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!

25. Days Forty-Four & Forty-Five (Afternoon)

"Dr. Grey?"

Derek stopped the wheelchair, hesitantly. He knew that as relieved as she was to have the wires off, and her arm free, the procedures and evaluations had been an ordeal. They'd been followed by an in-person visit with Dr. Wyatt, and Meredith didn't have to say that she wanted to get the kids and go home. She'd said it, anyway. Anything she wanted to say because she could was fine by him. He was not going to point out that that she would've been miserable sitting through a board meeting today. She would've been, though.

Wilson's tone was not the congratulatory one they'd been hearing from everyone they passed. Facing her, he could see why; her eyes were red and makeup wasn't enough to hide the bags below them. She wasn't in scrubs; the Princeton hoodie she was wearing was stretched out, and had been through as much, if not more, than Meredith's Dartmouth t-shirts.

"Jo?" Meredith said, and he had to bite back a smile. Her voice was raspy from lack of use; Boston dripping from every syllable. "What happened?"

"I-I told him. I didn't mean to! I haven't told Stephanie, but he was saying you'd be in today, and I said something about having you over. He got suspicious, I guess, because we're not…he doesn't think we're friends, and maybe I let on…I don't know, maybe he wasn't even…. There was this feeling in the silence, and I just blurted, 'I'm married,' and he left. Before I could explain, or—"

"Okay, okay." Meredith put her cane on the floor and pushed up. Wilson got to her side before he could, meaning they both got exasperated looks. "Derek, we're going to use your office."

"Are you?" He sighed. The time to prove he'd honor her choices had come. While she'd been immobile, there hadn't been a benefit to shunting aside her needs in favor of someone else's, but with the option on the table, he worried. That Wilson hadn't argued—that she'd approached in the first place—meant her own pain was significant; he couldn't assume she'd catch the signals Meredith couldn't hide. All he could do was trust his wife. She had weeks before she'd been here for anything except appointments, and, as contradictory as it seemed to his certainty about getting her away two weeks ago, the more involved she felt in regular hospital life now, the better.

"I'll go pick your scripts up, and then text you."

She smiled, and slowly moved her left hand to his chest, wincing a little. It would hurt for a few days until the muscles adjusted. She needed more than the ibuprofen that'd been in her purse to be full weight-baring on her leg, but extra pain pills were the one thing they'd cleaned out of the safe when Amelia moved in.

Her mouth tasted of the toothpaste Avery had had ready; waiting to kiss her had been worth it once she finally finished scrubbing and turned her grin on him. All morning, she'd been anxious. Her expression in the parking lot had been the one she wore right before she ran, and all he'd been able to do was lift Bailey onto her lap. She'd seemed more settled by the time they got to daycare; a mix of the toddler's cheerfulness and making it inside, he imagined. Having the wires and brackets off had lifted a weight all it's own.

He could've stood there kissing her forever, even with Avery and an intern he didn't know cleaning up around them. Always more disciplined, she'd tugged away.

"Hey," she'd said.

"Hey."

She'd kissed him again, quick, and returned to the exam chair to let Avery check her throat. "How's April?" she'd asked as he'd approached with the scope. From behind Avery, Derek had raised his eyebrow at her. He'd seen her texting Kepner pictures of Artemis, and he'd thought there'd been responses.

"Good," Avery said. When Meredith had been momentarily silenced again, he'd added, "You have a really cute dog."

Thanks to Mark, Derek had decades of practice in turning laughter into coughs. It didn't keep Meredith from seeing through him, but she'd only shrugged. It'd been a test for Avery, and she didn't care who knew. He wasn't sure if she noticed it was the first time she'd held eye contact with Jackson in weeks, but Derek could tell that he did.

Hours later, the grin was weaker, and he noticed a line between her eyebrows that hadn't been there when he'd helped her into the wheelchair in Wyatt's office. Karev would end up ashamed of himself once she got through with him, but Derek wasn't against giving him a second lecture.

"Go," he told her. Wilson was aware enough to take the left arm Meredith was still holding close to her body, and she caught his eye as they passed, nodding slightly. Yeah, he'd be very willing to call Karev out on being a hot-head.

He'd always seen Alex as more like Mark than himself, but he reconsidered as he navigated from the psych offices to the pharmacy in the lobby. That Mark had never been a hot-head had been something that'd occurred to him numerous times during the course of the drive cross-country, the one he'd begun without more than a second thought.

It seemed contradictory; he'd been the serial monogamist, while Mark had rarely had relationships. He'd always laughed whenever Mark started going on about "seduction," but the truth was, Mark didn't rush. He saw out last-calls with one-night stands. He'd let repartee build with a college classmate, and if Derek asked why he didn't simply ask her out, he'd say it "ruined the fun." The infatuation Derek had felt for Addison; the passion with Meredith, they were on the other end of the spectrum from the anger that could overcome him in his worst moments. Stepping on Mark's jacket that night, he'd known that, at least, on Mark's side, there was no chance what he was going to find had "just happened."

Karev had slept around. Meredith could go on for a while about why she'd been considered the slut of their year. Apart from the buzzcut, his similarities to Mark might end there. Karev had an absent dad and a mentally ill mother. Mark's parents had just been negligent, and he'd shrugged it off. He'd always been first to laugh. Derek was the one who stormed and slammed doors. If Meredith had said she was married….Knowing what his own reaction would be had been part of what made him hold back. That might be why Karev had always annoyed him a little. Hopefully, it also meant Meredith could talk him around quickly. It wouldn't be the first time.

She'd make faces at the paper bag from the pharmacy, but it was nothing compared to the unused syringes the home health agency would pick up on Monday. It was also waiting for him, and he found himself at odds within ten minutes of watching Meredith walk off with Wilson. Checking the kids out would not go well if he couldn't present Mommy on command. Not with the amount of reassurance Zola had needed that morning. He didn't think they'd gotten her all the way to believing Meredith wasn't stayingat the hospital again.

