"Dr. Yang!" Derek called down the corridor. She turned. As he jogged over, her expression cycle: insolence, concern, exasperation. "How are your fingers?"
"Sorry?"
"Figured you must've sprained something. Maybe lost one altogether. Unless…. Nope, phone's intact."
"You said it wasn't an emergency."
"I said—" He clenched his jaw and grabbed her arm. She started to speak in the stairwell, but he shushed her. There were no cameras there, but people were worse.
Outside, he let her go. He didn't shove her in the process. He wasn't asking for credit for that, but it would've been easy. "I said Meredith wasn't in crisis. I also said please respond. I said ASAP at six p.m., yesterday. I said it was about the hospital."
"Is it something you'd have wanted Owen to know, guess, or even speculate about? Who am I texting? 'Oh, did you fix things with Grey?'—like I broke them."
"You…." He gritted his teeth, hearing Meredith tell him it wasn't the time. "You couldn't get away for a minute?"
"Who says I wanted to?" She crossed her arms, smirking. He raised an eyebrow. "This is hurting him. If that was your goal at any point, congratulations."
"You know it wasn't. He needed…. Everyone who had a role in us being on that plane deserved to face consequences. But not to the point where it circles back around but to affect people who weren't involved. Or to putting our own jobs on the line," he added.
"Who said anything about that? We can't leave. The deal would fall through, and boom, no hospital."
"Unless there was another buyer."
"Who? Some other corporation? They wouldn't be any different."
"No. Us."
"Us? Us? Come on." She started laughing, for a different reason but with a similar edge to Meredith last night. "We can't buy a hospital."
"Yes, we could. I just got off the phone with my financial guy—"
"Is his name Stewart?"
"Uh, no, Stan. Grossberg."
"Does yours ride with a biker gang?"
"What?"
"It's a stereotype that Jewish guys are good at finance, obviously. Usury, pigeonholed in the Middle Ages, blah, blah. But…it's kinda true, too. They take over for their dads, and eventually get tired of goys acting like bris makes them eunuchs, and they take dumb risks. Some buy sports cars. Some marry insane Korean women. Whatever, their lives, but if I wanted to support one of them, I'd have said yes to Aaron Freedman when he asked me out in Hebrew School."
"Are you done pretending that's your hang up? This is a crazy idea. It's scary. It could go wrong. But what choice do we have?"
"Did you happen to ask your guy if we could just…give it back? The message has been sent."
"Were we trying to send a message, or to make a change? We've got phenomenal people, people with foresight, trying to work with outdated policies. An overhaul has been due, just not this one."
"You spent ten minutes as Chief Shepherd, and you think you know how to run a hospital?"
"I think I know how a hospital should work—That we do. We have people whose ideas are better than remote surveillance and assembly-line surgeries. Depersonalization was why you came back from Mayo, wasn't it? The lack of loyalty?"
"Oh, there it is—"
"If your loyalty is with Owen, you really think they'll keep him around? Unless he truly sells his soul to them—" Cristina scoffed. He made a mental note to get Callie to deliver the brochures she'd gotten from the Pegasus hospital in Portland. "—they're going to see that he's not a true believer. How long until they replace him?"
"That's not part of your grand plan, oh great and powerful Face of the Hospital?"
"I don't want to be the man behind the curtain! I don't want there to be one person there. It's.…" Oh, of course. "None of us could've done it alone."
If anyone could've made it without help, it was Cristina. Mer could say she hadn't been injured until she was blue in—He didn't finish that thought. Couldn't. It was still too real. She could say it, but she was small; she'd had a concussion, and who knew how long they would've been lost without Lexie's phone?
"What does that make Owen. The dead pilot?"
"Not if we don't let this place crash." Hokey, but Cristina didn't dismiss him out of hand. He hoped that meant something. "Stan's coming by today. Hear him out?"
Her head bobbed, thoughtfully. A yes, but not just that. "Yesterday was Three's birthday. How'd that go?"
"You should ask her. She's here, showing the OTs one of her presents."
"Did Thatcher show up?"
"He did."
"And? Would she still be wearing that sweater if it was July?"
"Are we talking about Lexie?"
"How can you think you're not enabling her—"
"Stop. Talking." He made himself look away from her and unclench his fists. He was not going to deck his wife's supposed best friend.
"When she opens an artery—" She wasn't making it easy.
"Godammit, Yang, I said stop talking."
The last time he'd hit anyone who wasn't Mark had been sometime in the late nineties, a loud homophobe in the East Village. The last sister was Nancy, maybe the only time that'd happened. Amelia's first time in treatment, she'd snuck out, and Nan had said maybe they should just see what happened. "She's not stupid. She knows we'll help her if she comes home. This is just l attention seeking."
As though how much attention Amelia got hadn't been part of what made her run from them.
"When your dad died, did your mother say 'tough, suck it up?'" he asked Cristina. "Did she say you were better off? You already spent more time with her anyway?"
"Can we skip the Socratic seminar? Ellis Grey sucked, I get it—"
"You don't. I don't. We can't. We had trauma as kids, and we were helped to identify what we felt, and why. We could differentiate between before and after. It didn't go like that for her.
"If a teacher told you to just try sounding it out, did that help?"
"This isn't a learning disability!"
