Quite a few quotes from 2x18 Yesterday.
chapter four: can't say
Mark thinks she's going to take him up to x-rays.
Beneath the vanity, and the precaution that comes with a specialty in plastics, he knows there's a golden opportunity to milk this. To not be sidelined like any other visitor to Seattle Grace, to needle information (about Addison, about Derek, about their marriage) and get a reaction out of her, by bringing up Derek again.
While he's finishing up suturing his face, she slips out with his chart to the five vultures she knows oh so well.
"So, who wants him?" she holds the file up like a prize.
Alex is the quickest, though all but Meredith and George have an instinctual straightening of the spine, a half-lunge. "On it."
It's quickly pilfered from her loose grip as Izzie and Cristina slouch back into their resting positions, looking less bothered to lose than usual. Alex breezes past in victory, just stopping at the door to gather his cool.
"Why don't you want him?" Meredith asks her, tilting her head at Mari. "I mean, don't you want to hear what McSexy has to say about –"
"McSexy?" Cristina interrupts, questioning.
"No?" Meredith wonders, turning it into a counsel as her, Izzie, and Cristina look between each other.
"No Mc-nicknames," Mari sighs long-sufferingly.
George perks up, trying to sound authoritative. "Listen to Mari." Izzie, without turning to him pushes his face away with a batting hand. George huffs.
"McYummy," Izzie suggest, with rare impishness.
"No," Cristina and Meredith reject in tandem.
Mari sighs as she leans against the nurse's desk, looking back into the trauma room, and wondering what Mc-Variant he's about to be dubbed with.
Only Derek had a Mc-nickname that stuck, so to christen Mark Sloan, Derek's...nemesis? Its like fated irony.
"McSteamy," Meredith drawls slowly.
"Ah, there it is." Cristina sighs with relish.
"Yep." Izzie giggles.
George gags. "Uh, excuse me, as I choke back the Mc-vomit."
Bailey stops her in the hallway.
It's a usual enough occurrence, for Bailey to snap out her name to call her to task, or to glance over with an eagle-eye, just looking for something because she knows Mari's involved in some particular mischief.
She's not used to Bailey calling "Dr. Grey," civilly. It's just as startling as seeing Bailey out of scrubs, Bailey carrying her newborn in a sling.
"I'm uh, surprised to see you on the surgical floor." Bailey scans her, frowning as she looks at Mari in full.
Mari twists her lips ironically. "I guess I should say the same. But then I assume you're introducing Baby Bailey to the hallowed halls."
She wonders if her mother ever did the same. No, probably not. Ellis Grey was part of the first crop of female surgeons. She didn't, maybe even couldn't, let her colleagues see anything soft about her. A child, two children, underfoot and unsupervised, sure, eventually, but not cradling a baby, not looking at ease doing it.
Bailey presses her lips, shifting the bundled baby in her arms.
"I heard the ORs are all fully operational. So," she sways slightly, rocking, and using the distraction to direct the rest of her question to her son's face. "Is that true for you too…Are you fully operational?"
"I'm not planning on heading back into the OR, if that's what you're asking," she responds dryly.
Of course, she isn't going to tell Bailey that she's once again shoehorning her way onto Burke's surgical case. Bailey's always been right to be suspicious.
"No, of course not," Bailey shoots out immediately criticizing the idea of Mari in the OR. She cringes, like she regrets it, which is very un-Bailey like. "I mean, are you good?"
"Is this some…new mother's resolution Dr. Bailey?"
Bailey huffs, rolling her eyes. "No, this is me asking after a colleague who – who went through something. So…" she narrows her brown eyes, cutting through Mari's attempts to bat away the euphemisms of 'being good' and 'fully operational'. "How are you doing?"
"My God. This is the Twilight Zone," Mari breathes.
Bailey grumbles. "So, you're fine then. No matter that you look like a," she scrambles for a description, looking at Mari like she's wholly out of character, "a...med student."
