(interlude four)

"Ah, yeah, hello. I'm Thatcher, I'm an alcoholic. Been sober, uh, one thousand one hundred ninety-six days…. I'm asking…I'm asking for support today, because, well, tomorrow I'm seeing my daughter. She, uh, she was in a plane crash, just over three months ago. That was almost—She was missing a few days, and that was over the fourth anniversary of my wife's death, so that…that was rough.

"She…She's a fighter. Like her mom. I suppose you could say that the only thing I've ever fought against is reality. She, uh, she's a doctor. A surgeon. Her sister was the one who went trick-or-treating in a lab coat, and would, uh…she'd wrap her doll up like a mummy. But I guess you can't really tell who they're going to be when they're…when they're five, can you?

"Her mom…she was a force. Better than me at everything. All the women in my life have been fiercely independent. The more they tell you there's nothing they need from you, the harder it becomes to doubt them. I teach comparative literature, and my girls could read by themselves at three or four…. It…It felt like it took no time at all for me to need her more than she needed me—but there was a lot of it. Time. There was a lot of time that I…. I wasn't able to…. Her mom had everything in hand, and I stepped back. I stepped too far back.

"No longer having her mother in my life was difficult on me, and their eyes…and I resented having to face her disappointment, I regretted not reaching out more once I got my sober…. She was all grown up. A surgeon….I respect what they do, how dedicated they have to be, but I have a personal history that made me…. It makes me mistrustful of the profession. She bore the brunt of that.

"I'm not a fighter, like I said. But having the love of my life taken from me—I lashed out. I never believed myself capable of that sort of behavior. Her mother would've clawed my eyes out over it. She didn't deserve that. She hadn't done anything other than try to help the father who'd never given her the recognition she deserved. Truly, I knew that no amount of pride; no amount of anything I owed her would be enough to make up for how I'd pushed her away. Still, she…she hasn't written me out of her life. I've gotten to see someone look at her like she was the best thing that ever happened to him. He, uh, was on the plane, too. Seems like…like she's found folks who all fight for each other. When my liver started to fail, well, I can say I wouldn't be here today if not for her, and I know the apology I gave her wasn't sufficient. I didn't think… I should not be the one to determine how I've wronged her, or her sisters.

"I have three daughters, you see. Two granddaughters, who've both proven got that same spirit. One of them belongs to my youngest, she married her high-school sweetheart, and he's enlisted. Got moved to a post that allowed dependents not long after her mom passed, so…so she's got a job out there. Getting her BA in international relations through one of those new online programs. I've been at UW for thirty years, and nothing I can say to her is relevant. She asks, though.

"When my first wife moved to Boston, she took our five-year-old with her. The next time I saw her, she was twenty-eight years old, and I…I'd long since decided there was nothing I could do for her. Not…Not sure that's true. I am sure that I've only made things worse for her, since.

"My second oldest, she went to Harvard at sixteen; continued on to Harvard Med. I was…I was a coward. Afraid of…of going out there, of the off chance I'd cross paths with my oldest. Afraid that I wouldn't. They didn't meet until they were both working out here. Both their moms died, and they've been taking care of each other ever since. Both of them were on that plane. I'm not sure I can do anything, but I think I owe it to both them to try this time."

Lexie woke to her door slamming, and caught the flash of dark blue before she heard Meredith retching. A month of PT, and she could raise herself enough to see her sister on the floor of the bathroom across from her bed. She'd probably been of more use as an unresponsive sounding board.

"Did you lose her?" she asked, once she'd heard the toilet flush and the water run.

"Uh-uh."

"Oh. Where's Zola?"

"With Owen." Meredith braced herself on the footboard. "I should go get her—"

"Wait. H-Her fever?"

"Gone."

"Good. That's good….I'm sorry I couldn't help."

"Are you?"