No, it's a TBI. "It might as well be. Her brain was still developing She couldn't process a certain stimuli in the same way as the other kids. She learned workarounds. Usually they're unnoticeable, but sometimes they mean investing much more effort than anyone else. Sound familiar? One of my nieces is dyslexic. I'm sure it's different for everyone, but reading gets more difficult for her when she's tired. That true for you?"
"Can be."
"Make it overwhelming?"
"Sometimes."
"Regulating emotions gets harder the more stress Mer is under. It's not the crash itself. It's everything she feels about this hospital, her hospital, becoming unrecognizable. And there's been…there was already a backlog.
"The emotions still happen, they're in her. Parts of everything she's been through are embedded in her, and her brain has very few pathways for getting them out. One of those was formed when she was fourteen.
"You can do the research to understand why it seems to help. It's complex. And it's not a matter of stopping. Building different pathways takes time.
"She hadn't been actively doing that it, true. She didn't think she had to. She'd never dealt with it head on. She didn't have the time, the safety, the support. Now, she's doing the work. The baby's doing fine. She's engaging with it. She's not depressed. She's healthy. I'm doing all I can do to help her stay that way. That assignment would go more smoothly as a group project."
Cristina looked away, folding her arms. "Owen doesn't have anyone else. You have Alex on board. Torres is her mommy-friend, she's got Lexie. Her surgeries have been going well."
Was she paying attention or just watching? Should he suggest going to Owen again to pre-empt an unrelated mistake in Mer's OR becoming an issue?
"She gets a lot from being solidly in the big sister role. Last night…. But Lexie's not her best friend. She doesn't confide in her."
"Three doesn't know? She lives there."
"She doesn't hear her pacing our bathroom at two a.m. Sometimes, I don't either. Eighty-five percent of the time she'll wake me up because Zola's in our bed, or, sometimes, because she's exhausted enough to ask for help."
She saw, she saw, she saw. He shouldn't blame Cristina for an accident that was likely to happen, but if she hadn't put it in Meredith's head, the experience wouldn't have been as harrowing.
"Ten percent of the time, I wake up because she's shaking, crying, trying not to cry; angry at herself for giving in, more often for getting close."
"I'm trying, Derek, I'm trying so hard."
She was succeeding. It wasn't do or do not. Yoda had a lot to answer for. The attitude was common in medicine. The all or nothing mindset. He'd fallen victim to it in countless situations, and he'd held her to that standard. Another thing that the crash, or maybe being a dad, had proven to be more complicated than he'd known.
"Lexie's not privy to that, and it's not as though we don't have anything else to talk about."
"So, what, in daylight, you just pretend it's not happening?"
"I don't pretend the other parts of our lives have stopped mattering. I don't tell her she shouldn't live until she's 'better.'"
"I—"
"You're not going to be able to justify what you said to me. I don't know what it was about. I don't think it was this, because half a second's thought would've told you how much worse getting rid of the pregnancy would've made things.
"Beyond that, you wanted to set a boundary. Great, except you shut her out entirely. You didn't make the self-harm too much. You made her too much."
"She's a high-functioning cutter. That doesn't mean she's not going to—"
"She's not trying to edge suicide for attention! She's not making her kid a participant! Do you really think Meredith needed you to suggest this was just another way of emulating her mother?"
"Apparently, because that's—"
"It proves she's alive. That's how it started. Pain is Theoa92– one thing that's certain in her life. And she's not running from that. You think she's weak? All I can tell you is, I've never been more sure of her strength, and I don't understand why that makes such a difference. Is she not allowed weaknesses?"
Cristina threw her hands up, like he was being unreasonable.
"Does it remind you of yours? Do you know how much you reminded her of Ellis this summer? She was terrified she'd lose you while you were still alive." For the first time, Yang looked stricken. "I understand why you're afraid of the worst happening. Your friend at Mayo died. Mark died. The pilot died. We all almost died against crazy odds. Cars are more dangerous than planes, and we drive them—You're concerned about Zola getting hurt? Report us to CFPS for that. You'd have to write Hunt off, too. He drives."
"It's not the same."
"No, but it's equally ridiculous." He sighed. "I didn't bring you out here to have this fight. I'll text you when Stan is here."
"Fine," she said, and turned on her heels.
I'm fine. It's fine. I'm telling you, it's fine.
"Cristina? Last night, there was a blow-up with Thatcher. Lexie might need someone to talk to. Someone who knows the history."
"What about….? I mean…it didn't bother Mer?"
"It did. Family gets through her armor. But what made her go quiet and tell me she was fine was checking my phone and seeing you hadn't replied."
"So, what? You're saying it's my fault she—?"
"She didn't do anything. And it wouldn't be. I'm saying, family gets through her armor."
The wind had picked up and was blowing curls that had escaped Cristina's ponytail into her face. He couldn't see her expression, and was about to be more explicit when she shoved the locks back over her shoulder.
He didn't repeat himself. She went inside.
He'd been oblivious to the argument while it happened. He and Robbins had been in the master bathroom watching the girls play with duckies. Zola was singing "Sick lit'ducks go hos'ital" Mer's revision of "Six Little Ducks—"the ducklings go missing one by one, and all the mother duck does is yell for them?"—He managed to catch a verse on his phone for her before tucking it out of the splash zone.