"Well, it's my day off," she defends, adjusting her half-zipped hoodie.
"Then what are you doing here?" Bailey asks, exasperated.
"What are you, shouldn't you be on maternity leave?"
Bailey doesn't hit back. She softens at the reminder, keeps her eyes down, and her voice receding back to a softer hum. "My husband is being discharged today."
Mari pauses.
Her husband.
The patient in the other OR.
Derek's patient.
"Good," she answers by rote, eyes drifting down to the baby. His wide brown eyes trying to capture the world, head moving back and forth. He's unbearably cute.
Bailey glances up at her while Mari is watching the baby rock, thinking about female surgeons and their babies.
Do they….lose this, this nurturing when the protective hormones aren't raging? When the rose falls off the vine? When their babies aren't as happy, aren't as docile when being rocked. When they cry after another long shift? When they start wanting more, more attention, more presence, more than crumbs?
'Children are so needy,' her mother sneers.
As curious as she is to see it from this perspective of how it falls apart, she isn't sure she wants to watch it happen. A mother more a surgeon, hiding away, going cold with the strain.
Bailey watches her, the way she does when she's at the bedside of a patient she likes. Usually that look is then followed by a narrowed eye glare at Mari, for swopping in where she doesn't belong. To be on the receiving end of regard and concern is completely foreign.
Why would Bailey look at her like that?
"I didn't save his life," she murmurs, feeling a tremor in her jaw as she locks against it. "I didn't save anyone. From what I heard Addison and Derek were the heroes of the hour."
If Bailey is being nice because she thinks Mari had anything to do with it –
She pushes through the phantom of smoke in her lungs, the dizziness of the blast, keeping her eyes focused on a little blue bear on the fuzzy, soft baby blanket. "And you," she adds, because Bailey brought her baby into the world. Life instead of death.
"You–" Bailey presses her lips tight, looking angry, exhaling like a bull through her nose. "Mari," she stresses, for the first time using her first name without the last, without her typical exasperation. Mari was always used for Mari Grey, to differentiate which Grey is the problem. "I'm not going to assume that my husband being on the table had anything to do with your decision. I don't know where your head was at, to, to-" she huffs. "The point is you bought him time. And I wanted to thank you," she softens, trailing off a little, in uncertain footing "and make sure you were okay."
She's the first, to ask it, to outright show it, without Mari having to interpret.
Why did she want this? Why did she want someone to be concerned, outright concerned, actually looking at her, instead of walking around it, when it's making her skin feel too tight.
"Right as rain," she answers, with Bailey looking at her with a sympathetic kind of knowing.
This is what Mari expects, when she agrees to Meredith's proposal:
She'll watch.
She'll watch Meredith prep her patient for surgery. She'll watch them head into the OR, that OR, and she'll –
She'll decide if she wants to watch from the observation deck, or stay on that line, the uncrossable red line she's supposed to respect, or if she'll slink off and wait somewhere else.
There's no Hail Mary that's going to increase the patient's odds, no misdiagnosis that's going to give him a delay of execution. She has nothing to do, nothing else she wants to do.
It's unlikely Burke will let her get too close. She's under no illusions on heading into the OR, and it's unfathomable that Meredith would relinquish the opportunity to perform surgery, to sit it out with her.
What time they'll spend together on this case will be minimal.
But -
It's the first time Meredith asks for her, wants her there, indifferent to any comparisons.
So, Mari says yes when every other part of her wants to say god no.
Then, Chuck Eaton surprises her.
They walk into his room, as he's fiddling with a handheld camcorder. He looks small, the way the very sick do, sinking into the hospital bed. Head shiny, eyes watering on his cheeks, like tears.
"What are you doing?" Meredith asks him.
The patient looks up, like he's surprised she had to ask, a small smile that's more genial than strangers typically shoot each other, his eyes soft. "I'm dying dear. One in four. I ah, I've never done well with odds like that. Some people are lucky. I just never have been." And can't she relate to that. He smiles at Mari too. "The camera is for posterity. Saying good-bye."
