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!

10. Day Twenty-Two

Derek had been afraid that the journal thing wouldn't be fair to Meredith. The timing didn't work out in her favor. Either he took it home with him at night, and she had to read it in front of him—far more stress than she needed at the moment—or he left it, and the reverse was true, which would also be stressful for her. Everyone agreed that she slept better on the nights he stayed, so he wasn't going to cut down on those.

Proving that necessity was more than a motivator for invention, they were making it work, trading it off a couple of times a day. Any time he left the room, he checked the window before entering. If she had the journal, he hung back to let her finish. Those five-to-fifteen-minute gaps were about how long she could read or write without a break, anyway. On his end, she was still sleeping at intervals, and there were parts of the routine, PT, visits from her friends, where he could duck out in the interest of making room.

He'd made sure he had it overnight while Karev stayed with her. She still needed to follow through on Wyatt's assignment. He'd brought her a notebook for that; an empty duplicate of the one in her purse. She might need to copy stuff out of it at some point, but that wasn't the same as being confronted with plans for a version of the future that'd been put on hold to record exactly how that happened. Like the old one, it became a depository for the notes and lists; maybe more so, since she couldn't put any of it on her phone. He'd seen several pages unintentionally while flipping it open for her. A list of smoothies to try or throw out. Steps toward reading real research. But most of the time, it was open to one list.

The stuff no one knows

Schraeder

Why not resent me for this?

He'd gone to a bookstore to find her one of the magnetic bookmarks that held pages together. She deserved so much more privacy than she was getting.

Reading the journal was as close to hearing her voice as anything could be. The constraints meant they were mostly stream-of-conscious, with places where he could tell she'd lifted the pen out of hesitation, not fatigue. They were unintentional punctuation marks that denoted his mistakes, either directly, or indirectly in letting her think there was anything he wouldn't want her to tell him.

"For every time I snitched there are a dozen of times I didn't."

"It's strange, because my mind was fixated on Mom. On how I could've missed her having a baby.On how she'dwoken up thinking she'd almost lost me, howmany timesdid she regret keeping me,found out she had Alzheimer's, and didn'ttell me or Richard about Maggie.But when you said 'what happened to you' like you'd woken up after five years and didn't know me, my mind didn't go to that day first. It went to the lemon night & you scoffing about me being whole and healed…. Whenever you want to break me, you accuse me of lying about who I am. Is that because you did it first?"

"I'm not upset about it at all. That was how you could call in specialists from Peru. Or, Berlin, I guess. If there's anyone who's an expert in me before you, it's Sadie, but she never met Lissy. Being Sadie's was like that. She did know Tara; the dealer dated both of them. I wasn't into either O'Grady, would barely let myself consider Sadie, but Ta—"

The bedroom door banged open. So much for Meredith being the one without privacy; at the hospital they knocked. "What the hell, Amy? You're going to wake up the kids!"

"Good! That'll give you something to occupy yourself with, instead of trying to steal my surgery!"

He looked up at the ceiling. He was sure he was getting the habit from Meredith—"you all say I'm rolling my eyes more. I think you don't pay enough attention normally."—and then sat up, putting the journal on the bedside table. "What are you talking about?"

"You pulled her scans!" she said, starting to pace in front of the bed. "Owen said you went by to confirm you had privileges—"

"To help you in an emergency! It can't be easy to handle everything with just you, the cockr…Nelson, and—"

"You asked Edwards for recordings of my lectures."

"All two of them."

"Do not be all smiley and sarcastic like I'm clearly making things up!"

"Amelia, I am not trying to get in on your surgery. I don't have time."

"Bullshit, all you have is time! You were working three jobs before Obama called, and it's not as though you're being a full-time parent!" She stopped, fisting her hands and glaring upward like she'd done any time she messed up from the time she was tiny. "Shit! Shit, shit, shit, I didn't mean that."

"If you need me to ask Karev or Torres to take them more often, I can."

"No, I'm actually not with them as much since you got back, I don't think. Maybe."

"Are you sleeping enough?"

"No." She pressed her hand against her eyes. "Neither are you. Neither is anyone, so don't pretend that because I'm sober, my erratic behavior must be exhaustion. I can take care of myself."

"I know that."

"Do you?" She turned her face to him, her hand still on her forehead. "How? I don't."

"You just said—"

"I know what I said!" she snapped, stomping a foot on the rug. Then she cringed. "Did I just copy Zola?"

"Yup."

"Zola, an hour ago because Bailey picked the last night-night book?"

"He doesn't know his letters, so she should get to choose 'twice the double times' to practice hers."

Twice the double, Amelia mouthed, and then she snickered. A moment later they were laughing. She sprawled across the end of the bed. "Go on, tell me about how crazy I am."

"When you were about nine months old, Liz dropped you getting you out of your highchair."

"Let me guess, I fell on my head?"

"No, you landed on your diapered tush, you laughed, and very clearly communicated that you wanted to do it again. That's when we knewyou were as crazy as the rest of us. To know where it started, you'd have to ask Mom, and it'd settle several long-standing bets."

"Because 'Amelia was an accident' rhetoric never gets old."

"A happy accident. I think you underestimate how often you were the only one who could make Mom smile, Ames. Did you stress her out later on? Sure. Were you the only one of us who pulled stupid shit? Hell, no."

"I just got the addict genes."

"So did I."

"What?"