Lexie turned toward the blinds tthat never showed her anything other than able-bodied visitors striding briskly toward their cars. Resentment made her jaw clench. Zola was a good listener, who would stay in place to watch most of a movie, but she was a toddler. It was easy to imagine her pulling the door handle, with a chipper, "Findin' Mama, Ecks! Lova much!" And if the nurses Lexie called couldn't respond quickly enough to intercept her, she'd be responsible for whatever happened next.

"Imagine what Welch would've said."

"Like I care." Meredith grumbled. Liar, She cared whenever anyone questioned her mothering, be it Lexie or The Daycare Wench. "It was presumptive of me. I'm not…. You….

"Melissa's gonna be all right. But she came so close, I kept thinking of—Seeing—" Meredith's face twisted, and she ran her hands over it. "—you. If the door had landed a few feet over? We couldn't have…. That would've been you."

"Maybe it should've been."

Mostly, Lexie said it because she knew how her sister would react. She didn't know what to do with a Meredith who was pale and shaky afterf a solid win. But if she hadn't made it, Meredith wouldn't have to worry about her. She could've gone to Boston, Lexie would be with Mark, not here burdening everyone in her family.

" I should've lost you? Hell, we should've all died?"

"What?" If Lexie hadn't been trapped, they could've kept camp where Arizona had been originally; they would've had more fluids for everyone, more oxygen. They wouldn't have had to waste energy caring for her. Meredith had barely been conscious herself and still regularly checking Lexie's vitals."What do you mean?"

Meredith's mouth opened, and then closed. She swallowed before saying, "What do you remember about after we got you out?"

"It hurt. I would've said I could feel every nerve ending. I screamed."

"You did. But we'd saved pain meds, and you were conscious just long enough for me to…." Meredith closed her eyes, hiding swimming irises. Whatever she'd done, it was a moment that had been important to her.

Lexie forced herself to come play her memories of the interminable removal of the weight on top of her. It went up in spurts, with regular dips. Every time, she imagined it falling again, having shifted just enough to crush the bones left in tact. Meredith had dived in as soon as there was room to pull her out. The massive branches they'd used to lever it up being removed cracked when they let it all go.

"It was in the report, but someone should've…. I should've…." Her hand went to her forehead. Lexie wondered if she'd deferred to her concussion at all on returning, or if she'd ignored it to stare at screens and light boxes while sitting at bedsides in brightly-lit ICU rooms. "We were rescued because of you. Your phone. When we freed you, it was lying right there. The clip attaching it to your pants had snapped. The screen was shattered, but Mark said you'd powered it down at take-off. While I stabilized you, Cristina walked with it until she got enough signal to call 911. Still took half a day to trace us.

"We'd debated getting that hunk of metal off you for days, because I was terrified that we'd lose you to crush syndrome. We'd used almost all the saline, and I'd barely been able to close Derek's hand without anesthetic, and…. God, Lex, I used the last of the gauze to pack your abdominal wound. It's a relief that you don't remember; I'm sure the lidocaine from the first-aid kit did fuck all for that. You saved us. I made it worse for everyone. If I hadn't waffled….We would've had more fluid to give you, your body would've been in better condition. You might not have needed the dialysis—"

"And I'm almost done with it. You…. Mer, if you hadn't believed you could save me, you wouldn't have been so determined to figure out how to free me. My phone would've stayed under there, too. We knew my legs were crushed; I never considered that it might not be."

"Guess I'm not gonna apologize for saving your life, then." Meredith came around to sit on the edge of the bed, taking Lexie's hand. "Nothing would be better if you had died, all right? Taking care of you kept me going out there."

"You keep yourself going."

Meredith shook her head."What do you know about when…when I drowned?"

"It was the day your mom died. There was a ferryboat crash. A nurse said that you…you knew? That she was gone. How?" Why didn't I know he was gone? Why wasn't I with him?