Meredith softens into a kind smile. "Do you want me to hold the camera for you?"
Chuck straightens, a shine of gratitude coming into his eyes. "You're very kind. Thank you."
Mari leans back against the wall as Meredith takes control of the camera.
Meredith looks like she's looking forward to the heartfelt confessions waiting to spill forward. Mari isn't so sure. She didn't think surgeons ever did these kinds of things for patients.
Chuck wipes beneath his eyes, removing the nasal cannula after the deepest inhale he can manage.
Meredith waits for him to gather himself, affording him his dignity before pressing record.
"Okay, we're recording."
Chuck starts off a little reedy, unsure. "This, this ah this is a message for Susie Zelman. My college sweetheart and the love of my life. Susie, I loved you with my whole heart. And I never would have stopped loving you if you hadn't been a vilest whore to have ever walked the planet Earth." Mari's eyes widen.
"You deserve that- that drunken imbecile that you slept with and then married. And then at the reunion I met your ugly children, I, I knew that you had done me a real favor! I am so deeply happy that I never have to see your face again." He pauses, the passion receding as he tilts his head, retreating back into the soft-spoken man as before, with the smile in his eyes. "Love, Chuck."
He finds the nasal cannula, placing it back under his nose with care. He doesn't seem to realize he's dumbfounded the Grey sisters. "Could you put in a fresh tape, dear?"
Tape 4
"And you knew it was mine! I saved up for it, I bought the parts, you – you –"
"Despicable traitor?" Mari pips up, ever helpful.
Chuck nods enthusiastically as he repeats the words with the barred teeth of a kitten.
Traitor becomes a popular word, with a very wide assortment of creative adjectives attached.
Meredith looks over to half-heartedly glare at her.
Tape 9
Meredith is wry now, instead of gobsmacked.
"Pestilence boil?" Meredith suggests, because Julio deserves a disgusting moniker for what he did.
Mari huffs to smother her laugh.
Tape 16
"And when you were 14! You stole Laura Brendese right out from under me. You knew how I felt about her! Don't say you didn't know because you knew! And you went for her anyway. What kind of human being does that to his little brother?"
"He was 14!" Meredith argues back. "Cut him slack for god's sake."
Mari looks across at her, both now seated in the corner. How hypocritical, to criticize someone from holding on to childhood resentments against their sibling.
Meredith looks at Mari's smirk, and Chuck's put out expression and sighs. "Sorry."
Chuck smiles, more cajoling because he can tell Meredith has run out of patience. "If you wouldn't mind rewinding just a little bit. Please?"
Meredith shuts the video camera and climbs to her feet.
She lasted ten tapes longer than Mari expected she would.
"Mr. Eaton," Meredith shakes her head. "Look, I'm a doctor. Not a videographer and I do need to prep you for surgery."
Chuck blinks at her, uncomprehending. "But you offered to help."
"When I thought you were saying goodbye."
Is that what was bothering Meredith, that his goodbyes weren't loving and gut-wrenching instead?
Chuck frowns. "I am saying goodbye. None of these people. Not one of them knows how I really feel. My whole life, I've kept it all inside. I, I don't want to carry this with me to my grave."
Mari bites her lip, no longer seeing the humor.
"You seem like such a nice man," Meredith says softly. "Wouldn't you just rather them remember you that way?"
Chuck's brows furrow as he thinks it over. "No," he says, decisively, pulling up a smile again. "Please rewind the tape?"
"He wouldn't really want them sent, right?" Meredith whispers outside of Chuck's room.
"Why not?" Mari wonders.
"Because." Meredith empathizes, like it's obvious. "He's in shock. He doesn't really want people to remember him like this."