"I had Miranda do a genetic screening on me a couple of years ago. We started off doing Zola's and Meredith's. Mer's came back with positive indicators for the Alzheimer's markers. She was pregnant with Bailey, and therefore always at a certain level of freaked out, so to give her context, I had mine run. I have a genetic tendency toward heroin addiction. If I hadn't been a dorky band nerd, who knows? Also, male-patterned balding. Dad already had a spot going, so I'm hoping that gene won't going to manifest."

"He did?" she grabbed a pillow and propping her elbows on it.

"You used to climb up behind him in the living room armchair and brush his hair with a doll brush. One night during the run of Roots; Mom had gotten us all down there to watch, and there was this big dramatic moment, and you announced, 'Daddy, you have skin on the dome!'"

"Oh, God. I hadn't heard that one."

"Could be your Butterfly Glioma Girl origin moment."

"I doubt mine happened before yours."

"Me too," he acknowledged. "You want to hear why none of your evidence proves that I want, or could, steal Herman out from under you?"

"Please."

"She's your patient. You convinced her to let you operate. She trusts you. If I could cut it out without her knowing, maybe our results would be the same, but lead-up and follow-up are important. Look at Mer. Having her people be the ones to treat her immediately was…it's a road bump. But having them be the ones who operated on her, and who are giving her post-op instructions? She's non-weight-bearing, can only support herself on one side, and Callie got her moving,. There's no way she'd have let anyone but Maggie or Cristina do a rib stabilization on her, even with her prior experience with broken ribs—maybe because of that. I'm sure she'd have herself convinced it wasn't that bad. In general, she'd just be more questioning and defiant overall if she didn't trust them absolutely.

Secondly, I don't have the free time you think I do. There's downtime, but Meredith is awake more, and her pain is being managed. Miranda told me at the beginning of this that it'd be hard to keep her from climbing walls. Took a few weeks, but we're getting there. I got the videos of your lecture for her. Lectures are great, because she doesn't have to stare at a blue screen constantly. Hence the physical scans."

"Well, that's highly logical," Amelia muttered. "I'll give you my slides. You have Audible, right?"

"I'm not a luddite." He rubbed a hand over his face. "We have to rewind a lot. I stop it whenever I notice her going away, but it's frustrating for her. The hallmark of her tendency to, uh...Miranda calls it going off with the butterflies, is that usually she doesn't check out totally. Either this is as much a focusing issue as the visual concussion symptoms are, or she got used to not having to listen. My guess is the latter, since she tunes out music, too, which is really not like her. Either way, it's not helping distract her from what goes on in her head, and that's not great right now."

Amelia nodded, slowly. "Don't get pissed at me for asking about this, but in terms of needing an escape from your thoughts-"

"The meds?" He rubbed his temples. "There's no 'never,' I'm aware. But…she used to drop truth cherry bombs to see if I'd flinch where we talked about her past, and there were a lot of warehouse raves. A general attitude of 'anything once.' Nothing stuck...It's not a switch; if it were, it would've been flipped. I did worry, before I knew all that.

"The first time her ribs were broken…well…. She was, too."

"That's when she drowned?

He closed his hands, trying for the millionth time to remember if he'd felt a give while he was doing compressions on that terrifying ride to the hospital. "Also, the day her mother died."

"Yikes."

"It was rough. It'd been rough. Stayed rough for a while. The past few months have made her think of Ellis, more than I…wanted to know. Even the atmosphere around here; between the two of us, must've been like living with her mother again.

"That year, she…the bartender didn't become a family friend just because I operated on him. That wasn't a new tendency. She used to say she'd 'miss the bar, but land on a stool.' Never mind that as often as not, the bar had been raised after she jumped, or wasn't visible... Anyway. I know I set some of those, but the more I consider the way it all played out... When Maggie told her who she was, Meredith spent day drinking at Karev's. We'd been fighting for weeks, and none of it…. She went out a few times, sure, but calling out of work? I think some part of me knew it had something to do with Ellis. Otherwise, why…?" He shook his head. "Family, it's always family."

Trying to rationalize throwing one of the most traumatic days of her life in Meredith's face wasn't going to help anything. But, Jesus, thirty years earlier, Richard had lied, telling Ellis that he couldn't be with her because of her daughter, and he'd all but accused Meredith of becoming her? It was hard to convince himself that he didn't deserve to be back at the NIH overseeing the research he'd put his family on the line to do.

Amelia wasn't the one to whom he needed to tell any of that.

"Anyway, um, she was triggered a lot that first year. For a lot of it. Needed more grace than I gave. And... the same was true last fall, she just has more confidence in her abilities and better coping mechanisms..." I can live without you. He'd forced her to. Telling her to come to him. Orchestrating another Daddy-Daughter Dinner that didn't work out. He'd done a better job of being on her side than he had with Thatcher, but talk about low bars.

"It's a shame that the woman every female surgeon is taught to admire was such a bitch." Amelia pressed her lips together. "You do know you're her family these days, right?"

He looked down. He had wanted to be , then. He hadn't understood that he already was, almost by process of elimination. "Yeah, that's occurred to me."

"Just checking. Keep it in mind when you're making travel plans." I'm not. He didn't say it; he'd let her get over the whole taking her surgery idea first. "Do we know how Ellis reacted to Meredith's friend's suicide? I know there's history there."

"She told you about that?"

"When you've both watched a parent bleed out at five years old, eventually you talk about it."

