(interlude eight)
Dear Meredith,
Merry Christmas! (Ha. Do you get "Meri Christmas!" a lot?)
I wanted to thank you for being there for Lexie this year, and I realize I never apologized for how I acted when we met. I didn't think I needed another big sister, especially one who came out of nowhere. Dad admitted he'd known you were there; he hadn't said anything to us or Mom, hadn't warned us. I was pissed on her behalf, and I blamed you. I'm just sorry for being a snotty snob who was not Able to Deal with It All. I didn't want you to think you could take Lexie's place. That's why I said what I did about Dad. Not that he wasn't proud of her. Obviously, he was, and is. But usually what he went on about was "My daughter's at Harvard Med," not the "she's a going to be a surgeon" part. I should've tried to do more the day of Mom's funeral. I'd seen you work, and I pay attention. You didn't do anything wrong. You were too professional for that, even if you hadn't liked her, and you did, didn't you?
Mom was my favorite person in the world. I thought I'd be calling her and asking for parenting advice for the next eighteen years. Eventually, Eric would retire, and we'd move into the house to take care of Mom and Dad. I was also just starting to see her as a person when she died. Rethinking the time that order forms from a scout selling more cookies than I was kept disappearing, or how Lexie was suddenly starting pitcher after originally being second-string. Mom always said she'd do anything for us. I get that. I'd do anything for Laura. Anything that I want her to see as an acceptable way to move through the world. Some rules are stupid. Some rules are plain wrong. (Is the institution that runs our lives, the good old US Miitary full of them? Oh, yes. Am I, a Mere Wife going to be able to Change Them All? Nope. Am I trying? DUH.) But some rules exist to keep children's organizations fair, and honestly, I hated selling cookies. If we end up on a base with a Scout troop, girl's on her own. (Huh. I'll do anything I want her to see, blah, blah, blah, except Girl Scouts, I guess.)
I'm sorry I didn't visit more while you were recovering from saving Dad's life. After what she went through with him the year before, it seemed wrong to make Lexie take care of him while I was there. Especially, because I wasn't actually there long. Silly military said move, and my big hunk of a soldier couldn't do it all on his own. (No, really, he'd have left half of our stuff, and ended up taking the neighbor's cat.) I'd have liked to have relieved you, bedside this summer, since I know Dad wouldn't. He said it put too much strain on him, which is just…very Dad. You were in a plane crash! That's something you don't get over quickly! I know vets who've gone down, unrelated to action, just bad conditions, and then you were lost for, what, three days? I can't imagine how traumatizing it must've been to be away from your daughter like that. And you've had your guy's surgeries, and prepping to bring Lex home. It's good you weren't injured, on top of all of that, but you were still out there. It's like I told Lexie after that crazy guy with the gun: he hunted her. She saw people she cared about with bullet wounds. It doesn't matter if other people who started at your baseline had "worse" stuff happen, because it's all off the scale. Meanwhile, there's Dad. You saw him in the NICU. He…tries. Bless.
Laura will be five next year. She's a little small for her age, and always trying to make up for it. I'm hoping for Eric to be redeployed somewhere else before she starts school so the reputation she's built in two years of pre-k won't follow her to kindergarten. I am frequently at my Wit's End with her, and I cannot imagine life without her. No love of a man, or hatred of one; would get me to give her up. (Lexie says you and Derek are in love in a way that makes you AND I QUOTE: "enchanted by each other's farts" in case she's EVER made you think she's the mature one. So, I'm sure you understand how it is I can love him enough to imagine hating him.)
She was in love with Mark. She never got to develop that way that familiarity just makes you love them more. Their break-ups lasted longer than they were together, and I am worried. She used to be a professional piner. She was two years younger than everyone in her classes by high school, more in some of them, and started having silly crushes when the boys started being serious about girlfriends. (Not all of them, but the ones she liked.) She'd write them long notes about how if they ever broke up with Laurel, she'd be first in line. And most of the guys A. had known her forever B. were decent, nerdy boys who were passionate about Vonnegut, and wrote short stories (And possibly, C. afraid of my mother, but that's speculation.) so they were nice to her about it. One of them transferred schools—unrelated—and she still sang to his yearbook photo and used his name as her email password for a year. They had been friends, but, well, ask her about Devon Ascott some time. (That was his name. I kNOW, RIGHT?) They became star-crossed in her memory.
That's a really long and little sistery way of saying, I believe that she had something real with Mark, and I'm afraid that will only make it worse. She's in a position where she could become a real Havisham, who was once going to be a surgeon and will never again feel the love of a man. (Er. I don't actually know—that's not medically true, right?. I've read some, I know about dermatomes, but her injury is incomplete, right? and the lady bitsclit—you're talking to a doctor, Molly—is stronger and more interior. Does that make a difference? Unsurprisingly, everything I've found online is dick-centric.)
I'm SO glad she's not moving back in with Dad. I thought she was exaggerating at first, because...he's Thatcher Grey. His photo is next to "avoidant" in dictionaries that aren't English. I've never told Lexie this part, but when she moved out, he started calling me. I didn't get a "lifetime's worth of proud." I got "little whore" who broke Mom's by heart marrying a guy who'd be continuously employeddeployed. He said it was my fault she died, and if I'd just had a normal baby, she'd never had ended up at that hospital. (I told him she'd have just died at Seattle Pres. Then, I cried.) He kept calling once a week from October to the day he went into rehab. I couldn't block him, in case something happened. Eventually, Eric would answer, and hang up on him. Took me a year with a new phone to stop screening calls. I felt bonkers; there's actual PTSD going on all around me, you know? My sisters save lives, they protect people in shootings. I got a few calls from Mad Dad. I don't know if he remembers. The ninth-step apology I got didn't have any specifics. Pretending the bad things didn't happen is a classic for our branch of Greys.
Please never tell her I said this, because she's so independent and stubborn, and strong!—but she can be suggestible. I'm sure you know she looks up to you. If I hadn't been curious about you, it would've driven me nuts when she visited. Everything was "Meredith this," "Meredith's friend that," "Meredith, the other." Obviously she's an adult, and her own person and all of that, but she's never been very good at "with the flow." The whole thing with Mark's kid, the way she'd talk about her, just made me remember "oh, yeah, you were always the youngest in the group, and no one involved you in their real problems." I think she should've waited that out. (I think she'd have had the best possible deal with Sofia. She wasn't going to be a real Eighties Sitcom Stepmom, since she'd have known her from jump. Her family was already unique, with two moms and a dad. Lexie could've written her own role. But that was the problem. She needs excitement within structure.)
Okay, enough analyzing my sister. You're probably better at it than me. I haven't even seen her yet. Dad said the rehab center was strict about visitors. I didn't get that sense on Skype, but we only talk once a week. (Saturdays at 3p.m. your time, if you ever want to say hi.) She mostly listens to me update her on Laura, and she's such a little terror that it takes the whole hour of Playing with Daddy Laura can handle before she starts trying to break down Mommy's bedroom door.
