Really, there was no reason for Meredith to be here. It was ridiculous to have driven down from Hanover, and not just dump her bags in her room and herself in her bed. But she'd been running even more nocturnal than usual in the days after exams; bartenders' hours were no joke. It'd been tempting to take the Christmas Eve shift. Her mother would've considered it a relief, and it would've been lucrative.
She didn't actually need the money, yet, but she wasn't sure her disinheritance wasn't eminent. Mom used to say that anyone who didn't start med school by twenty-five was wasting time. They weren't there, but she wasn't going to like it that Meredith hadn't even taken the MCAT. She should've tried for a baseline; gotten applications sent in and rejected. On the off-chance her name got her in on this round, she could've deferred.
Yeah, right. Mom wouldn't have accepted that. If the offer was there, Meredith would've had to take it, whatever she felt about it. If she failed, she'd never hear the end of it. It would be the end. How much could she really improve in a year or so? No, it'd be proof that her mother had wasted her time—her life—on a daughter who couldn't take the first step toward following her in hers.
Meredith wasn't even sure that that was the path she wanted to take. Looking down at all the people in scrub-caps whose hands were moving with such certainty, holding another human's life made her want to laugh at the idea that she could be one of them. Bandaging sprains for the pretty volleyball player down the hall wasn't surgery—and screwing a patient after treatment would've been an ethics violation. The closest Meredith really came was putting people in recovery position to sleep it off, or convincing club boys on bad trips that they weren't having a heart attack.
She wasn't naive. Med school would mean spending Friday nights in the library. It'd be taking Org Chem as a freshman times a hundred, and her grade in there had owed a lot to the curve. Her GPA was decent, but her mother said she hadn't challenged herself, and she wasn't totally wrong. Living a life that wasn't dictated by what would get her into the best program in five years had been a challenge. She hadn't really done it, either. She still had a B.S., and none of the classes she'd taken because they were interesting had made her think: This. This is who I could be.
The only time that had happened was in Italy; she'd been at a beach one of her Italian classmates had told her about, and a tourist had come up to her with a map and a question delivered in broken Italian. To them, she could've been anyone. Not from Boston, or Seattle, or America. It was the feeling she'd sought out on the dance floor, but as soon as someone said, "what's your name, beautiful?" it all came back. What bugged was that being anonymous had been thrilling. It'd also been frightening. She'd had no idea who that unknown girl in the bikini was.
She'd never put it like that to her mother. Not that it would make a difference. She could say she needed to find herself. That she was burnt out from four years of keeping up at an Ivy, after four years of keeping up at a prep school, and she needed a break before four years of attempting to keep up in med school. That she'd been screwing Sadie on every school break since freshman year, and wasn't ready to lose her. The degree of shock might vary, but they'd all hold equal weight. She'd seen far more of the world than Ellis had at her age! Everything she'd done to ensure her daughter had every opportunity, and she'd risk throwing it away? Had she raised such a coward? What would she do if she wasn't there to fall back on? When was she going to grow up?
She didn't know.
That was why she was here. She could say she'd have been spending Christmas on her own all she wanted; she would've been alone. School wouldn't be back in for two weeks. It wouldn't be enough to put herself on the schedule at the bar. This New Year would be the turn if the millennium. There were parties everywhere, and if you listened to her boss, the world was going to end. Meredith might not know who she wanted to be, but she could feel the pull. The lack of structure would give her leave to spin out.
There. There was something else she didn't want.
A monitor started going nuts, and a bleeder hit a guy holding a retractor in the face. Bullseye. So not an adult thought; although, Mom had totally smirked. Meredith wasn't any kind of holiday person, but she'd seen every horror movie out in the past four years with a different date. Gender didn't matter, they all flinched at blood spray. She was convinced that with girls it was conditioning, but whatever. They were conditioned to turn to the calm, reassuring person sitting next to them, ad the directors usually did her the favor of making things dark from that point on.
Maybe she could be a butcher. That was good, if you didn't mind blood. Those huge-ass knives were pretty intimidating, though. You weren't going to slice a finger off with a scalpel. Probably. She did have very slender fingers.