Mari straightens her glasses, thinking it over. That might be true. It was kind of similar to Dr. House's philosophy, that almost dying didn't change anything. They, and him more than her, watched people who thought they were dying, before the right diagnosis, before the treatment started to work, make all kinds of personality changes, make promises to their loved ones, to God, to the world. Be kind, and forgiving, and loving. Those resolutions rarely survived. As if coming back from almost dying, that paralyzing fear, had dunked you in cold water. Restored the senses.
But Chuck Eaton wasn't promising or bargaining with anyone.
He already was kind, soft-spoken, forgiving. An affable gentle man.
What did 'holding it in' get him? Here he was, dying alone. Gambling with what he had left.
These tapes were passionate, mean, and cathartic. Saying the things, you always wished you could.
There was no vanity in it, the need to be well-regarded, absolved, or mourned. The message wasn't for them.
In life, 'he seemed like a nice guy'. But on his death bed? Mari thought he was a rockstar.
"He…he shouldn't have held it in, right? It's sad that he waited so long to say this stuff that he's doing it on his deathbed." Meredith continues.
"If not now, when?" Mari muses.
Meredith frowns, contemplating, looking back at Mr. Eaton through the window, and at Mari.
"Still," she can't help but argue, still unsatisfied with it.
For the second time at Seattle Grace, Mari joins Meredith for lunch.
It's a bittersweet realization, seeing what Meredith looks like when she's including her.
It makes her realize it hadn't been her imagination or insecurity that made it feel like, on their first day, that Meredith hadn't wanted her there.
She puts her choices on Meredith's tray, to see what Meredith will do, to see if her smile will stay fixed or strain when pushed and instead watches her pay for both their lunches without batting an eye.
(What, no arguments on who's currently making more? No insinuation on who's trust fund is still flush, and who nearly depleted hers across Europe?)
Twilight Zone.
"Ugh, aren't you two cold?" Cristina complains as she plops her tray down at the table in the courtyard, pulling up her hoodie to cover her head and moving her sleeves down her hands.
Meredith shrugs, stretching out to slide into the sharp grooves of the iron chair. "No, why would we be?"
"Because it's January. And we're outside."
"Right," Mari nods with fake realization, snapping her fingers toward Cristina. "Beverly Hills."
"Yeah, globetrotter? You going tell me how you hiked in the snow in Swedish winters or something?"
"Uh, I skied to school, in Swedish winters," she corrects.
"Of course, you did."
"Mari!" George yells, in that half-strangled way of his. He, Izzie, and Alex show up at their table, dropping their trays down with a dull clatter. "Why didn't you answer your pager?!"
She sits back, slightly stilted, as she gestures to her wardrobe. "Well, I don't have it on me, so…"
Somehow, to no surprise, her roommates have forgotten she wasn't technically supposed to work today.
"And you're eating with us? You never eat with us."
"Who cares?" Alex interrupts flippantly, with the quickest glance over Mari's features before turning his scowl to George.
He, like her and Meredith looks relaxed in the cold, used to running hot. Izzie is bundled up in her puffy coat, and George's shoulders are hunched like he wants to burrow to keep warm. Alex turned to her, his scowl softening. "I got Sloan interested in Shepherd's lionitis case; you should see-"
"Please," Izzie huffs, though when Mari turns to her on her other side, she's surprised to see Izzie's repressed smile and twinkling eyes on Alex. "She isn't going to be interested in plastics when our patient is having spontaneous orgasms."
Meredith sits up, the spoon popping out of her mouth. "What really?"
"No way it's real, she's making it up," Alex scoffs.
"Nuh-uh, I saw it four times." Izzie argues.
"You're just jealous you didn't see it yourself –" George puffs up to Alex.
"Oh yeah, I totally am," Alex agrees sarcastically.
Cristina turns where Mari can't see the side of her face, so what she says in an aside to Meredith is lost.
"Sloan wants to do reconstructive surgery on the kid," Alex continues, looking at her, though distracted by Izzie over her shoulder. Like her, there's a glow about him, only his looks just a little different from Izzie's.
Happier.
Something happened between them that Mari knew nothing about. When?
