"I'm going to kill her," Meredith declared. "Where's my baby?"

"Daycare. We can go down in a sec. First, I brought you something."

"You sent me a gift last night," she said, dryly. He led her to the attendings lounge, and then pulled one of their coolers out of the fridge.

"Breakfast cannolis? Best husband!" It was not a superlative she'd have given him much this month. He knew her weaknesses. "This isn't meant to placate me before you say your sister isn't with you, is it?" She'd spent half the night worrying that he'd already driven Liz back across the country, figuratively or otherwise.

"No." Derek laughed as he dragged a chair over to sit closer. "Good call?"

"Didn't get to eat much last night."

"Mer—"

"I don't know if people are practicing for Thanksgiving or what, but there was abdominal pain everywhere. Then, Lexie showed up, which was a whole thing. I think Hunt knows I'm knocked up. A couple guys came in from an accident at the dock, it was a mess. He wouldn't let them page me. Tyler had to send Ross up here to get me so I wasn't technically 'being paged'—and I still got in fifteen minutes of lying on the floor in Lexie's bathroom. This it's-technically-morning sickness thing is stupid."

"What about sleep? Any of that?"

"Few hours." Maybe. Cumulatively. Derek sighed, and she offered him a forkful of pastry and ricotta. When he took it, she wrapped an arm around his neck. "You could've given this to me in your office."

"Oh, yeah?" she let him ask before she kissed him. They were past the rush of arrivals; they couldn't bet on having the room to themselves, but there wasn't heavy traffic. "That much enthusiasm about a cannoli, huh?"

"Mmhmm." She took another bite, letting the cream go where it wont and making sure she had his attention as she ran her tongue over her lips. "Certain is fantastic, but you know, it's not my favorite."

"No?" Derek ran his fingertips over the arm she'd rested on the table, and she shivered. "Think you could tell me more about that tonight?"

"Depends. You gonna be weird about your sister being in the house?" Or butthurt over her being here?

"Hmm." Feigning thoughtfulness, he dipped a finger in the cream oozing from her breakfast and then flicked it over the tip of her nose. She yelped, the sound leaving her just before his tongue hit the spot. He licked the cream off, and then brought his tongue down to her lips. While he kissed her, he painted her mouth with the sweet mix of cream, whey cheese, and chocolate. "Nope," he finished, popping the "p" against her lips.

She'd started this. Why was she the one being thrown off balance? Unless…. "Are you sure you didn't do something dumb? Cancel the pre-op appointment? Drop Liz at Seattle Pres?"

Derek laughed again, this time pressing a kiss against the inside of her wrist. "She's souvenir shopping so she has 'what'd you bring us?' taken care oft."

"Something I won't screw up, since I'm never going anywhere again."

"We can take road trips."

"With Zola. Only way the poor kid's gonna get out of Seattle with me. Taking her on a plane…." She flipped her fork, letting a chunk of pastry fall back into the box.

"I'm not ready for that, either," he reminded…. Wait, had he admitted that before? "Last night I dreamed we were out there. I could hear someone calling me. Thought it was my sisters, and I knew that was wrong. It still felt real. Turned out it was actually Zola."

"She call you 'Derek,' or did your sisters call you 'Daddy?'"

"I don't remember. Thank God."

"It's always going to be something that happened to us. Whatever…Whatever else we can fix…. We can't erase it. We choose how we want to move forward."

Derek sat there silently for a long moment, and her throat tightened. Maybe she'd gotten something wrong there. She only had part of the experience.

"It feels disrespectful," he said, softly. " Robbins will always have a prosthetic. Lexie will see improvement, and far as she wants to go, we'll go, but…." He sighed. "It's going to take years for her to have a shot at what I could have by January, and it might not happen. And Mark…. He'd be climbing walls in my position, yeah, but it didn't take this for him to see—"

"There was plenty he didn't see!—Sorry. I don't know why I interrupted you, just…Lexie was miserable for a long time. We saw it."

