Kathleen had noticed Meredith hadn't been at school for the past two days and with no calls from her parents about her whereabouts, she was concerned. Meredith was never off school, even when the young girl was actually sick her parents still sent her in, only for her to be sent back home again by the nurse. She didn't have many friends in school so none of the other children knew why Meredith was absent either. It was coming to the end of the school day and after 3 failed calls home, she felt something was wrong, she knew.
Her welfare to Meredith was in school but she felt like she had a bond with the small girl more than just a teacher to a student, she wanted to do whatever she could with whatever help she would accept from her. Her recent flags that were raised to the child protective service about her home life were still flying high and even they agreed with Kathleen that something had felt uneasy in the home, however they had found nothing and for now there was nothing anyone could do. Picking up her phone and stepping outside of her classroom, she called her mom.
"Mom, hey." She said as the line opened.
"Hi Kath, everything okay?"
"Yea- actually no. Are you busy?" She stuttered.
"What's wrong? I'm just on my way to get Derek and Amelia from school." Carolyn said, stopping whatever she was doing to listen to her eldest daughter.
"Have you seen little Meredith around?" She asked nervously, pacing the hallway.
"No. We don't ever see her.. in fact I haven't seen any of that family since the other day when Derek told us about her dad." She frowned as she thought about it.
Meredith was not allowed outside anyway so it wasn't uncommon for them not to see her but Carolyn hadn't even seen her and her father in the morning like she normally does when taking her own children to school.
"She hasn't been in school for 2 days and no one has heard anything from the family.. mom?"
"Yes?"
"Can you go over and check on her. I'm really worried, somethings wrong, I just know it is." Kathleen asked taking a shaky breath.
"I-" Carolyn was going to say she had to get Derek and Amelia but hearing her daughters concern she stopped. "Okay, you'll have to pick up Derek and Amelia from school though Kath."
"That's fine, thank you mom."
"I'll call you once I've been over." Carolyn said before ending the phone call.
The Greys house was only two houses down from her own so it wouldn't take her long at all to check on Meredith. Leaving her house she walked down the street slowly approaching the lonely house, it looked sad. There was no swing on the porch or children's toys in the garden, just a house; brick; windows and a door. As she got closer she noticed a breeze pushing the door slightly showing that it was in fact not closed. The silence was deafening and she couldn't stop the pit of her stomach dropping.
"Dr Grey?" Carolyn knocked on the swinging door. No response.
"Mr Grey? Meredith? Are you home?" She asked.
After with no response to her calls, she turned around to leave until she heard a shift, it sounded like the shift of a table across a wooden floor or some furniture. Someone was definitely home. She walked back up the porch steps and called out again, with no response again she decided to not walk away this time but instead enter the lone house. Straight away she noticed ornaments fallen on the ground and at the bottom of the stairs looked to be a small puddle of blood that someone had attempted to clean.
"Meredith? It's Carolyn, Amelia's mom. Are you here sweetie?" She asked gently as she walked through the house.
Her heart dropped as she walked into the living room and saw a tiny Meredith sat against the sofa, blood dried against her head and bruises on her body, her eyes were closed and Carolyn was afraid that she wasn't conscious until she touched her shoulder and Meredith jumped away.
"Mommy?" She asked confused.
"Meredith, it's Carolyn, Amelia's mom remember?"
Meredith just looked at her blankly for several seconds before she tries to hold herself up to her feet, "tidy, we can't leave the house messy for mommy."
"Meredith come here, sit down honey." Carolyn grasped her shoulders gently as Meredith fought to let her go saying she needed to clean her mess.
"I made a mess, mommy will be mad. Daddy will shout, I made the mess." She whimpered.
Carolyn noticed her eyes were becoming erratic, her pupils moving to every direction of the house and her head was becoming sweaty. A gasp left her mouth as she watched the girl faint in front of her, catching her before she hit the ground. She sat with an unconscious Meredith in her arms as she called an ambulance.
The ambulance didn't take long to arrive and child protective services had been alerted too due to their recent visit to the address. She watched with tears in her eyes and they loaded Meredith into the ambulance, jumping in too and grabbing her tiny hand. There was no way she was going to leave the girl alone after what she'd been through. Carolyn knew she had to call Kathleen but she decided to wait, there was no point in making her worry even more when they didn't know anything and it wouldn't be productive for her to sit in the waiting room in fear. Hee heart broke as she watched an unconscious Meredith lie on a stretcher, needles being poked in her and her head being bandaged up tightly.
"She needs to have a CT, possibly an MRI, her head lac is pretty deep." One paramedic told the other as he wrote in their folder. "Do you know what happened ma'am?" He turned to Carolyn.
"No. Well I don't know for sure, but I am pretty certain that her father did this to her. My daughter is her teacher and she's had concerns about Meredith and when she missed 2 days of school my Kathleen was worried and asked me to check on her. She was conscious when I found her but she passed out as she stood up. Poor thing was trying to clean the blood of the floor." She shook her head.
"How people can do this to a child." One of the paramedics said in an angry tone as he looked at Meredith.
"I know. I don't know where he went but he wasn't there when I got there. He probably left when it happened. My guess is that she's been in and out on consciousness for days." Carolyn said.
"I think that's the case, her blood pressure is a lot lower than we'd like." He agreed.
Shortly after they arrived at the hospital.
"6 year old female, obvious head injuries and bruises to her abdomen. She lost consciousness before we got to her." He explained as the gurney got pushed through the ER.
"Take her to trauma 1."
"Yes Dr Webber." An intern said.
"Chief." Carolyn pulled him aside, working at the hospital as a nurse, she knew he needed to be informed who the child was.
"Carolyn, now's not a good time." He tried to pull away.
"Dr Webber!" She raised her voice, the chief stopped and slowly turned around to look at her, "I brought the girl in, it's Meredith Grey. Dr Grey's daughter."
"I'm trauma 1? That's Meredith? Why didn't you have Dr Grey paged?!" Richard frowned, his voice stern.
"We have reason to believe that Meredith's father did this to her, we don't know if Dr Grey is involved but it may be in Meredith's best interests if Dr Grey wasn't informed yet."
"Oh my god." Richard said as he looked at Carolyn.
"I have to go." He said before running to the trauma room leaving Carolyn stood in the ER.
45 minutes later, Richard walked back out of the room and approached Carolyn wiping his forehead.
"She's going to be okay, she has a patellar fracture and fortunately it's not too severe but she'll need a cast, she also has a small intracranial haemorrhage which Dr Nelson will monitor, at the moment he thinks it will heal itself."
"That poor girl. Her abdomen?" Carolyn asked quietly.
"She has some bruising but internally she's okay." He sighed relief.
"Thank god." She breathed herself, "I have to call my daughter." She said as she excused herself to call Kathleen.
"Mom?" She answered at the first ring.
"Hi Kath-" Carolyn didn't even get to finish before she was interrupted.
"Did you find Meredith? Is she okay?" She asked.
"Actually Kath... I'm so sorry Kathleen but you need to come to Seattle Grace."
"What?" Kathleen's voice broke.
"Meredith's in the hospital, shes going to be okay but I'll explain once you get here. Bring Amelia and Derek and I'll take them home."
"I'm on my way." She said and quickly ended the phone.