I do have one question for you. Dad became an alcoholic because Mom died. Does that mean there's a genetic predilection, or nah? Is that related to any other kind of addiction? Just, I wondered, since she's still (will be forever?) on strong pain meds, and it's easy to say "oh. Well, she's a doctor," but that's like anyone who thinks a soldier would never go buck wild with an AK-47. (Boy, do I have news for them….).
I've told her she might want to see someone to help her adapt, but she thinks I'm one of those weird therapy evangelists. I'm not. My pregnancy with Laura was traumatic, Mom died, Eric was deployed in a warzone, and it's one of those situations where it's weirder if you're not depressed. (So says…
…wait for it….
…my therapist!)
This is not at all like the Christmas Letter we sent fifty of our Nearest and Dearest. Lexie has one if you want to play Spot the Exaggerations. If you have timewant to write back, please do. It's easier than Skype and I like how honest writing letters can feel. (Unless it's the Christmas Letter, again, that is an exercise in exbraggerations.) Lexie does talk to me about about Zola, and she sounds like a smart one. (Laura is wileyclever which is not quite the same, and involves a lot more cookie stealing.) I can't wait to meet her, and, I think it's safe to say, to meet you, for real.
Merry Christmas,
Margaret Grey-Thompson
Molly
In the week between Christmas and New Year's, Derek felt like he never saw his wife, even though neither of them was working. He enjoyed the events that were arranged for Kwanzaa, and hosting at the new place was as rewarding as he'd hoped it would be. Zola was too young to understand much about it, mostly preferring to show off her new Zoe Monster doll.
He understood the urge. Meredith had amazed him again this year. She'd not only gotten the grill he'd convinced himself to wait on, she'd had Karev and Hunt put it on the deck after he'd taken her upstairs. The print she'd found of Courtney Love and Joe Strummer was perfect for them to have in whichever room became his study. The digital record player and Bluetooth speakers were shared, but to go with them, he'd unwrapped a recording of The Clash: Live at Shay Stadium in 1981. He and Mark were somewhere in that crowd; he must've mentioned that to her, but he had no idea when it'd happened. Then, in his stocking he'd discovered that she'd found out Mark's hockey nickname, too. Animal banging his drums was an ornament that would now always be front and center on their tree.
He'd kissed her until Lexie started lobbing wrapping paper at them. Her niece had found a new favorite game, and for a few minutes it'd been a free-for-all.
Zola wasn't too little to learn anything this year, and one of Richard's friends had degrees in Early Childhood Education. She led discussions about every night on a level that engaged the littlest littles, but also taught him plenty. The whole week taught him many lessons, primarily in self-control and forgiveness that was made easier when he'd caught Meredith flicking through the neurosurgery texts he'd preloaded onto the iPad he'd gotten her.
A few hours after she'd opened it, he'd unwrapped a juggling kit from Callie. It would be excellent for adjusting to using both wrists again, but it seemed she'd also decided to fill the balls jokes gap in his life. He'd always given any commentary he had to Mark in asides; if he got in trouble for repeating them, Derek could claim innocence. He appreciated that Callie was equally subtle, and not subtle at all.
When he'd noticed Owen's guitar in the foyer, he'd gone up to get his from the closet. He'd still been in there when he'd heard Meredith say, "Derek went to the shed to get his guitar"—She wasn't the only one who had secrets that belonged to nights the other was on call, but his had been dexterity practice, and Zola had loved it—"I have to show you something,"
When Cristina's voice replied, he'd grinned to himself, assuming she was going to use the books to let her friend in on that project, which he'd already been starting to hope might become a plan. He'd make an appearance that would seem cued, she'd be annoyed but not angry, and maybe he could hold her back to talk about Richard, or Mark, or just hold her.
It hadn't happened like that.
"Yeesh, how'd you do that?"
Derek sank onto the bench in the walk-in.
"Can you stitch this for me?"
He closed his eyes, wishing himself into a universe where a blouse had proven to be cheaper than advertised by losing a button. Except, Meredith knew how to sew on a button. He'd taught her, years ago, when he'd asked why she'd stopped wearing one of her favorite shirts.
"I'm kind of surprised you didn't try to do it yourself. What kind of Grey are you? Your mom would've done it holding the needle in her mouth."
Maybe it was the haze of the holiday that made him appreciate Yang so much then, though he'd stuck to the virgin eggnog in solidarity—Meredith scoffed at that, but it didn't seem fair when it was one of her favorite parts of thhe holiday. Maybe it was realizing how much space Mark had taken up in his life, and not resenting it. He couldn't evoke Ellis that casually; if he tried she'd get defensive. Yang managed to hit the right note of sarcasm. She needed both of them.
The first-aid had been moved to the bathroom to make room for present wrapping. Yang walked by him on her way in. He was a second from pressing himself against Meredith's wall of shoes when she glanced at the mirror. Once again, he stood to be humiliated by a woman's scream.
Yang managed to catch herself, and was collected enough to roll her eyes when he put a finger to his lips. Then, she preceded to describe the cut to herself, as though a nurse was there to input the information into a chart. Too bad he couldn't grab the notebook off of Mer's bedside table without being detected. One by .05, at a seventy-five degree angle. She must've done it while he'd left her alone to confront Richard and Lexie. Bonehead move. Amateur. Sure, this was his first time dealing with "traditional" self-harm, but he knew what triggered looked like. He'd gone outside with good intentions, and he'd been watching her. There'd been a few moments before Karev went in where the conversation might've held his attention enough that he wouldn't have noticed her moving out of view., but it added up to thirty seconds, not more than a minute or two.
Maybe he should be more understanding of Richard turning away from Adele. He'd fought Meredith over sending her to Roseridge so passionately, going on about vows, as though Meredith hadn't heard enough about those for a lifetime.
Derek already knew that if she fell for someone else for any reason, he'd still need to see her.
"The edges of this are really clean." Yang observed.
"They would be." It didn't seem possible that he heard her swallow. Maybe he was that tuned into her voice. She swallowed. She said, "A lot of caustic stuff came up last night, and... It's something that happens sometimes. Something I do. This time, I'm getting treatment, I don't have a plan—it's never been like that. Derek knows. Well. Not about this one. Alex knows. Well. About this one. And only because he was here."
"Something you do? Cutting yourself is just something you do?"
"Six months ago—six weeks ago, it was something I used to do, when things got really bad. I'd gotten through bombs and bullets—but it's not…not a rock-bottom thing. It's more complicated than that."
"This has been—you've been doing this for six weeks?"
"Six weeks, sixteen years. I've had caustic stuff for a long time. It hasn't been that long, actually. Four weeks, I guess."
Usually overhearing Cristina and Meredith reminded him of an exchange he'd overheard between Kathleen and one of her friends at the tail end of a sleepover. Most of the girls had gotten quiet, and he'd been dozing under Kathleen's bed, his head on Tweets, her stuffed bird, planning to crawl out once they were all asleep, or stay until morning if he couldn't do that. Anything was better than getting caught spying. (Mom must've been working. Had Dad really not questioned it when there'd been extra girls in the house, and no one had chased nine-year-old Derek downstairs? In retrospect, they would've been within their rights to have him trussed up in the attic.)