"Saw He did, too. Seeing someone you love in pain, knowing you caused it…. You tend to think you're only going to make it worse."

"You can say that you're talking about my intern year."

"Not just then, but there were parallels."

"Julia, a Rose by another name."

Derek smiled, and she remembered the point of this conversation. "This could've been harder for her if they'd been making it work. There's no knowing. None. What you do for your hand has nothing to do with Arizona or Lexie. It's where the science is, and it wasn't there a year ago. And it wasn't…. They're fixing what…what Idaho did wrong."

"Your close didn't cause it, that I'm certain of," he said. "That I couldn't have gotten free another way is less sure—"

"I'm sure. You wouldn't have taken the risk if you'd seen an alternative, and so it doesn't matter what the actuality was."

"Getting back to you…getting home…getting back to…us as quickly as possible has led to some rash decisions on my part. I've…pushed things aside…pushed you...in ways I shouldn't. I haven't been a team player."

Meredith's heart sped up—for no reason. He didn't mean—

"Lexie told me… made me realize that…that what I've come to understand after this, about my priorities, and my career…it makes my behavior last year untenable."

Oh, Meredith was absolutely going to kill her sister. It'd be a great use for the adrenaline flooding her. She could feel Derek's scrutiny as heat on the back of her neck. She put the loaded fork back in her mouth, just to be doing something. Mistake. The sweetness was cloying and the formerly flaky crust caked in her throat, making it impossible to swallow.

She startled at the sound of the door opening, almost choking in the process. Derek put his hand on her shoulder, but his focus was partially on greeting Richard. She slipped her hands under the table and caught the rubber band under her watch on a crooked finger. Derek heard the snap, she felt it in his grip.

"Sorry." She coughed. "Wrong tube. Richard, how's Adele this morning?"

"She's in a good mood. She's heard about Miranda's wedding, and she thinks anyone talking about her procedure on Monday are referring to us traveling for her first go, to Tucker."

"You knew Miranda then?" Derek asked. "Our first year here, it'd been ten years." He smiled on our. It was a conceit, the idea that they'd started together, but it was essentially true.

"Adele knew her father. She and I had corresponded a bit once she started thinking about medicine."

Started thinking about medicine. That was an experience Meredith hadn't had. It'd been the only option—until it was too late to go back.

She'd had a choice last year. She had, and she'd made the right one.

She flipped the to-go box closed. "Would she like a cannoli? I haven't touched the second one."

"Mer, you—"

"I want to go say good morning to Zola before I'm refereeing you and Liz. That'll probably go 'til lunch." At which point, she'd have to start chugging water, probably to find out she'd freaked herself out into miscarrying over a conversation.

"Conservative estimate," Richard said. "I've never seen a pair go at each other like the Shepherd siblings can."

Derek blew his cheeks out in abject frustration. "She's deluded. Still says I took her place. I made her into a middle child. Amy put her in themiddle, but Amy was an accident. I chose to show her up."

"She chose to be here," Meredith mimicked, and Richard's chortle made her sure she'd nailed the whiny drawl. "I went through the text chains this morning. I'm surprised Mousey didn't toss my phone down a sink out of sheer desperation. Your sisters are a powerhouse.

"I'd have put my money on Kath, but she has everything planned to take the younger two to see Mack in Paris over the holidays. She's reimbursing Liz for the ticket she bought within five minutes of her explaining that. Nancy has two multiple moms due by Christmas, so she's getting her home, up to ensuring she or Peter pick her up at the airport. Amy—"

"—isn't getting anywhere near this. I'm not giving her chronic nerve pain on top of everything."

"Obviously! Think she feels good about that being a unilateral decision? I wouldn't. You or Liz…. Someone should get your mother to call her. She owes her an apology, but if she'd just say that's the right choice, when she moved out here so you'd have someone closer…."

His brow furrowed, and she wanted to shake him. He'd believed Amelia was continuing to shadow him. That she'd wanted him close—which hadn't benefited her at all last year—not because he'd been shot and there hadn't been a Shepherd who could get there in less than seven hours.