In his experience, the key word there was "eventually." But then, he and Meredith hadn't been together long when their stories were shared; it felt longer because of the gaps where they hadn't been. He and Yang hadn't had all that many personal conversations before the shooting-even fewer when they weren't about Meredith—but he'd known about her dad's death.

"I'm not sure what Ellis knew. She didn't go with Mer to the funeral. And…I don't think she ever hinted…. Wait.When Mark died, she said a girl she'd been friends with died in high school, and I thought cancer. She...She did tell me about what she said to Ellis the day Kurt Cobain died, and people were talking about genius burning out, all that stuff."

("He had a daughter." Almost twenty years after the fact, and there'd still been heartbreak in her voice.)

`"Seems like suicide wasn't something they'd talked about prior to that; not that 'talked about' is accurate. If Ellis said anything, I'm sure it was horribly hypocritical, and not a discussion."

"Ugh. Are all Meredith and Maggie's good points recessive, or what?"

"That's the worst part. At some point, Richard loved her. Thatcher loved her, and I have very little respect for him, but…. I assumed there'd been a slip, and he wanted to be the good guy. Mer did, too, but then she had to go through her mom's documents. Turns out, they'd been married a couple of years by then. The pregnancy could've still been unexpected—a newborn and an internship seems masochistic to me— but they weren't. Ellis wasn't a total shrew from jump. Losing Richard traumatized her. She gave birth to Maggie alone, and then she shut down. She let it take her from hard to cruel. Most of the time. Meredith has good memories; she'll be the first to tell you, but even that shows she was unpredictable."

"The good memories aren't the ones that jump out of the shadows." Amelia muttered into her arms. Derek put a hand on the back of her head, circling the crown, the way he'd done when she'd pretend that ending up asleep on the couch next to him was coincidence, and had nothing to do with the thunder shaking the windows. It didn't take her long to fall asleep; a sign of how desperately she'd needed it. He moved away carefully and dug a pen out of the bedside table drawer before he reached for the journal again.

"It would've been pretty awkward if I'd brought this to mock the whole idea of you being into chicks, and then you'd had to be all, 'Uh, about that," Alex said.

Meredith snorted and flicked her finger on Alex's iPad screen.

SRY I NVR TOLD U

"Nah, don't be. I mighta been an ass about it. Down with the rainbow's one thing, but uh, damn, real glad you weren't around the time Joe about tore me a new one."

She raised an eyebrow at him. Of all of them, Alex might've changed the most as a person; although, she was pretty sure a lot of thesexist, fatphobic, borderline-possibly-outright homophobic frat boy was a veneer. He'd been the chubby, poor kid trying to parent his siblings; he'd taken on hyper-masculinity to protect himself from it.

"Yeah, I, uh, held up a ten to a…lesbian…er…lady…female-presenting couple at the bar. Next thing I know, the chill bartender who's already set me up with his weed guy, is pulling me over the counter and dragging me into the back."

Meredith wished she had been there. She could imagine it. Joe with the curls that made her think of spring break beach-bars having the upper-hand over someone she'd think of as Jock-strap before Cristina came up with Evil Spawn.

"He said told me that he'd sworn the day he took over that no bar named The Emerald City Bar would put up with any harassment of the Friends of Dorothy. Said he'd liked having me around for the past week or so, and he didn't think I was a full-on bigot, but on the other side of that bar, I wasn't better than anyone. I was a customer, same as anyone else, and his customers weren't there for my entertainment. Meant no bugging ladies who shut me down, no slurs, no Black jokes—which is right where I interrupted, like, 'hey, man, I'm not racist! The Nazi's my resident!' Took me awhile to really get the whole meaning behind the look he gave me over that.

"You ever…? I think this might happen more with kids, because they're so into what they're into, but you ever have a patient recommend something, a book or whatever; pick it up, and suddenly it's your thing, too?—I talk Lord of the Rings with so many of my Chron's kids; they should have a book club. Anyway, a couple years after Bailey put a moratorium on that, one of my kids had just had a Holocaust survivor come speak to her class.

Meredith nodded. She remembered that day in junior year of high school. She'd gone in having read Diary of a Young Girl; she'd left knowing she would've been neck deep in resistance—unless she'd been collected as a deviant. Straight-passing or not, her classmates would've ID'd her as "promiscuous" more than a year before she'd deserved the adjective, and they weren't afraid of using others. Being small and (usually) blonde had gotten her out of trouble with authorities in 1990's Boston. Her mother's position could've get her leniency, and she would've made use of it. She could've save lives, even if she wasn't good enough to be a doctor. Amazing how much teenaged-ego was wrapped up in such little self-esteem.

The innocence in her obliviousness of the fact that that even then, it wasn't totally unimaginable that her motherwould be seen as some sort of deviant for being, a single, female surgeon—moreso now that she knew about Richard. Ellis hadn't exactly been a humanist. Not a psychopath, either. Did what she was told. Went along. Changed things from the inside. Thought she had that level of power. Meredith cut her eyes over to Alex. Good thing he couldn't read her mind. He'd find someone less disturbed to hang out with, and she'd be alone with her shadows.

"Kid sent me down kind of a rabbit hole. I knew the Stormtroopers and Vader were an allegory for Nazis, but, that's... I didn't know numbers, or how much of the continent, or…a lot. I didn't know a lot. It shouldn't have taken a paramedic with a swastika spouting racist bullshit for us all to consider that 'ultimate eugenist' was an awful nickname for Bailey. They harped on Mengele during medical ethics, but not Simms, I guess, or not enough for me to get it."

