After several months of speculation following the closure of the emergency department at Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital, King County can rest assured. You will find a hospital exactly where there has been one for nearly a century. It will be a fully modernized, 500 bed facility with a state-of-the-art burn unit, a devoted spinal injury treatment program, and a renewed commitment to providing individualized care. New equipment will allow the hospital's radiology department to go digital, as will a push to scan and computerize all patient records. Surgical imaging will be a focus, with updated endoscopic technology and intraoperative ultrasound machines, with a plan to invest in nascent intraoperative MRI systems.

The upgrade that will spark the most human interest is the renaming of the facility. An institution of Seattle, Seattle Grace was likely named after Grace Hospital, a nineteenth-century facility in First Hill. The current facility opened in 1920, and in the mid-seventies their surgical education program became nationally ranked, producing world-renowned surgeons such as Dr. Ellis Grey (inventor of The Grey method), and the future Chief of Surgery, Richard Webber. Under his lead in late 2008, a merger was arranged which led to the absorption of Mercy West Hospital. Although its standing has risen and fallen over the years, the hospital remains a magnet for surgical talent. This may have affected a continuing budget deficit, but any institution would have been rocked by recent events. In May of last year, six surgeons were traveling to consult on a conjoined twin separation. The charter plane they had contracted for crashed, leaving the doctors lost in the wilderness for several days. The plane's pilot, Jerry O'Connelly, 56, died on impact, and all passengers were injured, several severely. Dr. Mark Sloan, Head of Plastics, passed away of his injuries.

Due to insurance technicalities, the payout from the ensuing lawsuit had to come from the hospital directly. Attempts were made at cost-cutting, including the closure of the emergency department, it ultimately appeared that the hospital would have to be sold to healthcare conglomerate Pegasus, or closed entirely.

Who swooped in to save the day? The doctors who survived the crash. Coupling with the Avery Foundation, they reinvested the majority of the money awarded in the suit to reopen the facility as a doctor-run hospital. Their statement reads: "We were seeking to ensure that no one else would have the experience we did. The true issue is that the hospital budget was so tight that costs were cut without considering employee welfare. Was the same true for our patients? If it wasn't, it would have been if we'd become a corporate franchise.

"We believe that a hospital should not be run by a board interested only in profit. Our priority is people. Our patients, the students we take in as an academic hospital, the workforce that keeps the place running, and the broader population who will benefit from the innovative research we produce.

"We plan to work with other local health facilities to be able to provide continuity of care for our patients. In addition to a devoted acute care unit for spinal cord injury we will be partnering with inpatient rehabilitation program Roseridge to provide continuing care. It is our hope that we will be able to create partnerships like this all through the Seattle area.

"Our philosophy is very much influenced by that of our late colleague, Dr. Mark Sloan. His devotion to individualized, evidence-based care is disappearing in today's world where the hospital industrial complex seeks to find one-size-fits-all treatments. The human body is not a machine made of identical parts, it is a product of nature, and every single one is unique. No matter how experienced, surgeons should remember that each procedure they do alters a human life. In contemporary society, doctors are often highly-praised and appreciated. We will seek to ensure that our patients know how much we appreciate them, just as Dr. Sloan did.

"Dr. Sloan did not take on every patient willing to pay to have their body resculpted. He was honest about what plastic surgery could and couldn't do. But when he operated, he became a Michelangelo, working not to craft something new, but to reveal what already existed. To allow his patients to see themselves in their reflections. To do this, Dr. Sloan made a point of getting to know his patients. He didn't work with bodies: he worked with people. He loved people. He found them fascinating, and beautiful. He invented techniques, created instruments, and took on research to give each patient the maximum result.

"Dr. Sloan never hesitated to ensure that he was providing the care his patient needed. Not the easiest procedure, or the fastest. Not the most lucrative surgery, or the coolest technique. Never in the pursuit of glory, but because it was necessary for his patient, sometimes to save their life, and other times to help them feel a little bit more comfortable with the person in the mirror. He was, it was often said, a wizard.

