They arrived home long past dark that night, and Meredith was grateful that no one questioned her going straight around to the door behind hers to unhook the baby's restraints and bundle him inside. The ride had been nothing but questions, mostly Zola's. Her brother had started off rambunctious, singing full lines of carols at his own speed, when during the event he'd usually chimed in at the last word. He was a tiny one, but he was a Shepherd. They always wanted the last word.
That wasn't fair. Derek and his mom hadn't argued, at all, and he'd supported Meredith far more than he had the last time she'd been defending herself to a family member. (Did it count as defense if the offense wasn't saying more than "ah," and "I see," and "that's nice?") It'd still been…tense. Particularly once the sugar-crash hit, and the sleepy distraction now in her arms had fussed as his eyelids flickered.
"He always does that," Zola explained to her grandmother. "He doesn't like missing things. Missing out. Not like missing Daddy. He doesn't like that either, but they're same-a-names."
"Synonyms, Zo."
"Like in cookies?"
"That's cinnamon."
"Auntie Melia said once she dumped a whole lotta of sinny-mom in the bowl on accident."
Meredith expected Derek's sideways glance to land on her. Her stomach swooped like it had for the year or so it'd taken her to accept that he wasn't casting judgement on her past. She wasn't sure that was still true, and she'd forgotten how hard the cold dread hit. Once she'd fully believed that he'd gotten over the mix of jealous and prudishness that came over him in the stairwell, he would've read am I a sinny mom? or whatever in her expression. They would've laughed at it later, with him saying something like more like sexy mom. He wouldn't make the comment aloud with Carolyn here. Frankly, she didn't care, if something he—Nancy, Amelia, Addison, Mark—had let slip had lingered in Carolyn's view of her. Another jab at an old wound might be easier to bare than one of the sharp looks that he'd use in place of barbed words.
Then, his eyes kept going, and the moment that existed only in her head ended. His gaze settled on the middle seat between the kids where his mother was sitting, but she was facing Zola. He let his fingers fell onto the steering wheel one by one, and his knuckles went white. It'd be half an hour before they docked. Meredith reached over to break his noticeably white-knuckled grip. She wasn't sure which one of them laced their fingers together. Maybe both of them. Instinct. Muscle memory. A reaction to the motion of the ferry they couldn't consciously feel and the specific lighting of the car deck.
"Did she tell you that while you were making cookies for Santa?" Carolyn asked.
"Sorta," Zola hedged, and Meredith smiled at her in the backseat mirror. "Do all the cousins have Santa?"
"Well, of course!" Carolyn chuckled. "They're pretty grown, these days, but he used to leave a whole sleighful of gifts under our tree."
"Wow," Zola said. Maybe…. "But, um, Grams, I know it's not a'course."
This time, the sideways look did fall on Meredith, but Derek's face showed the dread.
"Oh?"
"Not all children do Christmas. They do Chanukah, some. Some do Kwanzaa, but only. Are you staying for Kwanzaa?"
"It's a seven day holiday? No, I'm leaving on Friday, I'm afraid."
"She'll be here for umoja, princess," Derek said. "That's...?"
"Unity!" Zola beamed. "With even Aunt Maggie and Uncle Richard, we'll be a united family! Is that right?"
"Well, yes and no. They're joining us on Saturday night for...?"
"Ujima... That's, um...co...One of the cos."
"Community."
"Yeah, they're in our community. So, we are Kwanzaa and Christmas people, which is we have a Santa, but, but… Most Christmas kids do believe he's a man, but that's not 'zactly true. He's not a live hu-man. He's a believe. If you don't know to believe, he's a no-man—not a snowman!" Her giggle fit gave Carolyn long enough to shoot her eyebrows up at the front seat. In her periphery, Meredith caught Derek thumping his head against the back of his seat. "What it is," Zola continued, a little breathlessly. "Is..is the gen...gen... Mommy?"
"Generosity."