"Look, if I didn't think Liz was totally in, I wouldn't be riding your ass, I'd be figuring out how to get Kath more PTO. Sorry, Richard."

"Perfectly all right. Ride on, I say."

Derek grimaced, and she stood pulling him up with her. "You sure you're done?" He asked.

She held the box out to Richard. He took it with a nod. He undoubtedly sensed subtext. People were going to start wondering.

If there was anything to wonder about.

Once the door to the attending's lounge closed behind them, she took both of Derek's wrists and held his gaze. If they were going to get even this close to that conversation, this came first. "If I get Alzheimer's, promise me you won't put me in a home."

"Mer—"

She shook her head. If she'd wanted to discuss everything underneath that—her certainty that she could've visited her mom more, everything that'd been done to give Richard time with Adele, the fact that the most prestigious care home in the area had missed cardiac issues in both women she'd sent there—she would've said so. "Promise me."

"I promise."

"Thank you." She started walking toward the elevator.

"So, why are you killing Lexie?"

What? Why…? "Chelle is being discharged tomorrow."

"Good for her. I know they're friends—"

"Do you know what she does for a living? She's a tattoo artist, and they decided to see if her hands are just steady enough to handle her tools."

The twist of amusement didn't leave the corners of Derek's eyes. "What'd she get?"

"That's your question?"

"I know it's somewhere below her level of injury—"

"So she wouldn't have to feel it? Yeah, that backfired. It's on her rib-cage. Right across her intercostals, which have displayed spasticity! Chelle took it as a challenge, and Lexie thought it'd be 'appropriate' if it affected the line-work."

"If she wanted to guarantee not feeling it, she'd have gone lower, wouldn't she?"

Showing him the picture was not going to bring him around to her side of this, and, truthfully, she wasn't sure if that was the side she was on. She wasn't the one who'd used Dani's tattoo as an excuse for why she wasn't right for Thatcher—Now, she wondered if, historically, he'd had a problem with them. Her mother's warnings about hepatitis hadn't been her reason for ignore g Sadie's needle needling. She'd never considered any symbol significant enough to put on her body.

She took her phone out of her pocket and opened the photos.

"Geez, Lexie. That's…."

"A better grand gesture than you could've thought of? Yeah. Look." She zoomed in on the snap of the black and white tattoo. The hands of the Tin Man's heart-shaped clock were set to 8:05:11.

"He'd have loved it," he murmured. "But he'd have been irritated at her taking the risk, like you are."

She shrugged. Mark loved people so wholeheartedly, she didn't feel like she could take on that legacy. "They're gonna call me Elphaba," she grumbled. "But that'd make more sense than most of what they've come up with. Bisexual non-conformist. Paralyzed younger sister. House, plane, what's the difference? Wonder if Lexie did hear me reading to her. In the book, the sister is a little ceviche." Derek failed at holding back a smile. "Shut up." She jabbed the elevator button.

"I didn't say anything."

"Your face is loud." She sighed. "Derek…. That…. This…. It wasn't a planned segue…. I-I wasn't releasing test animals in college, but I've always…I-I went to an execution for the inmate, and…I…I'm…." She squeezed her empty hand, focusing on the bite of he nails, and not the sense that if she couldn't get her thoughts and words to match up, some disaster would ensue. "I can't ignore when things are wrong. Would I have done it if it hadn't been Richard and Adele? If someone there husband had…suggested…that? Probably not, but I did, and…. It was Adele. It was my mom, it's Lexie, it's me. I didn't make it personal. Medicine is personal."

She swallowed multiple times before she could deliver her final thought.

"If-If it'd been Michael, and his mother had suggested that there was this one thing you could do…?"

The elevator arrived. He was giving her a look she hadn't seen in a while. The one that meant he'd followed her somewhere he never expected to go. In the empty car, she wanted to hold the doors open. Someone would be rushing along the hall in a second, but there was no one by the time they slid shut. Derek wrapped his arms around her, tightening his hold when she stiffened.