Kathleen had been counseling her best friend. Jilly had been angry that her parents wouldn't let her pledge herself to the church qimmediately after graduation. Tthey'd insisted she should go to college first. She was so sure she'd said. Kathleen hadn't contradicted her. She didn't say she was nuts, like Derek had thought. He'd been fine with the Church at the time, and there were enough younger nuns in the parish that they didn't think of them all as old ladies. But Jilly was cool. She wore a lot of color and sang walking down the sidewalk. She'd be Maria Von Trapp, out of place with the interchangeable novices.
His sister had said, "If that's your path, it'll stay clear. Haven't you noticed the better teachers are the nuns with experience and stories beyond the church? I think it's a more meaningful choice if it's not between the familiar and the unknown. If you want to do good, figure out who's out there to help, and what they need. See the world so you'll really be giving something up to Him. The Church will be there; they're everywhere."
Jilly had laughed at that. He kept waiting for Cristina to say something that made Meredith laugh. That was what she did. She didn't put caveats on their friendship. She took the dark stuff and reflected it, proving there was light there.
She hadn't done that.
Was Jilly Sister Mary Catherine somewhere, or did she fight ecoterrorism on a boat with her wife? He didn't remember. He hadn't been able to picture anyone leaving their neighborhood, their block, their house. His life would always be cast by the same people, because he wasn't going to war like Mom and Dad did. He was going to marry Rebecca Rubenstein, who could get him out in three pitches. Dad always said that Judeo-Irish relationships made sense; the persecuted shared a bond. He'd been gone years before Derek had thought to point out that there'd been six or seven generations since the famine, but Rebecca's mom had been born in a shtetl that didn't exist anymore.
"Small pinches."
"Liar."
"It's only a problem if someone else causes it?"
He'd started to storm out there, but caught himself in the closet doorway. As painful as resisting the urge to defend her was, he knew it wouldn't do any good.
He hadn't thought of Rebecca in years. They'd gone out officially in high school, and of anyone he'd dated she might've been the most like a Twisted Sister. She'd have loved Yang's gifts for Zola: a book about Hanukkah and a Little People airplane. Meredith had almost dumped coffee on the iPad she was setting up laughing at that.
The only sound coming from the bedroom was the click of forceps, and the faintest involuntary noises of pain he'd ever heard.
Jesus, Yang, talk to her!
He'd watched Cristina Yang develop a bedside manner over five years, and she'd chosen to shelve it in this situation? He wanted to be in there holding her hand. She'd say it was nothing compared to the "sutures" she'd done on him in the woods.
Two years ago, Cristina had been on a boat with him. It'd been Hanukkah, or not long after. Kwanzaa had been a concept to him, based on a couple of friends whose families adopted it when it emerged in the seventies. He'd never imagined celebrating it, but he'd been to menorah lightings. He'd asked about Cristina's Judaism, if she actually identified as culturally Jewish. That'd been when she'd told him she'd been bat mitzvahed.
"I learned enough Hebrew to get by. I understand a lot of Yiddish. I'm Korean; I'll only ever be seen as that, but if I did have a kid? I'd raise them as Jew-ish. Might have to ship them to my parents for the indoctrination part, and they didn't make it stick with me."
"You can teach our kid," he'd told her. "We'll cover lapsed Catholic guilt and atheism with the hope for an afterlife, you do Judaism."
He wasn't sure if Hunt had Irish or Scottish ancestors—he was Protestant, so Dad might've said it didn't matter—but he'd have liked to see kids who were the product of a kind of Judeo-(maybe) Irish relationship his Dad wouldn't have imagined.
Was that fair? Dad had seen more of the world than Derek, truth be told. There must've been Jewish families who adopted from Korea, and they could've been having kids by 'seventy-eight.
He'd have loved Zola, Derek knew that. And Sofia.
Not long after that day in the boat, Mer had admitted that Cristina committing to be the baby-who-would-be-Sofia's godmother made her feel like Cristina thought she'd never have one. Derek had felt something similar. His baby had been alive in the world, but Mark had beaten him to the milestone of being a dad, there was no denying that. He'd burned with jealousy hearing his Mom exclaim about the first new grandchild in ten years. "Don't worry, love. With your sisters it was contagious."—Their closeness had already given the girls so much more than identical rocking horses Mom had ordered a year ago. He was going to do all he could to keep them from becoming competitive.
He'd crafted the thought-web worthy of Meredith to keep himself in place while the silence in the room continued. It wasn't familiar or companionable. It was two people focused on disarming a bomb.
Their friendship had started as a competition; transitioning out of that wasn't easy. He wasn't sure he'd ever actually done it. That had been a factor in the end of his first marriage. If Meredith came back to neuro, he'd have to keep that from happening. He'd have to let himself be challenged by her without being bitter if she outshone him. He'd have to remember that she mattered more than the job. That having the best life with her should take priority over curing the disease she might have.
She would make rash decisions he didn't like. She might put her job on the line for a patient, because every case was her most important case. It was possible she'd put her body on the line again. He had to merge that empathetic, selfless, and adventurous Dr. Grey with Meredith.
Meredith was an extraordinary woman, an intuitive mother, and a giving sister. She'd been through an absurd amount of trauma, and it might infiltrate the OR before she got her bearings. Being kicked off neuro was wrapped up in those four months without Zola. She might need encouragement to trust her instincts under him. He'd spooked Ramsey in twenty seconds. Meredith wasn't fragile, but the fissures ran deep. Looking out for here without making her feel watched would be a challenge. She always was.
"There. Six."
"Thank you."
"My line is 'no problem,' but I can't give it to you."
Excuse you?
"That's okay." Meredith! "I know it's fucked up. I'm working on it. Actively. In a shrinky way."
Plastic crjnkled as it was slammed into the wastebasket, a sharper variation on the sounds he'd heard downstairs all morning. "Work harder." No. You do not get to tell her—
"If it worked like that, you'd have woken up when I begged you to."
"That's differen't."
"How? Unless—I'm not choosing this. I'm not slicing my abdomen open to impress interns, before you go there. I'd be happier if no one ever had to know. I should've asked Derek to do this, but I…I didn't want to keep a secret from you."
"I wish you had. Then, I wouldn't have to wonder how long it'll before ut Zola comes down to the kitchen and finds y—"
Shut up!
"Shut up! You think I want…? Non-Suicidal Self Harm is going to be in DSM-V, but, hey, you don't believe in psych, you just land there. What about Owen? Why couldn't he have just not strangled you?"
"Owen is a—!"
"Brother? He saw action, but that flashback came from losing his sister. Did you know that when I was going on about his attitude? My sister is here. Alive.
"What makes that fair? That's where my brain goes. What makes me deserving? How did I get through that without injuries? I shouldn't be having this baby—"
"Maybe you shouldn't."
The next sjlence was heavy, and he'd gripped the ede of the bench to keep himself from making sure it wasn't suffocating her. She didn't need him to do that. "W-What? No, that's not what I—"
"Maybe you should focus on not flaying yourself. Get stabilized. Take meds, whatever. Wait."