Out of habit, he wandered up to the fourth floor, and into the lounge. Immediately past the threshold he discovered Richard sitting at the table with a piece of cinnamon roll-style cake with glittery green frosting. King Cake. He hadn't had a King Cake since he and Mark had a receptionist whose parents owned a bakery in Mobile and shipped her one every year.

"New ortho nurse is from New Orleans," Richard said by way of explanation. "Apparently she sourced this locally."

"Huh." As far as he knew, Julie had searched every bakery in Manhattan and Brooklyn before letting her parents go through the trouble. "Better tradition than sitting in church and having dust pressed on your forehead. "Early, isn't it?" Ash Wednesday and Lent didn't have a place in his life these days, but forty days could pass in no time, and there'd be Easter baskets to assemble.

"Next Tuesday."

Derek nodded. There was quiet—Never silence in the hospital. Meredith said the whistling kettles and buzzing of vertigo hadn't been constant; the times with no sound at all must've been incredibly eerie. Like a horror movie. Did that have anything to do with her anxiety over being alone in the house?

"Did you reach out to Thatcher?" he asked. Wilson would've had to lead Thatcher to them in any circumstances, but Derek kept imagining Meredith alone, having to deal first with having a strange car drive up, and then it being him.

The older man hummed around the fork he had upside down in his mouth. He didn't look up, and the vague thoughts Derek had had floating around since at least the night before, if not since it turned out that Richard had been holding a card about Meredith's history up his sleeve for almost a decade.

"He's her father."

"Meredith doesn't have a father." How many times had Derek argued with her on that? Being a father hadn't made him see it, but having been separated from his children, he knew. He'd thought about them any time he could spare, and if he couldn't. There was nothing that could've made him cut them out of his life. "She never has."

Mark was Sofia's father, though she didn't remember him. When their father died, Amelia had been almost the same age as Meredith was the day Thatcher moved out. Amelia might have more memories; she might not. It wasn't the quantity that mattered. With a qualifier, Richard was one of Maggie's fathers, if not her dad. Hell, there might be a man in Malawi who could claim to be Zola's. Meredith didn't have one.

Derek used to consider Thatcher "estranged," but he no longer thought he deserved that. He'd had opportunities to prove that he'd been more than ambivalent about her in the first five years. With her report of his visit in the journal, Derek had mostly ruled out the possibility.

I don't know what either of us expected, honestly. i have no memories of him as a caring person. i don't remember ever crying for daddy. If there was a storm or something, Mom would at least tell me not to be scared. She'd let me sit with her, and maybe explain what was actually happening. He'd take me back upstairs, say I was a big girl, and the was it. He just wanted to get me out of the way. One time, I did something that made him snap at me, and Ellis Grey said "have some patience, Thatcher, she's a child." I remember, because I was confused; only doctors had "patients." He did things for me, but I don't think he did things for me, you know?

A trove of furrows appeared on Richard's forehead.

"When you tried to get me to do general, you weren't the only one trying to talk me out of neuro. Morales wanted me for cardio. I've never forgotten her sales pitches. She also told me that in cardio procedures, you could really feel how you were holding a life in your hands. That every time you put someone on bypass, you make a cyborg, and started to wonder if that wasn't a form of killing them. She didn't regale me with tales of neurosurgeons who'd missed funerals, or lost custody of their kids."

Stories from AA? Derek wouldn't rule it out, but they could've been anecdotes from the grapevine. "Prater were the first to tell me that neuro would mean making some though decisions about what you wanted your life to look like, but he didn't say, 'You'll never be able to spend a holiday with your mom and sisters, much less any children you and Addison might have.'"

"You needed to know—"

"Babies come on holidays. You didn't try to convince Addison to change her mind about adding to the low number of female OB-GYNs. We were about equally skilled. If anything, she was better.

"But she questioned too much. Her dad wasn't perfect, but she grew up with him. Learned not to accept everything he said at face-value; if she accepted any of it. I didn't. You couldn't talk me out of neuro, but that didn't mean I didn't listen to you. I believed that as a neurosurgeon, I had to put my work first. Somewhere in there, I decided it matteredmore. That's not what you wanted, is it?"

"Of course not, and honestly Derek, I think you might be giving us both too much credit. Until Maggie came along—"

"You weren't anyone's father. That's what you've always fallen back on. With Meredith. With Miranda. Likely with Amelia, but I haven't seen you use it to manipulate her."

Across from him, Richard's eyebrows shot up, the V between his eyes disappearing. "What do you mean by that?"

"Depends. You wanted me in general. Same with Miranda, when she went for that peds fellowship. I'd forgotten, until Meredith said she'd asked her about it yesterday.

"A mentor would've been reluctant to let her go from his service, sure, but you were Chief, not Head of General, and it was personal."

"That was years ago!"

"That doesn't make a difference if it keeps happening. Look, Richard, there hasn't been a situation in my life that you haven't inserted yourself into since I moved out here. You pushed me into the hole I'd dug myself, because of your guilt over Ellis and Adele. Everyone ended up being hurt. I always assumed it was you were trying to protect Meredith, but there were so many better ways to do that. Your method did get two of your most successful trainees to move out here.

"I am the last person to say I've never made the same mistake twice. It took almost losing it all again for me—for us—Meredith and me—to untangle it all, and I'm sure we're not done. Sending her out to the woods? She told you at the time it wasn't your right. You lied about why you made her your next-of-kin, and made her think you saw Ellis's coldness in her right after she'd had a baby. You regretted it," he added, before Richard could interrupt. "But you did it. Even…God, I could almost believe that you told her why you broke up with Ellis because you wanted to encourage her resistance to the NIH—I understand that you didn't. That you didn't know she'd heard you making her a scapegoat that day at the carousel. Did it truly not occur to you that it would affect Ellis's treatment of her? Is that why you keep calling Thatcher? To get him to step in and make up for you two, the way you expected, then?"

"I expected that he'd be in her life!"

"But did you think he'd be enough? Did you think, or was it just that you knew that by the time she saw through you, you'd be gone?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"The one time I met her, lucid, Ellis told me she'd known men like me; they only wanted someone to admire them. They didn't care about the damage they did. I should've put it together.

