"Let me summarize here: You're butt-hurt that your sisters hit it off?" Alex asked, opening and sectioning an orange. "Here," he added, holding a piece up for Lexie.
Before she could say anything, Jo Wilson threw the waiting room door open. "Al—Dr. Karev, Dr. Robbins is looking for you."
In or out! Lexie thought, hearing it in Dad's voice. She was vindicated when Wilson had to step back into the hall to let a kid with a walker through, and almost immediately ducked in to let a wheelchair user and his wife pass.
"Got it. Orange slice?"
"No thanks."
"More for us. I thought you were with Shepherd."
"He got a page from Dr…. The other…. His wife. And this morning Shane paged her while they were…talking, and she got mad, so they might…be a while.."
Lexie rolled her eyes. They'd been here for six months, and the interns were still dancing around that? In the weeks since she'd moved back in, she'd almost interrupted them on the second day—they were used to living alone, whatever—had heard them in the laundry room, and determined that the downstairs TV was directly under their room..
"Tell Robbins I'll be up once this Dr. Grey is back there playing with therapy putty."
Lexie elbowed him, and the intern's lip curled at his grunt of pain. Those flexors still worked. "Cool. Um, Dr. Grey, I like the bling."
Lexie stared at her dumbly for a second. Really? Your face is half of what you can feel! Sort of. She could do the math. The equation was set up in her head. She didn't bother.
"Thanks." Once the door closed on the intern, she added, "She thinks I'm into you. She's everywhere, and she's always staring at me."
"Nah, she's my… friend, and you're my friend, but she's an intern, so she's afraid you'll replace her."
"I was here first," she pointed out, digging through her purse. To avoid a chance of dropping the few pills left in the orange vial, she tipped the bottle against her lips and tapped two into her mouth.
"Hey, those things aren't tic-tacs."
"I went to Harvard Med, Alex," she reminded him around her water bottle. "I understand what an opiod does."
"That doesn't mean a thing. Shepherd's recovering junkie sister a neurosurgeon. I'm sure she went to an Ivy."
"Harvard, actually. I just missed her. She graduated right before I started undergrad, and came back for a fellowship after I graduated."
"Maybe it's a bratty brunette thing. Wilson went there, too. Just for med school. Maybe she saw you while she was there interviewing, and can't figure out why she recognizes you?"
"If I crossed paths with Jo Wilson in Boston and not Meredith the universe has a messed up sense of humor."
"That's a given. Seriously, though, what's your deal with Mer and Molly?"
"There's no deal. It's good. We can be actual sisters."
"Skip the middle-child wishy-washiness."
"She's the one…. It's just…. Molly's life plan was marriage and kids, and that was fine—Mom stayed at home—but now, she's talking about law school, and NGOs, and taking on the system—Whether she wants to be 'on the ground' or 'working with policy.', and might be on the way to saving lives as much as Mer and I do—which is great! Just…. She was a cheerleader!"
"So was Dubya, and he became president."
"Alex."
"Weren't you prom queen? Or was it a Carrie situation?"
"I was a known entity. I did student government. Always the youngest, class pet. I ran a good campaign. I knew it'd be unique on my college apps, and didn't foresee a lot of other chances to have a romcom moment as an Applied Mathmatics major headed for med school.
"Molly was on homecoming court from freshman year. She was dating Eric by Valentine's Day. She had their journey to law school planned out by sophomore year. Then, 9/11 happened. He decided to enlist. She decided she'd be a military wife. She got her degree in poly-sci, but I guess I assumed…. They learned Arabic together—-he said he wasn't going to be at war with someone he couldn't communicate with—-He's a good guy. They're good people. But she used to be sort of like…Reed."
"Adamson?"
"Yeah. You know how she gave off that air of superiority? She'd be nice to your face, almost mean to her people's faces, but don't you dare cross them?"
"You just described Meredith, but I think I get what you mean."
"She cared if people liked her, what people think about her. Mer has to like you before she cares. I could be wrong, I didn't know Reed…maybe Molly…super well.
"When Mer asked if they were going to have another baby, she said, 'if it happens, it happens.' That's not…. In their ten-year-plan they were going to have two more kids by now. I—It's…. Molly got exactly where she wanted to be, and it's not exactly where she wants to be. Do we ever…are people ever just content?"
"Would you want to be? I get it, but you're the kind of person who's always trying to improve."
"You know that new couch of yours? Depending on the height of the cushions, I might be able to transfer with minimal help. The angle of the arm determines whether I could support myself lying on it, or if I'll start tipping like Zola playing 'I'm a Little Teapot.' I might stay that way, or I'll slide while repositioning, or something will spasm. Then, there's the running countdown in my head for when I have to do something; when I can take something; if it wouldn't be better for me to be spending another fifteen minutes in my standing frame. That's to get the five minutes of contentment you get every day when you get home and throw yourself on the thing."
Alex put his hand on her shoulder, and she shrugged him off. She'd be gently guided enough in the next fifty-minute OT session, and grabbed and placed in PT later. They at least asked and warned, knowing that she had no actual control over her personal space.
"That blows. It blows hard. Everyone talking about moving on from the crash probably doesn't help. It hasn't even actually been six months for you. I know you always want to be leaping ahead—"
"Ha." Not being able to clench her fists was something that made her want to clench her fists. She'd started pressing her hands on her thighs. She had some feeling there, but it was strange and muted, and she wanted to knead the base of her fingers into her muscle. Good for frustration, bad for everything else.
