They were on the ferry. At every stoplight Derek had let his hand rest on Meredith's leg, propped next to him on the folded passenger seat. While he pulled the Porsche into a parking spot he took every excuse to look back at her rather than checking the rearview. They ended up deep in the parking deck. Getting a a temporary accessibility placard was the one thing he hadn't managed to do in the hours he'd spent running around this week, but once they got home, they'd mostly be staying there. Dr. Wyatt had agreed to Skype appointments for a couple of weeks, and the other variety of therapists would come to them, along with a Home Health nurse to care manage. In case of a true, hospital now emergency, they had contacts at Airlift Northwest. He hadn't realized how far they were from a decent ER until he'd been coming up with perks to impress Janet. As usual, Meredith had been the pragmatic one-"You really never noticed all the Life Flights we get from the Virginia Mason Clinic out there? They do good work, and we'll know what they're not equipped to handle."
That hadn't stopped him from wondering if they shouldn't be heading for Mark's place, or Karev's. They could've made her a room downstairs, and even once she she'd found a reason to attempt those stairs, and not being able to grab the railing on the left would counteract the support of the wall on the right. (He'd still kept wondering. He'd been flabbergasted by her ability to ascend them at times where alcohol, injury, exhaustion had her barely able to move one foot in front of another.)
Meredith tapped his shoulder as he set the emergency brake. He reached back for her hand, but she batted it away. He raised his eyes to the mirror that has been aimed at Zola's seat. "I'm gonna come back there so I can see you."
"Up," she signed. Her hand moved decisively; she'd probably been considering it for most of the ride. Her face showed how much she wanted to go; her cheeks were pink, and she peered up through lowered eyes. If she could've bitten her lip she would've.
"You got it."
Her eyes and her smile widened, but her expression quickly became questioning.
"I...I thought it'd be nice, but... I was worried a 'yes' would be for me not you. Stay there." He winked at her exasperated expression. The wheelchair took a minute to unfold and to get the leg-rests snapped on, and he returned to a marked-up white board.
NOT TRYING 2 PUSH 2 FAR
B/U GET THAT I'M UR WIFE.
I CAN DO THINGS 4U. NOT A LOT.
I DON'T WANNA B JUST A PATIENT.
"You're not just anything, Mer." She'd already undone her seatbelt, band the flicking of her eyes meant her mind was playing through getting out of the car, but he could say it again if he had to. "We're going home to work on our family. It'll be a few weeks before you're going to be taking on scrubbing the baseboards or reading the book tower every night. But you know just being there is huge. Zola figured out all on her own that you can play Go Fish in ASL. She made a face that would've been horrified without the smile. "There'll be some confusion for B. He'll get mad, and I promise it's not you're fault. Once he catches on to what you can do, he'll forget he ever liked any other activity." Her smile grew.
He'd fallen out of this habit. Of course, Meredith had learned plenty about relationships, and kids, and the workings of the world in the years outside of Ellis Grey's bubble. But he'd still caught the expression. The one he remembered from the weeks before she quit psych and Katherine had been "demanding" that she identify her emotions in the moment, a few times a day. They'd come with question marks. He didn't see her as an intern anymore, but that didn't mean she didn't have things to learn—hell, she taught him so much, all the time.
"You're going to need care, but letting me do that is doing something for me. Being here, looking at me like I'm bonkers is something. But I understand what you mean. We're not going to just leave you alone in bed. And, hey, I'm an expert on tasks that can be done one-handed. If you ask nicely, I'll teach you how to change a diaper."
That got a momentary wrinkle in her forehead, which he hadn't anticipated.
"Trying."
"Hm? Oh, Mer, Zo potty-trained early. Kids vary, boys tend to be later than girls—you told me that. He's not two until May. That's...I'm not bringing you home to have someone else to change diapers. I think I'm still in the red."
She smiled again. They'd put a moratorium on one-to-one for sex, but diapers were another story. They'd almost fought over the one-on-one moments with Zo, and with Bay he'd insisted on a two-for-one arrangement through her maternity leave. He'd tried to keep it up after; being the one who breastfed a baby had increased her part of the work. Had he gotten to the point where B. took solids? November. So, yes, but it'd been another few months before eating really replaced feedings. That'd been one reason Mer hadn't weaned at one. Last summer, with Cristina gone and him not entirely there, she'd had that.
He was working up the balls to write a proper apology for not saying anything on June nineteenth. It'd been a weekday. They'd taken the kids to the hospital's Juneteenth event. He remembered, because he'd wondered if Ellis had considered Richard might've been off that day. He'd told himself that it was a year she was ignoring it. She might have, even if he'd passed the test, not that he was too self-involved to put their problems aside and askd his wife what she wanted the day to look like, the way he'd done every year he'd known the story. It cost him nothing to do it, and it'd been obvious the first time it was huge for her. See it, do it, teach it. He'd gone on about truces in the fall, and if he'd molded the behavior that summer, maybe she'd have let him in sooner.
And if he'd blurted out that she was terrible at sisters?
No what-ifs. He needed to focus on the life he had. His wife, who was less of a mystery than a code. He'd crafted a cypher, and then stopped referring to it, overconfident in his grasp on the basics.
She bent her knee, and slid back in his seat to create more room to swing it around. Enough. I believe you, or, I don't, quite, but I'm done with the conversation.
Also, she wanted to get outside. In her childhood, the ferry had meant adventure. ("I don't remember being excited about where we were going—I loved the zoo, but while we were on the ferry, it didn't matter if it was that, or...I don't really remember if I went to the university. I must've. Not many other reasons to be on a ferry.)
As he put one arm under her legs and the other around her waist to get her out, he thought of all the things he did for Zola's smile, Bailey's laughter, Meredith's arms looped around his neck. His dad would've taken spontaneous ferry rides if it made one of them happy. He wanted to point it out to her, but it wasn't something he felt he could teach; he didn't know. He'd have needed a freaking enigma machine to understand Thatcher, when he'd thought there was nothing to decode.
She made a sound as he lifted her and looked to the ground.
"You need to practice, but you're going to have plenty of chances." She narrowed her eyes. "I'll let you, I promise."
Her eyebrows said; sure.
It was the first time she'd been in the wheelchair they'd ordered her, and she smiled as she adjusted herself on the cushion.
"Better than the hospital?"
"Best."
"Do you need anything? We can do the NSAID."