"All the secrets should've come out that day. There's no excuse for her not telling you about Maggie once she had her diagnosis—maybe there was enough damage by that day that she truly didn't have those memories, but with her, who knows? She should've made absolutely sure that Meredith didn't think she hadn't been worth living for as a preschooler. That you'd been afraid her career would outshine yours; that Meredith didn't cause the break-up that ruined her mother's life—or, later on, your relapse."

"What?" Richard's voice was low. Actually questioning, not denial.

"She brought her mother back into your life. She was a daily reminder of it. She'd guessed that it was all related in the first place. She'd given Thatcher part of her liver; losing Susan caused him to start drinking, and she always felt responsible there…. When I confronted you, Meredith accused me of stepping in the way I did for my career, and she wasn't wrong. I wanted to prove that I could be chief, and be with her. I also wanted you to feel the position you'd put her in.

"I'm not saying I didn't blame myself, either. I'd been there time and time again with Amelia. There were plenty of signs. Heaping on praise; telling her how much her skill reminded you of Ellis? You might as well have been channeling Thatcher when he came through, wasted, talking about lifetimes of pride. Then there was bullshit you fed her about not having a problem, just being depressed? You didn't think she'd identify with that? Latch onto the idea that she was like you,not Thatcher? You did everything you could to put yourself in the place of her father, to make her keep your secret, the way she'd kept her mother's.

"She takes everything on herself. You knew that, when you put rigging the tri—" Derek's phone buzzed, which was just as well. He'd let his voice rise after doing all he could to keep calm while he'd gone down a rabbit hole that'd turned out to be deeper and more spiraling than he'd expected.

MEREDITH GREY: done.

It was the shortest message he'd gotten from her since she'd been able to hold her phone reliably, and it said as much as any of them.

"You and Ellis were both ashamed," he said, telling her to stay put, and pocketing the phone. "I get it, believe me. But that guilt—yours—makes you as bad as Thatcher. You try to make up for it, or you push her away to assuage it. You don't consider what her situation is in that moment, and I haven't always been able to take the step back and see that that influence has hurt her more." He stood up, taking both their trash over to the trash. He paused on his way past the counter. Meredith should eat something before they were in the car. Cake was soft, and it definitely had more flavor than anything else he could offer. "Like I said, you've been there for Amelia, and I appreciate that. You missed Maggie's first thirty years, because you didn't know about her. What matters is being there for her, now."

Derek cut into the King Cake, and as he pushed down the side of the knife hit something. He grinned to himself, and slowly used the tip to ease the plastic baby out of the piece he'd been slicing. The token meant good fortune for whoever got it, and as he stuck it into the frosting, he imagined Meredith saying the fortune is that I didn't bite into it.

She'd also hope there was more to the symbolism, just like he did.

If Derek asked if she was sure she wanted to do this one more time, Meredith was going to shove him over the railing. It would be a difficult feat mainly because they hadn't left the car, but she'd freaking figure it out.

"Remember how you did a twenty-hour tumor resection I couldn't watch?"

"It was two ten-hour proc—Yes, dear, I do."

She smirked. Having perfected her glare over the past few weeks had come in handy over the past day. "Thought so. I'm not doing that again. When...when Lexie assisted, I could feel jealously proud. Edwards I like, she found me, but I'd happily shove her into a closet if being in there was a possibility."

"Now?"

"Today? No, she's tough. She could take me." She pretended to claw at him with the arm that didn't like to be extended all the way.

He rolled his eyes. "Wouldn't stop you."

"You do know me. This could be a cardio procedure, and it'd be cool. On the other hand, Maggie's updates would've been better."

"Who'd be operating?"

"Not her, she wouldn't open the gallery."

"Ouch."

"What?" she groused. "This is nota 'regular thing.' We're not 'watching the worst day of someone's life like a movie!' It's not entertainment! It's called an operating theater. What are we supposed to do, cram the interns into an OR and have them mouth-breathing down a surgeon's neck? Oh, how about keeping them in street clothes, like we're back in 'The Clinic of Dr. Gross'" That one of the last hold-outs against Lister's findings on sterilization had been named Dr. Gross was one of the best parts of medical history, in her opinion."They can breathe on the patients."

Sitting in a crowded gallery could mean interns breathing down herneck. The light wasn't bright up there—was it contradictory that that reassured her? It was contradictory that she didn't want to be crowded any more than she wanted to be alone.

Derek put a hand on her leg. "It's mid-afternoon. People are in surgery. And you're a board member. They can make room for you."

"I can always kick a resident out of their seat, right? It's not like we're a teachinghospital."

"Nope, no one learns anything," he agreed, dryly.

"I know! We film the surgery, bring everyone into an auditorium, and project it onto a screen. Kind of like…?"

"A movie."

"We could sell concessions. Popcorn. Oooh, popcorn."

"Maybe in a few days? We can have a mo…a DVD night."

"Nice save, bub."

"I thought so. Tell me, how much snark have you been keeping in your head, and how hard was that?"

"A lot. Very. Did that come up with Richard?"

"The sharpness of your sheathed sarcasm?"

"The time you stole an OR and operated on an employee for two days."

"Uh, no." He checked the mirrors, looking pained when they couldn't yet move. She knew the feeling.

"Derek, you're making me feel like I still can't speak, because I'm having to repeat myself so much. I'm not mad. You're allowed to chew Richard out."

"I didn't...okay, I did do that." He sighed. "I'm not sure it was fair. Plenty of people told me to kiss my life goodbye, but….I don't know, everything we've been talking about, it just hit home that he was…. He made it stick, partially because…. If I hadn't made a point of not letting it happen, he would've ignored me once I specialized, and...I knew that was coming."

"You can say you didn't want to lose him. And if you tell me 'guys don't' anything, we're gonna have a parenting problem."

"No, that's...I was. There weern't a lot of people who understood about Amy, and...I mean, Iwhen I moved here makes it pretty obvious that I thought highly of his guidance."

"Is that how they're saying, 'had daddy issues' these days?"

"When he and Adele were separated…. It would've been nice to know that he wasn't really basing anything he did or said on observation so much as he was seeing himself."