Why did everyone think they could tell her what she wanted? She wished she hadn't bothered responding to Alex's text. Her Christmas present from Derek had been a phone that could hold all the music she used to have on her iPod, and the new stuff Meredith had given her. With that, she could be alone in her head without being alone. Unlike images, lyrics rarely evoked memories she'd rather not examine, and if they did, she could switch to the next song.
"Can you get me a stick of gum, please?"
"Sure. You need to get the gum cubes that come in a cup, do your tic-tac routine with those. Too bad I didn't think of that while I was looking for your Christmas present."
"Glad you didn't. She's on the shelf over my desk. I'm sure once Zola's tall enough to see her she'll want to play with her, but I'm being selfish."
Alex shrugged. "Around the Atlanta Olympics, my sister got, like, Barbie's friend the Paralympic athlete from one of those foster kid gift things. These days, people make all kinds of shit for dolls, and I figured it'd be cooler if it was actually Barbie."
"It is," she admitted. "She's great. I love the hair." He'd gotten an actual Barbie, and then dyed her hair brown.
"Jo helped with that."
"Huh. Actual Barbie used to have different hairstyles, you know, but by time I was a kid, a different hair color meant 'Barbie's friend.' Now, I read they're changing Skipper to a 'natural blonde who dyes her hair brown,' like that happens—I guess so she doesn't just look like 'younger Barbie.' I would've been all over that—What?" Alex was smirking, and she slumped a little, realizing she'd been going on about a doll, which was what happened when she was reading articles about stuff no one else cared about.
"Just, it fits. Barbie's the oldest, then you've got Skipper, who's the younger teenager. Then, Stacie, who's maybe ten—"
"I remember her. I think she was one of my last dolls, actually."
"—blonde, brunette, blonde. Gets complicated when you add in the others. Stacie and Kelly. I was the one who did the Christmas shopping when they were a thing; they were introduced within a year or so of each other, and there was so mjuch crap. Some of it was cheap, so that was good, but…. Santa on a budget sucks."
Alex hadn't talked about Amber this much while they dated—or about anything, really—but he didn't have to say much for her to know he'd adored her. Staying away had been an attempt at a clean cut.
"Barbie, Skipper, Stacie, Kelly—" Alex ticked them off on his hand. "Baby Krissy—she's rare, but—I had a patient who got her collection—and I mean collection— from her sister and introduced me to all of them. She had a French Kelly, who was sold as 'Shelly.' Mattel ended up renamed her 'Chelsea' to avoid the descrepency in Barbie lore. People actually argue about whether that makes a sixth Roberts child, but they've never heard kids talk. Kelly and Shelly could both easily be nicknames for 'Chelsea.'"
"Roberts?"
"Read the wiki page, Lexipedia, or hang out with an eight-year-old on chemo with a serious obsession. She's the size of, like, a six-year-old, and schooled me on how Barbie wasn't meant to be some beauty-standard. She's an independent woman who had a job in 1964. And her full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts."
"God. I was that kid, except about Briar hourses."
"Funniest thing to me is that there were only two sisters until…." He paused, swiping at his phone. "Ninety-foiur, and they added a preteen, a preschooler, and a baby within four years. Then, they backtracked. Stopped making the baby in '03, with no explanation. Was it SIDS? Did too many parents complain about the thing getting lost and/or ingested? Who knows."
"Mer will love knowing that she needs to hand the 'Most Random Sisters' crown off to Barbie."
"Kids need something to take care of, especially if no one's taking care of them. Mer gets that. You ever heard her talk about her Anatomy Jane?"
"Yeah, because whether or not to get Zola one was a huge thing."
"Oh. She could buy, like….a million of them."
"About seven hundred fifty thousand, actually. Better than most of the ideas I've had. Derek has a guy who's gonna figure out what I need to live on…to get surgeries, and probably donate the rest to the hospital anonymously. The point was never the money."
Alex's face reacted to her reference to her uncertain future, but he said, "You know the story of the clinic?"
"The Denny? Patient memorial right? The, uh…the LVAD guy?"
"That's the one. Izzie donated the start-up cash. It was his. Duquette's. He'd left it to her. It felt like blood money to her, so she decided to do something big with it. Something they'd both have liked. Four years later, her hospital bills are still on my credit report, even though Shepherd got them mostly straightened out."
"Was that a parable?"
"Sort of. I've only got two stories about that kind of money, and you were there for the other. Just, you can wait. See how things play out. If they try to cancel my orphans, I'll let you pay for that."
"Deal. I kinda like that. In Zola's honor."
"She's our poster-child. Actually, we're trying to figure out if there's an ethical way to make that happen for any of the others. It's tough. Some of the kids aren't orphans; their folks just can't afford them. Some have siblings who aren't old enough to get custody, or relativees facing other issues. I'm not about separating families, or doing some sort of sick kid, orphan train-style open house. I don't know how you get people like Mer and Shepherd who celebrate that Zola's from Malawi, and not racist missionaries."
"That's complicated. Maybe—"
The door to the therapy rooms opened, and a blonde girl who probably didn't remember the Berlin Wall going down chirped, "Miss Lexie?" Alex pointed at her, his face turned to mouth Miss Lexie without the Barbie-clone seeing it. "Okay! Is she ready to go back?"
"Yeah, she is," Lexie said, mimicking her tone. Alex snickered.
"Great!" She stayed in place, holding the door. "Is your…companion waiting here?"
"My friend needs to go upstairs and face his grumpy boss."
"I see. Well, Miss Lexie—oh, can you tell me your birthday?"
"Two fifteen eighty-four."
"Oh, wow, next month! Happy early birthday! I'm Steffi! In here. Great. I'm going to get your vitals, and then I'd like you to tell me what you want to work on."