He leaned into the curve of her neck, the tip of his nose on her pulse point. Was this his latest way of monitoring her when he thought she was detaching? She knew exactly what she was feeling, and that her fear was disproportionate.

"It's okay," he murmured. "There's not…I want to talk to you about it before they operate. I'm absolutely willing to postpone."

"That's not new."

"Liz can come back. She can stay. I'll make something up. I owe you—"

"Nothing! I fucked up, and there was a consequence. That's all there is to it."

"Maybe ihat was all…. Where we are isn't going to change, okay? That, I promise. You, me, Zola. We're forever. No matter what happens today, or next month, or…thirty-two weeks from now."

She loved him for that. For believing, in spite of all evidence, that she wouldn't just be able to carry an—this embryo to the point of viability, but that she'd make it to term. That he wanted her to know that enough to do the math. That he still wasn't pretending it was a guarantee.

"You have to have the surgery. If…If Callie and Jackson say it's a go, you're doing it. There's no reason for…. It was what needed to happen, but…it can't be…. I can't be why…."

"I know you want me back in the O.R. I want it to work, too. I'm scared I want it too much. That I'll…."

The elevator dinged, and doors opened.

"Tonight," she said. "Unless… Unless there's something else."

Derek's hand rested on her abdomen before he brought it back to take hers. For a heartbeat. They needed a heartbeat.

"Feels like we're warehousing the kids down here," she said as they navigated the tunnels. "This should be easier to get to from the surgical floor."

"Be nice if it was a straight shot."

"A secret elevator. But the buttons would have to be…. Here, ish?" She gestured, indicating Zola's maximum reach, and adding six inches for good measure. "Hi, Erin," she added, catching the eye of the receptionist who was checking in a little boy whose mom she didn't recognize, but thought might be an oncology nurse.

When she was a kid, this had all been part of the daycare's main play area. It'd attached to the "baby room" where they corralled the under twos, and the rest was a free-for-all, with a table that was usually populated by four-and five-year-olds. It'd made getting out much easier.

"Dr. Grey, Dr. Shepherd. What can I do for you?"

"Just wanted to visit Zo. I haven't seen her today."

"I was scattered this morning," Derek added. "My sister's in town, I brought Zola in so I could direct her toward the sights, but I promised I'd come back and take her up to see Mer—"

"—but I'm impatient."

Erin adjusted the frames of her glasses. "She's already checked in."

"So?"

"You can't go back. Mrs—We don't want parents coming and going all the time. It confuses them."

"Yeah. I'm sure. Let me check her out, then. I can take her up to see Lexie. She's fine, just had a blood pressure scare. There's still half an hour before she's tardy."

"That's true…. Oh. She's marked down for lunch checkout?"

"My sister's in town," Derek repeated, and then addressed most of the next sentence to Meredith. "I figured we'd all have lunch together, before your…appointment."

"Yeah, that's—"

"Unless it's a special circumstance, like a medical appointment, we're supposed to be enforcing the check-out guidelines."

Erin, whose face was turning pink under her freckles, pointed to a notice taped onto the receptionist desk. All Meredith could process was the clip-art. A revolving door with an off-kilter X over it.

"They can only come in and out once a day. You'd have to keep her after lunch."

"We can't do that. I have a…an appointment. We both do. Have appointments. Plural."

Derek moved closer, his left hand resting steadily on her hip. "Liz could…but we'd have to tell her…."

She shook her head, focusing on Erin. "If Derek hadn't brought her in, we could've kept her with us for another half hour. If I'd met him down here, we could've walked her back, and still be in there for thirty minutes. Correct?"

"Yes, I suppose so. Although, Zola doesn't take long to settle."

"You'd kick us out because our kid doesn't cry and scream when we leave?"