The NSAID was ordered every four to six hours to prevent inflammation while her bones continued to knit. They'd given her a dose of Dilaudid before discharge. She'd been receiving it once a day at most, usually around PT. Mostly she'd take tramadol for breakthrough pain, and that if you called her out on her obvious discomfort. Maggie had been the one to add the prescription for diazepam.
"Absolutely monitor her," she'd said in response to the uncertainty around Meredith's room late Thursday afternoon. The patient herself had lowered her gaze to the blanket, and one of her fingers traced the lines that Bailey used as train tracks. He'd met Callie's gaze over the bed. The tell was in her not objecting.
"Tara did grab the Valium she'd told me she needed. We split it. I'd always been more careful with pills; I have this memory of Mom snatching a vial off of her bedside table and saying they'd make me die. I think it was after her pseudocide.
Drinking made my mind slow down. Morphine takes my awareness away. When I had the appy, felt like I'd needed the break. But after that... after Mom's lucid day, and seeing her face what she'd lost…. Having her say all she did, and not knowing if it was unfiltered truth or an altered mind? It's not worth it. Dilaudid and hyrdrocodone don't make me forget, but I'm still...disconnected.I can understand the appeal, but I don't actually like not inhabiting myself. Not just my body. My brain, too. As fast as it goes, and as much dark and twistiness as there is, it's me. Maybe my issue isn't pain. There is pain. There was. But it's almost like it's secondary to something I don't have a word for.
The times I've been on a benzo...the way I feel...it's probably what all the mindfulness chuckleheads call being present. I'm not looking everywhere, calculating worst-case scenarios, or zoning out because for a second I'm five or fifteen or twenty-five going through something vaguely connected to the moment. I think it's how most people feel. I can still think; it doesn't slow me down. It...declutters. Reallocates. Probably means there's a DSM diagnosis in Wyatt's notes somewhere, or there should be, but she knows what medicine is like. I thought about pursuing it before med school, but I like being alert to details too much to take them regularly. It's not something you need to worry about. The bottle from the crash is in the lockbox. I put it back after the weekend I didn't visit. Didn't help me get on the plane.
Maybe this happened because"
She'd written that a week ago; it felt like more. Did she still think she was being punished for taking a few pills? If so, it was an even bigger deal for her not to object.
"Half an hour, between that and other medications," Avery had insisted. "And no bypassing the observation period between medicating and discharge. That work for you, Grey?"
Meredith's head had snapped up, and she'd blinked at him like she hadn't anticipated being addressed. Derek had cursed himself for that. He'd had to advocate for her early on, and that she couldn't actually speak wasn't a reason to continue the habit. In the past she'd spoken up for everyone, save herself. That didn't tend to be the case these days; it definitely hadn't been when she'd walked an intern through her own splenectomy.
She'd nodded at Jackson and flashing an okay sign. Callie had put a hand on her shoulder. He'd still been relieved when she'd let Adriana administer the medication without suddenly deciding that it was cheating or weakness of some kind.
It hadn't kept her knuckles from going white over the arm rest as he'd pushed her through to the lobby. He'd still stopped twice before she'd told him to JUST GO. I'LL SIGNAL.
She'd been trusting him by buying into this plan; it would've been simpler for her to stay for a few more weeks. He could trust her to tell him if that was what she needed. He knew nothing more than she did about this situation. They'd gone over every issue either of them could come up with
And they'd made it to the ferry.
He opened the cooler that had been in the footwell on the passenger side and took out one of the bottles of Ensure tucked in next to the medications he'd packed, just in case. They'd received three cooler boxe from the home healthy agency's contracted pharmacy early that morning. One was full of PPN bags, and full of pre-prepared syringes all with tips that would screw into Meredith's IV catheter, avoiding needles entirely. That struck at least half a dozen problems off the list.
Meredith made a face at the sound of the Ensure bottle cracking open. "Once we're upstairs you can use needing your hand to talk as an excuse to 'forget' it." he instructed, holding it out to her. She showed him that she did, in fact, need her hand now, lest he forget who he was dealing with.
"Imagine if one of our kids learned to say that in English before they got the ABCs." She flashed him two fingers before taking the bottle. "Not sure if you're actually telling me to 'fuck off' in any European sign languages, but I think ASL adopted the finger once it became a thing—Google it before you add another language to your resume."
"Huuh-huuh-huuh," she voiced, managing deadpan without being able to get across much tone in general. He could feel how stupid his grin was, but she was already behaving more like herself. Dramatically irritable.
They took an elevator up to the passenger lounge, and it was early in the afternoon, making it easy to push her chair to the end of one of the tables facing the windows. Thankfully, the weather had stayed clear; rain might have spooked her, but it was still too cold to sit outside on the Sun Deck with only her hoodie.
"Feeling okay?" he asked. She thrust the Ensure at him. He took the cap out of his pocket, and sat it on the bottle so she could flip it off.
U KNOW THAT'S GONNA SPILL?
"It's almost like you're sick of drinking liquid chalk."
She smiled, ruefully. CLD BE WORSE.
"Is this a bad time to tell you that all our CostCo had was vanilla?" His mental count had gotten to five when she whacked him on the arm with her white board. He laughed. "Had you."
BLAME THE DRUGS
"It'd almost have been worth having to buy and throw out a box of those just to see you make that face again. Did you know Gretchen traded you off to other nurses for the next week? Couldn't hear, could barely move, and out of nowhere you're snatching the bottle and chucking it across the room. Can't wait for Bails to throw a plate, so I can tell him he's exactly like his mama."
U DONE?
"Probably not. Once they switch the room over, we're gonna get a call about the dent in the wall."
WILL NOT. THAT WAS WEEKS AGO
"But you couldn't hear me tease you about it."
THOSE WERE TH—she smeared the words out with her palm. He considered getting out the eraser she hadn't bothered with, and weighed the chances of her using it against those of them leaving it by accident. He left it where it was.
NVRMIND.
"They weren't the days?"
She shook her head, and pressed her lips, her eyes focused on the window. A few seconds later she turned her hand up signaling for him to take it.
"Hey," he said, after several minutes had passed. "You're out of the hospital." He kept his palm open on the table while she scrawled an answer.
NOT BETTER
Derek considered the infusion pump by their bed, the doubly blended food stacked in the refrigerator, the physical therapy ahead of her. He didn't think she was referring to any of it.