"I…I have an incomplete spinal cord injury at C-6. And I just got discharged from Roseridge before Christmas."
"That's excellent. Roseridge does great work on ADLs. We can help you smooth those out, and work with some really cool technologies that use electricity to move your muscles. Make things a little less shaky. But not everything we do in a day is an ADL.
"Often, we start working with a patient when they're about ready to return to work, but don't know if they'll be able to function in the same way they did before. We help them adapt solutions, or practice movements. Sometimes, it's just a matter of using a pen to hit the numbers on a phone!"
"What about when it's stenting an aortic aneurysm? Or removing a mass that's trying to cut off a toddler's airway? Are there bulked up forceps?"
"Oh," The shimmery bubble carrying Steffi around the world seemed to pop. "You're Sleeping Beauty."
"I am."
"You know, I always wondered if the magic was supposed to keep the sleeping princess's muscles from atrophying. I mean, a hundred years?"
"Maleficent probably had a whole medical team set to come up from the next kingdom," Lexie said. She couldn't see the fairy as evil these days. "And Snow White had the dwarves."
"One of them was a doctor."
"Yeah," Lexie said, feeling the amusement drain out of her. "At the Ridge, they called me Doc. So, I guess my goal is to keep my title."
"Are you thinking of going into internal medicine, or family practice?"
"I don't know. The reason I got Sleeping Besuty, not Snow White, was because they weren't sure when I'd come around—or if. Sometimes…Sometimes it feels like I haven't woken up yet."
It was more than she should've dumped on a chipper, outpatient OT; but when she looked up at Steffi she didn't see pity. "Well, then, tor now, we'll focus on making it easier for you to engage with the waking world."
Physical Therapy was frustrating. They had most of the same equipment as Roseridge, thanks to Derek. For Lexie, that meant starting with the standing frame. The one she had at their house—at home had a lever she had to pull to raise it up. This one did it for her, which only lengthened the time she spent feeling like the cards shuffled, and missed the use of her legs more than anything.
The room was was a twin to the one that held the tilt table. Not passing out. There's progress. Almost immediately she could hear Meredith's voice countering her, "Did you or did you not transfer yourself?"
Her PT handed her a weighted ball and backed up, gesturing for her to toss it. At least with the frame set up at the end of the kitchen island she could help with food prep—while Meredith stood across from her helping Zola learn to use her nylon training knife. It was incredible how closely Lexie's recovery mimicked the pace of her toddler niece's patchily-Montessori upbringing.
Meredith's gossipy PT friend did in-patient care, and Lexie didn't know any of the outpatient clinicians. They recognized her, though, and it led to her discovering more about the physician's advisor Owen had brought in to clean up the monetary mess the suit had put the hospital in. The woman had pulled a stunt, masquerading as a patient in the E.R. to judge the hospital response times—-"all the attendings were waiting for her upstairs; is that even fair?" one of the nearby PTs mused.
"Residents run the OR all the time, usually overnight. But there could've been confusion with the handover if Dr. Hunt wasn't checking his phone " Lexie commented.
"There could've been a resident in there overnight, and confusion at shift change without Dr. Major," her PT, Brent, said.
"True, true." One of the other guys nodded.
"I still don't get it," the therapist on the other side said, tossing her ponytail out of her face. "Why's does the money have to come from the hospital? The plane was the issue."
"The company was the issue," Lexie explained. "They had a history of safety violations. But the hospital didn't look very closely at their insurance policies." Lexie sure hadn't read it. Would they have kept going if she'd pulled up the loophole? "They're not paying because there were two attendings on the plane. Residents are expendable, I guess."
The female PT made a sympathetic face, so Lexie knew she'd spoken out loud. Brent still went all in on repeating her.—"The hospital chose the company, and put too many attendings on the plane…."
"Excuse me?"
Lexie turned her head to make eye contact with the a middle aged woman doing leg-lifts on the mat not far from her.
"Am I putting the right pieces together here: you were one of the doctors on the plane?"
"Yes, i was."
"I remember seeing the KTSW coverage of that. That one girl was a real hero. Staying awake for four days."
Lexie almost said, "That's my sister," but then realized that would've been Cristina.
"The one they interviewed, I wouldn't have wanted to be on camera in her state, but they like showing people all beaten up, don't they? And I guess they had to follow up with one of the daughters."
"The—?"
"Okay, Lane, sit up and try to push my arm up. Let Dr. Grey focus."
"Left hip, Dr. G." Brent added. "I'm gonna get a resistance band." He walked all of six feet to the shelf before saying, "Walt, you wanna go up to Joe's for trivia?"
New year, new tournament!
"Yeah, man. Gotta love watching the nerds realize they can be competitive without being beaten up."
"Ha, right? They think they're jocks now, but we all know…."
"Dude, did you see that intern last time? Kerplunk!"
Lexie could only sort-of see the other therapist mime falling off of his stool, but she could still see Brooks in the impression. Dicks.
The worst of it was, Brent was the type she'd always slept with in the past. It'd be kind of satisfying to go across the street with the jockiest surgeons she knew.
Alex had been a dark horse the first time she'd talked Mer's friends into actually participating in trivia instead of snarking at the bar. Meredith had her categories, but wasn't great at general trivia ("Just general surgery!") She'd had fun, so maybe she'd be into it. Lexie had seen out the darts bracket she'd arranged while Derek was chief. They wouldn't have Cristina; she didn't know why, but it'd been obvious watching her storm out on Christmas Day. Jo would see Alex was just Alex to them. It could be fun.
They'd be doing it for her. To get her out of the house.
Aside from that one exchange with Lane, there was no cross-talk between PT patients. That would've been far more motivating than having Brent saying, "yeah, check that, awesome, high five," on a loop every time he caught a ball.