Meredith didn't have delusions about changing the world with every surgery; she couldn't understand dismissing entire groupings of people, of dismissing any people with one glance, let alone millions of them. She was also self-involved enough that none of that had impacted her enough for her to hesitate at Miranda's nickname. It made her head spin, now, to imagine, but could it have lasted? Could it have taken naming her son Bailey, and realizing how wrong "little Nazi" sounded, especially applied to a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby boy? She hoped it would've died out long before; wouldn't have survived the rebrand, Derek's stint as Chief, the merger. Surgery was cutthroat; it leant itself to dark humor. It shouldn't be anything close to heartless.

"If it hadn't been for people like Joe, and you.… I was an ignorant, son-of-a-bastard—" NICE "—from Iowa. Manipulating things to get out of there—whether I earned it or not, I figured I deserved it. Oh, I knew starving kids in Africa had it worse, but they really push the Great American Dream out there on pioneer land; like you're only going to count if you get further west, or 'back east.' Chicago was exotic, but Jimmy took me to one of his gigs there, once, so it was too close.

"I saw that when he wasn't trashed and Mom was on the right meds, they did all right. I didn't understand why they couldn't just stay that way. May've really thought they didn't want it enough. This girl would've scared the shit out of me in high school," he added, pointing at the old picture of her on his tablet. "And there was plenty of her under the prep school look you caved on, don't worry. You scared the shit out of me as an intern. You also didn't drop me when I screwed shit up—ever.

"I hate that I might've been a jerk to you about it. If it hadn't been so obvious that you were basically Cinderellaing dudes to find the next Shepherd I might've given you more shit about that, too. It was pretty freaking obvious that if it'd just been the sex, it wouldn't have been as big of a deal.".

Derek had managed not to call her Goldilocks in front of her friends, which would've led to a lot more jokes along those lines. It wasn't like he'd been molded to fit her, only that she loved the way he did fit, and how quickly he'd learned her. She might've said "so right…just…just right," a few times after the so-called Glass Slippers, but she suspected that were measurements taken, nothing would be statistically significant.

UR SAYING U WLDVE TRIED 2 GET SADIE & ME 2 MAKE OUT

& THEN U WLDVE FELT BAD WHEN U REALIZED

UR NOT THE ONLY ONE W/A CRAZY EX-GIRLF

FUCKB

GIRLFRIEND

AND ID NEVER MAKE U MAKE OUT W/HER

Meredith shifted her focus back to the tablet screen. She hadn't been looking at it long enough for it to start hurting, but if it had, she could've taken it. Conversations about Nazis, cool. Having to go into exactly how messed up her adolescent relationships had been…. She could already see too much of it in her near future. At some point, she'd have to contact Sadie, so both she and Derek would know she wasn't pissed about that whole thing.

FWIW, NO ONE EVER KNEW EVERYTHING

The press couldn't get enough. C-list websites had been reaching out to her former classmates over the past week. Several had shared their observations about Lissy, her, and him, the scrotal sore—She loved that, of all people, Derek had called him that—saying one of them mentally ill, one a victim, and one a delinquent; no one able to decide who was which. "'[Felix] O'Grady was okay. Sort of quiet. Blended in. Felicia was sweet. Sometimes she'd say something, and you'd remember she was brilliant, not just a cutie. Grey was the volatile one. If anyone was going to pull a Plath, I think we'd have all bet on her'…'Oh, we definitely thought they were an item, yeah. They didn't make sense, otherwise.'"

There were worse things said, but they all danced around that detail. That because Lissy hadn't taken on the grunge look beyond a few pieces of plaid, and Meredith hadn't needed much make-up to contour her face into heroin-chic, their friendship could onlybe concealing a secret relationship.

Most comments on their sexuality were expressing surprise over Felicia being the one who had an older "boyfriend." These were not the kind of media outlet that would point out that they were the same age; Felicia, in fact, had been two months older. Statutory laws would've applied to both of them. Neither of them would have wanted to hear it. Meredith could imagine the version of herself on the screen speaking to her as though the scanned black-and-white image was a full-color GIF. That, like, totally takes away a woman's agency, because she hasn't reached an age that's considered adulthood based on male-puberty. Totally patriarchal.

Lissy would've been right there with her. So's thinking an older guy is more mature than a teenager, for certain. If he's got her Lolita'd up in a hotel room, duh, total power fantasy. But if he's the pimply guy who works concessions at the movies? I've got a 4.0, who's smarter?

It didn't help that they'd used the O'Grady's yearbook photos from eighth grade, their first year at BPA, but Meredith's from tenth, taken weeks before Lissy's death.

When you're right, you're right, Meri-Death. She winced. Lissy's voice had piped up in her head more than a couple of times in the past three weeks, but it'd been more frequent since she'd seen her face on the police documents. That makeup really doesn't translate to a colorless palette. You always told me I didn't need any. He likes my freckles, too. Don't worry so much, Meri, rape'd be, like, not wanting it. You doesn't have to scream for help in the town square, but if he's made for…Hey, are you wearing "a spiked collar?"

Meredith's hand went to the silicon bandage on her throat.

"Are you?" Alex repeated.

She popped the cap off her marker. He caught it before it rolled into the gap at the end of the bed. WHAT'S THE DIFF B/W A COLLAR & A CHOKER?