"Like he was the one with Alzheimer's. Maybe it's actually contagious." When Derek didn't respond, she added, "That was only funny in my head, huh?"

"I may not be the best audience for that material," he conceded. "Speaking of being involved in other people's relationships..."

"No updates, except Maggie confirmed they're both at work. Meaning Alex kept his promise not to go haring off after the guy."

"Huh. Not sure I would've taken that bet."

"I think it helped that he was trying not to Hulk out around me."

"Trying…?"

"He got loud a couple times. It's not…it wasn't... I know Alex isn't gonna hurt me, and…you know….Yelling wasn't really a part of the whole thing."

If she thought about it, Meredith didn't remember a time where seeing the hospital looming ahead hadn't given her a rush of anticipation. Yesterday, it had been the kind that bordered on dread. She'd stared up at the reflective windows, and they'd been dark, making the building seem like something ominous that could swallow her and refuse to let her out. While Derek had unloaded the kids, her legs had tensed, and every beat of her heart had been saying "run, run, run."

Today, the toggle was closer to apprehension. She got the button pushed on her seatbelt and caught the buckle with her right hand. She didn't realize she'd noticeably frozen at that point until Derek touched her shoulder again.

She turned to him, expecting another are you sure? look. He held up his phone with the picture Warren had captioned "not in Kansas anymore" displayed. His smile was as bright as the tumor glowing on screen. She kissed him. He might be worried about this plan, but he knew how to motivate her.

While he unloaded the wheelchair, which she'd agreed to in the name of energy conservation, her nerves started vibrating again. She took a deep breath and blew out her cheeks. She'd gotten through yesterday, she could do it again.

April was waiting in the lobby. Meredith had texted her to be sure she heard that Herman had gone in. Her argument that even April would be there had earned her an "if Kepner jumped off a bridge…?" but it hadn't been long after that that Derek had caved.

"Okay," he said, crouching in front of her chair. "I'm going to check BeeZ out, but we'll stay in the area until dinner—"

"Come on, we've been over this."

"I can take them to Karev's unt—"

"We're not waking them after the last ferry, and then driving all the way around to Bainbridge."

"They don't know the difference between the drive and the—"

"No one's on the property to check on Artie, and I slept here for a month."

"Not in an on-c—"

"Derek, she's already six hours in."

"Only six. You can't just sit for elev—"

"Are you my doctor? Half the people up there are!"

"Eat with your pills. Take your—"

"I will! I will take the don't-lose-it pills, and the no-pain pills; I will respond to your texts. I will—"

"Keep interrupting me, so I can keep stalling?"

"I…you…." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Asshole. You love that I can interrupt you."

"I do." He kissed her, his hand going to her cheek, but if his desire was to keep her in place, he didn't have to worry. Kissing him for real, making up for the time she couldn't—and before that, hadn't—kissed him properly, might have been the one thing that could have made her decide that she could watch the video of Amelia's surgery. But he withdrew, and then brushed his thumb over her lips.

"I can call you," she said, not sure which of them she was reminding.

"You can. I may have to FaceTime you in fifteen minutes."

"Bring her up, if you have to, but she knows Aunt Amelia had a big surgery coming. Tell her I'm helping."

"Not a lie. She'll be glad you're there. I'mperson non grata."

"True." She shoved his shoulder, lightly. "Person non grat-away. I'll be good with Kepner."

"Lucky Kepner." He stood up. "You're not good for me."

"Ha-freaking-ha." She stuck her tongue out at him, because she could. "Go have a Daddy date with the kids. I'll see you in the morning."

It took another minute, but he finally headed for the daycare. "He's horrible," she told April. "He let me sleep through the first three hours, and then woke me up going batshit over the pictures Warren sent."

"Is he jealous? I'm not coming back yet, but sometimes Jackson just has this look that says he's been in the OR, and I'm green enough to slap him. I wouldn't—"

Meredith laughed. "Don't backtrack, I've never heard you so violent! I like it. And, yeah, of course he is. Aren't you? Of big surgeries? White whale surgeries. Rare. Crazy. I mean, you're on the edge of your seat. The patient could die. This is life or death. The adrenaline, the rush... Not that—Crap. I don't know how to notsay things today, have I mentioned? Herman won't die."

"She could," April said, so simply that Meredith turned in her seat. "I've seem pictures, too. She could die. It'll be awful, especially for Arizona and Amelia. We're the ones they've chosen to bear witness, and to…to be there for the next part. That's what we do, right?"

"Yeah," Meredith agreed. "It is."

They disembarked from the elevator, rounded the corner to the galleries, and almost collided with Richard. Meredith would've been embarrassed at her yelp of shock, but she wasn't sure it was audible over the other two.

Richard managed to correct after a stumble backward, and out of the flurry of reactions in her head, Meredith's primary thought was two big steps. Sat-maybe Sunday, they were going to get out there and expand the game to make it competitive for her and Derek. Thinking toward a future time with her family helped shunt away the unnecessary adrenaline of an avoided crash.

"Dr. Webber, hi! Um. I'm-we're here to observe."

"Ah." Richard cleared his throat and straightened his coat, retrieving his dignity. "Meredith...hello."

Suddenly, she wished her teeth were still wired together, and she wouldn't be expected to produce more than a wave. She did that, arcing her left hand in an awkward hello, and then it occurred to her that he must've come tearing out of the gallery for Amelia's OR. "What's going on?"

"Well. Uh. Honestly, I'm not sure. She soared through freeing the gyrus rectus, and she's resected off the corpus on both hemispheres, but she hasn't moved on."

"She should be further along. The margins around the diencephalon must be worse than she expected." Richard blinked down at her, and she shrugged. "I live with her, and she's done about as much planning there as in her office. Was it post-fixed? Can she mobilize C6 of the inter cranial artery to access the optic nerve and ablate medially? She would have to be careful around the infundibulum, but the MRI showed a normal chiasm. Or are the feeder vessels…? I'm sure she's considered all of this."

"Maybe, but you never know where someone's going to hit a wall." He rocked back on one foot. "I should…."