"From the time he was a child, Dr. Sloan adored the film version of The Wizard of Oz. Most notable was his sympathy for Oz the Great and Powerful. The man behind the curtain, who discovers that his real power lies in helping people uncover strengths they already possess.

"In a city where the greenery of the Pacific Northwest is as dazzling as anything in Oz, we refuse to look through emerald-colored glasses. There is inequality here. There is poverty. There are people whose lives we could have saved if the fear of debt hadn't kept them from coming in. Healthcare has become an industry in this country, and the goal has become not healing but efficiency. It is not the patient who matters but the money that can be eked from their insurance. That is not the kind of care we want to provide.

We want to provide what our patients need to heal. To highlight that and to serve as a reminder for how we plan to grow, and in honor of the doctor whose example we are following, we are proud to announce that we will reopen our doors as the Emerald City Community Hospital.

Derek was almost never the lone body roaming their house at night, so it shouldn't have surprised him to find out that he wasn't. But he'd checked on Zola, and he'd gotten up to keep meredith from waking from the solid sleep she'd drifted into—rare when she'd woken up at three.

When he'd woken to muffled sounds coming from her side of the bed, he'd immediately tuned in to judge whether or not to wake her from the dream. Then, he'd turned to her and discovered that he'd made a false assumption. Whatever the dream had been, she was no longer in it.

"Thank fuck," she'd muttered, catching his gaze. The frantic movement of her hand increased, and her breath picked up to match. "Shut up," she added, the last word pitching up in a whine.

"I didn't say anything." He,kissed her flushed cheek. A single piece of hair had fallen over her eye. An adorable excuse to trace her hairline and let his thumb keep moving along the tender spot behind her ear.

"Your face did. Not funny. Your fault."

"Was it?"

"Mmmm." She gasped, her head arcing backward. "Tell you later."

His cock stirred at the promise in that. Why not now? But if she'd wanted him now, she'd be on top of him as soon as she'd seen he was awake. "What can I do to make up for it?"

"You…you c-can…. No, never mind, got it…I got…." Full Boston, more of a slur than he'd ever heard tequila cause. Tequila and exhaustion, maybe, in her en-suite at the old house, back when it'd taken a pyramid of shots for her to agree to be cared for. He longed to do that now, to respond to the plea she'd let creep into her voice, but not her words, "Please, yes, please…."

She'd tossed the covers down to her hips, and he focused on the pale skin of her arm, uncovered, and almost unmarred, with the exception of a fading cluster of crescents on her forearm. Personally, he didn't count them; the frustration that had led to them had been caused by the financial guy from the Foundation trying to counter every item on the proposal they'd written for the daycare. She'd taken point on that, and hadn't shown any sign of doubting her own qualifications. If his hypothesis was right, using her instincts as a mom this way; along with all she'd learned before Zola came home, could lead to progress.

"C'mon, c'mon…." She grabbed his hand and raised her pelvis off of the bed. straining as though the release she needed was physically in front of her. He turned his smile to the pillow when she fell back with a disappointed groan. "I wanted that." Her half-awake pout was worth being woken for.

"What you get will be better. You want a hand?"

Making her try to glare at him when her eyes showed nothing but arousal was one of his favorite games. "Stupid…. I-I just…just wanna…just needta…. Mmmm."

"Feels too good to change anything?"

"S-Sorry."

"Hey. I love watching you take care of yourself." He scooted toward her, nuzzling the curve of her neck directly over a spot-marking freckle. "You woke up throbbing, huh?" She mewled in ascent, one of her ankles twining with his as she squirmed. "So close to the edge that the tension from stretching your legs out almost took you over?"

"Yeaaah," she sighed, her hips rolling.

Possibly that friction had set her off before she'd settled into reality—he'd watched it happen, and God it was hot—and that venting of tension had misaligned her levels of arousal and desire; making her start rubbing before she was ready.

He could work with that.