"Oh. I dunno, Lex. She'd been stable, but supposed to have a procedure that day, and Derek said…. He said, 'your mother' and maybe it was something in the way he said it." Meredith hooked a finger under the rubber band on her wrist. "No. I'm lying. I'm telling you what I told him back then, because I worried he wouldn't understand how I could believe all this, and not any of the churchy-church stuff. He's not that way…but this was weird. I had…an experience. It was probably all the meds, shit hits me. You were there last time I was on morphine. Pot makes me paranoid. Never stopped me from trying new things, though, and this…it was nothing like a weird trip. It was…I don't know what it was. Not the point. I came out of it, and Cristina was there, asking me to talk, and she was engaged…. Everything was bright, and hazy, and hurty—but through all of that, in the back of my mind, I could hear her…Mom…saying I was anything but ordinary. And I…I almost knew. And Derek said, 'your mother,' and I was sure. Sure that she was gone, and…and I didn't want to be."

You sure you hadn't heard Avril Lavigne that morning? If Meredith had stopped to breathe, Lexie would've said it. Probably good that she didn't.

"That happened during a period where I was…I wasn't okay. I got knocked into the water, with no idea that anyone had seen, and I was fighting. I was swimming, and for a second, I thought, why bother? And I…I drowned. They got me back. Derek got me out of the water; Bailey and Richard revived me. But I had this…this dream, or whatever, and…I believe I made a choice. It's woo-woo and weird, probably the meds, but for me it happened.

"Choosing life and living are totally different things. I wanted to live. To have an identity beyond being my mother's daughter, successfully or not. Getting to know you…admitting to myself that I wanted to take that risk, was a big part of it; I had no idea how to be a sister. No relative experience." Lexie groaned. "Good, you're listening.

"I've been through a lot, Lex, but not like this. I've crashed, but by the time I could feel the pain, I knew I'd be okay. I'm used to the immediate aftermath where patients don't know what they need. With Mom, more I understood, the less she did, so I…I had to take over. So, you're gonna have to tell me what you need me to do, or not do. If you don't want me around—"

"What? Why wouldn't I?"

Her sister shrugged. "I left you to go find Derek, and for the rest of the time I was bugging you constantly. I could've backed off to give you more time alone with Mark. And I'm…. I came out basically unscathed. I come in here going on about surgeries—"

"I could move in with Dad, if it's too much."

Meredith's finger slipped and the rubber band snapped loudly enough to make both of them wince. "That's up to you."

"I didn't…. It's not that…. He just—"

"Hi, Ecks. Hi, Mama!" Zola gasped the second greeting, and her purple Velcro sneakers stomped as she ran around the bed to Meredith, almost letting the door slam in Dr. Hunt's face.

"Check out that lucky find," he said. "We were just coming to pay Auntie Lexie a visit, weren't we, Zola?"

"See Ecks," Zola agreed, her arms looped around her momma's neck.

"Nurses said it's time for this," Dr. Hunt added, holding up a syringe, and scanning the barcode into the terminal he'd pulled in with him. "Pain level?"

"Maybe a five? My shoulders have been sore all day."

He nodded, clicking around. "Any spasming?"

"Not since late last night."

"Wha'ssat?" Zola asked, watching him attaching the syringe to the peripheral central line Lexie had woken up with.

"That's medicine," Meredith said. "Like Daddy takes in the morning, except it goes right into her blood, instead of going this way." She tickled Zola from her neck down over her belly. "We'll step you down after we reverse your ostomy next week. You'll be on oral meds going to the rehab center."

Lexie nodded, and then closed her eyes. Hunt was used to administering meds in the OR; he injected fast, and it was definitely a rush. She couldn't feel it work, exactly, so much as the next time she moved, her shoulder didn't throb.

"Ecks, pat-a-take?" Zola held her hands up to Lexie. Putting exactly how limited her movements were on display in front of the Chief of Surgery hadn't been on Lexie's to-do list for the day, but she couldn't imagine two people who would judge her more for denying this kid. Derek would be disappointed, but Meredith and Hunt both had that air of If I'm willing to meet her on her level, you have no excuse.

"Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man," Lexie chanted. The simple hand claps were nothing to the games she'd planned to teach Zola as she got older. She was a smart little girl, being raised by people who would encourage her to osmose all the information she could. There was nothing wrong with that; Lexie figured any kids she'd have would be nerds by default, too. But Zola had the potential to be the too smart girl in the front row, like Lexie had been. She'd wanted to do everything she could to give her niece an edge on the playground.

Maybe she still did. Fun, cheerful Aunt Lexie must still exist in her somewhere, but she didn't rise to the surface in the process of rolling it, her hands flat. Zola mimicked her confusedly with one hand, the other forming a fist in the way she knew. "Pat it", she could handle, but to "mark it with a Z" she slashed the size of her hand through the air in a full Zorro-move. Zola giggled delightedly, and copied her.

"Big Z," she said, and then Lexie had to move quickly to catch up with her return to the rhyme. "Putta inna oven, Zola is me! Yay!"

"She came up with that all on her own." Meredith moved her hands to match Zola repeating the rhyme automatically, matching her daughter's off-beat rhythm when her eyes seemed to be fully on Lexie. "Didn't you, love-bug?"

" Didntcha potty."

"You need to go potty?"

"She, uh, she might," Hunt stammered. "She hasn't, so if the pull-up is—ah. that works." Meredith had popped Zola up onto the bedside commode that had replaced Lexie's indwelling Foley catheter. Lexie didn't appreciate the PT's focus on pivoting when they still weren't sure if she'd end up self-catheterizimg. As a woman, she didn't really have an option that wasn't a hundred times more difficult than having a tube going to a discrete bag

The social worker who'd come through several times this week was a wheelchair-user, and Lexie caught herself watching her without listening. She moved constantly, shifting to avoid pressure sores, leaning forward as she spoke, tossing her head back to laugh. Lexie had to focus to hold herself in a sitting position; unable to control her trunk muscles, which would've been automatic in the past.

"I can take her down to the cafeteria for dinner if you ladies want some time," Hunt offered.

"Nah, I've been passing her around like a hot potato all day," Meredith said, and Lexie's cheeks burned.

She'd been right. She couldn't have looked after Zola for any period of time. Meredith would've been setting them all up for failure there. "Have you talked to Cristina?"

"Uh, recently?"

"Since noon-ish?"

"Oh." Dr. Hunt leaned back against the arm of the VIP room sofa "No, I haven't."

Lexie glanced over to catch Meredith's expression, and her sister raised an eyebrow. Okay, she was right that that'd been weird. He'd definitely spoken to Cristina at a point that could've been considered "recently," and he not only felt like he shouldn't have, he thought Meredith would think so. Which, he'd cheated. That was one of those things no one was meant to know, but everyone did. Meredith was highly anti-cheating. So, what seemed weirder to Lexie was her seeming to have no problem with the possibility. Clearly, there was more to it than Lexie knew.

"She had a surgery with Dr. Mr. Feeney, and I thought I'd hear from her—"

"Okay, who?" Lexie interrupted.

"Hold on." With one hand still supporting Zola, Meredith took her phone out with the other. The sudden sound of liquid hitting plastic was loud in the otherwise silent room. It seemed to startle Zola as much as any of them, but she was clapping for herself before she'd finished.

"I pee-pee!"

"You sure did! No shy bladders here, huh? Okay, let's wipe, and then what do we do before you get your treat?"

"Scrubbup!" Zola's hands twisted around each other in an excited hand-washing gesture.

"Bingo!" Meredith directed Zola to the bathroom, taking the pot from the commode with her to rinse. While the water ran, Hunt picked up the phone she'd dropped on the bed, and then held it up to Lexie.

"That's Cristina's mentor up at Mayo," he explained. "Dr. Thomas. He looks like—"

"He's totally Mr. Feeney. Oh, man!"

"I'd trust her," Meredith said, opening the Ziploc she'd taken out of a pocket of the diaper bag. Lexie expected a comment on the useless information that had just run through her brain. Boy Meets World (1993-2000), one hundred fifty-six episodes, starring Ben Savage born September 13th 1980, Rider Strong, born December 11th, 1979…. "She was the target demographic."