"Maybe you're not healed, but you were barely leaving your room four days ago. For two weeks you couldn't communicate at all. That's a lot to process, let alone your actual experience."
She hummed in response, leaving her hand in his.
"I, uh, made something for you."
Her lips twisted, and he remembered a night not long after he'd left Addison. He'd come over while she'd been drinking with her roommates, and Karev, whatever he'd been. She'd said something particularly laced with innuendo, and then looked at him like...he really hadn't considered the parallel, but like Amelia the first time she'd sworn in front of their mother. Karev had commented that tequila took her "deflective shields down." Derek had been baffled. Yeah, at work she shifted to mild swears, but she'd told him their first night that she "wasn't a pussy girl," and pronounced "cunt" like there wasn't another word she could've used.
She'd doubled down one night after the ferryboats. Everything that could possibly be innuendo had gotten a that's what he/she/they said. Once they were alone, she'd told him Sadie was more than her roommate—but she didn't know what. She'd been explicit, throwing out barbs about what, where, and when—particularly while he was living with Addison. He'd attributed her ire as fear that he'd take off, and assumed the rest went back to the stupid implications he'd made in the stairwell. She hadn't put herself in a glass box like it'd seemed right before her mother died, or continued with the high ponytails, but there were moments—something she wasn't saying; maybe that she didn't know, but he couldn't decode it. It'd taken until he'd started as Interim Chief, almost exactly five years ago, for him to correct that. There'd been an evening of glib references to her being ill-suited to be the Chief's wife; certainty that she'd be a humiliation of a plus-one. She hadn't absorbed "a lick of etiquette" from going to events with Ellis, didn't he realize how recently she'd been dancing on table?-and he'd put it together.
Her belief that she had to be the girl in the bar, some bright and shiny woman he'd had in his head hadn't just been about taking on a persona. She'd filtered out parts of herself, some of them parts he'd admired. Most of the misconceptions had been cleared up, but in that period of flux she'd seen him with Rose; discovered that Lexie had been that other girl at Joe's, and still, deep down, compared herself to Addison. He'd managed to clear it up—it helped, he imagined—that she'd seen so many of his imperfections by then.
Dr. Meredith Grey didn't just smooth Meredith Grey's edges; she'd learned the other adaptations of professionalism. But he'd gotten more of the roughness, the wickedness, the naughtiness. Thoughts she once would've only shared with Cristina.
But now her expression was the same as that first night Like she'd only shown him her first thought because of an outside influence, presumably the diazepam. He wondered if prompting her was the best or worst thing to do. Before he'd decided, she shook her head and her mouth settled back into the smile.
U DID, HUH?
She'd caught herself.
What he had for her could be a segue into reminding her that she was the kind of woman he wanted. The woman.
"Where's your phone?" he asked. She gestured vaguely at the side-pocket on the wheelchair's armrest. He unpacked it on the table: charger, wallet, wire-cutters. Meredith huffed and turned to the water, but she had him in her periphery, and once he put the stuff back she spindled her finger in the air.
"What? I already have two phones. Three's a lot to keep up with, I don't know if I grabbed yours. Karev's bringing whatever we left. Let me see."
He hadn't intended to play a shell game with her, but by chance his phones came out of his pocket before hers. She caught on and casually sipped her chalk. Whenever she set it down, her smile would start to return, and she couldn't fold her lips in to dismiss it.
"Huh. Look at that, had it after all." He took her hand to unlock it with her fingerprint, and then swiped it over to her iTunes app. "Who had all the bootlegs, you or Felicia?"
She signed "what?" still holding her marker.
"You're good at it; I know that—"Their first Christmas, she'd found a recording of a performance from The Clash that he'd live thirty years earlier. "And spending a summer here put you in a good position to score in the where city your scene was rooted. But I bet you both had your sources." He flipped the phone toward her with the folder of playlists open for her to scroll through. Watching her lean over the table to draw her finger over the screen, it could almost be any other day; although, they were rarely on the ferry together in the afternoon.
YOU FOUND EVERYTHING
"Almost. I had to rip some of them off of the tapes. These, in particular." He angled the iPhone up just enough to see that he'd gotten to the bottom of the folder below the comprehensive collection he'd dropped all the songs into. The majority of the playlists were numbered; volumes one through six of Grrrl Power!'n'Grunge 4 Merry*Death! "Digitizing all of her commentary was where I got the idea," he admitted. "I didn't add them to the playlists for the tapes they came from, but that an easy to fix. I just wasn't sure you'd want to hear them every time you went through the playlist."
Her eyes shone as she looked up at him.
WHAT ABT
"No," he cut in before she could start forming the next word. "The recording with him is on my computer, as a .wav file. There's no chance it'll end up mixed into anyone's music."
Her thumb and forefinger formed the circle of "okay."
"Do you want…?" He started to take the looped earbuds out of his pocket, but she shook her head, tapping out of the string of intros, outros, and interludes that had her friend's voice on them.
"All?" she signed. "You listen?"
"Yeah. I'd forgotten Nirvana had a song called 'Aneurysm.'"
The teasing shift to her smile trembled only for a second. "Then, you know?"
"In '93? Possibly not. Once I'd committed to neuro? I'd like you to consider what you know about Mark and Amelia. If ringtones had been a thing, I would've had a different brain-themed song playing every day for long enough to go back to a landline."
She twirled her marker over her fingers; muscle memory of stick tricks she'd practiced with pencils in school. He'd really seen her put on a performance twice, once at the Guitar Center where she'd demonstrated how well she played, and once early in her fourth year, sitting on the bar at Joe's, twirling a scalpel. He'd walked into that scene, and his heart had bounced into his throat. It'd been surreal; she'd had perfect control; he'd recognized her smirk as the evolution of a smile; her eyes were both tracking the blade and never leaving Karev, who'd turned out to have been the instigator of the demonstration.
That had been the only time he'd looked at her and consciously seen Death.
U DID THIS IN 4 DAYS
"You already had most of the music," he pointed out. "She wrote out tracklists with the runtime. I made a few mixtapes in my life. That's takes effort."
SHE DID NOTHING HALF-ASSED.
I WAS HER SADIE.
"I doubt—" he started. Meredith thumped her marker on the table, and he held up a hand. "Mer, I believe that you were reckless, and angry, and sometimes couldn't imagine that you weren't going to go hard and burn out. That it wasn't visible that you were on a path that would take you here. But I also know you were vibrant, adventurous, and totally devoted to what you loved. Whether you thought you could change the world, you wanted it to change.
