she comes home."

"You don't have to convince me," Callie pointed out.

Derek sighed, shifting Bailey to face him as they rose. "You're going to be so happy to see Mommy, right?"

"Mama home, Daddy go D.C.?"

Omph. Well, the last time something had been sprung on him, it'd been that. "No, sweetie. Momma's not coming home with us yet. We'll go see her, you'll go back to Ms. Sammi, and Daddy will take you home tonight."

"And Zola doesn't know about this?" Callie asked.

"Not yet. There's no way to get him to keep it quiet, though. They have weird sibling ESP. I'm hoping that Mommy's the topic of conversation enough that she won't suspect anything. And that Mer will want her to be next. Possibly even before we leave today."

"Do you have weird sibling ESP with your sisters?"

"Might've made it easier to keep an eye on Amelia, but no. You?"

"We don't actually speak aloud."

"Still?"

"It's the half-sister thing. She's Mom's daughter. That's the nice thing about Meredith's situation, it doesn't matter who was which parent's actual favorite."

"Oh, it does. Molly's absence in our lives isn't just because her husband's deployed. She was sort of closer to both of their parents than Lexie, actually."

"Oh, right. I forget Little Grey was a Big Grey." They reached the surgical floor, and he put Bailey back on his hip. "This is a good call. She needs... not a push. A pull, maybe. A supported pull forward. Or up. A pull-up. I'm saying it's her morale I'm concerned about."

Was that what the past two weeks had been for him? A pull here? The night before, he'd opened an email Renée forwarded "to keep you in the loop." It was half a week old. While he'd read it, his mind whirred over the problems and progress, but it'd taken that for him to realize he'd hardly been thinking about any of it while he was with Meredith. Not the way he thought of her while he was there. He'd only opened it because the subject had been about marmoset acquisition, and she thought the monkey thing was funny.

"I think she's concerned she'll get well before she's better, if that makes sense. Maggie combined her dressing check with her ASL lesson this morning. When that worked, she admitted the twilight sleep was worse than morphine dreams."

"Not telling anyone that this weekend helped whom?!"

He sighed. Not having the same reaction, loudly, had been the day's high point before he'd cleared the preschool room. "It kept her from panicking—well, from lashing out. That's what matters to her. It hasn't happened since Thursday, and she met with Wyatt while everyone was at Amelia's master class."

"Has she left her room?"

"Baby steps, Torres."

"Baiyee da baby, Baiyee big boy!"

"Big boy steps, Torres," Derek corrected. "She's not used to being the one in the center."

"She's in the middle of everything."

"Exactly. She's…" He wiped a cookie crumb off the side of Bailey's mouth with a thumb. "She's the cream. It holds the cookie together. It doesn't crack."

"And you love eating it ou—"

"Okay!"

Callie cackled and clapped a hand on his shoulder.. "You're showing up for her. You're thinking about the right stuff. From experience. Have a good visit with Momma, B.B."

"See Mama!" Bailey shrieked. The Oreo might not have been the best idea. Derek put a finger on his lips, and the baby mimicked him.

"Mer? You have a visitor," he said as he reached for the door handle, preventing himself from chickening out. She was turning away from the exterior window as he opened the door, and he watched her face change from mild curiosity to shock.

"Mama," Bailey said around the fingers he'd put in his mouth.

"Yeah, there's your momma." Derek carried him around to the right side of the bed.

"Mama nigh' nigh'?"

"No, she's not going night-night. It's afternoon. Time to be awake."

"Siyee."

"Nah, not silly. It a was reasonable question. Beds are for bedtime, and naptime, and resting. Mommy is in this bed, because she has a hurt leg, see? She had to rest it until it's better."

"Ah better?"

"Until she's all better."

Bailey pointed to the railings on the bed. "Crib?"

"It is like a crib, one that's big enough for mommys and baby big boys."

Bailey looked at him skeptically. "No nigh' nigh'?"

"Are you sleepy?"

"Noooo!" He shook his head. "Not syeepy!"

"So, it's not a crib. Maybe when Mommy comes home you can nap with her on the big bed."

Meredith's eyes darkened, and Derek could've kicked himself. You'll have a sling, he thought, trying as hard to revive the low-level ESP they'd had while she couldn't hear. If it's not healed, you'll have a sling.

"Yeah. I nap go home." Bailey put his head on Derek's shoulder, his eyes on Meredith. "Down to Mama?"

"You want to sit with her?" Bailey nodded. Meredith's face contorted in a multitude of rapid emotions, but Derek sat him down at her side.

"Hurt?" The toddler pointed to the bruises on Meredith's cheek.