"They can't just put it on ice! You know how long…. This baby—pregnancy is a…. I'm not doing that."
A miracle. Meredith Grey had been about to call her pregnancy—the baby a miracle. Derek risked tapping his fist against the back wall of the closet in frustration.
"No? You'll just keep jumping in front of bull—"
"I'm not going to kill myself. I have never tried to kill myself. I grew up believing that I wasn't worth shit, but I owed it to my mother to stick around. Now, I have more reasons, more people, more future. I don't want to die until my life isn't mine anymore. I thought you understood that."
"I thought I understood you."
"Maybe you can't. It's not my heart that's screwed up."
"No, I think it is."
The bedroom door opened and closed. He'd almost burst out of his hiding place immediately, but managed to keep himself from startling her. Instead, he'd kept listening, first to a series of rubber band snaps that sounded too close together to have actually connected with skin. Meredith took in a jagged breath, and he held his. If she cried, he'd be out there without hesitation, but while her breathing was choppy for a moment, she got it controlled. He couldn't make out what she was mumbling, but he recognized the rhythm of one of Wyatt's breathing exercises.
She'd been wearing heeled buckle loafers, a compromise to get a gel-pad under the burn that hadn't improved over Christmas Eve night. They made her movements easy to follow on hardwood and tile, and he'd listened to her pace for a minute. He'd almost tuned out her words, they came so unexpectedly, and were definitely not for him.
"Glad you couldn't hear that. Sorry, for the weird adrenaline rushes. Think we're okay, now. Not gonna prove her…. I'm trying. I really, really am."
She'd left the room, and he'd managed to get into the living room without her seeing him come from the stairs. He'd seen her distraction through the rest of the evening, but he'd also seen her joy. Zola loved singing carols. Meredith had been forced to take piano lessons as a kid and didn't want to push Zola, but she obviously loved seeing her excited about music.
That night, she he'd taken Zola upstairs while he'd waited for Lexie. He'd watched her navigate the ramp out of Jean-Philippe's van, up the porch, and let herself into the house. "Hey, how—?"
"Hold that thought. Please?"
He'd known better than to ignore the level of strain in her voice. He followed her along the hall to her room, and when she stopped a few feet from the door, he went straight for the laundry room. A pile of towels was draped over the rower, and he gathered them up.
Lexie had her forehead in her hand, and her whole face was red. "Hey, we've got this. It's fine," he said, considering for a second, and then going into her room for her manual wheelchair.
"It's not. It's gross, and I didn't—I knew the downstairs bathroom is, like, three tiles wide."
"Geez. One...two…three….Okay, let's ditch the jeans here, you can shower, and I'll get your chair clean and charging.
"What about leaving it at the bathroom door there, and having two people help you in?" he asked, lowering her onto the towel covered seat of the manual chair, and then offering her another to put over her lap, if she wanted. Modesty, the choice of having it or not, was an easy way to give people dignity.
Richard had taught him that.
Lexie grimaced and shook her head. "Could maybe do one at an angle, but I…I…." She burst into tears, the heaving, overtired kind, and he'd put his hand on her back. She had on a green cabled sweater, and her hair was half-up, secured with a clip. Vintage Lexie. "It w-was fine at first. Molly and Laura were waiting for me; Dad and Dani were at a meeting. Eric and Dani had gotten into it last night over something, and he spent the day with his parents. Molly's never…. She'd have been game, but…. He's my dad. He carried me all the time until I was seven or eight. And I could've not cathed. I can empty most of the time…. He'd just have had to help me transfer. It was like…like I just couldn't say the words."
Her body language made him think of Meredith when she made herself small. Her right leg was lifting up with spasms, and he went over to her dresser to consider her meds.
"Diazepam?"
"Please. And the painkillers."
"When'd you last take them?"
"This morning."
He checked his watch. Nine-fifteen. Where did the day go?
"Two, please." she added as he dropped one of the pills into a cup. "I only took one, earlier."
He scanned the bottle that had his own name as the prescribing physician. It was one to two twice a day for breakthrough pain. "What, ten hours ago? I'm glad you're being mindful, but you'd be fine even if you'd taken two. May need to up the MS Contin."
"Blech," she said. "Those make me itch."
"They're morphine. Be glad you're not Mer."
"I wouldn't mind having a day to say things I won't remember."
"Lexie…you know, Meredith started back with Dr. Wyatt for…the nightmares, and her anxiety about the baby."
"I'm not crazy. I'm a Grey."
She'd glided past him to the bathroom, and he didn't doubt she turned the water on immediately to make it hard to be heard. He wasn't sure "not" belonged in that adage. "The bag on my powerchair has more presents," she told him, once he'd spotted her transfer to the shower.
He'd preceded to rush around doing a first round of what would have to be a multi-day pick-up, as which toys would go where was decided. He decided to stack the few boxes on the tray of her high-chair, so she wouldn't start expecting presents to appear under the tree every day. The envelope for Meredith he'd take up to her. It looked like it was from Molly, but he'd get Lexie to confirm.
Her clothes and the cushion cover for her powerchair went into the wash. It was as he was moving the joystick to get it to the charger cord that he'd noticed there was something in the pocket. He'd put her purse on the dresser, and when he'd investigated, he put the other find on the nightstand.
The small spiral notebook, thick with pages that had been turned over and over had JOURNAL LEXIE GREY '98/'99 written on the front in bubble letters.
"Derek?"
"One sec!"
He hadn't anticipated dryer fluffed towels and warm pajamas to make her tear up again, but he hadn't accurately predicted anyone's tears that day, not even Zola and Sofia's. A pinch had gotten no reaction, but Sofi touching her eerily realistic play-food had made Zola go berserk.
"Mark did that," Lexie said. "The dryer thing."
"We got it from the same person."
"Figured." Lexie clasped her hands in her lap, and while she wasn't obviously about to say anything else, he'd taken his time picking up. The last task he could come up with was returning her snowflake-shaped hair-clip to the basket on her vanity. "I've had that since I was fifteen."
"Not the only thing."
She touched the journal. "I had a teacher who gave us extra credit for journaling. Didn't read them. It's the only one I really kept up for more than a few weeks. I wanted to see…see if there's anything in there that I don't remember wanting."
"Not a bad idea."
He didn't think Lexie was always Meredith's opposite, but it was harder not to, thinking of what Meredith had said lately about being fourteen. But that wasn't far from fifteen and the summer she'd say she was happiest, where she'd danced with a girl who'd called her "Killer." That must've been when she'd started to discover that happiness didn't eliminate the rest.
"Did he always spend Christmas with you?" Lexie asked
He sat on the end of the bed, smiling at the ragged stuffed bear he'd found caught between the nightstand and bed in her attic room. "When we were kids, his parents managed to be around for it, and until my grandparents died we went there for lunch. But even early on, he'd be on the stoop when we got home from Granny's. Mom would say it was late, and little boys should be in bed. Then she'd pretend to remember there was one more gift under the tree. He'd open it, and really seem to like it more than the pricey stuff his folks got him. I'd show him my loot, and the next day I'd go over to see his. The first time, I went home with a toy fighter plane. The next, a yo-yo—a Duncan, a good one. It took me another year to understand they weren't gifts from Dr. and Mrs. Sloan. They'd been his. Mom told me not to draw attention to it, just be sure to thank him."