"Sadie…. You loved her. She was manipulative. You were intertwined, codependent adolescents. Been there…." He sucked his cheek in for a breath. "You told Sadie you couldn't be her friend during her internship." Meredith's cheek twitched, and he put his hand on her wrist. "Because that would've mean enabling her, not helping her.
"There's about ninety minutes of Felicia talking on there." Her eyes widened again, and the marker stilled. "Yeah. Almost equivalent to a whole tape. She reads drafts of op-eds for your zine or school paper. Runs you through an exam study schedule. That, I bet you tried to do that for Sadie. But I also think she needed you. A sounding board, someone receptive to encouragement. You needed someone to acknowledge what you were doing, not what you should be doing." He glanced out at the water, and Meredith slid her hand up and over his before she started writing.
U'RE NOT LIKE HER EITHER.
OK THERE ARE TINY WAYS I HVE A TYPE,
B/INTENTION IS DIFF.
W/ME. AND W/MARK. U WEREN'T USING HIM
EVERYTHING DIDN'T HAVE MOTIVE
SHE'D PRAISE ME 4 BEING MORE THAN I RLY WAS
& THN UNDERCUT IT TO TIE US 2GETHER.
U HEARD. NOT ALWAYS IN A
SHE WASN'T
I WAS HER CONSTANT. & I CLD B BROKEN W/HER.
MAYBE SHLDVE BEEN MORE W/L.
SADIE GOT DETAILS BY CHANCE
DIFF AFTER SUMMER '93. I
She hesitated, and her focus went to the phone again.
KNEW R HAD MORE CHEMO
B/WE HADN'T TALKED MUCH.
THINK I MIGHTVE BEEN THE HAPPY PERSON.
THN SHE WAS GONE.
NXT SEMESTER NO1 MENTIONED HER
B/I WAS STILL TYPHOID MER. I WAS SO
I DIDNT TALK ABT HER 4 YRS.
GRADUATION THERE WAS A THING.
PICS & I RLZED I'D BEENSHE WAS A KID.
W/E HAPPENED WSN'T ABT ME.
ID BEEN THE ONE 2 DUMP LAYLA
KURT COBAIN WAS A ROCKSTAR.
MOM HADN'T ACTUALLY DIED.
THINK I DECIDED MY ISSUESPAIN
W/E WAS WRONG. I DIDN'T HAVE A RGHT 2B
She let the heel of her palm smear the last letters.
"You were mad at her?" Fully, not meeting his eyes this time, Meredith nodded. "Do you think I never believed Dad shouldn't have run for the back room? Mer. At fifteen, rationality and emotion don't always crossover at the best of times. But that doesn't change that it's an avoidable action that hurts people. And you were blamed. Doesn't seem like something she'd have wanted, but that could make it worse."
She put a finger to her lips and tipped it forward. "True."Then, she circled her fist over her heart. "Sorry." Her eyes came up. "Thank you." She nodded to her phone. "I like."
"Why sorry?" he asked.
GOING ON. NOT ABT US. U DID THIS 4 ME.
I SPENT SUMMER '03 RIPPING CDS
2B W/MOM & NOT. TOOK AGES.
U LEARNED 2 PIRATE MUSIC 10YRS L8.
TELL ME U USED NAPSTER OR
KNEW WHAT KAZAA WAS.
"Mer, your life is part of us. And…feel free to dismiss this, but I think it's…if talking about it helps you remember her, I think…My sisters and I remember Dad differently. All mixed in with Mom, and his friends who are still around, and kids who came in while things were slow, and hung around the register while he read to one of us—all of that together maybe comes close to who he was. I'm here for you to tell those things to, okay? If it's what happened, or didn't, or what led there. I'm here if you don't, too."
She nodded slowly, and flicked her finger across her phone screen again. Two things that she couldn't do without wincing at the beginning of the month..
I 4GT SHE LOVED BIKINI KILL.
KATHLEEN HANNA IS A TRANSPHOBE NOW.
SHE'D HATE THAT
SHE WAS RLY GOOD ON A SK8BOARD.
IF R WAS OK, SHE'D TRY 2 TEACH US.
THAT'S HOW I GOT THE SCAR ON MY CALF.
SHE REREAD TAMORA PIERCE BOOKS CONSTANTLY
80s YA FEMINIST FANTASY. NOT SURE
"Carly had all of those. I think they made the cousin circuit, but she named her cat Faithful."
Meredith stared at him, and if she could he was sure she'd have spilled the Ensure lunging over the table. Before he could adapt to the situation and kiss her instead, she was writing again.
YOU DIDNT JUST NO THAT THEN
U REMEMBER. SHE'S 25.
I LOVE HOW U NO THE PPL U LOVE
He wasn't sure he knew the right things, but it wasn't the time to go into that. He kept his eyes on her while she cut hers away, her expression going distant for a second, and then returning.
HE WAS A SCROTUM SORE ABT THEM
& HIS BKS WERE THE SAME, B/W/BOYS
& THE SERIES WAS ABOUT TWINS_
She groaned and at first he thought something was hurting, but before he could spring up from his side of the table and start what she'd absolutely call "a goddamn scene, Derek," he noticed the position of the hand holding the marker and vaguely remembered the story. Twins who separate for their educations. There was more—Twelfth Night-esque crossdressing, he thought, but ultimately the girl became a warrior-healer, and the boy became the antagonist.
He'd tucked packs of markers into drawers, and there was one in the glove compartment, but that didn't mean this one should be flung on the ferry. He covered her fist with both hands as the tension in her wrist relaxed
"She saw herself in them, to what degree isn't something you had the information to know. It still isn't."
Now, she could see that there'd at least been superficial been toxicity between the twins. Then, it might not have stood out. Accepting his derision had seemed like rolling her eyes at Ellis, and now it felt like enabling.
"She's the person you started going to shows with, right?"
"Mmm." She rested the marker on her left hand and made a sign that used the same hand-shape as "like" but against her lower lip.
LUCKY.
THEY CALLED HER LUCKY LISSY
She told him about being pulled up onto the stage at one of her first shows; how she'd loved and hated being seen like that.—DRUM SET=OPERATING TABLE. MICROSCOPE. INSTRUMENT-SENSIBLE SYNONYM.—and when his phone buzzed, as much as he wanted to get her home, he was disappointed to see they needed to head for the car. The email subject line was Resignation Procedure. He pocketed it again; the NIH could wait.