"That guy down there, Damien, he was one of your patients?" Robbins asked.
"Yeah. Good guy."
"What's the deal with him and Lit—Lexie?"
"Nothing that I know of. I'm happy she's making friends; it's the one connection she's made with the future. She says she doesn't want to get deeply involved in something if she's going to be out for major surgeries."
"Does she think she'll get what you did?"
"She knows mine wasn't a sure bet. If it doesn't work,she's young, and she has her M.D. Having the hospital to fall back on would give her a vocation. Not just money."
"Just money." Arizona scoffed.
"You think I don't know what money does? Post I grew up in a family of five kids and hung out with Mark. But he'd have traded the privilege in for parents who didn't just buy the collectibles, but asked him why he wanted them; who cared about why he loved whatever he was into that year.
"I'm not saying this to sway you. It could do the opposite: Mark would've been on board with this. One of the reasons he insisted we start our own practice was getting to spend time with our patients. Not having to have anyone else sign off on diagnostic testing, or question our approach. We have a chance to put this money toward something that would've been meaningful to him."
She drew her good leg up against her chest. Callie had told him about the thousand-yard stare, but he hadn't seen it until now. "I lost a brother."
"I know."
"Tim was my best friend. I wasn't always his. The rule was that if I could keep up, I could play. It's why I learned to ride my bike. To skate. And after he died, everything I did, I thought about what he'd do. Getting the Preminger Grant…I thought he was pulling strings for me. Working in Africa was going to be my way of serving—"
"Africa!" Zola repeated. "I know there."
"You do?" Maybe it was just the abrupt change, but for the first time the tone she used with kids sounded fake. "What's in Africa?"
"Countries."
Robbins had no right to look at him like that; she knew they had every picture-book they could track down from or about Malawi, as well as folklore and history of other African countries. You had to start somewhere. 'Africa is a continent not a country' was somewhere.
Zola might've been offended too, or just in the mood to show off. "An' baby Zola, an' lions, an' gigis, an'-an' trees, an'a Mowi, an' my Kena kids."
"That's a lot of things, and it's only some of what you can see and do there!
"Tim would've been swept away by the adventure. It's just who he was. But I wasn't him. He was dead, he didn't get to make choices for me. Doing what he would've done wasn't going to bring him back."
"I wasn't saying— I know that." He had understood that at twelve when Mom sold the store. But it would let him hold on to the moments when he'd go to the cafeteria and sweep the tables for a buzz cut that wasn't there. When he'd hear a laugh and glanced up with both expectation and wariness. When he'd wake in an on call room bunk, and pretend Mark was above him like he'd been since Derek got a bunk bed for his ninth birthday.
"It doesn't matter, anyway. Mark's money is Sofia's. His…His legacy."
"Pah!" Derek's laugh echoed in the high-ceilinged bathroom. "Sorry, just…, God. Look, my dad's life insurance left us with a safety net, and I'm grateful, but that wasn't his legacy. That was his notes in the margins of every book he'd read. His vinyls. Photo albums. Her inheritance is just that. Exposing her to things he loved is more important when it comes to legacy. It's teaching her who he was.
"He was so excited to get to see the world through her eyes. To support her passions, and share his with her." He cupped the back of his niece's head, and she giggled, tipping it back to look at him. "Miss Sofia is passionate about knocking down towers aren't you? And Play-doh. And the cookie mouse book. Are we reading that before bed?"
"'Es!" Sofia exclaimed, letting Arizona catch her in a towel. "Cookie maas d'inka milk."
"Does he get a milk mouse-tache?"
The girls laughter echoed through the bathroom as they were plucked from the tub. Arizona smiled at them, but her lips were pressed tightly together. "I wasn't a good man in the storm out there. And when I woke up with my leg gone, my first thought was thank God. I can stop running. That wasn't Arizona Robbins. It wasn't Dr. Wheelie Sneaks. I hated it. I hated who I was becoming. I hated Callie for wanting me to be someone else. But this time, I am going to be the good man in this storm. I'm going to defend my family's best interests, and a straight, able-bodied, white man isn't going to tell me what that is." She'd scooped Sofia up and left him slathering Zola in lotion.
He'd heard Meredith shouting from the top of the stairs. Hearing Thatcher respond put him close to vaulting the baby gate, except he was holding the baby.
"Man mad. Mama mad. Roooar."
"Yeah…. Let's…." Before he could come up with a plan, Callie appeared at the landing.
"Hi, guys. Zola, can I read to you for a little bit?"
"Read Coun' Ovejas?"
"Absolutely."
Zola grinned, but wasn't xo enthusiastic about going to Callie. "Daddy read too!"
"I'll come back, princess." He kissed the top of her head as he passed her on wondering for the hundredth time how Thatcher lived with himself. Losing Susan had sent him to the bottom of the whiskey bottle within days. Had leaving his daughter really not led to guilt and grief strong enough to require anesthetic?
He took the stairs as fast as he could without his footsteps drowning out the argument below..
"You gave…You gave me that look at five years old. Exactly like her. Her little puppet, letting me know exactly ow stupid she thought I was."
"She worked more than eighty hours a week, and you didn't have the chance to win me over? It's not as though my opinion would've mattered, anyway. No judge would've given her full custody."