"Right, yeah," Meredith said, but as he nodded at April and started toward the stairwell, she called his name. "Tell her…tell her Derek's downstairs, but he's not gonna come up, because she doesn't need him here. There's nothing he could do that she can't. She's the right Shepherd."

Richard nodded again, but didn't go through the door. "I expect he told you that you spoke yesterday?"

"Yeah, yup, he did."

"Good. I owe you—"

"You owe me nothing. That's not how family works. Derek was upset on my behalf, not for me. He did…he told the truth. If I wasn't why you left my mother…even if I had been…. You're not beholden to me for that, and I don't have to make up for it. I only want to know…. You told me once that you didn't regret staying with Adele. Then, Maggie appeared, and you told me you made the wrong choice for the wrong reason. That we could've had a whole other life as a family. Which is it? What was the lie?"

Richard crossed his arms, and she thought he might be going to deny both. If so, he hadn't been paying attention, because she could remember exactly what he said and how he said it. Then, he uncrossed them with a sigh that made him look older than he ever had to her. "Meredith, I am a selfish man. I made the wrong choice, everyone involved suffered, and here we are. I wasn't on track for Harper Averys. I never became the family man I wanted to be. Regret? I don't regret what Adele and I had. I do wish I'd been braver, for you, for Ellis. For Maggie, although, realistically, her life with Diane and Bill was far less fraught, and gave her more than I imagine we could've."

It surprised her to hear him admit that; although, she agreed. They would've been them. Even without the little brother Richard once told her they'd included in their castle in the air, Meredith actually getting the attention she'd needed would've taken up time. She might've turned out better with siblings, but Maggie had thrived as an only child, even factoring in her questionable social skills. Ellis would've focused on her by pressuring her. Not allowing the additional pursuits that had shaped her personality.

"I wouldn't want to have deprived them of her."

"Okay," she said. "That's all I…. You have a place in my life, it's just not…." She swallowed. Wanting to finally say things didn't make the follow-through much easier. "Aside from the whole carousel thing, I have pretty good memories of you being Uncle Richard."

"Do you, now?" A small smile crossed his face, and Meredith forced herself to relax her grip on the armrest.

"Yeah, and my kids have way too many aunts." He laughed. "Maybe we could try going back to that? If…if you want?"

"I can't say I'd mind it. What about your husband?"

"He doesn't get a vote, but if you can get Amelia over the yips down there, I think he'll be fine."

"All right, then. Let me see what I can do." He disappeared into the stairwell.

During their conversation, April had politely pressed herself against the wall and pretended she couldn't hear every word. Now, she returned, pausing at Meredith's side. "Ready? Or if you need a minute..."

"No." Meredith rubbed her sleeve over her eyes. "Nah. I'm good. Do you? Need a minute?"

"Nah," April echoed, and Meredith laughed.

Arriving with April meant Meredith didn't have to be the sole recipient of all the surprised welcomes. The gallery was no longer as full as Maggie had intimated. Musical chairs became complicated if no one wanted to turn their head, but the shift that did occur put her front-row center, between Maggie and April. She took in the monitors and the clock as she pulled the right-hand brake. Ben leaned forward to secure the left side. She hadn't seen him much, if at all, since the ER, and for a moment she had to freeze to keep herself from cringing.

"Good to see you, Dr. Grey."

The intrusive repetition of you were there stopped, and she managed to smile at him. He didn't seem to notice the delay, or that her ability to form words shorted out.

"There's Webber," Owen announced, and the gallery went silent. The intercom didn't always pick up from the whole OR. From the door, Richard's voice carried, but she didn't fully understand Amelia's reply until Edwards moved away and shut it off.

Concerned murmurs filled the room around Meredith. Her reflex was to strain to hear all she could, but she did her best to block it out. She hadn't managed to improve her non-existent lip-reading skills while her hearing was gone, but she'd already been good with expressions, which served her better when half of everyone's face was covered by a mask.

Amelia was doing her best to keep it together, but there was terror in her eyes. Edwards's were darting from Amelia to Richard and back. There was nothing quite like the fear that your idol might be failing. It was total helplessness; feeling like a traitor for worrying if you'd been wrong to tie yourself them; thinking that ifthey couldn't win, where did that leave you?

Richard was poker-faced, a tell in itself. Amelia got more expressive, and he just listened, nodded, questioned. Meredith was on his side, but she'd been in Amelia's position. She understood the way her sister-in-law's shoulders were slumping; why she couldn't meet Richard's eyes. It was the flip side to Edwards's distress: knowing that someone had faith in you that you didn't deserve. His expression was shifting from attentive to stern. Amelia shook her head; she knew he was wrong, but she didn't have it in her to fight. She wasn't preparing to fail, and fail spectacularly; she wanted to give up.

It's not time for that. Not yet.

Richard said something that made Amelia's head jerk up, and then whipped around, up to the gallery. In her periphery, Meredith noticed Owen shifting, but Amelia's eyes didn't settle until they met Meredith's. She held her gaze. You can do this. You're the Shepherd who can.

She kept her focus ahead as Amelia turned back to the base of Herman's brain; their conversation on the porch replaying in her mind. Violating the fornix would cause the sort of damage Amelia most feared. It was one of the white matter structures that attracted the senile plaques that were a hallmark of Alzheimer's; the degree of degeneration mapping to the progression of the disease. It arced over the diencephalon from the thalamus to the hypothalamus, affecting everything from sexual response to body temperature.

Once she cleared that, she would be at the optic chasm, formed by the crossing of the optic nerves, from the retina on the right to the left hemisphere and vice versa, and moving onto the CO2 laser.

The clock kept going. Meredith's phone buzzed once. A text, so Derek must've convinced Zola to leave. She kept watch until Edwards approached the intercom again, transcribed the update for Derek, and left it at that. He could figure out that she'd made it half an hour without issue.

"Huh," Maggie said. "I guess Richard's staying in there."

"Guess so." Meredith looked at her sideways, trying to read her sister's expression without making it obvious. At the same time, she noticed Amelia looking up at him. He nodded in approval, and she continued.