"A-L-E-X?"
"Not yet." He screwed the lid on her drink and handed it to her. "The kids are down to be checked out at first shift-change. It's a Friday and a holiday, so there are few hours until they'll be home."
Her head bobbed. They'd been through the plan more than once that morning, but knowing things were working out reassured her. It didn't take much thought to figure out why.
"I am so proud of you, Mer. It would've been totally understandable if you'd asked me to turn around at any point of today. You would've been justified in kicking me out of your room on day one, but I'm incredibly grateful that you didn't."
"Same," she signed.
He leaned over the corner of the table to kiss her. "Mm. Chocolate chalk."
The breathy sound that she could make wasn't her full body laugh, but it was so much more than he'd gotten for most of the end of last year. He kissed her again. "I am so happy that you're going to be home, sweetheart. It's where we belong." Her eyes lit up with her smile. He hoped he'd be seeing that more.
At the car, she didn't object to him lifting her in. He thought of Callie asking how many times he thought he'd be doing that. Her advice had been good. At the pace he'd been going, it probably would have been gotten more difficult, not easier. She didn't weight more than both kids put together, and it was far easier to distribute her weight. It was inarguable that she'd gotten lighter over the past few weeks; jaw-wiring was one of the more messed up methods of weight loss people had tried over time, but it seemed to be staying about the same.
"Ready?" he asked, his eyes on the mirror as they joined the line of cars disembarking onto the Bainbridge terminal.
"Don't know," she signed. "I want."
He wasn't sure if that meant she wanted to be ready or wanted to be home until she smiled
"Did you know that it's Amy's thousandth day?" Derek asked, sprawling next to her after he'd hooked her up to the IV pump that would infuse her PPN overnight—a banana bag that she didn't earn the fun way. Then again, he'd given more than a couple Advil with it, so.
Not at all appropriate thoughts in light of what he'd said.
"Now?"
"Technically. That's why she's working—among other reasons—she thinks it's better to celebrate something she's made it through.. I thought we could have people over to celebrate tomorrow night."
She could see Amy thinking that, but Richard's thousandth day of sobriety had fallen during his long hospitalization after the storm, and it'd been the only day he'd seemed anything about but irate about having visitors, and he'd had dozens.
"It's not a true meeting," his sponsor had said when she'd gone by. "But he earned that chip, and he should get it today."
it was Friday. Not Amy's usual meeting day, but maybe-
Derek had asked her about this now on purpose. He'd had all day—days, she'd bet. Amy might object to being made a fuss over—and really did that seem like her? Like any Shepherd. Her's might've been the one to bring it up seeing it on the calendar after he'd picked the day to bring her home. It was the sort of thing he'd experience immediate contrition over. He'd have planned the dinner alternative before Amy said a word, which had probably been something like, 'Derek, it's Valentine's Day. Wherever Meredith will the that night, she'll be stuck there. Besides, I'm working."
Maybe that had what gave him the idea of the dinner. Bringing everyone to Meredith. Who'd had enough of people, thank you very much, and so what if it was for Amelia, they'd fuss about her. He'd promised her time with just them—their family. And the others were their family. Seeing them here and not in the hospital had been part of the point, right?
Derek had waited until she was high on oxytocin, and then been all Mer, I saw your face when Zola jostled your arm; Bailey was leaning on your ribs; you're clearly hurting; you need to sleep. Doubly high. And, thanks to said oxytocin, she couldn't convince herself that making the point would be worth jerking away from the hand on her abdomen. (He'd be going on about hate crimes, next. She wasn't changing her mind. Ir'd been an attack by a bigot, not for bigoted reasons.)
It hadn't occurred to her that Bailey would want her to feed him tonight.
No, okay, it had. A consequence of getting the opioids less frequently was that they hit harder. Lying to herself became difficult. Dilaudd didn't make things morphine-blurry, and without the wires she wouldn't have been as blathery. The NSAID did none of that, wasn't addictive, and didn't take all the edges off yetWhatever, facts were that she couldn't pretend she hadn't considered the possibility; he'd rooted at her pitifully a few times on morning visits, and been particularly stubborn Sunday afternoon. This was the first time it'd been at least five hours since she'd gotten any of the stronger meds, long enough according to the latest studies. It would be twenty-three hours, next time.
She wouldn't need them tI o get to the bathroom and maybe the couch. That was what she'd assumed her Saturday would be. But what difference would it be, really? People would be there for Amelia, and the point wouldn't be to bug her. That might be nice. Hey guys, you may not take my vitals. I can, in fact, tell you to piss off.
Not that she would.
She could
"You C-O-E-R-C-I-V-E."
"Who, me?"
"You and B.B."
"I didn't do that."
She moved her fist in a "yes," by which she meant sure, buddy.
"Swear to God, I was fixing his bottle, and I got waylaid. Anatomy Joanne needed a sling." She grinned, which still pulled a little. Too bad she wouldn't be walking the streets somewhere some dude would be telling her to smile. That would've made the wires fun. She'd even admit to growling.
The doll with a sling had been the, well, third or fourth cutest thing of the night. The first was beyond cute. Derek had helped her to—okay, set her down in her in—the glider rocker in Bailey's room while he went back and forth directing bedtime. Zola had come in between every piece of clothing at first—"Mommy, do I take off my shirt now?" "Do I hafa wear clean underoos, Momma? I want the Minnie Mouse"—until Meredith had jabbed her finger at Derek, and then signed, "Daddy," for emphasis.
"Okay," Zola had signed back, slumping back through the kids' bathroom to her room. Her daughter could be petulant in ASL, sing in Mandarin and Cantonese, argue with Sofia in basic Spanish, on top of the occasional phrase they thought to teach her in Italian or French. Mostly, it was attributable to the changes they'd made in the daycare. It'd already been certified for Pre-K by the time she'd became their first alumna on staff, but in three years they'd transitioned to twenty-four hour child care, with a birth-to-five education program.
The second cutest thing had happened that afternoon. Zola had run into the bedroom with her backpack on and skidding to a halt a second before diving into Meredith's arm. She'd held her hands up in what looked like two Live Long and Prosper gestures—all Meredith's friends were dorks, whatever—her face determined, and traced a heart over her chest. "Day," she'd added. Then her petal-pink mouth had shifted into a dismayed o. "I forgot to say 'happy.' I get a do-it-over."