"I…I wouldn't. It's just…. Parents whose schedules aren't as…unpredictable can't flit—" Erin winced. Not her word. "—can't visit through the day. They have a routine. Obviously it evens out, but they don't understand—"

"Teach them! Teach them that some jobs are different! That's what Zola understands. Ask her! She knows we fix people, and people don't only get hurt, or sick, or…or lost in the daytime. She has a routine, and part of it is that if I work overnight, she will see me in the morning!"

"Mer—"

She shrugged Derek off, staring at the closed door at the end of the hall. Erin wasn't making the rules. "Has Sofia been dropped off, yet?"

"I can't tell you that." Erin shook her head exaggeratedly.

"I'm on her list. I'll walk her back when she gets here."

Meredith deposited herself in one of the chairs that were all of five feet from Erin's desk. Derek took the other chair.

"I'm not leaving until I see Zola."

"I got that."

"I promised."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You didn't…. This is insane! It's a daycare for hospital staff. No one has a one hundred percent reliable schedule; that's why we have a multi-hour drop-off window! It's why they have lunch check-out! If they were actually accommodating our schedules they'd have twenty-four hour care, and we'd be free to check on them whenever. There'd be, like, a supervised on-call room for them"

"That'd be nice. We could work the same nights, and that'd be it."

"I'd like that."

Derek held his had out to over the table full of outdated Highlights and People. She took it.

The door opened, and she sat forward, hoping to be seconds away from one of Sofia's good morning hugs. Instead of a cheerful little girl in a slippery pink jacket, or any kid who could've broken up the tension in the room, she found herself looking up at Owen.

"Oh, he—heck no," she said, the drawn out vowel a result of Derek's very pointed squeezing of her hand. Controlling her words and her volume at the same time wasn't one of her skills. Luckily, kids cared more about the latter, so it rarely mattered that letting her mouth run around her own kid was sometimes beyond her capabilities. Ellis Grey had not censored. She'd left it up to Meredith to discover the power of words, and that was what she'd teach Zola when she repeated anything closer to Starz than the Primetime TV-level Meredith stuck to at work. Around other people's kids, she took it down to Nickelodeon, and while Owen had probably heard the gambit, she knew what Derek was trying to remind her of: Welch was listening. She had to be. That door was porous, or the room was bugged, or something.

"Did she call you as soon as I came through the door? Tell you to come get your berserker? I just want to see my kid!"

"I would've let you off last night."

"What? Why…? This isn't—"

"Lexie got readmitted."

"Yeah."

"She said you wanted to take Zola up to her. Well, she, uh…."

"Wanted confirmation? Referenced my dark, baby-stealing history? I don't care. I mean, I thought about it. Mostly, I want to see her. Zola. I can't be sure I won't be busy at lunch, we've got the pre-op for Derek's hand this morning—"

"If you want the day off to sit with L—"

"Not everything is about my sister!" Derek's hand clenched around hers. She'd couldn't find the volume toggle anymore.

"It should be!" Owen finally raising his voice made Derek stand, but he stayed several steps behind her. "You got her back!"

No, she hadn't. She'd tried; she'd done everything she'd known how to do; coaxing, and threatening, and gentle, and terrified—terrified that she'd be visiting Cristina at Roseridge before they turned forty. But… he didn't mean Cristina. Did he—? Had Derek—? She glanced at him. He looked as baffled as she felt, his eyebrows angled downward, his lips parted to let out words he couldn't find.

She could hear Zola crying. She got her back. She'd done what she had to do for that to happen. To bring her home. Her baby. Her sister, too, but that'd been Lexie's fight. She'd been the support. It hadn't been her fault. It had been worth it. Anything was worth it. There hadn't been another choice. If she'd stayed with neuro, Derek would've had to be her supervisor. Unless Harvard had given him the same offer no matter what her position would've been.… It would've been hadn't been time for complicated. She only had to see her daughter's face to remember how simple the choice was.

"I hav—…ha—ha.—…," Owen's stammering pulled her attention back to him. "My sister, Megan. We deployed together. Her chopper went missing between Fallujah and the Green Zone in 2007."