"Yeah, yeah, you said like genie! There's so much genie-osity at Christmas it feels like magic. And, and when something feels so magic people make up stories to explain it. Especially for kids. Santa is special presents to celebrate us.
"We pick out special presents for loved ones to make them feel seen, and wrap them up like it's everyone's birthday, 'cause we're celebrating everyone. Mommy and Daddy know us best, and find the best stuff to help us learn and grow. It's a lot of surprises."
"And your presents from Santa aren't surprises?"
"Sometimes. But, um, you make a list. Kids can't always want and get, but you can put wants on a Santa list, and then you're patience, and then…then, WOW it's under the tree. You get so happy!" Zola held her hands up to illustrate. "If you're a greedy guts, You might not always get everything.."
Derek coughed. This time the look did go to Meredith, and she shrugged. Most of that was impressive paraphrasing from conversations she'd had with one of them, but she hadn't heard the last line before.
"I could believe if I wanted," Zola continued. "We read Santa books. Sofi does. Her mommies aren't married anymore. She's gonna get Santa where she wakes up and still just be a kid, even with two houses. But I might not have had Santa presents as a n'infant. We dunno. I got scared about if you're bad or good that maybe Santa thought n'orphanage kids were bad babies. They're not. Right, Daddy?"
Derek swallowed. "Right. No bad babies."
"That's why we took Santa gifts to the care kids, so none of them think they're bad," Zola had concluded.
Derek's hand had tightened on Meredith's. Their brilliant, loving girl had almost spent a Christmas in foster care because they hadn't been able to get themselves together for a week, months earlier. No matter what, they'd always be devoted to making her holiday special. They'd never be able to give her enough to offsetting the gift of having her, and the same went for Bailey. While she was pregnant, Meredith had worried that it wouldn't feel as miraculous. That seemed absurd, now. They were equally extraordinary for entirely different reasons.
He roused while she changed him into his pajamas, pinching the fabric between his fingers and making the dinosaurs roar at each other. "You think you're going to get some dinos in your Santa presents?"
"T-N-A," he sang. "Name-o!"
"S-A-N-T-A. That's the guy." She sat down in the glider to nurse him. It was unusual not to have Zola there, sitting against her legs. This was the most routine moment of the day.
"I can't believe we swapped places."
She startled slightly, and then smiled at Bailey's eyes rolling up to see Derek leaning on the doorway.
"Sorry." He stepped forward to ease the door closed. "Mom's reading 'a few stories' to Zola."
"Hm," Meredith said."She doesn't strike me as a sucker, but she's not used to the face."
"Oh, tThey're going to read every holiday-themed book we have, and they'll both love it."
"That'll take a while. There are more on the shelf."
"How many of them are new?" Was there "not-going-to-say-anything" strain underneath that question? They'd always said there wasn't such a thing as too many books, but they'd never acquired so many in a month.
On the Wednesday of Thanksgiving week, everything Zola had said on the drive in had been related to one question: "How long until Daddy comes home?" That afternoon, the focus of her chatter had been the picture book her class had read about the Macy's Parade.
With email to the librarian who lead the Saturday story-hour, and a massive Amazon order, had saved her from future interrogations. Every morning, Zola or Bailey opened a package wrapped in brown paper with two numbers drawn on it in red and green Sharpies. It hadn't stopped the questions entirely, but they'd led to discussions of greater and less than, and adding or subtracting four. Reading the new book became a ferry-board routine that they'd all looked forward to. They'd had to open two, occasionally, but it'd been more predictable than bedtime. She'd begun to think it might be the better time to start chapter-books with Zola.
"Not many!" she told hadn't all been holiday-related. "Better that than one of the creepy elves."
"I think it was a brilliant idea. I was genuinely wondering."
"Oh. Um, all the holiday board books are in here, although there actually aren't many of those that we didn't have. This guy claimed the Sesame Street ones, too. The pile has a few gifts from last year that we just put up—I didn't recognize them either, but some of the regular ones got read and shelved for the twenty-sixth."