"That's a hurt."

He crawled decisively up to kiss Meredith's cheek with a loud smack. "Better."

She stared at him, like she wasn't entirely sure he was actually there, and then she touched her hand to a chin in the sign for "thank you."

Bailey turned to Derek. "No tahk."

"That's right. Momma's mouth has a hurt, too, and she can't talk with words. You can talk to her."

He considered that, and then squirmed to pull a toy train out of his pocket. He held it out to Meredith. "Thomas."

She took it, examined it for a moment, and then ran the engine over his leg. His giggle made the room brighter than the sun pouring in through the open blinds.

"Mama siyee!" He took the train and drove it over the plaid blanket. Eventually he settled with his head on the pillow, flying the toy over invisible tracks. Meredith put her arm around him and pressed her nose against his hair.

Derek dug another train out of the diaper bag, and Bailey narrated his little Island of Sodor dramas for them—"choo-choo station. Bes' engines Sir Mr. Toppahatt. Bump bump crash!"— until Derek's phone went off, signaling that he had fifteen minutes before they'd be dinged as late returning to daycare. Bailey might've stopped biting, but they couldn't lose anymore of the staff's esteem. That he objected to leaving was more than Derek had hoped for.

"Be good stay," he whined while Derek lifted him. Meredith's face fell, but the corners of her lips were curled up, and her eyes were bright.

"If you're good for Ms. Sammi, we'll visit Momma tomorrow," he promised, winking at Meredith. He'd be bringing him up tomorrow if he bit every other kid in his room and half of Zola's. "Can you say bye for now? Gent-" He cut himself off diving for Bailey, his hand closing on his arm too late to stop him from landing on her chest. She winced, but waved Derek off, patting Bailey's back. Once the toddler was fully in his arms, he whispered, "Say 'love you' like we practiced."

Bailey presented his hand, thumb up and fingers bent. Not perfect but recognizable. Meredith signed it back. When Derek kissed her, her hand lingered on his chest.

In the hall, he hugged Bailey and then offered his hand for a high-five. "You are incredible, you know that?"

Bailey poked out his lower lip. "Mama."

"Like your momma," Derek kissed the side of his head. He was going to drop him off and then search the gift shop for a train that wasn't already in the Thomas box. (He was never making fun of Meredith's lists again. Not the useful ones, anyway.) He'd have to get Zola something—a diversion, if Bailey didn't give him away, and a bribe, if he did—but it wasn't as though seeing her react to a surprise gift was a hardship. And, as well as the visit had gone, the longer he loitered the more time before he'd have to answer for surprising her mother.

He returned to the fourth floor with a paper bag under his arm, and a drink carrier in his hand. Meredith would see through the frozen mocha, but she wouldn't reject it. He'd unitentionally arranged this whole day Meredith-style, doing first, distracting later.

He found the curtain drawn behind her door, and one of the techs, helping her pivot from the bedside commode back to the mattress. A deep basin with a hose attachment was on the rolling tray.

"Afternoon, Dr. Shepherd."

"Hello, Tamara." He caught Meredith's eye and tilted his head at her. Want me to take over? She raised her hand, palm up. If you want. Was it a good sign that it wasn't a wild-eyed yes, or was she now capable of hiding that trepidation from him? "I'm sure you have a full docket today."

"There's always somewhere I can be. You trust him with your hair, Dr. Grey?" she asked. Meredith smirked. "Man has more products than you, don't he?"

Meredith rocked her hand, nodding at the same time.

Tamara laughed. "All right, then. Page me when you're done, and I'll come change the sheets." She caught Derek's arm on her way to the door. "There's some extra washcloths in the bathroom, if you need them." she said, and added, barely audibly, "She's in a good mood this afternoon."

The so don't fuck it up was understood.

He'd been popular in this hospital once. Then you spent six months plowing through it like a wrecking ball. Amelia had never said that directly, but he heard it in her most chipper tones.

"On a scale of one-to-ten, ten being the most you've ever experienced, can you rate your pissed off level for me?" His play on the pain scale spiel got a small smile. Bailey had earned both kids ice cream tonight.

She'd finger-spelled the letters E-H before he noticed that her white board was on the tray that had been moved to the end of the bed. He handed it to her, but she let it rest, satisfied with her answer.

"Lean up for me?" Her back was unmarked, but the bumps of her spine would've made it obvious that she'd lost weight if he couldn't recognize it in her face. He was dipping the washcloth in the basin when he heard the click and squeak of her marker, and he took his time turning to her.

DIDN'T SCARE HIM.