"That I didn't want to say 'choker,'" Alex admitted..

Her laugh came in a series of huffs; they were too fast for her to inhale. There was just enough swelling left to have a flash of her larynx closing, darkness closing in. She met Alex's eyes, and her chest burned where Maggie's tube had gone in. She couldn't open her mouth to breathe. The weight of the water got heavier on the top of her skull. The grip on her throat tightened—"I used to dream of making you scream, Dr. Death. Or was that my sister?"

Air rushed into her lungs through her nose. None of that was happening. It had happened. It wasn't happening.

Alex was sitting up on the foot of the bed, his hands held up close to his hips, like he didn't want her to notice. She pointed at him, and then at the pillow. He didn't question her, but moved carefully, like he thought he might set off a bomb. That wasn't as easy as he thought.

OK. HAPPENS. KEEPS D. & NOW U ALERT

MAYBE IT'S CLASP VS. BUCKLE?

The concerned lines on his face smoothed out, but his eyes weren't unconcerned. She sighed against her teeth. Panic attacks increased if you became sensitive to the symptoms, and she'd made it through that without getting close. If she could shrug it off, he could.

She hadn't had to watch herself stop breathing.

"So, how'd that fasten?" Alex zoomed in on her photo, pixelating the smooth skin almost exactly where she'd have a scar based on what she could feel during dressing changes. "If you're not sure, it tells me just as much."

What? No! Where'd the marker go? She snapped an ASL "no" at him, not sure if he actually understood it. They'd gone over numbers—"No one is letting you BS the nurses"—and Maggie had probably—where was that marker?

"I'm not getting much in the way of solid denial here. Who were you dating Harris, then? Did she have a thing for…." He waggled his eyebrows. Don't you dare. She shook her head. "—being bossy?" Meredith paused. Saying no to that would be a lie. She'd thought he was gonna— "Was she into all fifty shades of gray?" She shoved him as well as she could with him propped up on an elbow next to her good arm. He held up her marker. She held up her finger to show him where to shove it before snatching it from him. "You know, I have no idea if you're actually into kink or you just let people run their mouths, and I'm happy that way."

EVER THINK I WAS N 2 U?

EVER WANT ME 2 B?

"I told Jo you had to have wanted me at some point, but I was mostly trying to get a reaction. I dunno, you're objectively attractive; I wouldn't have said no. But you've been gone for Shepherd since day uno, and have more baggage than a sherpa could handle. You weren't really an option."

There might've been an insult in there, but she was relieved. She was nearly as comfortable with Alex as she was with Derek. She could let him touch her tits and only feel slightly queasy, not like she wanted to lose consciousness, immediately. Their roughhousing had never felt like anything more. He might as well be her brother. It was similar with Cristina; no one had ever assumed they were a couple because the spark wasn't there. Never had been. Alex hadn't been the first jock she'd had to put in his place. Slamming him against a wall had been the physical equivalent of chugging a pitcher to win a bet, but she could see where it could've looked like—felt like—been—foreplay.

What made Alex in the locker room different from Viper in the ER? Why hadn't their similar attitudes, backgrounds, their reputations, their mutual need to fix people created a different energy between them? What kept there from being anything to ignore while he did "practice exams" on her? Not much later, having Derek take her blood had felt obscenely intimate. Alex was Dirty Uncle Sal; she was the dirty mistress. They'd both "gotten around."

That day in the stairwell was something she and Derek had talked about, when a benign question had set her off. "I don't know my number, and you can't be growly about that. Growing up in the nineties made sure I wasn't a skank, and I'm not a whore. I had a couple bad months, and the way you looked at me…I've tried a whole lot of things, but the one thing that made me feel dirty was your fault. That wasn't the only point in my life where I was the girl who said 'fuck me, and fuck off.' Sometimes, I did it to get the hell out of my head. Sometimes, I'm just a slut. Anything about that make you not want me to meet your mom? Anything you couldn't raise a kid with?" He hadn't flinched. When it came to actual sex, she assumed he'd lost a lot of prudishness being married to an OB-GYN. His,attitude about sleeping around had been built on jealousy, patriarchy, and Mark.

It could've been easier if she'd been into Alex, but then; that's how she'd felt about George. That thought made her stomach turn over, which made sweat bead on the back of her neck. The slightest nausea could bring the taste of rubber into her mouth, and Jackson's face would be there—it wasn't a good time. She'd been through it once more since first being cajoled out of bed, and she resented that the other option was losing time to Zofran. This time, the sensation passed, leaving only clamminess behind.

SRSLY

"Seriously, where is your head? Start with that."

½ OF THESE ARTICLES: HE LIKED ME

OTHER ½:: SHE DID

I LED GEORGE ON

"Nah. Look, admittedly, I missed something, so I can't say it's obvious when you're into someone. Can't imagine you haven't looked twice at a chick in seven years. Could be a different look with them. Maybe it's obvious when you're not. Whatever, O'Malley knew you weren't looking at him like that, but to him you were the varsity volleyball captain, and he was the freshman. You just hadn't seen him. So, he confronted you, gave the big speech, and it's like…. You seen Sixteen Candles?"