This time, she spoke along with her signs. "Happy Valentine's Day. I did it!" She'd jumped onto the bed; her face shining with pride.
"Mama, hi!" Bailey had squealed, stomping in before Alex who'd joked at least four jokes about Person really meaning pack-mule."Ah home, ah home!"
"All home," Derek had confirmed in the doorframe. He'd been consistently enforcing the Bailey to say the L-sound for some re Meredith wasn't sure she was ready to lose "I Bay-yee" yet, but that didn't make it worth bringing up. She'd met her husband's eyes, hoping he could see she was thinking we're doing something right.
She hadn't been able to think when Bailey had climbed onto the ottoman that attached to the glider. Her eyes had darted to the door, afraid that she wouldn't be able to catch him if he slipped, but at some point he'd gotten coordinated enough to crawl into her lap from the space she made by moving her right leg.
"Mama, hi," he'd said again. She'd run her fingers through his hair, and played with his ear, making him giggle. "Mama miyuk?'
"Milk?" she'd signed.
"Yeah, miyuk." He'd thumped his hand onto her cast; not meaning to hurt, but she was glad for the fiberglass when she'd mostly hated it. "Boo-boo."
Alone but for the toddler, she'd snickered. She'd thought that was funny eight months ago. That everyone save four or five people would think he was commenting on her broken arm was amazing.
"Want milk?"
His eyes went wide, and he shook his fists. An enthusiastic yes. She used her arm to move his down. "Gentuh?" She'd nodded. "Be gentuhs, Mama got hurts. Ma miyuk?"
She'd pressed her lips against the side of his forehead, trying to be sure she could do this. The nurses had had attaching the pump with as little contact as possible down to a science, and she hadn't missed that they never sent in a male tech if they were busy, no matter who was assigned to her room. She'd felt less like she might be about to vomit if Derek did it. It'd always felt like she'd known every rough spot on his hands before she should've. He'd been the one to massage lanolin into her nipples when she hadn't wanted to touch them herself, and stayed awake at night to help her coax Bailey into a better latch.
The baby had nursed from the first time they'd tried, long before the lactation consultant had made it in after the storm, but his prematurity had made him small, and his muscles had been less developed. She'd never wanted to skip a feeding, and Derek had been highly amused by her whenever they started him on a bottle—"you're pouting. You've been fed him every few hours for a month, and you're pouting."—She hadn't been able to deny it or to explain. Sure, she didn't love the chaffing, or the biting once his teeth started coming in. At no point did she think their bond was stronger than what she'd had with Zola at his age, not even based on the extra eleven months—eight, before she'd known her daughter existed. But it wasn't an experience she could equate to anything else; definitely not like having suction cups attached to her tits. If she could do that, exclusively, for almost four weeks, she could get through a few minutes of discomfort, and she didn't think it'd last beyond that. It hadn't lasted when the skin on her breasts had been irritated to the point of cracking, and there wasn't any damage. It only felt like it whenever someone else put their hands on them.
She'd lifted the strap of her sling over her head carefully; she didn't love having anything touch the front of her neck, either. That it wasn't as big of an aversion still bugged her. She used to be highly vocal about sex not being anything more than being touched somewhere with more nerves than anywhere else. Orgasm released chemicals—freaking oxytocin—that increased feelings of intimacy; she'd felt that at fourteen, but it didn't force you to get attached. She'd been sure that took repetition. Women's breasts shouldn't be more sexualized than men's; she still believed that. It was hard for her to accept that she felt more violated by having hers touched through her scrubs than having a hand around her neck. She hadn't had a choice in either. But it hadn't been the time to consider that.
Taking her shirt off fully wouldn't have been an option if she'd wanted to. She'd bunched it up over her right breast, as low as she could. Bailey had pushed it up a little further, because the child she and Derek created wanted things his way.
"Gentuh," he'd said again. She couldn't know if he'd felt her tensing, or was just associating Mommy's body with being gentle. That wasn't a bad thing, as long as it didn't make him timid. His spindly fingers had guided her nipple into his mouth. She'd wanted to not be bothered at all, to be able to let him keep his palm against the side of her boob until he got more interested in the hem of her shirt.
She hadn't been there yet. She'd tugged his hand away, bouncing it as she did, and he'd smiled, responding by grasping her fingers and moving her hand up and down. Sometimes, she missed cradling a baby whose moods depended mostly on whether he was hungry or not; but tracking the way his personality formed as he interacted during something this routine was fascinating. That was partially why she'd kept going through his first birthday. Why force it when neither of them was ready?
He'd settled easily, like it hadn't been weeks. She'd had an uneasy moment of realizing that if he'd been scared on his first visit to her room, he'd still remember. She wouldn't have come home at this point. She might not have seen Zola yet. She hated that thought
If Bailey had been smaller, she would've had to use her good arm to support him; maybe grit through bending her knees up for a minute to adjust. She mostly kept her hand on his back anyway, but she couldn't resist stroking his cheeks, his arm; running her fingers along his hairline in the way that always encouraged sleepiness.
She couldn't say she got totally comfortable having her breast uncovered, even in her baby's room, in a house in the woods. That pissed her off, and that wasn't something she wanted, either. This time was supposed to be for her and Bailey. Eventually, his blue eyes had held more of her attention, and the desire to yank away and cover was easier to ignore.
It wasn't unlike the way she'd felt riding through the hospital that afternoon with diazepam in her system. Her irrational fear had been there; it'd surged on the elevator, and she was glad Derek had stayed behind her. His hand on her shoulder had been a bracing reminder that he was there; he was the only other person there. She didn't know what her subconscious thought could happen. That the unsettled feeling hadn't struck while she and April shared the elevator with a handful of others was bizarre. Shouldn't she have been less comfortable with strangers? Regardless, it'd subsided once they entered the lobby, and overall, seeing Derek's car made her more excited than apprehensive. Getting in brought relief, not panic.
She'd had dozens of things to realistically be anxious about, from getting back to the bed to going back to work, but with Bailey's weight pressed against her ribs, the pain just enough to remind her that something had kept her from being her to do this for almost a month, she couldn't focus on them. She could just be there.