"Pull it back a little. One finger between your lips. Bend it up slowly." He crooked his index finger and demonstrated along the inside of her arm. She liked that, a tiny gasp preceding her mewl of objection. It was followed by a low moan. Her face relaxed into one of his favorite smiles.

"Good girl. Keep playing right there. Just twitching that bud. You're gonna finish so hard, baby." He stroked her hair, appreciating the chance to just watch her. Her face moved constantly, struggling to form the sounds coming from her mouth into something coherent. Soon, her moans sharpened, and her legs got going. "What's happening under there? Are your lips so puffed up that they're trying to hold your finger in place?"

"Yeah," she gasped.

"The tip of your clit almost poking out between them?" He got a response in the way she started rocking. Stroking right across at that point could strip her of control, so much so that he'd forever claim he had reference for what it felt like to be kicked by a mule.

"More. Gotta…gotta rub…." The leg closest to him bent and fell to the side.

"Wait. I'm gonna count to ten. Keep going there for ten seconds." She gave him a defiant look. "Or I can hold on to that hand, too. Less of this, but you'll come harder."

"No-no-no-no-no-no-no."

He counted while a battle between ecstasy and desperation played out on her face. She could've ignored him; he'd felt her body demand it if he tried to keep her at this end of the plateau for too long. He'd also discovered how fast she'd try to go on her own, depriving herself of build-up.

It took her a moment to process "ten," or else held off another few seconds before she shifted, putting more of her hand to work.

"Ahhh…ahhh." She was thrashing this time, flipping the blanket off entirely. It might not be too long before she wouldn't have a chance at doing this solo without battery-operated assistance. Already, she couldn't sleep on her back, and she had her arm going around her belly rather than over.

She tightened her grasp on his hand, shoving her pelvis up again. The tremors coursing through her got stronger, and he considered interceding to move the elastic of her waistband. The thought was wiped out by her crow of triumph. "Got it, got it, got it, gotit, got…got me….s'got me. Oh, fuck, Derek!"

"I've got you." He wrapped his free arm around her shoulders, and pressed their clasped hands under her rib-cage. He'd never been sure whether it was the support or the resistance that helped; only that she'd always let him hold her at this point. She pulled up on his hand as she came, and he lifted his arm to keep supporting her shoulders.

He'd considered the parallels between this and labor in the past. Maybe not before Addison cracked up after telling him to push-push-push while he was taking her past that last hurdle. ("More proof that the men searching for a the evolutionary reason for female orgasm have never seen one," she'd noted. "They'd have decided it was practice for delivery a long time ago, and never realized it's the same tissue.").

Holding Meredith while she gave a last, interrupted cry, and then crumpled against him, he didn't think about the similarities anatomically. He wondered how to ensure that letting him support her was the instinct she'd give into, not the stoic belief that she didn't need or deserve that.

Her chest was still heaving when she rolled onto her side, still clutching his hand. "Thanks."

"Absolutely my pleasure."

"Not, actually." She snickered, and dragged her foot up his ankle.

She had no idea. Their lives refused to let him forget that every rise and fall of her chest was a minor miracle. Having her heart under his hand and knowing it was oxytocin and not adrenaline causing it to keep pace with a hummingbird's had become one, too.

"I can…." Her hand came down to the front of his pajama pants. She made contact before he could intercept her. "That was your dream come true, huh?"

Her eyes were hooded, and just the change in her grip on his hand told him that it would be minutes before she fell asleep again. Even with the increase in their workload, there were nights where she woke to pee and never slept again, As much as he'd appreciate feeling those long fingers still sticky with her fluids, it wouldn't be worth the guilt if she couldn't drift off immediately afterward

"Rain check."

"Y'sure?"

That she needed the rest? Absolutely."Don't want to wake the baby."

"She's in'er bed." He smiled to himself. Good and goofballed. She slapped away his attempt to fix the pillow that had been between her knees at the start of the night. "Don't need it."

"You'll change your tune when you can't get your hand down there."

"Hmm...? Derek! Dirty!"

He laughed and made use of his grasp on her hand to keep her elbow from coming his way.