She nodded, and couldn't resist taking the time to elaborate. HAD OUR CABLE BOX PUT IN ~1990

Back before she'd caught the John Hughes movie's racism and sexism, she'd thought the excuses it took for the protagonist's family to forget her birthday were contrived long before she'd seen the biggest reasons to critique it. (Parents: surgeons. Grandparents: dementia. Done!) More relatable to her now was that the girl's panties got passed around for half the movie. Holy crap. She did some quick arithmetic. Yup, Derek, Mark, and Addison were at the age to have been influenced by The Brat Pack. She had questions for him.

"You got it installed?" Alex asked. "As in, she didn't know?"

DIDNT CARE

IT WAS 10PM & HER 11YROLD WASN'T

BEGGING 2 GO 2 WORK W/HER

Hadn't they established that her mother's attitude was to let her see what she saw, and hope she asked questions?

"Okay, so, he'd never have intentionally hurt you. You got that?.

Meredith nodded, emphatically. George could've violated her in any number of situations. He'd taken her keys at Joe's. Helped her climb the stairs—"I'm the Bambi one, bambino!"—Held her hair back. Put her to bed.

"O'Malley had the Farmer Ted thing going on."

That geek's reward wasn't the relatable protagonist. He leveled up with the passed-out party girl. That he didn't remember if they'd fucked either was the convenient excuse keeping it from being date rape.

THAT'S MORE G&Iz DON'T U THINK?

"I don't mean the plotline. The character, the Revenge of the Nerds trope thing, where the nerd deserves a chance even if he has to disguise himself for it. Got watered down in kid's stuff, but it was there, too. The dork gets the girl if he's patient enough." Meredith hummed understanding. She could think of a few references, mostly Buffy. Alex wouldn't get them. "Screwing him might not've been your best choice, but it gave you time to try to figure out how to avoid rejecting him flat-out. He got butt-hurt 'cause you couldn't force yourself to be into him..

I CRIED

"Yeah, which is a pretty good sign something more than shitty sex is happening. He took off on you, exactly like every other jerk had. You didn't need that, and if he hadn't gone into being your friend with hopes, or expectations, or whatever…. I mean, I let Jo hang out on my couch for all that time because I wanted to cream her at Madden, not because I wanted to…cream anything else."

Huh, there was no great way to express gross without being able to open her mouth. She settled on flipping him off again. He'd said it to make her react, but he was also doing the thing where he had to undercut saying something good about himself. She recognized it. She also remembered him carrying Izzie out of Denny's hospital room. Taking care of Ava. Letting Jo mourn Mousy, to the point of taking it too far.

She twisted the stuffed fox's tail around her fingers. When George had entered her room, she'd had the echo of Thatcher's voice in her head. That safe, pushovery guy hadn't wanted her. This one did. She'd been able to almost imagine Mom and Thatcher as friends; at least, more than she could imagine them as lovers. For all she knew….well, she'd been their only child..So, she'd figured that as long as the sex wasn't awful….

Okay, she hadn't been sure she could handle that. How her mom could've had...relations…. with Richard that made her say…the stuff that'd made Meredith freak out on Derek the first time he told her she purred, and then give up had been beyond her. Meredith had never been one to lie back and take it for the team. It'd taken a weird web of influences to keep her from believing she didn't deserve to be exactly as into every second of things as her partner—and with George it wasn't even…. She'd badly, wanted it to be enough that he'd wanted her, not just her body, but the thing was, she'd known him as long as she'd known Derek, and she'd known...something. Something similar to what Alex was saying.

Derek hadn't known all of her, yet. She was still Meredith, the girl from the bar. But George…. She still didn't know who he'd known. When he'd started going down on her, it'd felt like he'd known good guys use their mouths, almost like that was an end, not a starting point. She hadn't been able to put it in even those uncertain words, and she'd known...thought that she bore the responsibility.

Alex's observations were close to what Wyatt had said back then. That she'd been triggered by shit with her parents, unable to access or name her emotions. Like maybe George should've had come in all Bambi-eyed, said "here are the reasons to love me," and then "think about it, I'll be here," like Lexie would, and before her, Derek.

Would George have accepted her tears, then? Instead of "sleeping with me is really this awful for you?" Like he was entitled to better. He hadn't said you brought home tenguys between Thanksgiving and New Year's; what's the big deal? but she'd known—thought she'd known—who she was, and what he expected of her. Be wasn't a stranger who might tie her up and rape her in a basement. She swallowed. Had he thought something was bound to happen to her? He'd basically said so.

"O'Malley cared about you," Alex added. "But wanting someone more than you care about them gets toxic fast. This—" He held up the iPad. "—is trash. You're not some siren. Teenage guys think if someone hot looks at them, there could be something there. Maybe girls too," he acknowledged, before she could start to slug him. "But, all rainbowy or not, the boys are always the ones trying to flirt with nurses."

Meredith wrinkled her nose. Teenage girls kept it quiet; didn't think they were owed, and were groomed. Who'd done that to Felicia? She didn't have much time to think before she heard a vitals cart rattling her way. The sweat on her nape returned. Alex put the iPad away and took her hand.

Click.

"Having a good evening, Dr. Grey?" Uma asked. Meredith turned the corner of her lip down, and raised an eyebrow at her. "'Til I show up. Worst time of the day. 'Specially if Dr. Derek's not around. I don't blame you for preferring him to this joker."

"Dr. Derek," Alex coughed.