"I noticed those. You couldn't pare down the powerful princesses list, huh?" That time, she caught an undertone: Amusement over something he liked about her. If she called him on it, would he say "adored" like he used to? She'd been pushing bravery on her daughter, but she was too tired to rustle enough of it to ask.
"There were a lot more books where princesses aren't stereotypes than I expected. I had to save the fractured fairy-tales for next year."
"When does she get the originals?"
"When her classmates won't be traumatized by the book reports."
He smiled. "Speaking from experience?"
"Possibly. Dunno where I got the collection. Even the Grimms are whimsical for Ellis…. I really don't mind her being into princesses. Sofia the First is cute, and there's Merida, and y'know, Leia's a princess, now."
"Symbolically. Some would say you can't rule a people who've been wiped out. But she takes the title to honor them, and the power she ends up using isn't an inheritance. Her father was the senator. Of course, ruling Alderaan would've taken political savvy from her mother's side. Both mothers…. I'm agreeing with you," he clarified in response to Meredith's raised eyebrow. Sure, buddy, Mark was the one who liked Star Wars.
"Yeah, I got that. Just she should know not everyone uses it to mean smart, independent and brave like we do. She'll have more examples under the tree. Today's book was very Christmasy. It is Christm—"
"Don't say it."
"—Christmas Adam," she finished, unable to stop from laughing at his grimace. They'd been coming off of the ferry when Carolyn had noticed the book tucked in the back of the driver's seat.
"That's today's countdown book," Zola had said. "Open it. Please," she'd added, when Meredith turned to her. Carolyn had already done so, revealing the piece of paper tucked between the end pages, labeled "CHRISTMAS - 2." Meredith had been grateful to her past self for not putting DADDY - 0 on the last few packages; it'd felt ingenuous, and Zola wasn't ready for negative numbers. Twenty-twenty-three days hadn't quite gotten the counting-backward concept across to Bailey.
Below the essential pieces of information, she'd written the day of the week, and the date. Earlier in the month, she'd included the number of weeks. If Zola had asked about hours, she might've fallen down a deeper rabbit hole.
"See, Grams? Two days. But tomorrow is Christmas," Zola said. "Momma, you should've put one day,"
"We talked about that, baby. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, Eve is a fancy way of saying 'the day before.'"
"So, today is Christmas Eve Eve. 'Cause it's the day before the day before!"
"Christmas Adam," Derek's mother had joked.
Zola's whole face had twisted. "Two days is the small, small, smallest parts?" she'd asked, completely, guilelessly baffled.
Derek groaned at the memory. "Christ."
"She knows that one," Meredith said, and he sank onto ottoman that went with the glider. She started to move her feet, which were propped against the edge, but he hooked her calves with his arm and stretched her legs onto his lap. "She…She know Jesus, Mary, Joseph, too, and you only let that slip on special occasions."
"Hey. I have definitely heard you use the lord's name... Well, not in vain." He waggling his eyebrows.
Meredith had always known how to respond to innuendo, particularly his, but suddenly it felt like trying to come up with a reply in French. She'd studied the so-called language of love in high school, and it'd never clicked. Any time she'd tried to speak it while traveling, she'd slipped into Italian. She could only think of the truth: sometimes he could make her dredge up Italian phrases that weren't in the guidebook, but she didn't need a deity to call on, his name could feel like a prayer. The shadow that crossed his face at her silence moved swiftly, but she caught it. That didn't give her more insight into what to say, and the moment passed.
"We may have done the no indoctrination thing too well," he acknowledged.
"You think?" The words came out rougher than she'd meant them to be, and she pulled back, slightly. She was annoyed at herself, not him. "It never occurred to me that the whole nineties PC movement worked. I mean, I noticed those freaking kiddie Bibles from waiting rooms disappearing, and that's where I got a very abridged understanding of Genesis, but they do so much cultural stuff at day-care."
"I think it might be easier to keep religion out of the ABCs than great works of the Western canon."