Once she escaped him, she crossed paths with Callie on the bridge. "Little Grey, hanging out to watch the rest of us be audited?"
Had Callie missed the memo? "That bad?" she asked, shifting to ease the tension pulling her left hip.
Sometimes she thought a complete injury would've been easier.
"Remember the time the hospital tanked, and Richard installed that stupid computer system?"
"And fired Derek? Yeah."
"I Googled Cahill. Haven't had time to do more than scroll through, but…I think that was a workshop, and this is going to be a Broadway production."
"What's her name?"
"Cahill. C-A-H-I-L-L. And, look, I know they have to do something. I still think the airline…. They deserved to face a consequence, but now I wanna sue the freaking insurance." Callie shook her fist at the ceiling. "Hey, I like this," she said, tapping her septum. "But I doubt Ralph Lauren would." She nodded at Lexie's sweater. "Your sister's going to need to extend her wardrobe soon. We should make a day of it!"
Callie's smile was bright with pure enthusiasm.
"Sure!" she said, calling on all of the acting electives she'd taken. ("You're so kind, honey. Half the surgeons out there can't even pretend to care about people.")
"Awesome! Whenever she gets tired of pretending her jeans fit, we'll go!"
"I'll keep you informed." Maybe. She didn't cross her fingers, and she…sort of could. Callie beamed at her, and started to walk away. "Hey, um, Callie? Could you do me a favor? Can you write a script for my pain pills for the week? I forgot to ask Derek, and he's got that surgery. If you're not comfortable—"
"It's no big deal," Callie said, taking out her pad.
In her head, Lexie could see her DEA numbers. She knew Derek's, too, for all the good it would do when, even when she was hooked up to a Functional Electric Stimulation devices, her handwriting looked worse than any doctor's she'd ever seen. Forgery was out of the question. Not that she would do that. Sometimes she just liked considering the hypotheticals.
"Just let him know?"
"I will. And, I really could wait…."
"You're in pain. Hopefully it'll get better as you train your muscles. He might wanna up your baseline meds, if you're still taking this regularly."
"Just with PT and everything…."
"I got you. You're on the Valium still? And…Lortab? Fives or sevens?"
"Tens. Twice a day."
"Slash three twenty-five? And fourteen. Okay."
She took the slip gratefully, and pocketed it next to the one Deerk had given her that morning.
A little under an hour later, she was sipping a mocha frap from the place across the street; scanning Cahill's website.
She had been a certified surgeon, but did you have to be?
Medicine had done this to her. She was going to make it do all it could for her, but she'd caught up on the journals she'd missed, including articles that had been sent to Derek for peer review. She was considering asking him if Amelia would share anything she had. His contacts went beyond that, and he must have been expecting her to ask. She hadn't—Meredith must not have either, not that Lexie blamed her! She had enough to deal with—She could read for herself; she knew where the research was. It was promising. She'd be a good candidate, but realistically, it'd be better for her to wait for more successes. That meant having something to do to avoid overworking her body—There had to be a better term for that. It wasn't working. That was the point. It had processes following through on their jobs, but to her that was the bare minimum. It was existence, not effort, and it wasn't enough.
When the meds were active, her mind could exist without her body pulling on it constantly. With that pain shunted to the side it couldn't pull up the other pain and drag her into the past. It could come out of nowhere in the hospital, and she was already tired of playing chicken with…it wasn't even Mark's ghost; it was the remains of her own expectations.
She ended up in front of the nursery window. The other day, Meredith said she'd told her regular endoscopy patient about the pregnancy. Larkin had told her that she hadn't held a baby since she'd been diagnosed. The paranoia people felt had led to a verbal tic about baby punting—"she's designing a video game called Baby Ball, which sounds hilarious, but her face when she told me…. I hope this kid makes it just so I can let her hold it."
Lexie couldn't imagine that. Her spasms didn't affect her arms. But when Zola was on her lap, and she could feel her weight against her chest, and a few places on her legs, she could only partially believe that she'd been able to swing her in circles a little over half a year ago. She might never be able to do that for the next one. Both Zola and Laura were thrilled by powerchair loop-the-loops, but Lexie would know there was a difference.
She finished her drink, just as Wilson came around the corner. "You've got to be kidding me."
"I'm being not a squeaky wheelchair! I-I…what class were you?"
"I was supposed to be your chief resident, so…."
"Seriously? That'd be so much better!"
"How would you know?"
"Anyone would be." The intern's features contracted. "I don't mean…he's probably your friend—"
"Not really. We weren't a close cohort." Her class and Meredith's had both had a crazy blonde provoking them into illicit procedures, but where they'd bonded, hers had splintered. She'd blamed the merger. It wasn't as though she'd tried to keep them together.
She hadn't tried at Roseridge, and she still had texts going with several of them.
"Us either. Um. Not everyone comes in straight from med school."
"I did. Class of '07."
The intern sagged like muscles in her trunk and shoulders had given out, though she recovered quickly. "Same. From college. We didn't…. We probably know people who overlap. Not that…I wasn't social, and, you know, brunette. Forgettable."
"Sometimes," Lexie said, suspciously. Had Alex already talked to her?
"Enough."
"Not interchangeable. You can make a move on Alex."
"I-I wasn't going to…. We're not like that."
"Sure." How did a runaway who lived in a car turn out to be so bad at lying? "If you were, I'd tell you you'll regret putting it off."
"Okay," the intern said, sounding almost like she got it. What was her deal? Maybe Lexie's next goal should be sneaking into Hunt's office to snoop. It'd take a plan worthy of any of the heist movies she loved; and a whole lot of luck. There were people who'd say she had that, but she was pretty sure that if they challenged her to debate; she could win from either angle.