"'Sides," she added. "Humping doesn't do it for me. Scissoring wasn't my thing, either. Sorry 'bout your fantasies."

He managed not to splutter into her hair, but it was a close call. "That's, uh, more of a sliding...situation, isn't it?"

"With our lube stash, sure. But when it's like…." She interlocked two Vs with her fingers and demonstrated

"Submitting the time I was on the phone with—"

"S'different," she insisted. "That wasn't like…." She bumped the Vs in a way that still seemed anatomically unlikely. "S'not like the pornos."

There was a chance—he gave it seventy-five percent—that she was fucking with him. She'd said much weirder things in the afterglow, but she was aware of that.

The satisfied la mincina sound she made as a muscle in the leg over his spammed was real, and he focused on trying to come up with a formula for which level of post-coital Meredith he had.

He called her "clit-drunk" and "goofballed" for a reason, and he couldn't see her face to check for the savvy smirk. The last time they'd grabbed fifteen minutes before the latest drop on this rollercoaster, he hadn't realized she'd made it there until they were in the hall. One of the techs they were friendly with had asked if they were hoping for a girl or a boy, like people did,

His wife had replied, "Yes, as long as it's human. There's still time for it to be an alien that gnaws its way out of me."

He'd thought she was just being Meredith until gnaws.

"Hey," she murmured. "Love you."

"Luff you, too," he mimicked.

"Shuddup."

He kissed her shoulder and then rested his chin on it. Her breathing deepened.

A week ago, she'd found him reviewing pain management policies downstairs, and put her iPad in front of him. One glance revealed an article about pregnancy rhinitis and snoring.

"I thought you weren't researching—"

"I wanted to see if the nosebleed thing was likely to reoccur, and it's the same—You haven't been using the earplugs."

"You noticed that." Her duh face was the most exaggerated he'd ever seen. "Can I blame it on Zola?"

"What do you think?" she'd demanded, tapping the edge of the tablet on her palm. Then her fury had transformed, and she'd bit her lip. "I'd thought... I almost always sleep on my side now, I figured it wasn't a thing. I figured the only issue with my nose would be that it's freaking huge already. I didn't think…the mucus membranes softening and swelling is a recipe for snoring. I don't wanna keep you up before there's even a baby."

He stood up, putting his arms around her. "Your nose is not huge," he'd assured her, and kissed it. There might have been the start of some swelling due to increased blood flow, but he wasn't going to let her convince herself she was preeclamptic. "And you're not keeping me up." His worries were what kept him from falling asleep before she did, and that they were about her was the natural byproduct of a relationship. "I've gotten used to it."

She'd accepted that; proof that the times he'd woken to the sounds of her distress—awake or not—having him there was significant to her.

Truthfully, he'd become grateful for her snoring. For all reminders that she was alive. She knew he still had nightmares sometimes, but he told her they were about the woods. Carr, who he'd finally started seeing with the hospital transition in progress, disapproved. Admitting that what made him panic the most were images of her blue-faced, her lungs giving up; her blood covering both their hands; even just her eyes going dull, would not help her. Long-term, that didn't benefit them. Those dreams were rare, and he counted himself lucky that the pregnancy hadn't shown up in them.

The research he was doing to essentially serve as her doula, or at least a highly-informed partner might be focused on complication-free births, but they still triggered memories of cases Addison had taken on over the years. That Meredith was healthy, and things had progressed well so far was no guarantee. Successfully delivering the baby was no guarantee. He operated on people every day who'd acknowledged that the anesthesia could kill them, because the probability was , he could dismiss complications with extremely low numbers, but the fact was, they wouldn't be listed if they hadn't happened to someone. It was entirely possible for Meredith to be the next one. He couldn't give in to thinking that way for long—she did it enough for both of them—but the moments where his mind was overtaken did give him a sense of how her thoughts ran. She deserved more credit for holding things together.