"They did Moses and the Maccabees. Those are in the Bible…right?"
"Uh," The amused expression was back. Bailey shifted, and Meredith wondered if he felt her heartbeat speed up. "Yeah. Technically. Hanukkah is in the Talmud, which is Jewish law, but it's not in the Torah. The sacred text. First ten books of the Old Testament. Christianity doesn't stop there. The Books of the Maccabees are Apocrypha, which means no one knows when they were For Catholics they're Old Testament, but sometimes—What? I was a Catholic kid in a half Jewish neighborhood."
"No, that's not…." It was weird for him to go into the religious stuff, but she'd never doubted that if it'd been expected to know something, he'd given it his all. The same went for the Jewish girls he'd dated in high school. "Just…aside from the whole messiah thing…it's all about which sequels are canon?"
"Canonized…." The amused expression came back, and turned into laughter. "God, I love the way you see things."
To keep herself from getting hung up on whether she really heard a pause after love in that sentence, Meredith kept talking. "I purposefully avoided get the more religious Tomie de Paola books. They have maybe two books with the actual story of Christmas. Your mom's going to think I'm a Christmas-ruining heathen."
"Hey, give me some credit. I blew the Santa thing."
"Carolyn doesn't know that!"
"I'll tell her."
"And it won't seem like you're covering?"
"For what? We had a flawless record until 'bad babies.'"
"I'm the one who didn't grow up with it. You had stories. I changed the subject because saying, 'Mommy didn't get Santa' would've gotten us here earlier. Now, I get it, but I probably didn't hype it enough."
"You did! And you had good reasons for not being sure about the whole deal."
"I did?"
His wince of guilt was all too familiar; she felt it all the time. She lowered her eyes to Bailey, who was droopy-lidded. He had his arm held over his head, a posture that always reminded her of Derek.
"The more I think about it," he said. "And that's a lot since she asked me that question—It is basically conning them into buying a secular myth that is pretty close to 'omnipotent power requires good behavior and sacrifice."
"Crap, did I sound that much like..." Meredith let her mother's name hung unspoken, and she expected him to turn the conversation away.
"If you did, she wasn't wrong." He smiled ruefully at her and ran a hand through his hair. Had anyone else seen it mussed in the past six weeks? "I pushed you pretty hard over it."
"Yeah." Why avoid the truth about an argument from three years ago? There were so many more recent ones to choose from.
"I loved the whole production, as a kid, and with my sister's kids. But I wonder…cutting it out doesn't recontextualize the holiday. And if you hadn't put so much thought into it, I wouldn't have had a clue how to handle 'bad babies.' It came out of nowhere."
"Amelia was babysitting that night. If you hadn't been on the phone with them, she might've asked her. She tried to tell me what'd happened, but she cracked up every time she tried."
"Not long ago I would've assumed she'd said something," he admitted.
"But you didn't."
"No."
"Honestly, I think Zola likes knowing. I'd already bought all the Countdown books, so we got a whole bunch of library books about different Santa traditions stories, and talked about how they're like and not like ours. It'd be a cool research project if you don't have kids who'd ask why one gut does things so differently in different places. Either Santa won't stand up to globalization, or one myth'll take over. Kind of a shame."
"How many of those books had you encountered while trying to scare me off the idea?"
"She's still too little for the actual Saint Nicholas stories, and you think I showed her Krampus?"
"If there'd been a book of saints in your house, you'd have loved it."
"She's not as weird as I was…am. Yet." She paused to shift Bailey, and maybe to see if he'd use the set-up, to mock her or aim vicious hit. Bailey reached to him before latching on, pulling his hand over, and saving her from both. "I'm not sure what to do about this guy. I'm betting on him not remembering anything we've said this year. I wanted her to be able to talk to me about it whenever, and he's always with her. They're best buds, huh?" She fluffed the back of Bailey's hair. "She's done well not blabbing to Sofia, but I don't know if she'll be ready to pretend constantly."