"That's…so Mark."
"It really was. When the girls started having kids, he'd drag me out at seven on a Saturday in November to start looking for gifts, and most of the time he'd done 'recon'"
"I cannot imagine actually shopping for fourteen children. I had to overnight Laura's present last year. You'd think the baby in the house would've been a reminder." She looked down. "I felt bad about that. They're both my nieces."
"You were juggling a lot, then. Give yourself a break. Getting stuff for the flock got harder out here. Mer's great at gifts. She's only met a handful of the kids, but she's a huge help." There'd been a robotics competition that had three Hyphen-Shepherd attendees from different schools, and two highly suspect college tours—Squared had been fixated on M.I.T. for years, and Briana had talked a lot about Aunt Amelia and Aunt Addison—"she said she's still our aunt. Is that okay, Aunt —and none about UCLA.
He'd been ashamed to face them. Especially the Manhattan contingent. (The Suburban Upset had been the biggest family coup until he blew it out of the water.) He'd been more and more of a presence in their lives as he collected excuses not to be home. Then, they'd returned from family vacations, summer camps, and first road trips with friends, to find Uncle Derek gone.
"I didn't want to be the cash or gift cards uncle," he told Lexie. "Now, I'm the 'whatever Mer picks' uncle who occasionally reads the 'present ideas' email thread." He ran a hand over his face. His sisters hadn't made it hard for him to know that Hannie wasn't into Dora the Explorer anymore. He'd just checked out. Not out of sight out of mind; he thought about them frequently. He also flinched away from photos proving that Lucas was a teenager.
"I've missed seven high school graduations, three from college, and a grad school convocation. But to me it's that I missed Squared's black belt ceremony, Mariah's first science fair, and Elena's senior play. I would've missed some things anyway, but not everything, for years."Sending flowers for a missed opening night was a different thing when he'd be there for the next performance.
"That's what you use the blood money for."
"What?"
"A private jet," she deadpanned, and he threw his head back laughing. It would be absurd, but wasn't it all?
"As for Mark…. We went to Addison's parents in Connecticut a few times. Once he took a girl to Paris and came home with a different one. And the year I moved here, he was with my family and I wasn't. They didn't tell me that until the next Christmas."
"That was right before I seduced h. The next year, Sloan." Lexie held her hand out like she was examining painted nails. "Funny how we rushed to get my finger reattached, and now I can't feel it." She paused for a while, and he wondered if she'd lost the thread. "We had one nice Christmas. After the shooting? It was harder for you guys, and Callie and Arizona were…at a stalemate that disturbed the peace across the hall a little, but…for me. It was nice for me."
"That year was nice," he agreed. "We said we were going to enjoy it and hope that the next year there'd either be a baby, or a pregnancy. We got a baby."
"And this year, a pregnancy."
"I can see how it seems too incredible to her." He shook his head. "Did Mark ever tell you about the time he took at of them to the Macy's Santa?"
"No?"
"Fourteen kids from seventeen to two, and every one of them sweetly asked Santa for something slightly off color. 'The sort of doll you blow up.' 'A swing like my friend's parents have in their bedroom.' Our friend Sam was there with his daughter, Maya, about twenty people behind them, and he filmed it. You can see the Santa getting more flustered, especially because it's notobvious that they're all one group. Mark promised each of them twenty bucks, and not only did every kid, even baby Hannah, follow through, when it was Maya's turn—"
"Oh, no."
"'A buzzing back massager.' Mark had nothing to do with it; she'd copied one of the cousins who was a little older. Sam was so pissed. Mark'll…He'd still have told you it was worth it."
"God, I wish there'd been YouTube. That's epic."
"Another time, we were upstate, basically snowed in, and he had them singing 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer' in four-part harmony," he added. "Mom pretended to be mad, but even she admitted that it was better than the constant squabbling." The kids got along better than the adults, most of the time, but Christmas morning brought the same overstimulation they'd faced with Zola and Sofia that morning, by a factor of eighteen.
"He, uh, he'd talk about them some, but I think my reaction to Sloan made him skittish about bringing up family."
"Could be. Could be he tended to live in the moment. Not that he didn't love the flock, just, they're not here. He'd be more interested in the next procedure, or a game on the weekend, or anything Sofia…."
"Yeah. Anything Sofia." Lexie laughed again, but the sound was nothing like her earlier merriment. "When I…. I didn't decide. I knew. When I knew I had to say something to him, I thought, okay. maybe I won't be able to follow the job just anywhere, but he's not going to take off. Not in the next seventeen years. If I'd been willing to try, I could've had eighteen."
"Okay, we're gonna take a step back. It might have been different for Julia, or anyone who'd come later. But both of you knew that he wouldn't have been asking you to try. He'd have been asking for eighteen years, minimum. You weren't ready. That year wouldn't have been what you're imagining if you weren't sure."
"I guess not. I just…I missed him today, but I also missed having someone else there who knew the story I was telling, or—Oh my god, have you seen Dani's tattoo?"
"Er. This summer." He remembered Meredith clicking off a news report in his hospital room as a reporter was shown outside of the other Grey house, and saying, "She must be boiling in those sleeves." In retrospect, she'd sounded empathetic. Another few weeks passed before he'd run into Thatcher in the parking lot, and finally been introduced.
"All I could think was 'cookie.'" Lexie's devilish look was shared with her sister.
"Oh, man. He'd have seen how many times he could say it before you cracked up."
"Yeah. We'd have been totally obnoxious. But, usually, he helped bridge the gap."
"Mark was particularly good at that kind of thing. He fit in everywhere long before I could pass as anything but a weedy—" The dryer buzzed causing Lexie to startle and tip left. He caught her shoulder and nudged her upright. She'd had a long day, and without support her tired muscles had faltered. Something shuttered in her eyes.
"Hey," he said, trying to draw her a little bit further into the present. "How was the drive?"
"Jean-Philippe? He's…nice. He calls me Lucy."
"Lucy?"
"He thought that was my name until he saw my card. His sister is an Alix. He keeps joking that he can get DR on his cards too, because he's from there. He's actually Haitian, but they live on the D.R. part of Hispanola. I don't really know how that works."
He got the feeling that she would, by the next time she got in the van.
She'd lost weight she didn't need to lose in the past few months, and with her hair wavier while it dried, he could really see Meredith in her. Meredith midway through her intern year.
When he'd switched the clothes over, and locked the house up, he'd discovered the Post-it on the pill cabinet. Ambien -1. Good girl, he thought, while at the same time he worried. The studies said it should be fine, especially this early, but she'd been wary of playing the odds. He'd been saving his arguements, in case Wyatt suggested a benzo or SSRI—past the first trimester, it was a question of the bene fits of use out weighing the possiblity of damage.