"Nope." There was adhesive residue from the heart monitor leads on her chest. He lathered a washcloth and sat on the side of the bed to scrub it off without putting too much pressure on her ribcage, or bump the nearly-healed incision over them. She stared at the window, the way she did whenever a tech or a nurse checked her lungs or started setting up her pump before he could intercept. There'd already been more excitment today than there'd been over the whole weekend, but her zoning out hadn't been restful here.

"Mer…you're resilient because of all you've been through. Bay and Zola? We've raised them—You have raised them to know someone is always going to be there for them. They adapt, and that's not the same as just being swept along. They'll let any of their grown-ups take them home if we need it, but they trust we're going to be here, and we'll be home soon. If you hadn't been doing such an incredible job with them, I would've faced far more behavior issues over the past few weeks…. That doesn't mean there haven't been any."

She made a small, curious noise.

"Zola decided she didn't like macaroni and cheese one night, and cried when we didn't have any the next. Bailey has put two of Anatomy Joanne's organs up his nose, and I'm not sure how he's getting them. I switched out Zo's sheets instead of washing the pink ones and putting them back on, and you'd have thought the world was over. That's since Wednesday." The corner of her lip turned up. "Zola's going to understand more than Bails. Seeing all of this could scare her, but she won't have to process it on her own." With the goop cleared off, he paused and noticed her knuckles whiten against the plush fox's fur. "Do you want to take over for the next part?" She shook her head. "Okay."

He brought the washcloth down between her breasts first and hesitated at the way she flinched. She flicked her fingers for him to go on; under and up to her armpit, across, down her other side and under again. A moment later she turned her head, keeping his face in view without meeting his eyes. There were no marks here that weren't attributable to the blows to her ribs. There didn't need to be.

Even with the identity of her attacker known, Derek hadn't pressed for details. She'd have to go over it for the police, eventually. Since he'd talked to his mother, he'd been thinking about everything they hadn't discussed over the years, and the things they had. They'd gotten through the plane crash because they'd shared it. He'd been in her position after the shooting; and there'd been a barrier between them until she'd told him about the miscarriage, and how much his reckless driving scared her. The times they hadn't been able to talk had been the times they fell apart.

"Mer. The...ass-clown touched you here?" he murmured.

She nodded, and there was a small movement by her mouth as she raised her hand. "A-L-E-X."

Karev?! No…. "Oh. Dr. Butthole Junior is the ass-clown." A nod of confirmation. "I'm the jackass. Also often the asshole. Uh..." He should've consulted Cristina. She'd have come up with something demeaning that didn't have associations.

Meredith's insults usually included "douche" somewhere-"not as an insult to vaginas, but because they're unnecessary products of the patriarchy"-but that didn't belittle in the right way….

"Um...human scrotal sore?"

Her lips pursed, and he started to apologize; he wasn't trying to undercut what she'd been through, or make it farcical. He just wanted to—Her finger tapped his chin, and he looked down at her board.

GROSS, PAINFUL, RECURRENT

PERFECT

"Okay. Good. He, uh, touched you here. Did he...get to anywhere else we can't see?"

NOT THIS TIME. She glanced over, waited for him to nod, and continued. FUNERAL.

THEIR MOM ASKED ME 2 SPEAK.

"Oh."

OF ALL PPL RIGHT?

"No, that's not what—"

SAID HE WANTED 2 TALK.

WERE FRIENDS. I THOUGHT.

U SAW.

"I did."

DUNNO IF HE DIDNT THINK SO

OR SMTHNG CHANGED

THE F-BOOK MSGS SAID

I LED HIM ON. OWED HIM.

BS NVR INTO EITHER O'GRADY

Derek could've seen this guy being self-centered and misogynistic enough to assume flirtation with his sister was for him, but it wouldn't have excused anything. If there'd been ambiguity between someone's interest in him versus Mark, clarifying and stepping back took seconds. It was rare that someone into one of them would be compatible with the other. Addison had been an exception, which was something he'd thought about a lot driving to Seattle, and not since.

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH HE SAID:

I STOLE HIS SISTER

WAS A STUPID SLUT

JEALOUS OF HER

^ ^ TRYING 2 RUIN HER LIFE

I SAID SHE'D BEEN DOING THAT

4 SOME LOSER & SHE DIDNT CARE

ABT HIM OR ME

WHICH WASNT FAIR 2 HER

"You were fifteen. You were mad. You can still be mad, even if you understand more."

Sometimes Derek wondered if he went too far in identifying and/or validating her emotions. Then, she gave him looks like the one currently on her face, and he thought better of it. For more than three-quarters of her life, she'd had plenty of feelings, but acknowledging them was verboten. That was a perquisite for figuring out the whats and whys.