"Yang here is warming up to him, but you're good with the freaks. I know he'd like you."
Cristina whips back to Alex, saying something unusually defensive.
"Come on, it's Mari, Alex. She'll want the spontaneous orgasms with the completely unknown diagnosis. Duh." Izzie leans against Mari's side, with a challenging smile.
"Duh," Alex mocks back, also grinning.
Izzie puts her hand on Mari's shoulder, directing her smiling eyes at her as she lowers her voice. Mari narrows her eyes on Izzie's lips, trying not to let her agitation show as everyone talks over each other, and she can't make all of it out. "Spontaneous orgasms," she sighs dreamily. "Isn't that awesome?"
"It would certainly solve a lot of problems," Meredith declares.
"Preach."
"It's definitely your kind of case, right?"
"Gee, thanks?" She feels a little overwhelmed, a little deadened in the clamor.
"It's Gyno," Alex grumbles. "Why would she want to be with the She-Shepherd?"
"Why would she want to be in the middle of McDreamy and McSteamy?" Izzie returns, her words not matching the teasing eye contact.
"You mean besides the obvious?" Cristina interjects. Mari eyes dart to see her and Meredith laugh, before Meredith looks at Mari's face and sobers.
"Hey! Stop trying to poach my sister. She's with me and the lung tumor guy."
"Sounds boring," Cristina waves her fork. She turns to Mari. "I vote spontaneous orgasms. Who's with me?"
Mari climbs to her feet. Izzie and George's cheer for spontaneous orgasms stops as the table's eyes zero in on her. George nearly unbalances, as he was leaning so close to Meredith's side that it looked like he was going to bodily scoot to join at her hip. Based on Meredith's easy slouch, she hadn't even noticed.
"This is why I don't eat lunch with you," she realizes aloud. She shakes her head. "Izzie, I'd love to steal your patient from you, if I was working today, which I'm not," she clarifies. Izzie rolls her eyes at 'steal'. "Because unless you've already confirmed pelvic muscle hypertonicity, I can't see why she's even a surgical case."
Izzie's eyes brighten at the possible diagnosis, as Mari is already turning to her and Alex. She wrinkles her nose.
"And being in the middle of you two, while talking about orgasms is making me feel dirty."
She snags her milk, and walks away, a little slow, but needing the space to stop the buzzing in her ears.
She finds a quiet spot, to start packaging Chuck's tapes, no matter that her and Meredith hadn't reached a decision of what should be done with them.
In that moment of quiet, resting her sore ribs, she hears -
With everyone else it takes effort, to make sure she's catching it all. With him, even with the world hushed, without seeing him, she still hears him.
Does that mean, it's all in her head? Or something else, unvoiced, unnamed, profound, and impossible.
"I hear there's a woman in the ER with spontaneous orgasms and you're here doing clerical work?"
For a moment she doesn't turn, keeping her head down, for the ache to be manageable, the flutter to calm.
"Meredith asked me to join her case." She looks over the tapes, the ones she hasn't gotten to, and the ones placed in unsealed envelopes. "Apparently, what he wanted to do today is send seventeen insult tapes to the people who have wronged him."
"Ah," Derek sighs ruefully. "Right now, I understand the impulse."
She laughs softly, turning her neck to peek over her shoulder at him.
Derek is leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, a troubled weight to his eyes. He softens measurably, lips quirking in a tired smile.
"Certainly, easier on the hands," she teases quietly, testing. She wonders what this day has been for him, seeing Mark, working with Mark. He looks like he both does and doesn't want to talk about it.
He hums on a slight laugh, looking down at his right hand, which he flexes. She notices it's only lightly scabbed on one knuckle, which is lucky, for his surgery today, given how hard she knew he hit him. "Yeah," he agrees, too conflicted for pride or self-crimination.
She pulls up a distraction, gesturing her chin to Chuck's tapes.
"Everything you've ever wanted to say, no consequences."