It seemed so simple. She wasn't his student; he wasn't even her boss. They weren't just colleagues, but sharing the AA thing was something Richard knew how to do. The sort of reassurance Amelia sought started from the loss of her dad, but Derek had filled in as many of the gaps as he could. She'd come to him when she was in over her head professionally—not emotionally, Meredith noted. Her kids would inherit it from both of them if they didn't keep working to break the cycle—and what she needed now was to feel confident on her own. Richard could give her that. Meredith's needs hadn't been that obvious. Not once she became an adult, anyway.

The surgery continued. People drifted in and out of the gallery. Meredith's phone buzzed. About every other text was a picture of Bailey, Zola, or both; at the park, at a seafood place on the pier. One taken by Zola showing Derek looking at an ice cream-covered Bailey in dismay.

"That's surprisingly well-framed," Maggie commented.

"She's 'a-spansed,' what can I say?'

"Not that, apparently."

"Shut up, Evil Spawn, it's a direct quote." She flipped Alex off as she turned around to face him. "Where have you been?"

"Surgery. I'll tell you all about it over dinner." He reached over her shoulders, disengaging both brakes, and jumping down from the top tier of seats as he pushed her forward.

"Hey, whoa, no! I did not agree to this! I'm being taken against my will!"

"Doctor's orders," Jackson interjected.

"Seconded," Maggie added. "No more IV nutrients. You need to eat."

"And you've barely moved in four hours," Owen noted. "I could check with Torres, but I don't think that's—"

"All right! I hate all of you."

"I didn't say anything."

"Except Kepner."

"But I agree with them."

"Retracted, Kepner, too." Meredith crossed her arms, looking down at the OR for as long as she could. It wasn't until they were halfway down the hall that she sank back in her seat. The gallery had gotten full as afternoon became evening, and as focused as she'd been on the window, she couldn't quite ignore the bodies pushing into every space, like the tumor invading every space in Herman's brain.

"Is Wilson joining us?" she asked on the elevator, tilting her head back to look at Alex again.

"She's running the Pit."

"Hunt really wanted to be in Amelia's gallery, huh?"

"That's happening?"

"Gutter brain."

"I didn't mean—How is that possibly a euphemism?"

"You said it, and it sounded dirty. She's basically been dating a tumor, but he watches her like the puppy watches B.B. eat."

"The puppy you've had less than a week?"

"She's smart. He's—" She held up the picture of Bailey covered in ice cream. "—Derek's problem tonight."

"One night of your mouth being open, and he needs a break?"

"You are such a dick." Meredith laughed as he swung her into an empty spot at a cafeteria table.

"So you tell me. Stay here. Stretch. I'll get you a smoothie."

"Yeah, ye—wait, no! You'd better not, Karev! You will wear it!" He saluted her as he picked up a tray. She scowled. He wouldn't. If he did, he was going to regret it, married girlfriend or not.

Once he was out of sight, she shoved the wheelchair far enough back from the table to stand. Her knee protested, and her wrist couldn't take on more than about a quarter of her weight on that side. As she attempted a subtler version of the shoulder exercises Greg had given her, she couldn't help thinking bitterly of a time when she could stand for eleven hours and counting.

It'd gotten dark outside of the hospital, which made the buzzing lights shining over the open seating area seem brighter than the ones in the hall. The contrast got eerie during slow periods; that was why they'd stuck with the faux-wood tabletops, not the gray or institutional green the decorator had suggested. Plants near drew the eye to the window, where you could see real greenery, and confirm the world hadn't stopped.

A sea of empty tables sat between Meredith and the steady stream of shift-change diners: Day nurses, on-call doctors starting their nights, visitors who hadn't been able to subsist on what their loved one left on the tray. The hum of voices echoing to the ceiling was the same one she remembered from being the size of that little girl wearing one of the "Best Big Sister" shirts they sold in the gift-shop. She'd been in here while it was completely empty, before it became twenty-four hour along with the daycare. She'd had to jockey for a table during conferences; had helped clear it out to provide space for families of disaster victims.

She'd been comfortable here. Was she now? Her eyes kept catching on blue scrubs and white coats, but she didn't feel on-edge. No more than she had upstairs.

"Better?"

"Bah!" She thumped back into the wheelchair, sending it a few inches backward without the brakes. Maybe no less, either.

Alex caught the left caster with his foot. "Sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"Don't, please. My startle reflex has reset to a five-month-old's, it's fine."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I love screaming in public. No, doofus, it sucks."

"Does this help?" He slid a to-go box over to her. Without opening it, she could smell garlic. The cafeteria's spaghetti wasn't the best she'd ever had, but it'd be the best she'd had in six weeks.

"I'll take it," she said, grinning at him. His return smile faded quickly. She'd always been jealous of the way Alex almost never showed stress on his face. Tonight, there were bags under his eyes, and he had a visible five o'clock shadow, which for him took going around the clock more than once. "So," she said, watching him tear into his sandwich. "You wanna tell me how last night went or about the surgery first?"

"Robbins is something else," he said, and she stabbed her fork into the noodles, a little relieved. She could listen to this and not pretend that she wasn't mostly focused on putting food in her mouth. For some reason, a high percent of her mother's doctors had kept their waiting room TVs on Food Network, and she'd snort at the Closed Captioned transcription of chefs going on about "mouthfeel," but she got it now. "I mean, if she was having brain surgery, I'd be a mess. And she kinda was," he added, before she could react to that confession. "Bailey gave her a 'You're Doctor Robbins,' speech. She should send O'Malley's mom royalties." Meredith snickered around a mouthful of spaghetti and Alex held a napkin out to her. "God, it's like you haven't eaten in months."

"Fugh ew." She grimaced. Making her sound like the wires were there might finally cure her of talking with her mouth full.

"Ew is right." He smirked at her. "It's kinda weird, isn't it? I'm not sure Robbins knows about that whole thing. You almost blowing up, Bailey trying to cross her legs and keep Tuck in."