"Having been told somewhat traumatically by Liz, I think we just keep going like this. If they were farther apart…. We all loved being Santa for Amelia, even though... Well, we said Santa would bring her whatever she wanted, the Church told her God could work miracles, and when neither of them brought Dad back, it pissed her off. The Christmas after her first communion, Mom said mouthing off would put her on the naughty list, and she immediately goes, 'shouldn't I be good for God, not gifts?'"
Meredith pressed her lips to the top of Bailey's head, muffling her snicker. Derek didn't react.
"It wasn't just that we couldn't ever get her into Christmas. She hated it. I thought it was losing that belief that took away the magic. Then we got Zola. Every second of her first... everything…but that first month especially—her birthday, Christmas—She wasn't going to remember them, we weren't prepared, and our baby…she was entranced by all of it. In the video from Christmas morning, Lexie was the only one who was consistent on where those toys under the tree came from." Had he watched that since last year?Meredith wondered, but didn't interrupt to ask. "The magic wasn't Santa or God. It was us being together, making Zola's eyes as round as possible. It was you and Lexie squabble about nineties films. It was seeing how happy you were with our daughter in your arms. It was all such a miracle, and I remember thinking that it was a shame we'd have to put it all behind a veil.
"On the phone…I could've pretended we did know Santa went to her on her first Christmas. She would've been with her biological family at that point, and eighty-five percent of Malawi is Christian. But she was specifically asking about the orphanage. They're not affiliated with a church, they probably celebrate Christmas, and have some Western volunteer handing out gifts in a fake beard. But I could see the dominos, and…if she was already wondering about them,…I couldn't tell her why a guy who can travel the world in one night would discriminate at all. It's not what we want her to get from the holiday."
It was so rare to hear him question himself like that. He sounded…well, he sounded like her. Maybe they really had switched. "I think there's more mystery this way," she said. "Childhood should have inexplicable magic. With Santa, they know every detail of how he gets them there. When we came home late one night last week, she asked if the real reason she has to go to bed on Christmas Eve is because every store on the Island closes so early."
"She thinks we get all the presents in one night?"
"We're surgeons. When else?"
"She has your mind." His hand was sliding up and her calf, over the black tights she'd worn under the jumper. She almost hadn't bothered shaving her legs for his homecoming. She hadn't wanted him to think she'd expected…. She hadn't expected moments like this, even if Amelia had been supposed to be home tonight, and could've been with Zola in Carolyn's place.
"I told Mom I'd take her to Mass tomorrow night. She's not a Midnight Mass stickler, but it might be most convenient. We can put them down, get the bigger stuff under the tree…. Maybe get it all done?"
"Does she…? No…never mind."
"What?"
"Nothing. You and your mom should get time together."
"Mer…." He turned to her almost fully, holding her legs to keep them from slipping off his lap. "You'd be willing to go?"
"I went with you once."
"Yeah, but, that was before…." Before. It was before the NIH, before the president's call, before Bailey's birth. Lexie and Mark's deaths, Zola, the Alzheimer's trial. Before, before, before.
It was the year of the shooting; a couple of days after the shooting at Pacific College. His quiet had made her wish she'd pushed to visit his family, no matter how understaffed the hospital was thanks to everyone else doing just that.
"What would make it Christmas-y?" she'd asked, going into the living room with a plate of the cookies April had left with them.
"It is Christmas E'e." He'd smiled, but his eyes had been unsettled. "I have you. In New York, they're trying to wrestle kids into church clothes. It's nowhere near this peaceful."
"We could do that."
"With whose children?"
"Try again."
"Go to church?"
"I spent a semester in Italy, I've been to Mass."
"Actually, that might be nice." That'd been followed by hedging. "It's not…I don't think I….I don't know what I believe, but it's not anything I heard from Father Michael. It's not about being closer to God, or anything. The peace on the boat with Cristina…. I haven't found that in church since I was twelve. Apart from Christmas, I stopped going a long time ago, unless one of my sisters' kids was up there in a white dress. "
"It's being closer to your family. An eight o'clock service here ends at midnight there." He'd gotten a look similar to the one he had now, like she was a crystal shining in a way he hadn't quite seen before.