Another bleeder. If this went south, she was going to take off and let Mom take it out on some poor cabbie who was expecting a somber family whose loved one was in the hospital over the holidays. Instead, he'd get Ellis Grey in a mood. If he knew his way up to Beacon Hill, he could get a good tip, though. She never waited for a bill to be broken. Meredith could've funded a ticket to Paris with all the change her mother had let a driver or cashier keep. Not enough to get her back, maybe, but that'd be okay.
Sadie wanted to graduate and go; she'd pay. Meredith lended plenty. No, she gave. Come on, who actually expected a twenty-year-old boy to pay them back for a beer? Borrowing actually made you beholden. Plus, whipping out Harris Sr's AmEx was what Sadie did to enthrall someone. Meredith wasn't one of her peons, and she wouldn't become one. Not after eight years of being kept around because she didn't take her bullshit.
Maybe she could enthrall. She thought of the garment bag hanging in the back of her car; the outfit purchased on a whim, before she'd really decided to be in Boston for the First Night gala. For the past few years, she'd rotated through cocktail gowns that'd been purchased for other events. Same attendees, different hotel ballroom. There wasn't anything else like this in her closet.
She might not have the guts to wear it.
Speaking of guts, Mom had almost finished attaching this poor dude's liver. Well. Lucky dude, actually. Helluva a Christmas Eve, having that pager go off. She wondered if he'd spent this season trying to seize on every tradition, to give his family every possible good memory of the holiday. Maybe he wasn't close to them. Liver transplants weren't always middle-aged dudes who'd spent more time at the bar watching the Sox than with his kids, but it wasn't an uncommon story. Sure, it wasn't just men who'd been "in the program" for long enough to be considered, and sometimes Mom would give her a look recounting the story of those patients. Like she could single glass of red at her desk, the whites with dinner, Meredith had figured out that they didn't account for the weight of the recycling bin years ago. Ellis Grey didn't find sleep any easier than her daughter, and Meredith always finished her papers before getting blotto.
Almost always. Seniorits was a bitch. Whatever, she proofed them sober. One instance of being docked points for every wrong key she'd hit had taught her that.
She didn't hate school was the thing. Sure, right now, today, within a week of finals, she could do without sitting in another classroom ever again. That didn't mean she wouldn't, even after May. She'd had a couple of professors say that she should apply to grad school in their discipline, and maybe if "physician" hadn't been the only option she'd been allowed to imagine as a kid, she'd be heading toward the title "Dr. Grey" with a different set of initials after her name.
Mom would never go for that. She couldn't stand academics, and it was her money. It wouldn't be fair to apply for funding that could've gone to someone who had a real passion. Maybe "researcher" would be okay, but she'd still be expected to get the MD.
Bartending wasn't bad. She didn't mind cleaning, didn't mind bodily fluids. She could humor the occasional pushy group and take a shot without it hitting her too hard to count cash. The ones who sat down to talk seemed to like her, and she was learning to predict their stories beyond the stereotypes.
It would get old, eventually. She would. There wasn't anywhere to go beyond manager, unless she wanted to own a bar, and that wasn't appealing, no offense to anyone who loved doing taxes, and applying for liquor licenses, and courting suppliers. (Except for Y2K-believer Daryl, full offense to him.)
It was a conundrum. She was. Boredom led to the antsyiness that had made her come here, rather than going straight home. Too much pressure, and she might become cirrhosis Cyril down there—unfair, she didn't know his story—but she'd been raised with contradictory beliefs. I'm not good enough, but I'm a hell of a lot better than Elaine Hopkins, and my science fair project will prove it.
A ripple went through the O.R., and Meredith's Docs thunked onto the floor as she sat forward. Her mom took the clamp off. She was crossing her fingers. There was no way Ellis was going to look up and focus on her hands, but she still hid them under her legs. If she uncrossed them, or put them behind her back, and this dude croaked, it'd some how be her fault. Stupidly superstitious, one of many things Mom had tried to keep her from being. Whatever, at least she was self-aware.
The liver went pink. Latex-muffled applause were just audible through the observation window. Meredith pulled her legs into her chair again and clasped her hands over her knees. The patient might not even celebrate Christmas, but he would see it.
Someone else wouldn't. A Living Donor Liver Transplant would've been scheduled. This was either a DDLT, or the donor had been terminal enough that they would've been a dead donor by Boxing Day anyway. Shit.