Derek steps closer. In this quiet moment, the alcove feels…private, its own island. And yet it comes with the respectability of opened doors, and the atrium near-by. It isn't a stairwell, or an on-call room, a storage closet, or an elevator.
And yet, it feels stolen anyway.
"Of course," she continues, trying for casualness. "Meredith doesn't think we should send them."
"But you want to?" he guesses, with a spark of knowing humor as he takes the seat next to her.
"Welllll, he might live, and burnt bridges, and all that."
He hums, considering, glancing down at his hand again. "Do you think he'll regret it?"
She tilts her head. "Saying them? No. Sending them? …Maybe."
She taps her pen against the corner of the page in her lap. "I thought about," her voice quietens in self-conscious confession, peeking up, "maybe adding a note…Sort of a, preparation?"
He glances down at the legal pad, at her neat, curling handwriting. "May I?" he asks.
She swallows.
They're her words. Not the ones she's kept back, when she was in a room with a bomb, when the explosion blinded, and deafened, and almost killed her, but…still hers.
And this is Derek.
She hands it over slowly. Their hands are in no danger of touching, and yet she blinks, looking away, anxious to see what he thinks of them.
She had tried different messages, different lines. About death bed confessionals, why people lean on regret when they die alone. It felt like breaking a confidence to give them that, so she had balled it up and thrown it away.
Instead, she went with, well, in an insult, was still a truth – that they were thinking of you, in a moment that gravely mattered.
But should she include it?
She didn't have the right, and Chuck, the one who might die and the one who might live, might see it as a breech of trust. Or taking his message away from him.
He already spoke. He chose to do it this way. Rewinding the tape when Mari and Meredith interjected so it was just him, passionate and uninterrupted.
He didn't call any of these people. He wasn't asking for their attention or their apology. He wasn't trying to make amends.
It was just…pure, brutal honesty from someone used to keeping it bottled up. Exploding out after a lifetime of not drawing attention to piercing hurts.
"I'm not going to send it," she realizes, with dawning clarity. She realizes what Meredith has meant, all these years, sees it without her feelings stopping her from hearing it. Being the buffer…maybe she just diluted, or diverted meaning that, even harsh, was a truth. Something that needed to be aired out, even if it hurt. She was always trying to prevent pain, and...when did that work out for her?
He looks up, a black curl falling on his forehead. His blue eyes soft.
"My words, I mean," she murmurs. "I guess I just wanted to… say something."
He looks down at her words, mouth soft, as he reads along, or again, silently.
'You can be insulted. You can feel it's out of line, or out of context, an unjustified attack, but the truth is, no matter what happened in the past, when he was dying, when he felt death's breath in his shadow, he thought of you.'
"Where were you?" he asks quietly, sounding in a fog. He looks up, eyes searching. "The past two weeks. And - Before that, during the bombing. I – I heard that Meredith was involved, but where were you?"
Her whole body stills.
"After," his voice grows quieter, eyes roving the curves of her face, meeting her eyes with unspoken meaning. "I couldn't…" he blinks, changes what he's going to say. "I didn't…see you."
Her heart flutters, bruises against her ribs.
"I –" She doesn't know what to say. There's too much crowding her throat. Too much flashing through her mind's eye.
He didn't know.
She thought he knew; thought he knew and didn't…
He didn't know, but he looked for her anyway?
"Alright man," Mark's voice interrupts. Mari flinches, blinking like she's looking away from the sun. "Jake's ready to roll." Mark leans into the doorway, looking at Derek, before he glances over, sees Mari. "I'm sorry," he says, an edge sarcastic. "Did I interrupt something?"
Mari feels the urge to flee vibrate through her. The need to turn away.
She can't, not with broken ribs. If she tries, she won't be able to hide her injury. Hearing that Derek didn't even know –
"We were discussing the benefits of hate mail." Derek declares, his anger palpable, even with it repressed.
"I'll be sure to have the doorman check mine thoroughly then." Mark volleys back. Deliberately, he lets his gaze drift to Mari. "Mari," he greets, in his slower draw.