NXT THING

Without looking, without touching, she demonstrated being shoved by hands cupped around her breasts. Derek clenched his jaw. The teenage boy in that picture hadn't had nearly the strength that he would in twenty years; he'd still been twice the size of fifteen-year-old Meredith.

I HAD ON A DRESS

HIS LEG WAS BTW MINE

KEPT MY HANDS FREE 1ST

HE GOT MY WRISTS B/

OLD ︎RELATIVE CAME BY.

GRABBED HIM & GLARED ME

COULDVE GONE FURTHER SOUTH.

She turned to him again, flashing her wired teeth. She always claimed his influence made her pun, and maybe so, but the humor was a hundred percent hers.

CLASSM8 HEARD HIM SAY

"IF U HADNT TOLD"

TOP ASSUMPTIONS:

1. I WAS THE 1 GAGGING 4 IT

2. SHE & I WERE TOGETHER

3. WEIRD INCESTY TRIANGLE

4. I CHEATED ON HIM W/HER

5. OTHER WAY AROUND

COMMON DENOMINATORS:

I DROVE HER 2 IT

& I WAS A SNITCH.

I HADN'T BEEN W/A GUY.

DIDNT MATTER.

BECAME SCHOOL BICYCLE.

FAMILY MOVED.

THOUGHT I'D

NEVER^ SAW SEE HIM AGAIN.

She yanked the washcloth out of his hand and swiped it across the white board, and then drew her good leg up, slinging her arm over her knee and pressing her head against it.

While he considered his response, he ran his nails over her back. Once he started speaking, he expected her to pull away at every word. "I'm proud of you. For telling me, for everything you did for your friend. For getting through everything before I met you. Everything after. What I told you the other day…about what I do and don't know? I didn't find out what actually happened, but I did…I discovered some things I didn't know, from your records...court records in Massachusetts. None of it was relevant. I shouldn't have gone behind your back, and I'm sorry for that."

It took a moment, but she lifted her head enough to see her white board. WHO ELSE?

"What?"

"Help-you," she signed, moving her fist to him from empty space representing his alleged compatriots. "Who?"

"Karev. Maggie. Cristina knows that something happened when you were little. I...er…." In for a penny, Shepherd. "I sent her to talk to Sadie."

"Mmm?!"

"The detectives thought you might've...had someone with you, at the airport hotel. I didn't buy into their assumptions about why for a second, I swear. Not with her, or anyone. I could see you giving her a chance to say her piece without anyone knowing. Booking the flight as a misdirection...or to get away if you decided you didn't want to see her. There was the possibility that you'd just run into her. That's almost... It was a leap. Not totally out of character for you, but…but it relied on the premise that you weren't….

"I'd already talked to her when Karev told me why you didn't get on the plane. I wish you had." She twisted her lips and gestured down her body. "Whether or not it'd mean he didn't hear your name. I'd prefer that, yeah, but…. Mer, I didn't want to fight anymore, either. And I missed you so much." Her eyes lowered. "Really," he added. "And I'm sorry you didn't get to tell me all of it when you were ready. I just…I couldn't do nothing. Not when…you were so...so hurt and so scared, Mer. You still are. Anything I can do to make that better, I'm going to do." He started to touch her cheek, and then raked his hand through his hair instead. "I've spent a lot of time running toward the good life. What I thought that was. A brownstone in Manhattan. Being Chief here. The big house. The presidential appointment. I had to keep going forward. I wasn't thinking about what I wanted. I know how selfish that sounds juxtaposed to how I behaved last year, but I—" He let the squeak of her marker interupt him.

U WERE MISERABLE.

YOU EARNED THAT JOB.

"Maybe. But I'd never be where I am without—and that's not—When Wilson called—"

U BARELY STARTED

& I ALMOST DIE ON U AGAIN.

LEMON.

"Meredith, you lived on me," he corrected. "I got the call Wilson, and it terrified me, because I can't live without you. You matter to me more than anything. You and the kids. This isn't a truce. It's an armistice. I don't know what the terms of the treaty will be, but I'd like us to figure out them out together."

She rolled her eyes up to the lights, until single tears fell from each eye. He wiped one with the washcloth she'd abandoned. As he swiped the other, she opened the marker again, and then turned to him. The plea in her eyes was obvious. He got up, keeping a hand on her shoulder until he could signal his intent by picking up the basin. "We let this get cold. I'm going to refill it."