Regardless, most would probably agree that she'd used her allotment. It would make sense for the odds to be against her for the rest of her life. She'd lived a moderately charmed life, she wouldn't deny that. She'd have to move forward like she was cursed.
The stories were told about resilient people like Meredith, who fought to prove herself. Like Dorothy, who woke up in the poppy field and kept going to the Emerald City.
What about the cursed girls who their princes, and didn't have a Plan C? Who didn't mind living with a frozen heart? She didn't like haunting her old life. If coming back to life wasn't what she wanted, what would she become?
In no mythos were ghouls the form hereeen girl and ghost, Pokémon-style, but maybe no one else had gone through this in exactly the same way. Maybe Lexie's body was proof that she was lucky. It was a minor influence on her feeling like a half-dead monster, but it did give the rest of the world a clue about what they were dealing with.
If only anyone would take the hint.
"Airplane," Zola had shrieked. "Again airplane."
"Okay. Ready? On my count, one…two…three…take-off!" Holding on to Zola's hands, Derek had unbent his legs, levering her into the air. "Whoosh! Welcome to Daddy Airlines!"
"Whoooshha…. Woooshha!"
"You can't call it superhero, or I dunno, jetpack?" Meredith asked from the bedroom doorway.
"We're trying not to pass it on,"
"I hate when you make your argument with my words."
"Not my fault you're right. Ladies and gentlemen, we're preparing for landing. Thank you for letting Daddy Airlines fill all your travel needs!"
"Again!" Zola had insisted, while her pajama footies were still hovering above the comforter.
"Why don't let your mom have a try?"
"Me?" Meredith said, incredulously. Zola's expression' agreed: her?
"What, don't think I can do it?" He didn't move or glance at his braced hand. The assumption was in his voice, and the shadows creeping onto his face.
"I think you've told me 'can' and 'should' aren't synonyms."
"Well…." He did the head tilt. Goddamnit, she was a sucker for the head tilt.
Once she sat on the bed, Zola decided she might be into the idea, too. "Mama fly!"
"What do you need me to do?" They'd finally gotten to the point where he didn't say anything about her deprived childhood, the thoughts just flashed across his face.
"Get over here, for one. I don't bite, right Zoie-Zo?"
"No!" Zola clacked her teeth, and Meredith took Derek's outstretched hand to maneuver over to kneel in front of him. It wasn't an unfamiliar position, but there was something different about this. Clothes? Yes, but that wasn't what made it feel strange. Their observer? She'd think it was funny no matter what happened, and the worst case scenario was her ending up on the floor. They'd have Lexie taking worse falls in PT when she got to Roseridge. Meredith turned to the window, where the leaves were turning, and no longer resembled those woods. Not in daylight.
She always had preferred winter. The season of death.
Not the way she needed to be thinking in a new house, with her toddler watching. Zola didn't need to see her hesitate.
"Hey, relax. I'm not going to drop you."
"I know."
As she let him guide her into place, it clicked. In this position, she should be in charge. Sure, if her clothes were off, he'd grab her hips, adjust her to the right angle, but she let him do that. Like this, with him lying there, and her kneeling, fully dressed…. Derek never took advantage of her size and his strength, but it wasn't often that she got to see him really vulnerable. She wasn't someone who liked giving up power once she had it, but he wasn't either.
He'd been letting her take care of him, though. Not pouting when a task required more flexibility, or snapping if she dove for something he dropped. She could do this. (And maybe they could put that to use, without the clothes and the kid.)
"Okay," he said. "On my count, one…two…three…!"
"Take ooooooff!" Zola exclaimed, throwing her arms up.
Meredith yelped, not entirely for Zola's benefit, though it did make her laugh. Success, she determined, though she already knew the experience was about more than that. A minute earlier, she'd have said she'd seen Derek from every perspective, but this was something new. A distance and a closeness, above him and with him. His eyes were clear blue skies, brighter than she'd seen in months. Both he and Zola beamed, giving off the unadulterated warmth she'd once associated with a pure white sun, and she knew: Someday, sunlight through branches wouldn't make her shiver whatever the temperature.
"Wooosh, woooosh!" The little star around which she orbited bounced while providing sound effects, but Derek didn't waver. He kept his left wrist bent to avoid putting too much strain on it, and the slight effort she was putting in to correct the imbalance made her think of Lexie. She was having to let people she barely knew do more than hold her up for half a minute. They weren't using the sling lift as much since she'd gotten stronger, but transferring was still a two-person maneuver.
Did she compare it to something like this? A memory of running to Thatcher and feeling perfectly safe being swept up, maybe even thrown in the air? All Meredith remembered of being carried by him was spotting her mom and squirming to be put down. Richard had carried her for short distances, to daycare or the car. She didn't remember when her mother had put her down for the last time, or know how old she'd been. She'd been small for her age, and Mom would've taken advantage of the control it gave her. Meredith still suspected it'd been too soon.
Flying required relinquishing control, and not to any higher power. To a person, and a man-made machine. Not all that different from surgery. She knew how stressful having one life in her hands could be; having total control, and responsibility, was both heady and overwhelming. Being asked to assist could be a relief. She'd already been in charge of more than she'd expected in her first year.
"Flight attendent Zola, cross-check. We are approaching our destination."
Right before Derek lowered her, she'd looked up at the skyline painting over their bed. For that moment, she could just…exist. For the first time, she'd missed flying. At least this way, no one was going to ask if there was a doctor on the flight.