Could she do that? Take an organ out of someone, knowing it would kill them? Brain dead was dead; Meredith couldn't remember not understanding that. She'd never doubted that if she cracked her skull doing something stupid—or in some random accident—Mom would have donated anything salvageable, and the mark was on her driver's license. It was the right thing to do. Sometimes, in her darker moments, she thought that would benefit the world more than she did with a working brain.
If you don't put all I've taught you to use, won't it be true?
Meredith shook herself. Her mom hadn't possibly whispered in her ear, but it felt like she had. It might've been the same sentimentality that was making her imagine the donor's family up in the ICU with some social worker digging her talons into their shoulders. If she could push past that, would she have anything more of Ellis Grey's insight than an intern who'd devoured Beyond the Grey Method?
Would she be as good as any intern who'd just read the damn book? Or would it be Elaine Hopkins taking gold with one of three space=themed projects? Mom had never cared about anything positive on Meredith's evaluation sheets, or the time she'd taken to hand draw the organs on her poster. "Are her parents astronauts? You should be starting out with a boost."
What would've happened if she'd chosen to make a model that addressed the hole in the ozone layer instead of the circulatory system? If she'd written history papers on Emmeline Pankhurst instead of Elizabeth Blackwell? Would leaping on her own steam have made it easier to reach the bar?
She'd never wanted to, though. Sure, they hadn't been exposed to many careers other than "doctor" at the hospital day-care, but she'd heard the hero-worship in other kids' arguments for "helpers" like firefighters and police officers, and she hadn't gotten it—She might not have liked waking up in the middle of the night to hear a door closing and finding a babysitter in the living room, or having the phone ring within ten minutes of an ambulance whirring down the closest thoroughfare—but she'd known mom saved just as many lives.
Mom blocked two days a year on her schedule. It was weird for her to have even taken this shift. Maybe this patient was important enough that she couldn't pass it onto Dr. Ahmed. Meredith still sort of thought of him as an intern, Mom definitely did. It used to be that they did something—movies, ice skating, other normal weekend activities—on Christmas Eve, and then went to her aunt's place to spend the night. She'd died had last fall, but Meredith hadn't thought about Christmas, until she'd called on Thanksgiving, and Mom had said, "You'll be here for the holiday"—as if it hadn't been one—To her, it hadn't—and as if there'd been another possibility.
She'd imagined what it'd be like to be the one to call and say, "I'm not going to be able to make it home. I have to work."
It'd been satisfying, but she'd known it wouldn't play out at all like she imagined. She wouldn't end up feeling vindicated. She'd feel small and scared, because the truth was, she hadn't been able to not come home for Christmas, or stay through New Year's Eve. She'd spend the day sure that Mom's backseat driving would distract a cab driver on an icy intersection, or worse, not take one home from the First Night gala.
Meredith had never been as afraid in her life as when she'd lost control of the car in Florida, but it was primarily because she'd pictured so many fatal car crashes over the course of her life. MVAs could be horrendous, and Mom was a terror behind the wheel. She knew it enough that the car usually stayed parked, either in front of the curb, or in the MGH garage. Since she was fourteen, she'd been the one to move it, and the grounding had been worth it; the roads had already been slippery. For the past few days, she'd dreamed about coming in on the first day of the new millennium and see the red light signaling that she had a voicemail.
If nothing else, she'd make sure her mom didn't get slammed into by someone who could be her patient in a couple of years. She wasn't sure she could make a living saving lives, but there was one she could watch out for. She'd done it before.
If this call had come tomorrow she wouldn't have minded. She'd never asked Mom to stick around for her just because the next day was a holiday that just meant the few boxes in the living room got opened.
The intercom in the O.R. hadn't been turned on. Even if it'd been an LDLT, there wasn't enough staff to anticipate an audience. Meredith didn't understand what was going on when her mother gestured at Blood Spray Boy, but then the scrub-nurse offered him the open suture kit. She still expected Ellis to stick around. She didn't let other attendings close her appys most of the time. But then, her red-tipped glove was pointing at Meredith. Everyone in the O.R. turned to her, and she offered a weak two-fingered salute. Mom's eyebrows went up over her scrub cab, and she jabbed her finger toward the door.