"…we had kids," he finished.
"Don't they usually have family services? Eight o'clock would be too late for them, but…."
"She'll care more about being with these grandkids. That, I can….That's for sure."
Why not start making promises you can keep?
"It's settled, then. One homily isn't going to convince anyone of anything, and it'd be a good experience for them to have with her. Zo does know the basics. We should maybe have more about the nativity, considering that we have a bazillion about secular Christmas, one about Dwali, Yule, Parrandas…. "
"Mention it to Mom. She'll hitchhike to the bookstore tomorrow just to have another present for them."
"You mention it."
"You know we're not the only Shepherds raising kids outside of religion?"
Bailey made a small noise of protest between sucks, and they both turned to his expression of perturbed sleepiness.
Derek put a hand on his head, stroking his forehead with his thumb. "Going to sleep now just means Christmas is that much closer."
"Kiss-mas." Bailey squirmed to curl up against Meredith's shoulder. "Kiss muah." The kiss was a light brush this time, followed by puffs of warm, milky breath on her neck.
"I like the way you think, too, bud." Derek lifted her legs and kissed her while he stood up and put them in his spot on the ottoman. "I'll get Mom set up in the guest room. We can catch up on Homeland while I finish what I was doing earlier." He winked, indicating that the secret was between them, while she felt lost. "What? Did you finish it?"
He didn't sound accusatory, and this time he'd have a right to be.
They weren't TV people. There wasn't time. It didn't matter that pushing record on the DVR was far easier than programming a VCR with her mother behind her, insisting she'd broken the thing—with no idea how many times she'd taken it apart and pieced it back together—Then, one night in the fall they'd moved into the house—before they bought a hospital, before he broke a promise, before, before, before—he'd come bounding into their room and grabbed the remote. "We get Showtime, right? With the old movies package?"
"Hello to you, too. What the…? Is that Claire Danes?"
He'd grinned like he'd cast the actress himself. "You love her face."
"Why would anyone not? Was I the target demo for My So-Called Life? Sure. Does that affect how expressive she is? No. You'll see."
She hadn't been the girl who could gab with her friends about an ABC show at school the next day. Anyone at Boston Preparatory School would've expected her to identify with party-girl best friend. But she'd never missed a minute of quiet Angela Chase with her dyed red hair, and the emotions she couldn't hide. Carrie Matthews was a mix of the two, and every twitch of Claire Danes's chin had made Meredith feel weirdly vindicated. See, Ellis? Even a CIA Agent doesn't have to be a statue.
Ridiculous. It was a show.
A good one, with a romance far more taboo than hers and Derek's had been. They'd watched the first two seasons, and she'd mocked herself for how attached she'd gotten to the normal, married couple thing of having a show. They did, though. One not even Cristina watched. (Meredith didn't blame her; the love interest was a red-haired soldier with PTSD.) This season there had been Sunday nights where that was the only full hour they spent awake and alone together.
After Zola's birthday, she'd watched the three episodes he'd missed. Then, she'd chickened out on visiting, and somewhere that had led to her coming clean in a text. His reply had been OK, but he must've caught up as far as the three episodes left on the DVR.
"I-I didn't… just…I kind of know what happens. Miranda keeps forgetting I'm not watching live. She, um…whenever I remind her, she says that TV dates helped while Ben was in LA."
"We could make that work. I'd have to get a better TV. The one the extended stay provides is smaller than my laptop."
"Tell your mom, and maybe Santa will bring you one."
He made a face, and then he kissed her again, bringing his hand to her cheek and letting it linger. "Meet you in our room."
When the door clicked shut, she sagged against the back of the glider. Bailey's weight in her arms was grounding, even if it felt like his heat had sunk straight through her skin into her heart.