Pouring the tiny, oblong pills into his hand and letting them slip one by one into the vial was a strangely soothing task. It became part of his routine over the course of that liminal week, before he made his way upstairs to find her asleep, or close enough that she wouldn't remember anything they said. It kept her from ruminating while she tried to fall asleep, but eliminated the main time they had alone. During th e day, there was Zola, or Meredith was with Lexie, room, listening to the music or watching the movies that had been part of Lexie's Christmas present. On the fifth day, she got called in to assist on an MVA—with Bailey, he'd been grateful to hear. The OR was a safe place for her, and she was already seeing Richard every evening. She insisted that it didn't bother her. "Lexie's the one who made a big deal," but he knew better. She'd said enough to kickstart Lexie's protective instinct, and there had to be a lot whirling through her mind for it to escape, especiallyin front of Lexie. She could want to say somethiing and have it get stuck for days. A few times over the course of the week, he'd catch her eye and see it, the look that meant there was something. A minute later, he'd decide he was projecting based on what he knew.
On New Year's Eve, he'd decided he was done waiting for her to come to him. When she and Lexie came back from their errand, he planned to get her to play with Zola, or put on her "Sesame Monster" DVD, and talk to Meredith.
He hadn't accounted for the third Grey sister.
Molly wore her hair at chin length, similar to Lexie's when they'd met. It'd was more red than blonde, but the similarites were there, in their movements.
They were laughing as they came in, all carrying coffee, and Zola flew over on her push trike. He got a foot in place to keep her from slamming into Meredith's legs. When she picked her up, he carefully kicked it under the island, one of several designated "parking spots" they weee optimistically enforcing.
"Smooth," Molly said. "And you're such a good girl. Mine would be furious at having that moved without her say-so."
"She has her moments," Meredith said, but when she met his eyes she flashed a quick expression that said she'd seen her niece in action, and Zola was officially an angel. "Derek, Molly, Molly, Derek," she added.
"Oh, we met when he was my OB's husband. I remember while I was in labor, Mom cornered a tech to not-very-subtely determine whether him becoming your boyfriend would be a problem for her."
"For whom? Addison?" Meredith shook her head. "No, she had more class about the whole thing than we did."
"Hey!" Derek objected.
"Prom," she shot at him.
"Mark."
She raised an eyebrow, and he heard Addison asking if she'd been punished enough. By the time he pocketed Meredith's panties, had she truly not made up for that night in his mind? At this point, he was grateful. Using his suit jacket to put Addison through a version of that night had been petty, and definitely put her in the red.
"It doesn't matter. She never let her personal feelings affect patient care. There were some socialites in New York who'd screwed her over in one way or another, and she'd hike out in a blizzard because they felt a twinge."
"Hope they were grateful. I am, even if I sometimes wish I could've had those last few weeks of peeing by myself. It was happening every half-hour; I could've banked it."
"We know all about that, huh, Zo? And that not everyone who visits us wants an audience? She almost broke the doorhandle when our friend Alex locked the door."
"No lock-a door," Zola said. "Every friends can play."
"The bathroom's not a playtime place, love-bug."
Zola stuck out her lower lip. "See hi to Ecks, " she said, reaching over like she hadn't noticed her aunt earlier.
"Making an escape when someone contradicts you, huh? Derek, I think she might be ours."
Meredith handed Zola down to Lexie. As he watched the hand-over, a strange glint caught his eye. "Uh, Lexie?" he said, assuming a trick of the light.
"Yes?"
"Is that a septum piercing?"
There was another wave of giggles that left him battling his flight-or-fight response. Sisters. Zola joined in and slid off Lexie's lap, presumably to gather the toys her new aunt needed to meet—they were family, after all.
"From the time I was thirteen, I swore I was going get one on my eighteenth birthday."
"When you were thirteen, you wanted it immediately," Molly contradicted, stepping closer to Lexie, as Meredith came to lean against him. "It took the Trever Van Breun Incident for you to agree to wait."
"The who what incident?" Meredith asked, grabbing his hands to position his arms around her. Favoring his right arm was a habit it would take time to break, he thoght, until he absently rubbed her shoulder and felt the extra layer.
"'She was a skater girl, she kissed the stoner boy,'" Molly sang. "Up to that point, Mom said if you were bullheaded enough to go behind her back she'd pull you around by it for a weekend before getting it removed. Nothing provoked you more than waving around something red and yelling 'torro.'"
Meredith tilted her head back. A "and she says it's all Eric."
For her part, Lexie showed impressive skill at ignoring her little sister. "—but I'd already been at school two years by the time I turned eighteen, I was going to be interviewing at med schools—was alreasdy courting faculty recommendations." Meredith and Molly didn't make exactly the same face, but they conveyed the same emotion at the same time, a mix of disgust and fondness for Lexie.. " It seemed silly to waste the money. Impractical. But deep down, I regretted never being the girl with the septum piercing. So. Now that I'm not in and out of the O.R. why not?"
Hiring bias, he thought, and if Meredith had seen his face she'd be calling him an old-fashioned prude. It wasn't that; he didn't care. People shouldn't, but they did. They won't stop unless they're confronted. He knew that—he just didn't see the value of always being the one to do it. But the jewelry could be flipped up, and Lexie's smile was bright and uncomplicated.
"Just be sure you're done with it before taking it out for good," Meredith advised. "They can heal faster than you expect."
"Oh?" Molly said. "Want to share with the class?"
"I removed eight the day I decided to look all…preppy and put-together when I told Mom I got into med school. By the time I thought of them again, I was in Berlin, three had closed." She gestured vaguely. He could see the tiny marks on her nose and along the shell of her ear. They could pass as freckles, but he'd been seeing piercing scars in the process of healing since Kathleen took out her nose ring for one in my cartilage was partially filled in. Sadie offered to just keep pushing—"
"With a post?" Lexie cringed.
"I didn't let her. Just when I was old enough to start asking about getting my lobes done at the mall, Mom enlisted a guy from plastics to give me a lecture on keloids. A few minutes went to infections and HCV, lest I think anything was safe. There were some awesome pictures."
Self-mutilation, which piercings technically were, could be categorized as self-harm, in certain cases, but he could see significant differences for Meredith. There was some desire for control involved, and some rebellion. But for Meredith, a means to an end was different from pain she thought she'd deserved all along.
"Is that 'awesome' your kind of awesome?" Molly asked Lexie.
"More gruesome."
"Yikes."
Meredith shrugged. "Tiny crush wound is still a crush wound. I got them done by professionals with needles, You wanted a house tour?" She stepped out of Derek's hold, and he had a fleeting thought that he should've held her tighter. "She's coming along tonight. Eric and Laura are meeting us there. I called Richard, but it's a courtesy RSVP, anyway."
"You—"
"He's just Richard, Derek."
That was the problem. They'd always excused him, because he was just Richard.
"She swears we're not going to be the only clueless white people there," Molly said. "That's an experience people should have, but not while invading someone's holiday. Especially not a holiday that exists because white people invaded a continent."
He could see why Meredith had warmed to this sister. Lexie was a little wide-eyed, like this wasn't an entirely new Molly, but there'd been improvement.