Derek tightens.
Mari isn't looking at him, though Mark is.
She rolls her eyes. "Slow your roll, smooth devil. Save your virility for your patient."
Mark chuckles. Derek glances over at her, a little less tense, still with the legal pad, and Mari's words in his hands.
"Good luck in surgery," she forestalls anything he's going to say. Isn't ready to hear anything else, say anything else.
She glances between them, wondering what the operating room is going to be like, and hoping the patient will benefit from their familiarity, not Derek's anger, and Mark's need to be noticed. "Good luck to both of you," she adds.
Here's the thing, at the end of the day. In the surgery she doesn't watch.
Chuck pulls through.
Against the odds, he pulls through to be wheeled into post-op.
Burke glances at her, his eyes shielded behind delicate frames. For a moment, it looks like he's going to say something, a slight press to his lips in his otherwise disciplined face.
She waits for it. Expects it.
To hear what a child she is, to ignore rules and protocol. To hear that it was her fault. That she caused the danger, heightened it, exasperated it.
She stands arrow straight, with the burn in her ribs, waiting.
He looks at her for a long moment, a twitch of a furrow in his brow before he glances away, turning to his patient that's waking up from anesthesia.
She glances away too, heavy in the silence. Feels Meredith's arm graze hers as she stands next to her. Mari falls back.
"I'm alive?"
"Yes sir, you are alive."
She turns, near the door, hears the plastic bag she set near his bedside rustle as Meredith lifts it into view. There's a smile in Meredith's voice. "Would you like me to throw them away?"
She strains her ears to hear Chuck's response. Was deathbed honesty no clarity at all, just a temporary insanity?
Chuck licks his lips, looking up at the ceiling. His smile peaceful, his words painfully. "No," he decides. "I'd like you…to mail them."
Mari releases her breath.
"I've said my peace. Sometimes…a man has to say his peace."
While Meredith leaves, while Chuck's drifts off to sleep, Dr. Burke calls out her name.
"Dr. Grey."
"Dr. Burke," she returns, sighing.
He stalks closer, leaning down from his tall height. "It was reckless, it was stupid, and I never want to see you in an OR again. But" He pauses, his jaw flexing. "I'm glad you're alive, Dr. Grey."
"…Thank you, Dr. Burke."
"I don't want to make death bed video tapes," Meredith declares.
She shows Mari a ripped-out page from the phone book, her fist tight like she's holding something she doesn't want to lose. "Look I found – I mean, I'm pretty sure it's him. Thatcher Grey."
Mari inhales sharply enough to burn.
She didn't even know Thatcher Grey lived in Seattle.
In her dumb silence, Meredith continues, the words tumbling over themselves.
"I know, we never, I mean never, talk about Dad. But I want to know. Why he left. I didn't know she had an affair. That she flaunted it. Maybe it… It wasn't so black and white, him leaving. Maybe we were the ones who really left." She sounds hopeful. So uncharacteristically hopeful, and open.
She smiles, tremulously. "I mean, the only thing I know about him is what I remember, and you," she looks at Mari, with realization, with empathetic sadness. "You never even got that, so maybe, I mean, don't you want to see if he has anything he wants to say? To just…see him?"
Mari is very, very silent.
It isn't fair.
It isn't fair. It isn't fair. It isn't fair.
A day where Meredith included her, to have it end by asking for this.
If Mari goes…
She can't imagine Thatcher Grey would be happy to see the illegitimate child who bore his name. Whatever glad feelings he'd have for Meredith would sour with her presence.
Meredith has never brought him up before. Has never been this close, as to have his address in hand.
"No," she says quietly, watching the impact of it make Meredith flinch. "I think…you should go alone."
Meredith's expression shutters.
Mari tastes blood, from where she's bitten the inside of her cheek. "And…don't mention me. Please, don't mention me at all."
Notes: iZombie quote in here!