"First time I got knocked out here. Now, I'm the Giles of this hospital." Alex made a questioning face. "A reference Bailey would get." She sighed; if he'd turned on the WB once or twice more in college, she could've made so many "Xander" jokes. Except not. Xander had been the geek who started out crushing on Buffy, and then cheated on the cheerleader. He'd turned out okay-ish; after being left behind for a while when his friends started college. Geez, George.

"Amelia froze." She stripped the crust off her garlic bread and picked off a piece small enough to disintegrate on her tongue. "And the way everyone stressed out…at some point, Jackson mentioned scrubbing in while Derek stared at a tumor for days, and so many people in that room weren't around yet. I didn't know he was him; just that there was some Mercy West asshole Lexie wanted to prove herself to…. Did anyone know to suggest the diaper to Edwards?"

"Not exactly subtle, Mer." Alex took the crust off her plate and stuffed it in his mouth.

"I've spent six weeks having to spell out everything; I don't remember subtly. There's always stuff about someone that you don't know—"

"No kidding?"

"But there's a lot she wasn't here for."

"A lot I'm glad she wasn't here for." He leaned back, linking his hands behind his head. "She's jealous as hell of Edwards; It's you and Yang all over again. She'd use it against her." The fondness in his voice and face while he spoke of Jo was a relief. "I'm not—I don't blameher for leaving a guy who almost beat her to death. And, yeah, I get the hints, I'll never know everything. Plenty of shit in my past that I hope never comes up, but…. I…." He surveyed the cafeteria, though no one was sitting anywhere near them. "She got here while I was planning to dump this place for Hopkins. I had to cut off Robbins's leg. I figured she'd never want to see my face again, or maybe she'd come to some reunion in Baltimore in ten years, back on her wheelie sneaks, you know? I'd have a reputation she'd be proud of. I didn't have a reason to care about what anyone here thought."

"Then you had your Great Leaf Turnover. Stopped schlepping interns, stopped saying 'dude.' Except, she was an intern, and she says 'dude.' She gets you're a good guy, Alex. That's why she told you."

He nodded again, but his tongue was pressed against the inside of his cheek. She let him think while she took small forkfuls of pasta. As desperate as she'd been for solid food, her body wasn't used to it. A few days stood between her and dumping the nutrition shakes, and never having to drink another one.

"Am I just safe?"

"There's no 'just' about safe. Don't give me that look," she added as the water bottle he was bouncing against the table paused. "I would've said that before. Is that your 'crazy girl' thing?"

"No! Not like you're thinking. I dealt with my mom's episodes, sure, but I spent way more time looking out for kids. Even if Aaron, Amber, and I got separated, I was never the only kid at my shitty foster homes. I got shit for it. The fat boy who was always playing baby-sitter? Working off the weight, wrestling, it had a lot to do with all the times I'd taken the licks for someone smaller."

"Been there." She expected a dig. When were you bigger than anyone? but Alex nodded.

"Yeah, and your patients know you're gonna be on their side. I can still get kids to trust that I'm going to protect them from as much bad stuff as possible. Not just kids. That's what I'm saying. Rebecca's BPD made her paranoid; it didn't control where she went because of it. She knew I'd keep her safe."

"She imprinted on you. You were gentle, and kind, and cared forher. You cared about who she was, not who you expected her to be. That's not what Jo…. It's not the same."

"We got together right after the Chest Peckwell thing," he countered. "You might remember that; it was Baby Bailey's birth day. We started being friends around adult Bailey's wedding. My place, that couch she bought…it might have been the first place she felt safe from that bastard." Plastic cracked under his clenched fingers. She wasn't sure she bit the side of her lip fast enough to hide her wince, but he didn't call her out, only dropped the crushed bottle.

"It might," she agreed. "You think she expected that? Jo Wilson wasn't looking for someone to protect her. Going to you when she'd broken Gynny Guy's skull and given him an epidural hematoma? During a fight about her not telling him things? She'd taken care of herself, but she wasn't about to set herself up to have it happen again. Meaning, she trusted you with what you knew, and what you didn't. The now, the after…. One day, she'd have to trust you with the before. But it's easier to know that; to know that you can, and then to want to change how someone understands you.

"The…the things Derek found out recently? They're not stories I'd told anyone, but if he'd asked if I'd ever testified? I would've told him. There are things I wasn't sure he'd get. The pharmacy thing…I should've faced more consequences. Mom could've been fired. She'd operated on the spouse of someone in the Juvenile Court, and.…That might've been rough, on its own. I didn't think he'd throw me over for it all. Maybe…maybe there was a time I was wrong about that, but… Jo telling you says a lot more than her not telling you."

"I did storm out on her. She said 'married,' and I—She's been here for over two years, working resident hours. She isn't one of those truckers living a second life."

"I doubt you thought that. All you could hear was your pulse, and maybe the word 'married' pounding in your head. You realized you'd run two blocks away. Maybe you pulled the truck into that turn-off a few roads down and yelled. Hit the steering wheel a few times. You knew there was something, but this?"

"Familiar, huh?'

"A little bit. Derek and I had been together less than two months. As furious as I was—"

"You threatened to run him down in the parking lot."

"Threatened is strong. I wasn't going to do that, Alex. You wouldn't have done anything to Jo. You just…you get angry, and you have to do something with it. Have you chosen to go off on the object of your anger? Sure. So've I. Did it to you. And you didn't fight back. You stick to your weight class."

"I do stupid shit, though. I wanted to go off and kill him. That makes two guys who, if they walked in here, I'd want to clobber," he added, the second part coming out softly, like he was making a confession.

"Then why haven't you?" she asked, the way she would trying to coax Zola toward a conclusion she needed to come to herself.

"They got your guy before I knew who he was."

"Not my guy."

"Sorry, yeah. That's messed up." He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. "Jo doesn't want me to do that. She made it clear, yesterday."

"Goes for me, too. Why?" Alex held his hands palm up on the table. "Don't give me that, there's a major brain surgery I should be watching. We care about you, Alex. More than a couple of wasteoids who want to hurt us. That's…it's easy for me to know I'm safe, even if I've twitched every time someone put down a tray."