Hunt had a sister. Everyone had secret, hidden away sisters, or they were that sister.

Like Callie.

Like Meredith?

Even Zola would secretly be a sister, for a heartbeat.

Zola's crying. Zola's crying—she'd heard it in her mind that night while Derek had explained what he needed to stay married to her, and to bring their baby home. She'd heard her, and heard her, and heard her, but it hadn't felt real—hadn't felt crazy.

She snapped the rubber band on her wrist, trying to bring herself back, but the sharpened reality brought by the sting didn't stop it. Zola was crying. Zola was—

"Mama! Morning!" Zola was there. She'd darted past a parent who'd been distracted by them while she opened the baby-proofed door.

Her smile was so bright, it took feeling her wet cheeks against her own face for Meredith to believe she'd ever cried in her life.

"Hi, love-bug! I missed you! Were you good for daddy last night?"

"Kiyrens loud! Wooo-eeee! See Ecksy?"

"We'll see Lexie tonight. You need to go back to Ms. Phoebe and say sorry for running off. I'll help you, okay? Tell Daddy and Owen you'll see them later."

Oblivious to anything that wasn't about her, Zola broke the clench-jawed stare down that was happening between the two men. Forget ice-breaker, she was an ice-melter. A pure ray of sunshine. Even when she was screaming, overwhelmed by being a little human.

Sometimes, Meredith wondered if she'd ever made her mother sure of her choices. If she'd been a source of guaranteed smiles. If the resentment had crept in because no child's antics could cure heartbreak, especially a child taking cues from the person going through it. (A child who'd caused it.) Zola had had a quick temper this week, a different reminder of why it was better for her that her parents weren't on the same service. Too many arguments would've bled over.

Successes would've too.

"Hear you, Mama."

"I know you did," Meredith said, carrying Zola down the hall, keeping her tone chipper, and her voice pitched to carry. "But you shouldn't leave Ms. Phoebe's room without a grown-up holding your hand. I told you I'd come see you, right? And what's true?"

"True."

"What's true is, Mommy will be here. Maybe not right on time, but if I tell you I'll be here, I will."

"Promise true. Bus-lance big big lion truck."

"I see. You going to tell everyone about that today? About how brave you were with those big, loud sirens? Just like your Ecksy. And your dad and his big sister. They're being very brave. Callie and Jackson, too. They're gonna be a good team." They reached the toddler room, but Meredith didn't open the door, immediately. "You and I, Zo-Zo, what are we?"

"Are we…Are we team."

"That's right! We're a team. Always. For you, I'd give up so much more than I have. Daddy would, too. He thinks getting it back makes it less meaningful. I don't think it does for him. I wish I understood why it's so much harder to believe it for me.

"Sometimes, I can hardly believe any of it. It's easy to think this life's a dream, Z. Especially the part where I have a little daycare Houdini of my own."

Meredith had absorbed the opinion that her mother was more important than other adults, and her level of obedience had reflected that. The daycare teachers might say they could have her paged, but Meredith had known she wouldn't deign to respond. (Some nights, Ellis would sit her in the cafeteria and said she'd be back when she'd finished for the day. Meredith don't remember ever being left behind, but she'd known what shift change looked like, and always met her in the lobby.) There weren't code pink lockdowns when she'd escaped. If she was gone longer than it took to find her mother and be returned, they'd have someone search the supply closets.

"Let's not make it a thing, though. I like having you down here. I'm going to come see you whenever I can, and it's easier if I'm the one in trouble, okay?"

"Okay, trouble."

"Good talk. Thanks for making me a mom, Zo. You're always gonna be the one who did that for me."

Derek and Owen's voices carried, even if she didn't focus enough to catch their words. She needed to do damage control. She needed to make sure he never family-tracked her again. She needed to teach Lexie how to identify the third rail—it wasn't always obvious…She needed a moment to hold her baby, to feel her weight and the warmth of her breath. A heartbeat.

She just needed a heartbeat.