Half an hour later, she wasn't quite at that point, but opioids could dull anxiety, too, which Derek absolutely knew. "I haven't asked anyone officially, yet," he reassured her. "It can be just the five of us. Amelia would thank you. But I also…I noticed her birthday coming up on my calendar the other day. Not Ame—"
"L-E-X-I-E." Her first surprise little sister, who was now in the middle. That suited her in a way Meredith would have to examine at another time.
"Yeah."
"30."
"Mmhmm. I know you usually celebrate with the kids. I figured maybe birthday cake milkshakes instead of cupcakes?"
Meredith nodded, blinking up at the ceiling fan. She'd had the thought over the past few days; Valentine's Day had meant Lexie's birthday was coming for long enough that the association would always be there. Doing something about it had been overshadowed by her own problems. Shouldn't that have been the case for Maggie's birthday? She'd let that overlap with Zola's.
"Hey. You've had less time to think about it than I have."
"Sure."
"I'm serious. Maybe my evenings have been, well, like that was." He gestured to the hallway, where their children had been running, energized by the novelty of Mommy being home, and the sugar they'd been given in honor of a made-up holiday. Okay, technically, all holidays were made-up. Meredith still disliked Valentine's Day more than most.
"But for the past few weeks you were bugged by doctors, or techs, or nurses, or therapists, or me constantly while you were awake. You've had a few hours a day to fill, and you've thought about her, haven't you?"
She looked to him this time. Lexie had come up in the journal. Should that be considered talking?
"You were an extraordinary sister to Lexie. You're terrific with my sisters; I have a functional wrist to prove it. You would not have been a terrible sister at any point. I'm sorry that I said that. Mer, once you apologized for calling me names behind my back. I should've learned from you then. You are a natural teacher. A caretaker, in spite of never having enough people take care of you. You would've been a great big sister. You were. You are. You will be."
Even without painkillers, the words that finally escaped once she'd been baited and insulted were usually honest. He tended to regret the things he said when pressed, she knew that, but it was hard for her to know which things. It traced to him growing up in a house where you could say plenty without being heard, while she'd gotten one chance to get an idea across to her mother, if that. He didn't always focus on what was being said, and she took in too much.
"Aside from her birthday, your last bed-rest style recovery was the liver donation; you were far more ambulatory after the C and splenectomy. How much of that was because Lexie wasn't here to boss you back into bed?"
"Some," she signed. She squeezed her eyes shut, seeing Lexie standing in the bedroom door at the old house demanding to know what Meredith thought she was doing; she had an excuse to wear pajamas all day, why was she getting dressed?
"Because the days I stay in bed all day are the days when I can't get up," Meredith had said. She hadn't been totally shocked by the empathy on Lexie's face as she'd grabbed the shirt Meredith was putting on with a huffed reminder about not being cleared to lift her arms up that high. Any lingering stand-offishness about touching between them had ended in the days after Meredith's surgery.
"I've had those," Lexie had said.
"When your mom died?"
"Mm, yeah, but…I went to college really young, you know, and my parents were across the country. Did I mention my high school was a teeny-tiny magnet school? I mean, come on, how else does a band nerd who hasn't learned not to raise her hand get to be valedictorian and prom queen?"
Meredith shrugged. "Didn't have a chance at either. I did finish in the top-ten. It was a total coup. Summer after eighth grade I discovered grunge, and they forgot I'd been the nerd who did a book report on Schwarz's Principles of Surgery."
"Five years later, it was all BSB and N'Sync," Lexie said. "Even here, if you can believe that. Anyway, I expected college it to be the same, and I became a very small fish in a river, where my ability to recite facts did not impress. The professors wanted me to think more; no one else was at all interested in my opinion. They'd all been valedictorian at their elite.. Boston prep schools…. Don't you wonder if we ever crossed paths?"
"I hope not. They pretend to be nice to you? I wouldn't have."
"Would've been better. I got to my birthday without anyone to have a real conversation with, and I started tagging along whenever someone on my hall sought out a party. I'd only been drunk in my friends' basements; I wasn't a virgin, but I did expect someone I slept with to remember my name on Monday. Especially because I was going by Alexandra. I thought it sounded sexy."She rolled her eyes at herself. "I was a total mess for a while. The girl who pretends she doesn't know how to play beer pong at a different house every night." Her teeth closed on her thumbnail. "Harvard, MIT, BU. Became a sort of mascot at one of their frat houses. I'd 'date' a brother, he'd get what he wanted, and his roommate would put me in a cab. I blew five of them at one party."
Meredith hadn't been able to stop her eyebrows from raising, but she'd swallowed the damn, Lexie.
"I know. Total slut, right?"
"No. Not if you didn't feel like you had a choice."
"They didn't, like force me. I liked how they'd look at me, and I told myself it wasn't degradation; it ]r was liberation! But I didn't like how they looked at me the next day. Got to where I wasn't having fun, like I had. The girls around me were, or pretended they were. I thought something was wrong with me. I was just naive, and no one would notice if I stopped showing up.
"I hadn't wanted to keep spending my nights alone in my room, but then it was all I wanted. I stayed in bed for days. Eventually my R.A. dragged me to Student Services. Having someone to talk to made things a little better. I had to totally rearrange my life to avoid the guys I'd been invisible to a month or so earlier. Luckily, it's a big school. I made friends like anyone does in college. You're sitting by someone in the dining hall, and you see them in the library, and then you can't imagine life without them. But it was a long time before I could really be…Lexie, and it still felt like tagging along, like they'd formed these deep bonds at some point in first semester, and I'd missed out. Same as skipping a grade. Kinda happened intern year, thanks to dealing with Dad. Think that might be why I was so receptive to your crazy ex."
Meredith had squeezed Lexie's hand, which she'd taken midway through her story. "I can think of more than one time in freshman year when I called my mom just to hear her say, 'yes, what is it, Meredith?' I wasn't ready to pick up and move across the country, and I knew it. I would've taken off for Vassar or Stanford. Hell, we had this house, I might've tried to talk Mom into U-Dub. I was crazy, but I wasn't that brave."
Lexie had shrugged. "I got into Harvard. Who says no to that?"
Meredith had laughed so hard that it'd hurt, and she'd given Lexie crap about sabotaging her recovery while she told the story of burning her Harvard letter in a trash can.