"No," Thatcher said, and Derek knew without a doubt that whatever he said next would hurt Meredith more than being slapped. "They wouldn't've."
Lexie was in the foyer, staring at the tableau in the kitchen. Meredith had shut her eyes, but when she opened them, they met his. She shook her head just enough to make him stay where he was.
"I-I-I thought you and your sister told each other everything." Thatcher said "sister" with a hiss. It must've been significant in an earlier beat of this scene. "I had no idea Richard had managed to avoid being snagged by her claws again. Ig she wanted you, and he wanted her, well,…. Let him deal with the tantrums, and 'when does Mommy get home?,' and 'did Mommy say we could…?' He…He'd think every 'my mommy says' was cute. H-He could enjoy you for…for what you were. A high spirited, bright, imaginative child who used every speck of willpower she had to be good for Ellis.
"I-I h-h-hated him for it, as much as I hated who I'd become. I-I was always behind. Using my office hours to grade midterms, snapping at students needing help on the final—forget tenure, I was afraid of probation.
I…I was not the father you deserved. I-I almost left Susan twice, because I was sure that was just who I was as a father. I was never perfect. I snapped and slammed doors, but she didn't tell the girls that Daddy was weak. Never said 'Daddy doesn't know what stress is.' 'Daddy has to yell at a little girl to feel powerful.' And here you are doing the same thing with my daughters—"
"That's bullshit."
Thatcher turned, and his eyes widened. He must not have expected an audience. "Lexie, honey—"
Meredith, whose face had been locked down, cringed. Derek took the shift in focus as permission to go to her. He we t the long way around, avoiding Thatcher.
"There've been so many times where she defended you when she didn't have to."
Meredith had crossed her arms, but when he put himself between her and the counter, she leaned against him. He put his hands on her shoulders. A second later, she pulled them down to the base of her ribcage. Her breaths were shallow, but even.
Did anyone else marvel at how she'd evolved? She'd come to him, spontaneously, and made a need for comfort explicit. Five years ago, she hadn't had the framework to let him do that. Why seek what you've never found? Most people had to learn to save themselves. She'd done it so many times that the universe's page in her ledger was blood red. She might never trust in the promise of rescue, but she believed he'd try.
Every bandage was proof that she could still take care of herself.
He'd put that in his phone to run past her before her she saw Wyatt. (He'd called Amy's therapist with an observation once, and the fallout had made him fumble the phone last Tuesday morning.)
"If it wasn't for Meredith's example, I wouldn't have invited you tonight—That's me being self-aware. You should try it.
"I don't know what I'm gonna do with the money. I don't know what you want from me—"
"Nothing!"
"—but I want you to go MIA for a while. When I call you can claim you just thought I was busy."
"You were a surgeon," he said. Lexie flinched. "But since your schedule has—"
"Enough," Meredith cut in. "Lexie is a fully capable adult. If your concerns are about her, you talk to her. Don't try talking to me behind her back. "
"A capable adult?" Derek repeated. "Wait… Did you…Did youy threaten to get her declared incompetent?"
"Th-Threaten is an extreme…way of putting it." Thatcher's pause didn't fit the pattern of his stammer. He'd expected to be spoken over. Meredith did the same thing.
He'd noticed how infrequent her stammer had become after the night he'd stood in front of a glass trailer throwing stones, and she'd refused to break. It'd resurfaced two summers ago as they struggled to avoid topics they'd talked about almost exclusively since meeting Zola. There'd been a spike in the summer...fall? Before or after Lexie woke up? What stood out to him was that last time all the tricks she used to get her thoughts out had stayed at work. With him, she'd just talked, letting herself trip over words and picking herself back up. He wasn't going to weaponize someone else's trouble speaking, but especially not in front of her.
"I've been an expert in a case like that; a family trying to get conservatorship over an adult with a TBI. It was necessary…. No, let's say there wasn't a better alternative—but no judge would grant it in this case."
He'd said it as though he couldn't imagine how the right sleazeball could paint things; making it seem like he'd somehow gotten her evaluations falsified, that Meredith couldn't possibly care about a sister she hadn't known, and her father only had her best interests at heart.
"That's not what he meant," Lexie said. "Is it, Dad?"
"I-I don't know anything about it, except…except Dani's stepfather's a money-grabbing you know what…. Lawyer told him that if alcoholism was a valid justification, half the lawyers in the city would be unable to sign their own paperwork."
"So, you knew about it," Meredith summarized. "And insinuating that she's—What was it? Easily led?-and I should consider what people might think about the influence I have over someone in her condition was testing the waters."
"Wow," Lexie deadpanned. "That's projection if I've ever heard it."
Thatcher had spluttered. stammered, hemmed and hawed. He hadn't gotten through a full denial.
Derek hadn't known what to do with himself once he'd left. He needed to keep his promise to Zola, he wanted to be with Meredith, and Lexie needed someone. When she asked if she could shower before "the next part goes down," and Meredith immediately offered to assist. He accepted it as a happy medium.
He waited for Lexie's door to close before surveying the counter. No sharps. He turned the knife block around; any additional step gave Meredith a chance to redirect. Then, he went upstairs.
Once the little girls were tucked in, the discussion had gone nowhere in circles. Callie had been to a Pegasus hospital; her disdain carried weight for him.