"Sure," Hunt acknowledged. "But I didn't have any trouble picturing the guy. My—My family…. We were sitcom people."

"We weren't," Lexie insisted. "I liked Full House. Boy Meets World and Sabrina were, like, the two shows Molly and I both watched. We'd usually tape TGIF and watch on Saturday mornings, because I had a social life."

"Sure. Hanging out with your friends Cory, Shawn, and Topanga," Meredith quipped.

"I don't mock the show you were obsessed with in ninety-four."

"No, you just ruined it for me."

"I highly doubt you made the comparison."

"But what if I did, somewhere deep in my twisted brain?" Meredith made a tortured face. "Did you watch My So-Called Life, Owen?"

Dr. Hunt's face did something weird. A flicker of a fond smile. Maybe the fiancée before Cristina had a thing for Jared Leto, or Claire Danes, like Mer. "I saw most of it, I think."

"Okay, so, there's a character in it, a teacher who happens to be gay, which, whatever, except—this one had to point out that he looks a lot like our father."

"I said you were lucky that he wouldn't to you, because you didn't know he went gray by then."

Meredith shook her head. "That show meant a lot to me, and I just…. Sometimes, I wondered—He doesn't show up until about halfway through the season, so I know that's not why I was into it, but…. Mom wasn't homophobic. She treated AIDS patients—according to Richard, she was willing to operate when it was called GRID, and they knew nothing. I had babysitters who were very…."

Lexie knew she was stopping herself from saying "queer" and tumbling down the outting herself slope. Hunt didn't know. Strange, since he was her best friend's husband. Less strange, because she couldn't imagine sharing a lot of personal information with him, either.

"Not straight. So, I didn't think it'd be why she took me away from Thatcher, just that maybe it'd been a marriage of convenience, or something."

"You…thought your father might be gay?" Dr. Hunt clarified.

"She also thought he was the Green River Killer."

"I really wanted an explanation for Mom leaving a situation where she didn't have to pour my cereal! She didn't date, and if there were sex friends, I didn't know about them!"

Lexie caught her looking at Hunt, who glanced at Zola. She was holding Rawr over the bedside commode, offering him an M &M, popping it into her own mouth, and taking another from the cup of Meredith's hand.

"Speaking of Dad—" Lexie started.

"Oh, yeah, did he ask you, too?"

"Ask me what?"

"If I'd be operating on you."

"He did not! Oh my God, Mer. I'm sorry. I'd be lucky if you—"

Meredith held her hands up, and then lowered one onto Lexie's shoulder. "I think that's what he meant, Lex."

"Oh." Great, now Lexie looked like the asshole. She'd be glad when this visit ended, and she could go back to telling herself Titanic; a challenge, because she tried to remember as many details about the ship as she could—She'd been fourteen in 1998; she'd gone through a phase.

"It'd be against policy, regardless," Hunt pointed out. "Operating on family."

Meredith put Zola's container of M&Ms back into the diaper bag. "It's a very broad, unspecific guideline," she said. "I could claim that, legally, we're not. My father waived his parental rights. He's not on my birth certificate. And I don't consider what I did to her out there to be surgery, but it could qualify under some definitions."

"For me," Lexie murmured. Meredith turned to her, a small smile on her lips.

Lexie wished she was better at reading her eyes. Ellis Grey's eyes, she'd gathered, from the rants Dad went on. As much as she'd studied them, while pretending not to, they spoke a language Lexie couldn't translate half as well as even Alex or Callie. Cristina was fluent, but Derek was the most infuriating. She'd commented on Meredith's inscrutability last year, in mid-autumn, when he was still frustrated with her, but starting to transfer it onto the system, where Lexie felt it'd belonged the whole time.

"it's all in her eyes," he'd said. Maybe, but it was layered, and Lexie knew he didn't always stop to tease it all out.