Meredith shut her to-go box and pursed her lips around her straw. Unlike the ones in her arm, her facial muscles hadn't gone unused, but sucking was an unfamiliar act. She'd joked with Derek about it—"guess I won't be getting on my knees for you right away"—he'd been the right audience for that. He'd been with her through this. Alzheimer's was a fact of her past, and a fear in his future.

"Jo was phlegmatic yesterday. She'd planned it. If anything, you taking off gave her time to do that. The night she told me? She was scared. I hate that I brought that to the surface for her," she added, and held up her hand to stop him from speaking. "'What happened to me brought this to the surface,' better? One of the worst parts of this is the effects it's had beyond me. I'm glad Derek's home—'glad' isn't the freaking word. 'Ecstatic?' 'Blessed.' Everything I used to think I shouldn't feel. I also feel guilty that he quit. I hope it would've happened, eventually. It happened when it did.

"Jo would've told you, but she wasn't ready. If what happened to me had happened to an ordinary patient, I doubt we'd be having the conversation. Being front-row, stage left, knowing that him finding me was such a coincidence…. It must've made all her sacrifices seem pointless. Maybe she doesn't expect to see him on the other side of every door, but…her shields were breached beyond repair."

Alex smiled again at her phrasing, and it went to his eyes this time. "Dork."

"I'm looking at one." Her phone buzzed. "Ha! He's on the ferry!" She held her hand up to him, purposefully using the left one because she knew the gesture would make him cave. He didn't leave her hanging; he wasn't a pediatric surgeon for nothing.

They sat without talking for a couple of minutes, something she and Alex had always been able to do. It helped in situations like yesterday afternoon, where he'd come into Derek's office still vibrating with the energy of unspent anger. Jo had sat up next to her on the couch, ready to spill. She'd silenced the resident with a hand on her arm. "Alex, you need to listen," she'd said. "There's something Jo needs to tell you."

He'd paced the carpet in front of the door; the only open space in a room that looked like an Office Depot warehouse. "I got the memo."

"If she'd come to me two weeks ago, and just said she was married, would I keep that from you?"

"Two—!" He'd balled his fists up. Jo had shifted, looking at Meredith. Meredith had simply stared at him. "Two weeks? I've been at your place four times since then!"

"Exactly. It could wait for me to be able to tell you to take a breath and listen to Jo. This is important, and if you keep strutting around, braying like an ass, you're gonna regret it."

"Fine, what is it?"

Squeezing Jo's arm again, she'd rested her chin on her other hand, which was holding the head of the cane Callie had given her. He'd looked between them for another few seconds, and then gone over to lean against the desk.

This time, he was the one to break the silence. "You know what makes me terrible?"

"Do you want an alphabetical list or an ordinal one?"

"Are there just words you decided didn't get used enough while you couldn't speak them?"

"What makes you terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, Alexander?"

"All I want is to do to him what he did to her. I'm not all forgiveness, restorative justice—"

"You think Jo is?"

"No, but what I mean is, I'd beat him to a pulp right in front of her, even now. I don't have any of the skill with words my mom tried to give me when she was with it. I'm sure that was confirmed for her when I punched a heroin addict who'd been in a car accident."

"Jimmy?"

"You think there was more than one? Not exactly my weight class."

"I don't know your whole life. With him...in your head, you were a child. He was the one who hurt your mom. That doesn't go away. Especially if you haven't seen him in decades."

"She…. It's her dream, still. That one day someone will see her, and know she's their kid. Like Shepherd and Zola. Like it should've happened for her as a baby. She deserved that." If he'd opened Meredith's chest cavity at that moment, he would've seen that saying that made her heart glow like the tumor in Herman's head. It wasn't the kind of thing she'd say. She only smiled, and she knew Alex got it. "Jimmy went after her. Hallucinating, withdrawing, didn't mean to, but…it's like, he knew I cared about her, so of course he did."

Words of sympathy came to Meredith's lips, but she held onto them; instead, putting her hand on the inside of his arm and leaving it there.

"After I made him leave, Mom would lose it if Aaron and I got into it in front of her. Even if someone was yelling out on the street, it'd stress her out. Jo wasn't at the bar, but that's…. Don't you think that's what made her sure of what I'd do?"

"And what you wouldn't do. It was a concrete example. How you dealt with all of that said a lot about you, Alex; not just about who you'd hurt and who you wouldn't."

"That's not…. I keep wondering…. Like you said, she wasn't ready. But I wish she'd been able to tell me, then. Not just because it would've been better for her. It might not've been. I might've chased him down, whatever she'd said, right after that. What I wish is that I'd known that…I knew she went through shit, but…it would've been…. God, not nice. Just, if I'd known she'd been through something close…I could've….It would've been…."

"You could've supported each other? Understood each other more? Known she got it? That's not wrong to want, Alex. It helps me that Derek's been through the whole criminal trial thing. Is it different because Jo's a woman and you were a child? Sure. Because you're older. Because he's dead. Was it a little selfish of her not to let you know you weren't alone? Sure. This is a situation where she gets to be selfish."

Alex thought about that, nodding slowly, and then he put his hand over hers. "None of us are ever gonna need a break from hearing what you have to say, Mer."

"Th-thanks." Her voice broke a little on the word. She'd been on vocal rest for weeks, it was expected.

Three hours after Alex had taken her out, Meredith saw Amelia burn the last layer of the tumor off of Nicole Herman's optic nerves from front row, center. Debulking the tumor would help Herman's symptoms, and keep them from progressing, but it would recur without the next steps.

She'd taken out her phone to text Derek when Edwards went down. She'd been scrubbed in for longer than should've been allowed for a resident. As everyone gasped, and Owen headed for the door, Jackson whispered, "Somewhere, Lexie is screaming," in Meredith's ear, and she smirked a little.

She wasn't smirking a few minutes later. Ben turned to her from the post he'd taken up by the intercom, and she slit her flinger across her throat. "Say that again, please?"

Owen pressed a gloved hand against the wall below them. Exasperated? He did not get to be exasperated while he was talking—irrationally. He was talking irrationally. "I said, Dr. Shepherd would like Dr. Grey to assist."