Moving to another hospital might've made switching services easier for Meredith; it would've protected her from backlash. But it could be harder to set up such an unconventional residency somewhere else, especially if he wasn't Head of Neurosurgery, and she was the definition of loyal. Whenever she wasn't defending him, she kept flipping his hand over to light up his phone screen. Lexie had been on her standing frame, citing studies about ideal policies.
"That's stuff we figure out later," Callie interrupted. "All I know is, I don't want what they have. if we ran the place, we could make policy decisions based on experience. Do y—?"
""Uh, no offense," Derek interrupted her. "But that is a naive way of putting it."
Lexie gave him a half-smile, but she didn't say anything else until Arizona accused Callie of being ready to bankrupt them.
"'May the love for my art actuate me at all times; may neither avarice, nor miserliness, nor thirst for glory or for a great reputation engage my mind,'" she quoted.
"That's from…." Callie snapped her fingers with each word.
"The Oath of Maimonides." Arizona crossed her arms. "It's for pharmacists."
"Some med schools use it," Meredith countered.
"It's not about the words specifically. It's about staying true to who we want to be as doctors," Callie said. "This hospital is not something that we lucked into. This is something that we made. Webber hired us, and he set a tone. Hunt sets a tone, and it's something I am proud to be a part of, and it's worth fighting for." A blast of thunder was followed by a stereo wail, audible from the monitor and upstairs. "Shit. Sorry, is that mine or yours?"
"Mine, but she's gonna wake yours," Meredith said, heading for the stairs.
"Hippocrates says to teach without caring about money, too," Lexie added. Arizona rolled her eyes. ''To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers and sisters, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it…to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own descendants, the descendants of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the Healer's oath."
My own brothers and sisters…. If they did this—no, regardless—he needed to talk to Amy.
"And what? He's your teacher, so your money is his to gamble?" Arizona had snapped, jerking her head at Derek.
"No! It's not... If Pegasus takes over and won't let you teach what you know, is that keeping the oath?"
"It's considering my family." Arizona snapped.
"I think Callie's right," Derek said, drawing her ire away from Lexie. It'd worked too well. Arizona had gone on to accuse him of being a guilty egomaniacal with a hero complex.
Did he have survivors' guilt? He didn't think it was fair that his wrist had been fixable, but he'd faced the prospect of losing his profession. His whole outlook had changed. He wanted to be a better teacher, and, harkening back to Lexie's oath-quoting, he didn't want to be the department hot shot; he wanted colleagues he could rely on. To prioritize his family, he'd need that. If someone at Seattle Pres could cover a procedure, there was no reason there shouldn't be two at Seattle Grace.
His procedure times were up. Only by thirty minutes or so, but that was another half hour under anesthetic. Something Pegasus would take note of. He'd been close to ambidextrous before, which had turned out to be less useful than he'd anticipated, writing flashcards left-handed in med school. Not having his non-dominant hand up to speed was an actual problem.
Having one functioning hand hadn't made him as dependent as an amputation would have. He didn't have a new label he'd carry for the rest of his life. He might get his speed back without trying. In a few months, they'd have a new baby. None of it was fair, but he hadn't had control over any of it.
He'd decided to check in with Lexie before going upstairs. She was propped up in bed with her laptop, and except that her legs weren't bent, it could've been any evening last year. As she started tapping at the keyboard, he noticed the Messenger app sitting above the article she had open.
"One of the Thorns?"
Lexie startled, and he noticed her hip rising off the bed. She'd had some movement there from the start, but not like that. "Uh, earlier, yeah. This is…it's J.P."
"Oh? Are you going out?"
"With Je—? Oh, you mean…. Not tonight. But I do, a lot, so….,I've gotten to know him, that's all. He's saving up to go to school here. His degree from the D.R. didn't transfer, but he says that's all right, because he did what his dad wanted. Now, he gets to start over, do what he wants; except he doesn't know what that is yet."
"You can understand that, huh?"
She raised a shoulder. "I have more time to kill before I can start planning, but…if it doesn't work…."
"Or if it does, but it's not what you want to do?"
"Wh-What? I want to be a surgeon. I've always wanted…. And…And if it does, if I get enough mobility to operate, doesn't that mean…? Shouldn't I?"
"You're talented, Lexie. Technically, you have four years of training done. Realistically, it'd take longer for you to regain the level of muscle memory you had. It might be that you decide to take on an area of medicine that would let you get to work sooner. You might like the hospital admin stuff. And there's rehabilitative medicine. Myra would love to recruit you. You have a lot of options, and…. If you decide that you're ready to get a consult for surgery next fall, I'll be with you, but…. You can only do this once, Lex. In a couple of years, I think it'll be more standardized. You're hoping for such extreme results…."
"You think I should wait longer."
"I think you should consider it." She nodded, and he sighed. He hadn't meant to dump that on her tonight. "It's not my specialty. Not my subspecialty, anyway. I'll make some calls. What's published and what's being done aren't the same thing."
"Thank you for being honest with me." She blocked a yawn with her hand. A stereo-chime from her phone and her computer, and her eyes lit up.
"Sure." Impulsively, he kissed the top of her head, like she was one of his nieces. He'd never gone as far as to tease Mark about her only being three years older than Ally, but facts were. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow's judgment day."