Derek had brought her down, and straightened his legs, so she lay on top of him."Your first successful flight," he'd murmured.
She'd rolled her she could feelthat safe on a plane, she'd have gotten a job harvesting and ferrying organs all over the country.
She wished he was with her on her actual first fight. That memory had nothing in common with being on a rising plane with freaking Shane Ross for the second time in as many hours. She did not want to end up in the forests of the Pacific Northwest with Shane Ross.
She didn't want to end up lost in the forests of the Pacific Northwest with anyone. Oh, she knew chances were slim, but slim chances were a lot like gaps—something she fell into them.
Like the last plane had fallen.
Okay. rhat was factually inaccurate. She'd made it through getting here, but if she'd thought it would make the return easy, it'd been a delusion. She had to get through this, because she definitely couldn't leave Shane alone with this liver, and she needed to get back to Seattle, back to her baby, and her husband. She wanted to see this liver go in.
Wyatt had told her that at the dosage she'd been given, one of the pills she'd prescribed wouldn't bench her, but this wasn't a situation where she wanted to take the risk.
She'd repeated "I can't get on a plane," a dozen times as soon as the shrink picked up the phone. She'd replied, "Okay, you can't get on a plane," which was unhelpful reverse psychology bullshit. She had to get on a plane, because she did not let a dare pass her by like that. Playground rules! Her instincts followed playground rules. Maybe that was why that look from Bailey had made her feel like she had to prove something. Miranda Bailey was not her boss. Not any more. Not yet. She'd be Chief one day, ecen if her inevitable move to Head of General didn't put her above Meredith— Did she really think she could take the career equivalent of jumping out of a—Moving plane. The plane was moving.
She could still tell them to stop. It would be A Thing, because 1. the door was shut, and 2. they were moving, but she broke rules. Even playground ones. For instance, she was currently working to teach Zola not to show off her panties and having had hers displayed on a bulletin board was definitely worse than that. It'd been five years, yeah, but apparently she'd regressed into an intern who jumped at the implication of an instruction from Bailey—who really was Richard's protégé.
Meanwhile, she could feel the actual intern watching her. Waiting for her to lose her grip. He might think she had, considering that she'd either been yelling at him or crying for the past twenty-four hours, but that was because he was making stupid intern mistakes. You snapped and dared over stupid intern mistakes, not life-altering trauma. The hell had Bailey ever—
Bailey had faced, and lied to, Clark. Bailey had taken multiple organs out of her body. Bailey had brought her baby to Iowa. She hadn't been in that clearing; she didn't know everything, but Meredith suspected she knew more than she'd been told.
Maybe.
She definitely knew Meredith hadn't had the best night—If they went down, she'd definitely let the cougars take Ross first for interrupting her and Derek yesterday. If the stupid hormones could be fooled by anything she could do herself, she hadn't been in the headspace to try. Lexie having made plans with someone she met at Roseridge had been unexpected. She'd gotten close to texting Alex. If nothing else, she'd have had another adult in the house, and she could've knocked herself out. But she was on the borderline for studies on the placental barrier going from conclusions of "yeah, should be fine" to "eh, maybe" followed by "YOU ARE DOOMING YOUR BABY—Probably. We think. We can't exactly do a double-blind trial here." As it was, stayed up until Lexie got home, and hadn't fallen asleep until after Zola came in around three.
(Her shoulder was itching. Healing. Should've been healed.)
Bailey might not know all of that. She followed the rules, not a case-by-case code. Picking teams, she'd chose Meredith over Owen, but a year ago they'd been fighting on a softball field, because Meredith hadn't lost her job entirely over—
The plane was rising. No countdown, no warning. No doofus husband. Because he's in surgery. He's better. Lexie's home. I'm…. She was pregnant. That was a positive. Progress.
They were in the air. Also progress. Ross had turned to the window, because people who panicked on planes were afraid of take-off, turbulence, and landing, right? But no longer being pressed against the seat by G-forces didn't help her. She couldn't let go and just exist. She could barely think over the sound of the engines. If she reached for her purse, that would be the moment they went down.
When her pulse pounded in her ears this way, she could sometimes lose herself in the rhythm. She didn't want to be lost. She needed to be attentive. She needed to be in her body. She ran her hands over her thighs, but she couldn't focus. Her ears strained, listening for a change in the tone of the pilots' voices—two of them. Was that safer? Did it just mean one of them couldn't control the plane?—or for Ross to shift again. If she took her iPad out, he'd probably expect her to throw it at him. That was what he'd been taught to expect from the crazy attend—
She couldn't do it. She couldn't be bitter and sarcastic about what Cristina had gone through. She'd kept them alive. Lexie might credit Meredith…and okay, yes, she'd acknowledge to the frowning Wyatt in her head, she'd played the role of trauma surgeon. And nurse. She'd done a lot, actually. She'd had to—wanted to, obviously—wanted to keep her people alive. But she'd been ambulatory, with functioning hands. She'd been able to talk to the Search and Rescue people; to consent for Derek and Lexie, to fill in Cristina's medical history. She hadn't needed surgery. Her wounds had stayed clean of infection. The concussion hadn't done much more than hurt. She hadn't stayed awake for the whole time, but she'd kept going ever since, she hadn't stopped—and it wasn't a choice. Cristina hadn't had a choice.
That was what had made it terrifying. That was why she wasn't mad. Derek thought it was all related—that she counted having Cristina bow out as something she deserved. It wasn't. It was shit. He understood, and accepted, more of this than she'd ever imagined, but he also believed that because he and Cristina played entirely different roles in her life, they were entirely different. Maybe that came from older assumptions about wives and wingmen.