"Think you're cute? You might win over all the children, but us mamas, we know, don't we? You get too cute, you're covering something up. That husband of yours, Dr. Grey, first time I met him, I knew he'd gotten away with everything his whole life. Then, I saw that baby loving on you this morning, and I knew you had it handled. You have to be able to see through cute to have one that sweet. We're going to do it all the same as we've been doing it. Quick doses first." Her tone had become a reassuring cant, and Meredith missed the transition. "Without counting that pain in the neck there, what can I put you down for?"

"Hey!" Alex objected. "Yesterday, you told a dad I was the best baby doctor on the floor."

"Mmhmm." Uma's nails clicked against the terminal keyboard. "Dr. Robbins was up in the NICU, making you the only baby doctor on the floor." In spite of the dread making it hard to attend to anything beyond the nurse's hands, Meredith laughed. It came with a sound this time, a tight henh that gave away more than she'd have wanted if she had any control.

"It's hard for anyone to imagine life without me once they know me, I know," Ulma continued. "But I never had to keep track of Dr. Shepherds, and it's not like you can say 'the pretty brain surgeon,' to differentiate between them, is it?" She pushed the plunger of the syringe she'd inserted into Meredith's IV catheter.

It wasn't a bad thing to be able to shake her head without considering that someone might wonder about her agreeing that Amelia was pretty, when no straight girl would've thought twice about it. The Shepherds had objectively good genes. Apparently, she hadn't needed to care, either. A guy who'd been with her almost every day she'd been here hadn't had an inkling that she wasn't one of those straight girls. Did that bother her? It bothered pre-Seattle her, who hadn't cared who knew what, but lowkey wanted to be the one to tell her mother. She hated it coming to light this way, like it was one of the screwed up, dark parts of her; not what'd taught her more about relating to women than her mother, and prepared her for Derek more than any guy.

"I'm not about to disrespect a doctor who got chosen for a position by Obama by calling him 'Mister.' Even if he's better off here, being my patient's husband. Can't imagine how he managed to leave. Dr. Grey's a catch, and I'm sure Miss Zola gives her daddy earfuls about being gone."

"Yeah, you're not wrong."

Meredith glanced over at Alex, and he indicated no, hardly moving a muscle. She'd known Derek was sugar-coating life with BeeZ before he copped to it; Alex was her secondary source. Thus far, they'd been consistent on Zola not having asked about how her mommy got hurt. Meredith had to assume she'd heard something. Something she didn't want to bring up, maybe didn't understand enough to wonder about, but the possibility remained that she hadn't. That she wouldn't have to be told that ghosts could become corporal to punish you for what haunted them.

The sharps container clicked. There was too much else going on for Meredith to follow the heat hitting her synapses from her spinal cord to the current configuration of aching, piercing, pulsing, jabbing; it was almost a shame. More movement meant more positional pains, and sometimes those caused flares from nerves she hadn't had to think of since she'd studied charts for operating with Derek.

"His name's Bailey?" Ulma asked, and then clicked her tongue. It might not've been meant to cover the sound of her pulling the plastic tabs off of one of the suction cups, but Meredith appreciated that it did. "You didn't want to use his middle name? Make things less confusing around here?" Alex guffawed long enough that she pointed at Meredith. "Spell it out for me, Dr. Grey..

She managed a weak, chagrinned smile. "D-E-R—"

"Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh."

"—E-K. B-A-I—"

"There is tradition, and there is silliness." The nurse shook her head. "Doesn't seem like much of a Junior, either. Have a nickname at all?"

"Baby Bailey," Alex offered. Meredith glared at him. "What? Bails, B.B., Bay. They're all pretty close. If you're saying Bailey did a whipple, it's not him. Or else, he has Zola's doll, which isn't good either. Dr. Bailey's kid's nickname is a nakesake, too. Only works because his dad wasn't here much, even before the divorce, but O'Malley wasn't dead to begin with."

Was that an actual Dickens reference? With Alex, he could've just remembered the line from The Muppet Christmas Carol,or his mom could've made him read a half a dozen Dickens novels. She wanted to know which, and he'd wanted to distract her. So, D. All of the above.

"It's like learning patois again," Ulma said, addressing the air. "Sounds familiar, until you pay attention. All right, Dr. Grey." Curiosity was gonna kill her, but It wasn't enough distraction. It was annoying. She hated him. She hated this. She hated this. "Going to fold your shirt up just a little." The nurse was efficient and gentle, folding it just below Meredith's swollen breasts so that the next fold gave her all she needed to work with. "All right, sweets. Think of that gentle little lamb you'll see in the morning. He's got such a brave mama. I wish I'd let mine nurse longer. It's the calmest they ever get..

She aligned the first suction cup over Meredith's nipple, counting before she pressed it down. She hadn't been overly-sensitive about the Foley catheter while she'd had it. They'd tell her to open her legs, spread petroleum jelly over her vulva. Her mind could identify the differentiation they were teaching Zola, about where and how no one should touch her or her brother, not even a doctor. This sensation was hundreds of times more familiar. Why couldn't she make the distinction when it came to having the scrotal sore grope her over her scrubs? He hadn't touched her, really. Not rape. Not attempted rape.