His life hadn't exactly been misfortune free. Far from it, he'd have to admit, after this year. But they tended to be big, life-changing events. Meredith had those, but she'd also had a lifetime of daily disasters that came from not having, or not trusting, anyone to get her out of a situation. So many of her stories started where he would've called Mom, or Kath, or his uncle Adam—Mark would've been with him, and even that gave him someone more reliable than most people she'd hung out with—He had a guess that the reason she'd managed to avoid dependence during her try everything once era was that her deeply ingrained awareness that she wasn't going to be rescued kept her from letting go. Dr. Wyatt's theory that her appendicitis could've been a symptom of a body worn down from stress of all kinds; he wondered if there wasn't some chance that her body had given in, knowing that this time she'd be taken care of. Not consciously. She'd saved herself the day she drowned, and would never have expected to be saved.

When she'd said she was ready to try for their "crappy babies," he hadn't realized what that really meant. It'd only been a few months after she'd donated part of her liver to Thatcher, and needed more care than, potentially, any point since she was tiny. She'd been ready to trust him to take care of her in the case of complications.

To him, allowing him to take on this prep had been her admitting that she wasn't good at worrying for herself. Even in a healthy labor, there often came a point where most people giving birth were detached or incoherent, which was part of the reason for doulas and birth plans. Meredith, understandably, laughed at planning for the best case scenario in most situations; let alone one almost certain to require some alteration. If things went wrong, he believed she'd be as level-headed as ever. His job was to ensure that she didn't have to be, and that an easily resolvable situation didn't start to feel like a crisis. Once he knew her preferences, he'd do everything he could to ensure they were abided by. Hopefully, they'd be able to provide the same for all other patients, but in this case he was only concerned with one.

Every doctor had to weigh the chance of complication against the cost of intervention, but OB was known for including variables like tradition and staff convenience into the equation. The first time Meredith had mentioned the episiotomy, he'd remembered watching a push end with the baby's head stretching the mother's peritoneum, obviously primed to slide though with the next contraction. The OB resident had made the cut because they were nearing shift-change. He trusted Connie, but he also knew how hard Addison had had to fight to get Doppler monitoring and delayed clamping implemented. The health care in general suffered from an average research to practice gap, sometimes called the chasm, of up to seventeen years, something they were specifically working to bridge.

He lay there listening to her snoring, and the occasional sounds from the nursery monitor for long enough to know he was going to be restless, not just awake. He'd seen an email from a contact at the ACNS with notes on his program proposal had come in on his phone. He decided to go down to read that. Drexel had made the shift from general to neuro as a resident, and he was proof-of-concept at minimum. They wanted to have everything in hand to go to the board. That they were a quarter of that actually complicated things. They couldn't just schedule a meeting with Owen, and see what happened. Avery having a vote made everything feel more precarious than it'd seemed making the original plans in their dining room. Which, granted, was strange, since nothing had been certain then. Outside of the board, it would be seen as Meredith getting special treatment, but she'd said they'd seen that in plenty of situations when it hadn't been true, she might as well take advantage.

He'd watched her for a minute once he slid out of the bed. The new pillow had stayed in place this tune. Lately, she'd been curling up so tightly that the first one they'd tried kept slipping away.

He'd came around the corner from the stairs assuming that all of the other inhabitants of the house were asleep. He'd walked past the dining table, his focus on the laptop he'd left on the living room desk, when motion in his periphery made him turn toward the kitchen counters.

"What are you—?"

Lexie startled and lost the impressive balance she was using to lever herself up on the counter and hold the grabber one-handed. He left the question behind to bolt across the distance between them, catching her around the waist before she fell sideways, The handle of the case slipped off the end of the grabber and hit the ground with a clatter.

"Th-That wasn't as loud as I'd expected," she stammered,. "Don't think it woke anyone."

"Probably not."\ He lowered her into her chair, and picked up the case. An idea of what was happening was forming in his mind, while at the same time he tried to convince himself he was being paranoid. He slammed it onto the counter and took out a random bottle of painkillers. Meredith's, from right after the crash. She'd taken eight of thirty. Just looking at the bottle, it did look like there were twenty-two pills, but something was off. He opened it and tipped a couple into his hand. They were white ovals, but they were oblong. Thin. He didn't have to look at the inscription in the light to recognize acetaminophen.