Her past didn't have to be her constant filter, but that didn't mean a person wasn't made up of a tangle of who they'd been and what had happened to them.
She'd loved flying.
Well. She'd loved traveling. She'd liked flying. Liminal spaces were great for someone who tried to live on the edges of other people's lives. Sure, her last few flights hadn't been great. Back from Hawaii with Cristina, she'd mostly studied, feeling as unprepared for resident as she had for intern. Going was…blurry. From Boston to Seattle she'd been as keyed up as she was currently, thanks to Mom going walkabout at Logan. From Amsterdam she'd made an increasingly sloppy list: Diseases Mom Could Have. Alzheimer's had been on it, but only once she'd started asking other passengers how their parents died. (She rarely cared about impressing strangers, and before she'd feared ending up in the wilderness with them, she really hadn't cared about plane strangers.) The memory of JFK to London made her cringe a decade later—what of it she could remember.
Before that, she'd traveled with her mother. Sometimes that had meant she was giving a lecture she'd given scores of times, and she'd be almost relaxed about it. Usually that took them to university towns. The conferences were in big, touristy places, where even before she was allowed to go out alone, Meredith could escape the storm of Ellis's stress in the anonymity of a hotel. Getting to those places, well….
"Enough whining." "Keep your ass on the seat." "No, you can't walk the aisle alone." "Well, read it again." "Were I to get your coat down, in five minutes you'd say you were hot." "Bringing batteries for your gadgets is not my job." "Leave that man alone. No one actually wants to talk to people on planes." "You're about to replace that baby as the most annoying child on this flight." "They're salted peanuts, ergo, they're salty. You should've saved your drink." "Of course the flush was loud, it's a vacuum." "I didn't have to bring you along." "You're making me consider leaving you at the hotel."
That threat had always rung true enough to make her press closer to her mother as she shoved and darted through the crowds, taking her hand when she never would have at home. She hadn't genuinely….usually…believed Ellis would abandon purposefully. Her fear had been getting lost or being forgotten. She'd glower at little kids whose dragging feet got them lifted up by harried parents. She'd been bundled through an airport that way only once, when her confusion over what was happening hadn't quite overwhelmed the relief that she wasn't going to be left behind. Once the door was closed on a plane, that couldn't happen, but it made hers the only other life her mother had power over, and she hadn't been able to stop herself from wielding it.
So, maybe she'd always had mixed feelings about being on a plane. That actually made her breathe easier.
She still felt like she'd missed a step and was about to fall down another, but she angled herself to the window. The sky was hazy. She hadn't felt much of that. The pilots were good. The plane was safe. Their pilot—Jerry—had done the best he could with shoddy material, like Meredith had on the ground.
She pinched a wrinkle on her scrub pants, her nails capturing a tiny bit of skin. Jerry. His name was Jerry. If he'd had a name tag, it'd been under the door that crushed him, and by the time they figured it out he'd become "the pilot," more a part of the plane than one of them. He'd given her the first inkling of how complicated blame would be; it hadn't been "the freaking pilot's" fault that his corpse was attracting predators, or scavengers, or whatever lived out there. She'd only begun to think of him as more than carrion while wishing they'd known his blood type, or, as Lexie deteriorated and Meredith got more desperate, if they could've rigged something up with the coolant to preserve a kidney. ("That's not how coolant works," Lexie said. Meredith grimaced. She hadn't meant to speak aloud. "It'd be…great for our Reader's Digest…cover story. The Donner Party…Surgical Remix.")
She used to feel as though she was shoddy material. If there was a time for that belief to return, shouldn't it have been in the past month or so? When she was falling apart while everyone else was healing? While the last thing she should be doing was lashing out at a body tasked with growing another person? If anything happened, it might technically be another casualty of the crash, but she'd blame herself.
There was a point where it wasn't a choice. She was getting better at not reaching that point. Harm reduction seemed like the soft option, but she didn't miss feeling like she was starting over every time she'd screwed up.
Cristina's crises had had definitive endpoints. Would hers? In the past, the down spiral had been easy enough to trace, but figuring out where the upswing started wasn't as easy. She'd realize that misery and doubt weren't dogging her out of nowhere, or she'd have a bad day that was only a bad day. She was already afraid that she'd get her mind back on track only to have it hijacked again by postpartum something, and no one would recognize it.
She had that thought as they left the wispy cotton of a cloud behind, and momentarily flew through a patch of pure blue sky. Hadn't there been a time where she scoffed at the idea of fate, and soulmates, and that shit? When she'd been as logical and anti-whimsy as her mother?
Well. Sort of.
Had Ellis always been like that? It wasn't explicit in her journals that she thought she and Richard were meant to be, but it wasn't entirely subtext. She wouldn't "waste money on novelty items," but she hadn't been using Anatomy Jane to drill Meredith on proper organ names. If Thatcher had been the one to turn on Sesame Street and Mister Rogers, Mom never made her turn them off. Maybe she just appreciated that she had a child who could entertain herself so well—Too well? She'd already preferred the worlds she'd created in various supply closets to the kitchen corner in daycare, and her early Show and Tells had put here soundly in the weird girl category at Boston Prep—Once, Mom had been picking gravel out of a particularly bad scrape, and the third time Meredith had yanked her leg away and cupped her hand over it, she'd snapped at her to stop being childish, and Meredith had volleyed back, "I am a child!"
It wasn't the only time her mother should've gotten that reminder. It definitely wasn't the first. It might've been her first time talking back, secure enough that her punishment would be grounding, not abandonment. She'd only been more indignant when her mother had laughed, but then she'd explained that making this hurt less would take shots that hurt more, and just putting the bandage on—which had been Meredith's idea of a compromise—would lead to infection followed by necrosis. It was not the explanation most mothers would have given, but it had worked. She'd let her mom care for the wound and even remembered kneepads for a while afterward.