"I felt pretty judged tonight, actually," she said sardonically.
"Yeah. I'm sorry. You'll always be welcome here if that helps."
"It does."
He peeked in on Zola on his way to their bedroom. She was sleeping soundly, her eyelids twitching as she dreamt. What those dreams contained was still a mystery. Life gave her so many new things to process. It was a wonder that they seemed to mostly be good. She was a happy little girl, by disposition. If she preferred one of them, it was Meredith. He couldn't imagine resenting that.
Things would be so much simpler if it was just the three of them. Lexie could manage with a part-time attendant. She had her own friends. Mer and Cristina were on the outs. He couldn't get her to see that as the betrayal he saw it as, but she might not be a reason to stay this time.
Meredith had been sitting on their bed, fully dressed. She'd been so still that for a moment he'd been afraid she was gone again. Then, she turned to him as though about to say something, but what had come in place of words was laughter. Within a minute he'd understood that crying or laughing didn't matter so much if the adjective was "hysterically."
All he could do was hold her, waiting for her to regain enough control over her lungs and larynx to speak. "It's bizarre, isn't it?"
"What, specifically?"
"All of it. Everything. That she thinks you're the one…. Not that you don't…. I don't own guilt. You shouldn't be... Whether or not we're responsible is another question…. I'm the one who's been—You're the goddamn face of everything—I don't want to be! Just…guilt's basically my watchword, and…if they knew...if the Grace grapevine…. They'd say it makes sense that I'd want more attention.
"And Thatcher? How much spin did he add, telling Susan about Mom? He wanted an excuse to get rid of me, and he made himself the victim. Who knows what else he blamed on her? Or me?
"You know what the weirdest part is? I think he did assume Mom's manipulative suicide attempt got Richard back."
"SMaybe Richard was more gullible in those days."
"Maybe he learned to be so freaking Machiavellian from her!"
"Maybe from him."
"From Thatcher?" Meredith cracked up again. It sounded more like her usual laugh, but not quite. "Yesterday that would've been send-you-upstairs material. Now…you could be right, Mr. Face-of-the-Hospital.
"I have horrible parents." He kissed the crown of her head, ready to reassure her. "I remembered him yelling. He might've that I preferred her, but he'd… he'd use it as a threat. If I didn't pick up my toys, turn out the light, stay in bed, whatever, I'd never get to go to the hospital again. But that'd make me his problem, so…so I knew it was bull. Not like Mom didn't yell at me.… They yelled at each other. At me. About me…." She trailed off, and her eyes went distant. Blue Screen of Meredith. He still held his breath until she shook her head and looked at him. "I blamed Mom for it, 'cause I knew what living with her was like. But…I remembered. And I never worried I'd be like him as a parent. I'm not. Maybe…. Maybe I can worry less about being like her."
"That would be a good take away."
"Lexie thinks you've warped me."
"What?"
"I told her he wasn't, y'know, emotionally abusive. There are good memories, same as with Mom. It's more confusing, because I was little. He took me places on weekends. The zoo, the grade school playground, the library…. She said I was being way too positive and blamed you. I said you stopped defending Thatcher a long time ago."
"Damn right I did."
Meredith snickered. Pure her. She kissed him and shifted onto his lap. "He never hit me. That was new—and at least once I remember saying 'why not the ho'pital?' when he told me where we were going. I probably did it dozens of times."
"That doesn't mean—"
"I know. I was a little kid. If he'd just told me where the lungs were…." She put her hands on his chest and kissed him again, following it up, contradictorily, by saying, "There is a huge picture of you all over the hospital. My Valentine's Day present was super timely, because I'm not sure I can take your face seriously."
"Mm, after last night, that's how you're gonna feel about seeing me everywhere?"
"Absolutely." She adjusted her position pointedly against him. "But there are ways I don't have to look at your Prince of PR mug."
Jesus, what if hey did mugs? Places that did printing these days could put pictures on anything. He was suddenly incredibly glad his birthday had passed, and Father's Day was months away. Her birthday, though….
He hadn't expected to go from there to lying on the bed with his dick in her mouth, but that was life with Meredith.
She'd been pushier than the night before, shoving his hands away. She'd made a show of folding his sweater and hanging his shirt on a dry-clean hanger, occasionally returning to kiss him or squeeze the rising bulge in his pants. When she'd stripped him of those, she'd hung them, and tossed his underwear in the hamper.
She pulled him onto his side and started to maneuver downward. He caught her wrist. "Hey. I could—"
"Not tonight."
He moved his hand to her hair. She didn't object to that. She never did.
"What are you not, Derek?" she asked, huskily, taking hold of his dick at the same time.
"E-Egomaniacal?"
"Good answer," she purred, her other hand circling his abs, and then toward his balls. "What else?"
"Mer, you…you say I'm selfish all the time."
"You can be. But not about this. You like being the hero, but that's not what this is."
"Isn't it?"
"No." Her smile was mind-blowing. Sly, knowing, devious in a way that was nothing like anyone who'd had a part in raising her. "You're not doing this for yourself. You're doing it for the good we can do. Whatever happens with this, you're gonna be my hero."