Meredith was standing on the safe side of the "Authorized Personnel Only" line by the time her mother scrubbed out. Hopefully, she'd decide not to chew anyone out for letting Meredith sneak past them. That'd always been the refrain: if she found her way in, the ones not doing their job were to blame. Probably not what the higher-ups thought.
"You got here without incident, then?"
"Mom, it's good to see you! Merry Christmas!"
Ellis rolled her eyes, and then put her hand on Meredith's shoulder. It served the purpose of steering her toward the locker room, but it that'd been the only reason, she'd have grabbed her arm and tugged. "Meredith, you know I don't work on Christmas."
"Well, not usually, but I mean, liver transplant."
"Be that as it may. It's eleven forty-five. That should give me enough time to speak to Mr. Sykes family. His wife is a character, but she had three grandchildren in awful sweaters running around the waiting room, so hopefully she'll be too exhausted to make a fuss."
"Sure, why make a fuss over the doctor who saved her husband's life on Christmas Eve?"
"December twenty-third." Her mother took off her scrub-cap, and looked to the mirror attached to the door of her locker to attend to fly-aways—"A family does not want to see you disheveled. They should never consider how taxing the procedure might have been."—as she fixed a bobby-pin, her eyes met Meredith's in the reflection. "You'll be staying for the New Year foolishness? It's going to be a mess; they all want to prove they don't need to be here for the computer systems to keep working."
"If that's okay."
"Why on Earth would it not be?"
"I don't know."
"Then don't waste breath on saying it. You should know that there will be a doctor from Rochester at our table. He's looking to woo me into a research project."
"Oh." Meredith stuck her hands in her pockets. "What about the U.N.?"
"Still on the table, but I'm not sure what happens a year from now. We could have a Republican in the White House again. It could be the true end of the world."
Meredith managed to smile, and hoped that not being picked up at a protest meant the FBI didn't have pictures that could somehow be turned around on her mother. That was whyshe'd had the foresight to avoid being picked up.
"Think about what you want to do tomorrow. It's just us this year. I'd like to have a pleasant day. Unless you'd like to keep up the Grey Christmas tradition of sniping at someone?"
Meredith shook her head. Her mom and her aunt had never done anything she'd call getting along. Her will had made Ellis furious, and if she missed her, she wasn't showing it. Maybe tomorrow.
"Good. Go down and let a cab start running the meter." She kept her gaze on Meredith, like there might be more she wanted to say, and then spun on her heels again.
"I'm wearing a suit! To…to First Night." If that's okay, if that's okay, if that's okay. She pressed her lips closed. Her mother paused, but there were no signs of impending explosion. No tightening in her shoulders, or clenching fists. "The fitted kind. Not with a skirt."
"Do you need it tailored?"
"Uh. No. They did that at the store."
"As they should." Her bun bobbed as she nodded. "I'll do this as quickly as I can."
Meredith stayed frozen while her mother disappeared down the hall. She'd expected more. Whenever she'd gone through a period of accessorizing with ties, they'd been "an affectation." This time, there'd been something close to approval in Mom's voice.
She'd have to do it, now. Sadie drew every eye at these things, and her mother made conversation she couldn't avoid. She'd always hung back, getting enough attention from who she was, and the glasses she managed to spill. This time, she was going to make an impression. And why not? It might be her last chance, if Mom took another job. Meredith hadn't figured out how to get out of her shadow yet, so the guy from Mayo might as well know who they were getting.
She headed into the hall, in the opposite direction from the one Ellis had taken. There was still the subject of med school to broach, and that would be an argument. More than one. But maybe it wouldn't be as bad as she'd anticipated. She'd made a choice, just now, and her mother had respected that. Maybe if she kept it up, Mom would start to see her as someone who could make her own decisions, even if she wasn't quite ready to be an adult. And, who knew, she thought, as she walked out of the hospital and into the bracing cold of early Christmas Eve, maybe if she kept it up, she'd figure out the secret to being one. Maybe she'd finally become the person her mother wanted her to be, or at least someone she wanted to know.
There was a single cab waiting in the rank, and she hurried towards it. Not for the heat it promised, but because once she got in, she could put her mind to deciding what they could do tomorrow. It'd be like her to blow it by suggesting—no, deciding on—something that wasn't open. But she wasn't going to. She could figure out something that her mother would approve of, and from there, maybe she could keep it up. They were approaching a new millennium, after all. Anything was possible.