It took an episode and a half for the presents to be wrapped, even with her caving and helping when it turned out that one of his suitcases held a plethora of sealed shipping boxes that turned out to be Carolyn's gifts from the rest of the clan. Some of them held pre-wrapped gifts, but not all of the college kids had figured out how to click that box.
"Carly's the one who got most of this together," he said, running scissors over a length of ribbon to curl it. "I rented a car and went up to New Jersey to meet her on Friday night."
Geez. No wonder he'd seemed so drained at the airport."Wait, you don't have a car up there?"
"Haven't needed one. The shuttle service has been sufficient so far, getting back and forth to the extended stay and the airport, and I can walk to the store."
"And you're on the Metrorail."
"Mmhmm. Finger." She rolled her eyes, but put her finger down on the ribbon he was tying. She wanted to investigate that situation further, but she hadn't been able to figure out the right question to ask before the time for it passed.
It wasn't until she'd been packing the wrapped gifts up be taken downstairs that Meredith had realized he'd gotten more done that afternoon than she'd assumed. Alongside the gifts for Zola and Bailey, she discovered a neat collection of gifts with her name on them, all wrapped in a magenta paper leftover from Zola's third birthday. It complimented the dark blue she'd wrapped his in over a week ago.
Their bed was stupidly big. From the point where the jazz of the show's theme started for the third time, Meredith tried to make moving closer to him a subtle thing. She was a surgeon. She saw gruesome deaths daily, without a camera that could cut away. Well, not every…. "Pause it."
He did, landing on a frame where Claire-as-Carrie stood surrounded by sunlight that only signaled how dark things were about to get. "What's up?"
Meredith held up one hand, the other holding her phone. She scrolled up and down the document where she tracked basic information about her procedures, counting under her breath. "It's not…it's not actually all that impressive. It's not like my research has picked back up. But I just realized…I haven't lost a patient since…since early November."
Snce he left. That wasn't the point. What was the point? She thought of him putting her wedding ring down by her cereal bowl the day of Izzie's surgery. Of him in the scrub room, begging her to promise. He hadn't needed her. He'd needed to know that.
"Mer? That is impressive. It is." He rolled to face her, and this time she anticipated the kiss before he'd put his hand on her cheek. "How many?"
"Forty-seven. I'll break the purse strings on an appy, and somehow cut an artery while I try to fix it next time I go in, but…."
He kissed her again, long enough to draw most of her focus. "That's almost fifty people you kept alive for Christmas, Mer. Or Thanksgiving, or Kwanzaa, or Winter Solstice, or…I don't know, Pearl Harbor Day! Whatever's important for them and their families."
"I hadn't thought of it that way."
"You hadn't thought of it, period." He tugged her closer, his fingers sliding into her hair, and she was glad she hadn't had time to get it cut. It'd been a reminder of his absence, but so had every turn she'd made in the hospital, and she hadn't been distracted enough to kill anyone.
She hadn't cured death. Someone would die on her table again. Somewhere, someone was dying in the hours before Christmas Eve. Families of patients she'd had die in October were lost in grief. But even right after he'd left, while she'd thought the Post-it had lost its pull, that Seattle had, that she had==she'd done her job. And he was here.
On the screen, Carrie screamed for the father of her child. Meredith didn't flinch, but Derek held her against his chest anyway. Half an hour later, she fell asleep with his arm around around her.
Derek was gone. She could see him, but he was out of her reach, falling, dying. She was the one screaming, and she was drowning in the wail of sirens and the iron scent of blood. "Open your eyes, Mer. Let it go." She shivered, and Derek wrapped her in his arms, his hands pressed firmly against her back. Above her the water shone pale blue. She kicked, hard, and then she could see them. Forty-seven lights lining the bottom of the bay. "Mer, I'm here." Their bedroom was dark. She landed in a warm divot in the mattress. She heard voices coming through the speaker of the baby monitor. Light spilling through the branches that winter had emptied made the darkness slip away. She wished it would wait, just until she'd figured out which parts had been dreams.