She'd told Lexie a lot of things over those weeks. Most of the time, she wished they'd talked more. Sometimes, she selfishly wished Lexie hadn't burrowed her way so deeply into her life. Losing her would've been easier.
Opening her eyes, she glanced over to ensure Derek hadn't turned away. "Hospital needs-to discuss L-E-X-I-E more."
"They do," he agreed, and she couldn't help smiling. She'd stuck to the white board with all but a few other people. Partially, it was not wanting to put anyone on the spot if they didn't sign, but she also didn't want to put her clumsy, one-handed signs on display. She wasn't used to being inept at things these days.
It'd infuriated her that he made her feel that way last year; inept at family, at surgery, even at fighting with him. He'd always been the person who didn't see her that way. Who'd refused to. She'd told herself he didn't believe the things he'd said; she was starting to believe that.
"I need-to. Always working. M-E-D-U-S-A, always mad. Maggie." Maggie's neighbors had given her a name-sign Meredith didn't get; she was pretty sure it was a Doogie Howser reference, and she'd avoided that show at all costs. "C-R-I-S-T-I-N-A. You."
Derek's lip curled down, thoughtfully.
"What?" The sign reminded her of the gesture she and Lexie had shared. She'd have memorized the ASL dictionary by this point, and been blurting out facts like the ones included in an article Derek hadn't managed to keep from her: "Although the grudge against Dr. Grey turns out to be unrelated to her practice, it is not unheard of for a doctor to be attacked twenty years after a grievance. George H. W. Bush's cardiologist Mark Hausknecht was murdered not for operating on the former president, but for the death of his killer's mother two decades prior. Though comparatively rare in America, the Chinese have a term for assaults on medical professionals: 'yinao,' which roughly translates to 'medical ruckus.'"
Derek moved his hand, tracing the path the bruises had taken over her cheekbone with his thumb. "When your mom died, you didn't wait for anyone to ask before you insisted you weren't upset. You told on yourself by throwing around 'dead-Mommy' references. You didn't expect to lose Lexie, and yeah, you were mad. She was stolen from you. And, in your eyes, everyone else had it worse. Right?" She nodded. "Maybe some of why you were mad about Maggie?"
"Eh."
"There's a lot involved in that," he acknowledged. "Mer, it's okay if you're still not ready. We don't have to have anyone don't have to bring it up, or talk about it beyond that "
"Can't talk."
"Oh, ha-ha."
She shrugged. "Who tomorrow?"
"Uh, Amelia. She wants to \get Arizona and Herman out. Are she and Callie...?"
"Eh."
"I'll talk to Callie. Karev?"
"Work."
"Two less."
"J-O."
"On her own? Okay. Richard. Maggie…?"
"Good. One more."
"Are you ready for that?"
"Have-to."
"No, you don't. We're here so you don't have to see anyone." He touched her lips and then reached into the bedside table for a lemon glycerin swab. He brushed it carefully against her lips, touching them, and then kissed her. Somehow, that was the thing that made her realize she was really home.
Usually, bringing the hospital home was verboten, they didn't have anything but an emergency bag. Home did go to the hospital: toys, clothes, who knew what in Derek's office. This was a new melding; the IV pump, syringes, gloves, the swabs, the books carried home in a basin. Her past had come into this life, demanding that they blend. She could face recalling a bad experience to apologize to her boss. Everything had to be blended now. She'd be Meredith purée.
Derek cocked an eyebrow at her. Crap, couldn't talk, and her face thought that out loud. She waved a hand. "O-en uhkay."
"You sure?"
In answer, she kissed him, scraping the short stubble; he'd shaved for her this morning. She wasn't sure, but she'd manage. Amelia deserved celebration; she and Owen were…weirdly dancing around each other. She could include Maggie as the newest sister who'd taken care of her.
She rolled over again and held her hand out, moving her left one as much as she could to mimick Zola's signed, "happy Valentine's Day."
Derek's eyes welled up. She suppressed the first stream of spiraling, crazy-girl thoughts—he just realized what he's gotten into; he should've left her in the hospital; should've stayed in Bethesda—and acted like his wife, returning her hand to his cheek. He took her wrist, fiddling with her watch, not exactly like she did, but eerily close.
"You...I can't believe I got so close to losing you."
"Breathing."
"Not physically, love. I could've. I mean this. Us. Coming home for the holidays and knowing I'd have to go back to the life I had there...it was all I could do to leave. I don't know how long I'd have been able to keep living like that way
"The..' She paused and added, "R-E-S-E-A-R-C-H not...better? Being boss?"
"That part was worse that Chief. The research, if doing it here had worked out—I wanted to do it. But I wanted to come home to you, to get your thoughts and hear about your day,, to play with Beez.
"Same. Then…imagining future scary. Noqw, all futures. I see us."
"Yeah. Me too." He kissed her again, and he felt the tensing of her jaw muscles pullingthe breath o/f the yawn coming out through her nose.. "Time for sleep?"
"Sleep all day, me.'
"Shenanigans," he said, coming around the bed to straighten out her bedside table, putting the white board, and an electronic bell within reach.
She tried to echo him, but the laughter and the wires made it gibberish. She put a hand over her mouth.
"I doubt that. When you chose to use your voice I want to hear it Just be judicious UYou I'you need as much vocal rest as possible. Okay, you wanna try sleeping on your side?"
She nodded with enthusiasm, and he took her hand, providing resistance for her to roll over. Then he propped her arm on pillow she recognized from the tub in the shed, collected after her heprectomy.
"If that's too much on your arm, we can switch sides. Let's leave the brace on tonight since you were up more, okay?"
She gave him an okay sign, and he covered her and kissed her like he was tucking in one of the kids. She listened to him putter around in the bathroom and burrowed into their sheets. They were so soft and silky against her feet. The best part, though, was the way it dipped as Derek got in, alerting her to the fact that she wasn't going to have to sleep alone in their bed again. The lights clicked off. Derek rolled over, his chest against her back. She held her hand up. He clasped it, and she pulled his arm over her torso.
"Don't let—" he started, echoing himself last time her ribcage hadn't been able to take the pressure. She brought his hand to her lips. She'd had worse, more recent breaks and wanted him to hold her. She'd wanted him to hold her while she'd thought they were breaking.
Maybe we have, she thought, noticing the shadow of the post-it shadow box. Breaks healed; stronger, sometimes, or different-they'd just had a conversation that could have been journal material face to face. That had to mean they were getting better.