"Yeah, and it made me want to poach you for trauma," Dr. Hunt said. "But unless there were extenuating circumstances, I wouldn't want you operating on Cristina, so I definitely wouldn't sign off on you doing so on Lexie."

"Kinda mean."

"What's that?" he asked, tilting his head at Lexie. Derek did that all the time, and it didn't feel condescending. With Hunt it did, more than it had three months ago. Maybe she felt more inferior as a patient, not a surgeon. But if he wasn't her boss, then he was just her sister's friend.

"Asking her to do trauma. She gets enough of that off the clock." Meredith snickered. "Not that reversing colostomies is where you should be, either," Lexa added, earning a glare from her sister.

Lexie hadn't liked Meredith's decision to let Derek block her from his service. She'd told herself it was guilt over getting to more or less take her place, even after her part in the removal of Lori Bosson's tumor. She'd also believed she was conflating her own dreams with her sister's. It would've been great if they'd both gone into neurosurgery. There'd be competition involved, sure, but it hadn't come between them as residents; surely they could handle it as attendings. Derek was harsher with his actual little sister than he'd ever been with Lexie. It didn't stop her from imagining brainstorming cases with Meredith when they….Grow up? She needed to grow up. But, didn't it mean something that she had the same feeling, now, with her own future transformed into static?

Zola stopped trying to get her hand into the M&M pocket without Meredith noticing, and accepted a box of lacing cards as a redirection. Her focus on feeding the string into one hole and out the other made anyone who looked at her comment on her future as a surgeon, and even Meredith, who didn't want to pigeonhole her, would say the practice wouldn't hurt.

"I don't want the surgery, anyway," Lexie said.

"The ileostomy reversal?" Meredith asked.

Lexie nodded. "I'm supposed to, for all the body image stuff, I get it. Why would I want to shit in a bag forever? Especially if I want to meet someone! But I don't. I want…I'm not getting my life back, I understand that, but if I want a chance…. In The Journal of Spinal Cord medicine, seventy percent of quadriplegic patients with a stoma wish they'd done it earlier, and there's a five to seven hour difference in time spent on bowel care a week. That's seven hours I can use on OT, or…or learning how to cook again; I don't know."

What did she do that didn't involve her hands? Reading? She'd tried that after she broke up with Jackson, and it'd been impossible to focus. "I could change my mind later. They didn't use Hartmann, did they? I know that's for diverticulitis, but judging by what everyone else went through in Boise—"

Meredith smirked. "No. It's a loop ileostomy. We try to reverse those within three to six months, but you have up to a year before you'd really need to make a decision on permanency. Reversal doesn't always work, even if it's not a Hartmann—which can be reversed," she added. "It just has lower success rates."

"She's done it twice in two months," Hunt said, and Lexie saw a flash of the pride Meredith had had admitting that Melissa made it. "I've encountered guys at the VA with the same attitude. One thing to consider is that you'll be dependent on having access tp supplies."

"Where'm I going to go?"

"To visit Molly," Meredith suggested. "To perform breakthrough tumor surgeries in Mongolia. You're not closing off paths yet, remember?"

"Exactly."

Hunt and Meredith gave her identically scrutinizing looks, like they weren't sure she'd meant it as a joke. Then, Meredith rolled her eyes. "Okay. I'm sure Bailey will want to interrogate—discuss this," she corrected exaggeratedly. "But there's no reason to rush if you don't want to."

Lexie didn't want to give them a reason to question the first real decision she'd made in months, so she turned her smile on Zola, who was flying her cardboard butterfly around now that it was "all fixed." Really, Lexie was painfully amused at the paradox: She did want to rush, but for the first time in her life, that wouldn't guarantee that she'd get where she wanted to go.

A/N: Like this chapter, my posting schedule will ahve an interlude next week. I'm having an in-patient procedure to fix my wonky eyelids, which is a big step toward getting full vision back. If you're behind on this fic, or want to recommend it to someone, they'll have two weeks to catch up!