Her hero. She'd said it playfully before, and that'd been remarkable. If she thought she hadn't gotten him anything for Valentine's Day, she was wrong.
Her hair glided silkily through his fingers, glistening golden in the light of a single lamp. "You were incredible down there. Not letting him dodge responsibility. Standing up for Lexie. For yourself. Even for me. I'm proud of you." She found the hand resting on his hip, and clasped it with hers. A perfect moment. He'd love if they had more of them, but he wouldn't trade them for anything.
"Look at me, bright eyes," he said later, out of habit, and maybe some concern about where her mind might be. She snickered, her lips humming against him, and the thought had almost slipped his mind. "Mer…I got it... We need…. People can't—God, yes, that's it, that's it, that's it—they can't…take it seriously—Christ."
She'd crawled up to him a minute later, lying across his chest. "Good?"
"Perfect." He'd tucked his hand under the hem of her sweater. Starting to undo the clasp of her bra was automatic, hardly related to his asking, "Want to feel how good?"
He was selfish, he knew that, but he'd never understood being that way about sex. If the woman you were with wasn't getting anything from it, why would she want to do it? Getting someone off was hot on both sides—or, it should be.
"I said not tonight." She'd rolled off him, yanking the strap out of his hand. The snap against her skin had been audible. "Ow! Motherfucker."
"Shit, Mer, I'm sorry."
"It's fine. Just don't accuse me of making that one. There's nothing else."
"I didn't think there was."
He wasn't oblivious. He'd known there might be a reason she didn't want to take her clothes off, but she'd also been with someone all evening. Anything she'd had time to do would've been obvious or not worth hiding.
She slammed a dresser drawer, pajamas tucked under her arm. "I'm gonna shower. Tomorrow—" She looked at the clock, and winced. "—today's gonna be a long day."
"You're...taking those with you?"
"I don't want to keep you awake."
"Mer…."
"There's nothing new! You saw me naked last night. Can't you trust me?"
"I do trust you. I don't understand why you're being difficult. If there' nothing—"
"I'm trying to be easy! I'm tired of being one more thing you have to worry about."
"You're not."
"I told you the speeding scared me, and you stopped. Th-That's how it works."
"It's not the same thing. I'd been doing that a few weeks, and— What scared me wasn't….It was the effect Zola seeing had on you. That you…you went somewhere I couldn't follow."
"Makes it sound like I'm the one Thatcher should have investigated."
"You're perfectly competent, and you know it."
"Competent, but stable? With everything going on, with all the people whose lives we're betting on Stan—"
"You like Stan."
"Yes, I like Stan. I don't understand Stan. I didn't understand the Stan who took care of Mom's stuff, either. I've let you handle it, because I had money, but you had money, and that's fine, but if it falls through, it'll be on you, and I…."
"This was my crazy idea. If you think it's going too far, you can say so. That's what I need you for, remember? And if things don't work out, I'm not going to be mad at you."
"I could handle it if you were."
"I know," he said, getting off the bed and going over to her. "You can handle anything. But I am telling you, we're even in this."
"What if…." She swallowed. "What if Cristina…won't buy in? That'd be my fault."
She pulled her sleeve up and held her arm out to him. The gauze hadn't been touched since the last time he changed it.
When the roll was wrapped toward her, he worried. Usually, she covered it in plastic to scrub in or shower at work, repacking that in her bag to keep any evidence out of the trash. The only people likely to notice were scrub nurses, and nothing had been said. It didn't mean he'd find dried blood where there had been scabs, but the possibility existed. (She could maneuver a roll of gauze one-handed better than he could've. How much direct experience had she had? She'd been treating them carefully before he started helping. For all the scars he could see, how many more were there?)
"It'd be about her, not you. But I don't see that being the reason she rejects this idea."
Her expression started at doubt, but he could almost see the memories playing across her face. Cristina was loyal. Often to Meredith. Not always. "Owen."
"I don't envy him that job, and God knows Richard wasn't perfect…."
"He set the tone. Owen's been treading water. The stunts he pulled with me in the fall were incredibly fucking personal, which is usually why she gets pissed at me. For making things personal."
"He's not bad at the job. This...This put him in over his head, and I think he could use that sabbatical he was talking about…. But we can't…."
"Nope. He's gonna break Cristina's heart again, too. They opened the box, and hope stayed inside. They're not hoping for the same thing."
Would she be the one picking up the pieces? He loved her capacity for forgiveness, but what Lexie said the other night had stuck with him. She let people hurt her repeatedly. Like she thought she deserved it. He wrapped his arms around her, kissed her forehead, and then tipped her chin up to catch her lips. "I love you so much. Go get your shower."
She'd disengaged from him, but instead of going into the bathroom, she'd put her pajamas down on the bed and taken off her cardigan, and then followed it with her sweater. He unfastened the top hook of her bra, and kissed the small purple mark the other one had left.
Like he'd tell Cristina, she hadn't done anything.
Thirty minutes later, she'd been in his arms again, and the question had floated up to the forefront of his mind, the one at the crux of everything. One thing Arizona had said was inarguable: you didn't know what tomorrow would bring.
"Mer? This…it can be a yes or no tonight. You don't even have o answer, I just…. While we were waiting for Zola—" She stiffened, and he kept his tone even. "—did you hurt yourself then?"