"Okay, so this is basically the first floor. Kitchen. Dining area. Supposedly that's the living room, and the playroom is on the left, but Zola plays wherever we're living."
"I like the bookshelves. Very 'we have a toddler,'" Molly said. The few full shelves on far wall were well above Zola's reach.
"They weren't supposed to go in here," Lexie explained.
"But they work."
"My room was supposed to be as Derek's study and their library, and they still have boxes of stuff—"
"If you decide you don't want to move upstairs in the spring, we'll remodel a bedroom, but if we arrange them up there before that, you'll say you're fine down here just so Derek doesn't have to move them again."
"That's you nailed." Molly snickered..
"Besides, I'd have to shelve them all, and I'm not doing that twice."
"You'd have to?" Derek asked.
"Uh, yeah, no heavy lifting."
"I can also shelve."
"Not if you move the books."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm capable of doing things!" Meredith exclaimed, slamming her cardboard coffee cup on the counter.
"You don't have to. That's all I meant. If you don't want to do something,you can say so instead of suffering through it alone."
"It's hypothetical shelving!"
"I assume it's not," Molly commented. "Life's full of paperwork and gas lines. Why not see if someone else wants to do the thing you dislike?"
"Like how some surgeons let interns close because they get tired of stitching, but Mark considered it an art," Lexie put in. "Robbins likes appys, but Dr. Bailey can only handle so many before she starts grumbling. Nelson never opens his own skull flaps."
"And that's who I should emulate?"
"I wouldn't wanna open my own skull flaps," Molly quipped.
"Not in most things, but if he can free up time and mindspace to do whatever he does, shouldn't you get to?"
"Putting it like that, maybe. But I don't mind sucking it up and doing my share. Come on, we're still at the front of the house. Derek, you want to go get Zo dressed for tonight?"
"One minute."
"I'm trying to delegate here."
"Let Lexie show Molly the back—"
"We have to be at the dock in forty-five minutes, and it could take two-thirds of that time to get her ready."
That was true. Their potty training efforts had paid off, but they hadn't anticipated how quickly Zola's excitement about underoos would turn into wanting to put on all of her clothes herself.
"I did the giving her two tries before taking over thing yesterday, but it just made her more frustrated."
"She knows tights are beyond her, and the dress is easy. No socks, so she can try, try her shoe snaps again all the way across the sound."
"We'll see. Zo-Zo? Time to get—"
"I was in the closet!"
Derek had been fully out-of-body only a few times: holding Amelia on that floor, hauling Mark out of his bed, hearing Meredith scream while a bullet hit him just like Dad. More often, he had a few moments in his life where his mind seemed to be in the backseat while his mouth drove. Knowing he should have control and not being able to do anything. Usually when he wanted to sink into the floor, he was the only one miserable, but this time he might be taking Meredith down with him.
Luckily, she'd contend embarrassment was an emotion she hadn't learned to feel, and it was only a slight exaggeration. "No, that's me," she quipped, and he could tell she hadn't been able to resist. "Unless you're trying to tell me something? There is a subset of nurses who contend I'm a long-term beard,"
"No—Not that. Goddamn it. I was…on Christmas," he finally stammered, and glanced at her shoulder. Meredith's eyes widened, and before she turned around to her sisters, he saw relief in them. He exhaled. He shouldn't have let her get away without letting him see it. He'd started expecting her to bring it up on Boxing Day, and as the week went on, began to think that after the drama it'd caused, she couldn't bring herself to bring it up. Thank God, he seemed to have been right. "Sorry. That came out…Er…." He grimaced.
She rolled her eyes. "Apparently, that's what I'm doing. Molly, I screw both ways. Not common knowledge. That cool?"
"More than. Did Lexie ever tell you—"
"I did."
"—about the time—"
"She knows!"
"—Mom and Dad gave her an 'it's okay if you're gay' talk?"
"I haven't heard that one," Derek said.
"My room is this way!" Lexie grabbed her younger sister's hand and forcing her to scamper to keep up with her powerchair.
"I'm sorry," he said before they were out of sight. Meredith crossed her arms, but didn't pull away when he cupped his hand over her elbows. "I'm so sorry, For saying that. Outing you—"
"I could've shut that down. I made a choice."
"I know. It was a good one. So was telling Yang. I'm sorry for eavesdropping. You have every right to be mad. I should've found a better time, but I…I realized I was doing the thing. Expecting you to come to me, right after you were open with someone who couldn't deal with it…. I could just as easily tell you this: I heard everything when Cristina was stitching your arm. She loves you, and she was scared, but she wasn't right. I have seen that you are absolutely doing the work, and in no way are you endangering the baby."
Meredith nodded, her eyes aimed past him, not quite focused, "I changed it to Alex. My…person for this. I'd put 'call or text Cristina' on my 'alternatives' list. The replacement skills thing. It's Alex, mow. He's good with crazy girls."
Contradicting that, saying she wasn't crazy, was low-hanging fruit. An attempt to steer the conversation away from the next level of depth. "I'm impressed by you letting both of them in over a weekend."
"Alex wasn't on purpose. He caught me."
"Did you try to lie? To gaslight him about what he saw?"
"No."
"You made a choice."
"I should've gotten you to stitch it, but I…I would've felt liek I was screwing up the holiday. I didn't want to worry you more on Christmas. But also, I thought if I could give her a task while I did it, she'd…i dunno, see that she could help. She acted like…like I was making her complicit in something—" Her lips started to form the word "Twisted," and she crossed her arms, clutching her elbows close. "—disturbed."
"So much for helping you hide a body."
"She…She has a boundary. I can respect that."
"I can't respect her bringing Zola into it."
"Mother with mental illness is an ACE." She said it almost off-handedly, but there was so much more to it. Her posture already reminded him of a memory he'd tortured himself with for over a year.
"Cristina would never—"
"Wouldn't she? If she thought she wasn't safe? And she might…. If I fuck up again—"
"Hey, whoa. What's the goal?"
"Reducing frequency, but, Derek, she'll be watching…. You were right, we should've told Owen, but I was too stupid, and scared, and…and proud. She could easily convince him that I'm a liability."
"That's…yeah….Mer, when Owen was actively in treatment, he operated. Does Wyatt have concerns about you doing your job?"
"N-No. We've talked about…if, somehow, someone saying something made me start to feel…to detach. I'm the attending, I can tell people to stop talking, I can turn the music up, I can take ten seconds to breathe. If someone's actively dying, I'm as far from in my head as I can get, so…. But none of that's here. N-None of that's p-putting Zola to bed, and being exhausted but keyed up, walking around the house picking up sheep, and hearing all these noises that I know are the trees, and I'll get used to them—mostly am used to them, but then….
"But…but it'll be different. Lexie will be here,. I h-have plans. Not bad plans! Good plans. More replacement skills. My Christmas presents doubled my list. Thank you for that."
She smiled at him, and he knew she meant it. That was the most painful part. This wasn't false cheer meant to distract him. There hadn't been a lot of time to find gifts that would genuinely help her and could be added to what he'd already bought without making her say he'd done too much. He'd ended up calling Kathleen about "someone else on the plane," and if she'd seen through him, she hadn't let on.