One of the strange facts she'd absorbed over years of sitting in libraries overhearing and taking part in conversations with a mix of geeks, dorks, and nerds was that original The Muppet Show pilot had been called "Sex and Violence." If you were looking to push boundaries, why not highlight the two biggest taboos in the culture— the ones women were never supposed to take an active part in? They were, in a way, two sides of the same coin. Pleasure could be almost painful, and plenty of good people made pain into pleasure. In the straight side of her life, men respected giving and receiving violence; and she'd used that to her advantage. Women weren't meant to give pain or take pleasure. It was the other way around. If you were a woman, you were immediately considered less feminine if you made a fist. The idea was that you shouldn't have to; you should have a man to fight off other men who were out of their place. But if a man attacked you in the shadows, for no real reason at all, you were supposed to take it. You were also supposed to take his dick. You weren't supposed to take pleasure. To give pain. Meredith had always been proud of ignoring those rules. She'd done her best to pick and choose when she met expectations, and never given the constraints power; that didn't exempt her from the dangers.

She was relieved he hadn't gone further, and ashamed of being relieved; she'd known women who went through worse. Ashamed that what he had done bothered her, she had worse injuries. If she'd been a patient, she would've pointed out that fear stems from the promise of pain; you can't assume a promise will be broken. He'd made his desire obvious. Never suggested it wasn't his intent. Saying shit like, "just finishing what we started," The intermittent humming of a Nirvana song that he'd never understood. The smirk when he'd shoved her onto the gurney. She'd been determined not to stay there, but there'd been darkness on the edges of her vision already. "Damn, I forgot how flexible you are. One size fits all?" He'd stood over her once she was on the ground, and she'd clenched the fist she could control. She must've whimpered, or he'd pretended she had. "You always were asking for it. Shoulda said something earlier. It might've been fun to make you scream. Too bad you're not a dyke these days. Bet you're a gaping maw down there."

When he'd cut off her airway, she'd thought it couldn't get worse. When he'd groped her, she'd known it could. Any minute he'd stop hurting her, and he'd keep using her. Because she'd been his friend as a teenager? Because his sister called her before jumping? No. Because she had a body he wanted to violate. Had violently violated, in Lissy's name. Sexual violation was what he thought he was owed as a man. Because ultimately, this hadn't been about revenge for Lissy. If Lissy was at the heart of all of this, he'd have gone after the man who'd preyed on her, wouldn't he? He'd been the one who…. Who what? Wanted to take her away?

Meredith had supported her applying to boarding school.

"It's like he thinks I belong to him."

Alex squeezed her hand. The pump squeezed her tits. Her stomach squeezed in on itself.

"If he cares about you so much, doesn't he want you to be successful?"

"He loves me. He wants me. No matter what propriety says. We're meant to be together. On the same path."

"Why's that matter? I'm nothing like Layla, and she's a sixteen-year-old girl, too."

"You didn't grow up the same way."

"So, he's from here? Or is he from Alaska, too?"

"I was born in Alaska; white people aren't from there."

"We're all from Africa if you wanna play that. My family's all WASPy. I dunno where the boats came from."

"Which church did your mom go to growing up?"

"You really think that's come up with her? Or Auntie? Layla's...is it Chicana if you're Puerto Rican? I don't know. I am white girl ignorant, but she's still from Seattle, like me. Mme 'Spits in Your Eye is Dominican from Nice, Thinh Neugyn is from Vietnam, but Thuy is Vietnamese from Boston. You aren't native to Alaska. Assuming you meant, like, spiritually? Are your souls mated in the woo-woo realm? Or the woo-hoo realm?"

"You're being contrary, Meri."

"Don't call me that!"

"Meri, Meri, quite con...hmm…Meri, Meri, Meri-deth, Mer-uh-deth, Mer-a-death, Meri, Meri, Mer-a-death, Merry-Death. Merry Death! Ha! It's perfect! 'Tis the season for Mer—"

"Mer!" She blinked Alex into focus, and then rubbed her eyes. He slumped back onto his side. "You really disappeared that time. Was worried they'd ordered the sedative by accident. I'll pull it from your chart, if Shepherd hasn't.

"I was saying that if you hadn't been determined to be the best Dr. Grey, we could've had three Dr. Shepherds. Four, if we're talking historically. We'd've had to let Amelia be She-Shepherd, Addison was Montgomery-Shepherd, you'd be…. You're really against hyphenating? Okay, Amelia could be Sis-Shepherd—"

"And Dr. Derek, I suppose you'd call him He-Shepherd?" Ulma interrupted. Alex floundered. The nurse was connecting the yellow-green solution of nutrients and saline. Meredith's shirt had been pulled down.

Had she dreamed up that conversation with Felicia? She couldn't remember if it'd been on the phone, or walking through the Public Gardens, or in the window-seat of the dormer in Felicia's bedroom. It could've been any of them. All of them.

"For you, Dr. Grey." The nurse handed her one of Derek's smoothies. The cups were a model he'd seen reviewed on some message-board, with a wide-mouth and a switch on the handle that slid a cover over it. The contents were orange, which likely meant banana too. She couldn't be positive what else. Something green, probably. Not enough to make it gross, at least. She sipped at it until Ulma had moved all the way out of sight of the window, and then shoved it at Alex.

TIME 2 MAKE UP 4 HELPING BG CHECK ME

"Uh, I did that for you. I owe you squat. Whatcha need?"

THE BLACK NOTEBOOK ON THE TRAY & U 2B MY RESEARCHER.

WE R GOING 2 FIND LISSY'S INAPPROPRIATE BF.

"Aren't the police on that?"

DON'T THINK THEY'LL FIND ANYTHING I CAN'T.

"Because you're just that good?"

B/C I DON'T THINK HE EXISTED.

I THINK HE WAS FELIX.