He couldn't get the image out of his head: her alone in the office at the old house, spinning out, while he was upstairs, completely oblivious. The length of her silence was an answer. She surprised him by rolling over to face him. Surprised herself, too, judging by her expression as she groped for words.
"Hey." He guided a thick piece of hair behind her ear, and rested his thumb on her cheek. "Nothing changes."
She nodded. Her eyes were focused. He didn't push.
"I want to qualify it so many different ways. It was only a coupla times. It was different. It got so loud…most of the time the researching, preparing for her, it drowned them out. The…the intrusive thoughts, or whatever. Saying it was my fault. That this was how it should be, because hadn't I already done what my mother did? That it wasn't gonna matter that I gave up neuro; if we lost her…that'd be it.
"Mom, my whole life, any time I said, 'when' or 'if I have a kid,' she'd laugh at me. 'Imagine. You, responsible for someone else's life.' But didn't she want me to be in charge of hundreds of them?
"I knew all it meant was that she didn't know me. I did okay with her life…. Then, I'd think: Did I just want Zo to prove her wrong? A-And…and, um,I'd hear… I'd hear you. Saying I'd never faced a consequence in my life. Th-That you didn't know if you could raise a child with me. I knew you…you didn't mean it, but I wasn't sure I did know what was right.
"It got better. We did. By the time she came home, I believed you. That we'd be okay."
"When?" He wanted her to say both times had been in the two days it'd taken him to be able to go home and face her. Worse, would be the weeks between that and Zola's hospitalization, when he'd managed to get his head out of his ass. But there'd still been so many late nights after that. Extra shifts. So much time for wounds to heal.
" At…At a month," she said. "And, uh…a hundred and three days." Jesus. "I didn't want to be counting, but I couldn't stop…. I did okay to a hundred. We had the Saturday softball practice, so we were out all day, and I got to hit." He smiled. She couldn't catch to save her life ("Off with the goddamn butterflies," Bailey had said.) but she could more than handle being at bat. "But it made me think about how much you deserved to have kids to teach that stuff to, and…I made it to Tuesday. Thursday, we got a court date."
"The band-aid on your leg. Not a sports-adjacent injury."
"Those bleachers could've done it, but, yeah, I lied about that. Sorry. "
"No, don't…God…." How many nights had he snapped the light off when he heard her come up, because he didn't know what to say? He'd smelled tequila under the mint of her toothpaste, but he'd been afraid that saying anything would end a detente that felt precarious. That'd been August. September. By October, he'd thought they were okay.
Maybe they were. She hadn't been.
"I understand why you didn't let me in, then, and I'm so sorry you were dealing with it alone." She started to shrug, and he gripped her shoulder. "You shouldn't have had to. I don't know how I would've reacted, but if you were afraid I'd think you deserved to feel like that? Never. Not ever." He didn't notice how tense she'd been holding herself until she sagged against him. "Mer? What about September? The butterfly glioma?"
"That was my consequence."
"Yeah…."
"So, I had to live with it."
At first he didn't get it. Was it the work bubble she seemed to have? But she'd admitted to how intermixed it'd become. That any regret had made her feel like she was betraying Zola somehow.
Oh. Cutting was an escape—both definitions of cutting—Whatever the mechanism, it evened things out for her. In a roundabout way, not giving in had been part of the punishment.
"We're gonna find you the coolest butterfly glioma, and Zola's going to be in the gallery cheering you on."
"Wishing a brain tumor on someone for me. That's true love." He adored the sound of her smile. "Nuh—" He would've missed the almost inaudible syllable if he hadn't felt her inhale to speak.
"Nothing's changed."
"So much is gonna."
"Not us. We got home. Zola has both her parents. Those are the important things. The rest is details."
"Your hand."
"Details."
"No. You still went through that. And you worked hard to be back so soon. Arizona had no right to diminish that. What she said to Callie…. Do you think it's 'cause she wasn't out there?"
"I don't know…. I wish you hadn't gone through it, and I would've done anything to get home to you. But it would've been…less bearable."
"It would've been harder for me to talk about it, but I think…with you I could've. I'd trust you to make calls on my spine or my brain. I'd have let you cut my leg off out there if it got to it. I get the stoic soldier thing, but isn't that also about counting on people?"
He'd had a feeling that she wasn't only talking about Robbins, but he'd let it go. Even when she'd asked him to check his phone one last time. "Nothing. But—"
"It's fine."
"I'll talk to her first thing tomorrow."
"I'm telling you, it's fine."
The next day, staring at another storm, he wondered what it meant that she still considered her friendship with Cristina to be its own entity; the one thing she'd lie to him about. She deserved to have things that were hers. This year had already been invasive and the OB-GYN was just getting started—he'd read ahead, next month introduced the amnio debate. If she didn't want Addison consulted, he'd have to go to another sister.
Inside, he discovered a defaced image of his face. He made sure no one was looking before he grinned at it. If Mark could see this…. If Mark had been there, he would've drawn mustaches on the posters without being asked; without ulterior motive or approval. Derek wouldn't be surprised if there weren't rumors about his ghost being the one behind the prank.
That might've been Derek's ulterior motive for all of this. To remind anyone who thought he'd done any of it for the money that Mark had existed. That this hospital had been better for his presence.