He tried to let the sound of the water be white noise; not to speculate about what might be going through her mind. It was impossible, but landing where she did wasn't any more likely. He could backtrack the thread of her intricate thought-webs, sometimes, and their complexity was gorgeous, but the patterns were only visible upon completion.

He grabbed the extra washcloths Tamara had mentioned and slung them over his arm. She was writing when he got to the bed, and he couldn't stop himself from looking over her shoulder. If he'd filled the basin any higher, the way he froze would've made it slosh and soak them.

I CAN LIVE W/O YOU.

I DON'T WANT TO.

I DON'T EVER WANT TO.

B/WE CAN'T JUST

She erased the last line and looked up at him. Her lower lip kept twitching, like she couldn't stop trying to bite the yellowing bruises accentuated the vulnerability on her face.

"No water under the whatever?" he suggested, and she nodded. "I want to prove it to you. I want to talk about the stuff that matters, so you don't think I'm going to take off. I don't know how to do that fairly."

For a while the only sound came from him wet the washcloth. He barely had to indicate for her to movie, and while she'd let him move her, he tried to only provide support. She stiffened once she'd moved her right leg to the side. Then, she turned her palm up. He took her hand. It turned out that the washcloth between her legs to clean off dried blood from the last of her period didn't trigger anything like the panic that encroached when a hand got too close to her breasts. The discrepancy made sense now. Through the attack—if not somewhere in her mind for twenty years—she'd been expecting him to finish the assault he started in 1993, and knowing the person touching her wasn't him wasn't enough to shut that down. Even when she knewsomeone was familiar enough to be safe, her subconscious wouldn't let her relax because he'd been familiar before becoming a threat. He let go of the wisps of doubt that'd been there since Wilson had said "sexual assault."

Any positive reaction was dulled by the pain meds, which was expected. He just wanted her to experience more that wasn't pain, and having a washcloth dragged over her in the right way was a sensation she usually coveted. Her relieved exhalation, and her steady pulse said this was enough for her.

He went to the dresser to get a clean pair of the boyshorts that stretched over her cast, turning at the sound of her fingers snapping. "Yes, dear?"

She scowled at him and snapped again before pointing at the tray that Tamara had moved to the end of the bed. It held her increasing collection of distractions. He held them up one-by-one, and she shook her head. It was a comedy of expectation; she didn't write down what she wanted, and he didn't ask, both assuming that the next object would be it. Finally, he picked up a leather-bound journal he didn't recognize. She snapped out a quick rhythm he interpreted as yes that, stupid.

WYATT

"She wants you to journal?" Her face pinkened as she nodded, and it took him until she'd lowered the bed for him to bring the basin over to realize why. "Mer, your mom wasn't getting out things she couldn't say after a major trauma."

She bobbed her fist, the sign for "yes," but her expression made it a sarcastic oh, yeah?

"Okay, I heard it," he allowed, gathering her hair up and putting a rolled towel under her neck. "But it didn't start that way, and…you get my point." She hummed a non-committal answer. He started spraying her hair, combing his fingers carefully through the knots. "The brown brings out that little bit of blue-green in your eyes. I like it." Her eyebrows rose. "I do, Goldilocks. Your hair doesn't have to be a specific color for me to think you're beautiful. You could shave it off if you wanted. Wouldn't mean you're not just right."

She rolled her eyes, and then circled her hand over her face with the sarcastic look back. At first he thought she was gesturing to the bruises, but then it clicked.

"You are beautiful. No matter what caused those bruises, they're your skin, your blood. They're part of you, and you are always gorgeous to me." He kissed her as he reached over for the travel-sized bottle of shampoo Tamara had left, and she closed her eyes while he massaged it into her hair and rinsed it out. He took his time with it. Part of the reason he loved her hair was that messing with it was one of the few things that always relaxed her. Her marker started again while he was dumping the basin.

WE CAN USE IT 4

THE BEFORE &AFTER

WE NEED 2 KNOW

EACH OTHER'S SIDES.

"Yeah. We do," he said, wrapping her hair in a towel. "I'll get you a new one for your homework from Wyatt." She scrunched her face up at him. "Would it help if...? Not putting that on you. I'll talk to her, Someone. Maybe not her, since—" Meredith reached up, two fingers touched his lips. He leaned over to kiss her, and then held her hair, and her left side for her to sit. "We can give you a real bath once you're home. I think we have most of a roll of the sticky plastic I used to shower post-op."

HOME = CASTS-BRACE/OFF

3WKS 1D MINIMUM

"That's the plan," he acknowledged, scrubbing several layers of dry-erase marker off her palm with the last washcloth. It was. He wasn't sure it should be.