"There's some evidence that people who self-harm have endogenous opiod system dysfunction," she'd said. "Their brains either naturally release more analgesics at the time of the injurious behavior, or have been conditioned to by repetitive self-harm that releases the patient from a dysphoric or dissociated state. Or they have a diminished pain sensitivity, a lack of negative EOS feedback, and overproduction of endogenous opioids."
"Any chance you're trying to draw a parallel?"
"You can provide support, change the environment to set her up for success, and the behavior could stop in a few weeks of intense therapy. There's evidence for pharmacological treatment—even one study with naltrexone, which I'm sure you know is used to treat substance abuse. Some patients respond to SSRIs. It's not a matter of simple willpower.
"In one of the foremost texts on the subject the author says they've never heard someone say they were so happy or relaxed that they cut themselves. It's moves the patient from a negative emotion toward something more neutral or positive."
She cut when she was frustrated and angry at herself. They'd discussed adding a punching bag to the laundry room/gym, and then it'd been tabled while his hand was taken care of. He un-tabled it. He'd already been replenishing bubble baths and massage oils, and doubled down to help her through the pregnancy.
He'd already seen her flipping the butterfly knife trainer, even more precisely than he'd expected. She didn't show off the skills she'd originally picked up with drumsticks much, but she'd won a couple of bets at Joe's, when the scalpel in her purse had just been one of her quirks. He wanted the mace to replace that, but she'd always argue that if she had to do an emergency trach or something, she'd need a blade.
Ninety-eight percent of the time, that was all it was. Currently, it was a tool.
He'd looked at drum-kits. She'd never actually had one; using friends' until she wasn't in Ellis's house, and then determined not to use her mother's money for it. Right before she'd left for Europe, she'd rewarded herself for getting into med school. The kit had gone into storage, waiting for her to find an apartment in Hanover. Instead, she'd moved into grad student dorms, and taken any excuse to drive out claustrophobic self-storage space when she was in Boston with Ellis. "It was the one thing I could do to decompress that wasn't marginally self-destructive," she'd told him while showing him pictures of herself, pink-haired and wild-looking midway through a show. "No band, no audience. Didn't need it." Then she'd laughed. "Actually, there was one other thing. I swam laps at the Y."
Another thing she'd lost. With him, she'd go in the body of water on their property that she called Lake Pond. If she'd be comfortable in the heated pool by herself remained to be seen. It wouldn't be useable for months.
He'd gone with an electronic practice pad. If she wanted a kit, she deserved to be the one who chose it. The other things were small; a new wallet with a photo insert, and Zola's pictures already in it. She was always saying she should've bought her favorite brown boots in black, too, so he had, and when he'd seen the red, he'd decided she needed them too. She'd protested that her shoe size could change in the next six months. If it did, he'd know what to get her next Christmas. She was wearing the red pair now, with dark wash jeans, a button-up cuffed under a sweater with black and cranberry stripes, under which he could almost think he saw a curve. Her hair was down, wavy and windswept. No one would ever guess that she'd fought with her best friend, much less what had led to it.
She'd made progress with Wyatt, he could point to it in the honesty she'd just given him. But he knew Cristina had hurt her, and that she'd scared her. If he could figure out where she was keeping that pain locked down, maybe he could help her through it more easily.
It would be like Meredith to hold it in, to think anything else would "show her." That she wouldn't "give her the satisfaction," and it would only build. She'd hit so much harder when she fell, and as strong as she was, it was likely that she would. He didn't want to get in too deep with both of her sisters within eavesdropping distance, but he was afraid that if Zola ever did see anything, it wouldn't be because Cristina called it, but because she'd caused it.
"Saturday night could have been your last incident, but it might not be. You're still working out what helps and what doesn't. There's one thing that's a certainty. A setback will be the same as any other. Not a big deal."
"I logged it with Wyatt. The ice was good."
"Okay. Maybe next time, you try holding Zola's Bumps and Bruises Butterflies, and you don't have to worry about melting?"
"Thought you said I wasn't gonna be the Wicked Witch?"
"Well, I can't be sure, I haven't started the book you got me, yet. I can tell you I would love you even if you were green." He kissed her, and then pulled back, slightly. "Uh, Mer?"
"Molly smokes," she confirmed. "My hair holds cigarette smell forever. I could never convince Mom that I hadn't picked it up."
Not being a smoker in her youth was probably why she didn't have (more) self-inflicted burn scars. He held back the question about what else seh might've picked up, but he didn't have to say things for Meredith to hear them.
"What? You need to pat me down?"
"Wouldn't be difficult in those jeans," be said, without thinking. He might have stepped in it without any connections to stolen lighters or checking her cuts. They were skinny jeans; it'd be good if they were tighter than usual. She hadn't gained the average amount Dr. Ryan had cited for the first trimester, before saying it wasn't significant. She was new to Meredith "Everything Means I'm Failing" Grey. She'd never had the weight hang-ups he'd experienced with his sisters. If anything how she talked about her ass was the opposite…. Okay, that was still about body image—he'd listened when she outlined what they'd try to teach Zola.
"Mama!"
His daughter saved him right as he wondered if he'd ever get out of the spiral—and that was what happened to Meredith multiple times on a good day.
"Mama, help, help, Mama!" Zola called, trying to run to them with her legs on either side of her scooter seat. He hadn't thought he'd have to worry about her going over handlebars for several years, but the lack of coordination between her arms and legs made it look continously like she was going to forget to push the toy forward, only for her to thrust it to arm's length at the last second.
"You need these unbuckled?" Meredith asked, leaning over to undo Zola's purple overalls. "Guess what? It's time to change for the party. Let's do this." She tugged the pants down and lifted Zola straight up out of them.
"Peek-a-boo, Elmo un'eroo!"
Meredith's delighted giggle echoed thanks to the high ceiling. "Go in the little bathroom, and then we'll get you dressed, Z'okay?"
"Z'okay, lovamuch, bye!"
"Is it bad that I think that's cuter than thank you?"
"How did you know?"
"What?" Meredith asked, picking up the pool of purple corduroy..
"That she needed help with the overalls."
"I just…. I guess the straps were already crooked, like she'd tried to do it, and she came from that direction. But I didn't really…I just did."
He moved his hands down, sliding them into her back pockets. "Now that we're both up-to-date on current events, and it's the first night of the year…."
"Mmhmm?"
"They say it's good to start the year how you want it to go on."
"Do they? Well, as much fun as I've had at the Kwanzaa feasts this week, and I mean that, I did miss one New Year's Eve tradition."
"Oh yeah?" He slid his palms down a little lower, cupped over her ass. "What's that, gorgeous?"
She kissed him until they heard Zola flush, giggling, and then gave him the answer he'd expected. "Fireworks. Think you can make that happen?"
"Absolutely," he said, and boosted her up to kiss her one more time before he took the overalls, and hurried to head off the toddler who'd decided a no-pants tea party was a better use of her time than getting dressed again.
He couldn't say she was wrong.