Caution after an injury was natural. Fear, too. Humans avoided pain.
Most humans.
They were averse to pain.
Masochism was something different. Neurobiologically, self-injury was too. She did not, would not ever, even if she was at the points where her skin was buzzing, and she couldn't escape the thoughts fractaling in her mind any other way, want to throw herself out the door of this, or any other plane.
She doubted she could do it with a parachute, now, or attach herself to someone else with a parachute—that had felt like both more and less of a risk than her usual exploits—Even with a guarantee of survival, she didn't want the injuries that would give her, even if maybe it looked—
Fuck, fuck, fuck, we're falling, forget whimsy, I'm cursed. Not the evil godmother; I must have one—
"Guess they don't announce that we're starting our descent on this sort of plane, huh?"
Descent? Already? She waited, and, yeah, Ross seemed to have it right. Broken clocks were correct for two seconds a day, or whatever.
They were back in sky the color of a dreary day in January, not Derek's eyes—She'd gotten the message; Derek would know if something was wrong. He'd known it in November, even with his surgery, and Liz, and all the rest of it. They'd gotten home together, and they were getting through the aftermath together. His hand might be fixed, but she knew that wasn't everything. His birthday was coming up; he and Mark always did something for that. The end of the pregnancy, however it went, would be a time where he'd notice his best friend's absence.
It wouldn't just be the milestones, either. The moments where she missed her mother, or George, or any number of people who'd left her life, came from nowhere and could take over everything.
Cristina had lost Dr. Mr. Feeney. She'd attached herself to him, because whether she wanted to or not, she'd needed someone. He'd died, and she'd come back. Back to Meredith, who was supposed to be fine. Like she'd used up her allocated not-fine days as an intern. Like she could have either Cristina or Derek helping her put herself back together, not both of them. Maybe Derek was right, and things were just—
The wheels of the plane bounced down on the tarmac, where an ambulance waited to take them back to Seattle Grace—funny, she'd crashed in one of those, and hadn't thought twice the next time she got in—There had been planes that exploded on the runway, hadn't there? Lexie might know; although she hadn't tunneled into that one like she had with the shooting. She hadn't done it with SCIs either, not to the degree Meredith had expected. It was the only sign that Lexie might not have the hope for recovery she professed. The texts said that she'd be okay as long as her actions kept her going through the motions of rehabilitation, but until she'd suddenly had plans with Garrett—so, definitely not a date—she'd been retreating to her room as early as six-thirty. Meredith had convinced her to join them watching movies a few times; she might just not be comfortable in the house yet.
Was anything ever that simple?
The pilot opened the door, and that was it. She gestured for Shane to go down first, and then had to hiss at him to get the cooler.
"Oh, God, sorry. You always forget your dish for the picnic, right?"
"Go!"
He went, and she closed her eyes. She'd dropped a kidney as a resident. Ross wasn't any worse than any other intern. Better for her to be dealing with him than Derek. They couldn't have gotten Jimmy a new brain.
Her exasperation, and the related concern that he'd manage to drop the cooler, was the impetus she needed to stand. A commercial flight would've given her that long, restless period while a jetway was attached, and passengers with layovers started shoving past, as though a few feet would make the difference in getting across the airport. She could've tested her kneecaps. Collapsing in front of the intern at the last minute was not how she wanted to finish this. She had a hunch he'd be waiting at the foot of the stairs, the slightly patriarchal manners he'd been raised with warring with his fear of being cursed by her. She crossed the aisle. As close as the weather in Portland was to theirs, the chill and smell of petrichor pulled her fully into the present. She'd made it home.
She thanked the pilots, vowing to get their names next time, and got off of the plane. Her guess about Ross had been correct. She strode past him, ignoring the hand he kept jamming into his pocket, and then putting at his side again. If she thought he'd have as much trouble offering a shaky guy a hand, she might have reacted differently.
She snatched the cooler as she passed him. "You can take it into the hospital," she said. The likelihood of dying in a car crash was about 1;115, compared to air travel at 1;1,000—Someone had so helpfully shared that with her in Boise, and she couldn't forget it. She didn't know the stats for ambulances, but she did know that anyone who said lightening didn't hit the same place twice was wrong.
True to her word, she gave Ross the cooler once the rig stopped in the ambulance bay. She glanced around for someone who'd know how Derek's procedure was going; he was less than a third of the way in, but that was too far to go back.
Upstairs, she made eye contact with someone in the waiting room, and stopped short. "Go on," she told Ross. "I'll be there in a minute." He looked baffled; still too green to imagine delaying entering an O.R. but he obeyed. She watched for a moment, and then turned to the smiling African woman. "Makena! I'm sorry, I promised I'd bring Zola up yesterday."
"You are a busy woman, Dr. Grey."
"Still. You have someone in surgery?"
"Nyah went in with Dr. Alex and Dr. Yang two hours ago. They said it could take up to five, and I should feel free to join the others, but my staff can handle them for a little while."
"I understand if you want to stay here and wait for news, but would you like to go by the daycare with me?"
"Don't you have a surgery?"
"They can handle it for a little while."
Makena grinned. Leading her to the elevator bay, and away from the O.R. Meredith registered an antsy, "I should be there," feeling, but the pull wasn't nearly as strong as her desire to see her daughter first.
"Oh, Dr. Grey, good, you got the message," Erin said as soon as she got through the door. "Director Welch needs to speak to you."
Of course. There always had to be one more thing.