He'd been given Percocet for his wrist in December. There should've been fourteen left. There were six.

"I'm going to wish it had, huh?"

He didn't respond. For the first time he formed a real opinion on the baby's gender. He hoped for a boy, to save Zola from the mayhem caused by little sisters.

Meredith couldn't go home.

Possibly ever.

She couldn't stay at the hospital. She should've been able to. She was supposed to be okay at the hospital. That was what had held her together all day, like a self-fulfilling whatever.

The decision to stay open with a skeletal staff during the transition had been unanimous. They were all junkies who couldn't deal with not working for the time it would take to change the logos; let alone to do the remodels they'd planned, comparatively minimal as they were. She was overseeing the transformation of the daycare into the Emerald City Community Hospital Childcare Center, which would include an after-school program that picked up at the three area schools. She'd run almost every idea past Bailey. It'd reminded her a little of preparing for Zola to come home, originally. Except this time she knew that she might be—would be—losing her as a mentor, and possibly as a friend.

Assuming the board accepted Derek's plan. Assuming she went through with the switch. She wanted to, so much, and that made her afraid of what the catch would be. Derek wanted her to tell people, to commit, which was logical. Asking if they could wait until the fetus evacuated sounded nuts—and maybe it was safer this way. No one could take a baby that hadn't been born.

Crazy. She got that that fear was crazy. Giving up neurosurgery had not been what brought Zola home. Going back did not mean she regretted the reason for the choice. There was nothing that could lead to having a child taken from her. It wasn't going to lead to the kind of stress that would put the fetus in danger. She knew all of that. It was a strange experience knowing a fact, and having your mind reject it. Holding onto contradictions that just kept piling up made her feel like her mind was going to split; an organic lobotomy. Too bad that excising part of her brain wouldn't fix her.

(She'd told herself she wanted to go into a specialty that prioritized good, old fashioned 'cut it out and sew 'em up' techniques. With brain-mapping and microsurgery, and studies in plasticity, neurosurgery could look totally different in a decade. It looked different than it had a decade ago. She'd wanted to rise with it. Still did, when it didn't feel like her blood had become lead, weighing her down.)

She ended up at the old house without putting a lot of thought into it. An instinct driven by this particular feeling of ignorance, and being certain she'd missed countless signs. No one was home. She had a key, but she didn't want to go in. Being outside, even on a quiet street, she felt less alone.

Her leg protested the climb up the steps, but at least she could do it. She smirked at her inevitable return to thoughts that she'd wanted to leave in the supply closet. The reason she'd barely felt the edge of the metal break through the ridge on her calf. That cut had been the one that hurt, made her drop the blade, horrified, even as her breath had evened out. Around her, white blurs had settled into shelves. She'd dressed it and almost disposed of the leftover gauze. Letting blood soak into her jacket would've been right, she'd thought. It'd took her a long moment to understand that that was the same sort of thought that had gotten her onto the closet floor in the first place.

She startled at the movement of the swing underneath her. They'd returned the nail to lock it for Zola's benefit, before she'd even been theirs. She'd become a fiend for swinging, though, and they'd spent plenty of teething nights sitting out here with her. Just before they'd moved, Meredith had been clearing up breakfast while Derek loaded their bags in the car. Zola had followed him out, and while she'd been good about not attempting the porch steps alone, Meredith had hurried to retrieve her. When she'd gotten to the front door, Zola had been pushing Rawr on the swing, dutifully holding out the nail when Meredith asked what she was doing.

Thatcher had said she was always catching her fingers. Had he been watching from the kitchen? Raking leaves she would jump in? Or had he trusted the swing to keep her interest if she got past the door? Probably not. She'd have tried to walk to Seattle Grace. (Had she?).

It didn't matter. She couldn't judge. Look what she'd missed. She'd been as oblivious as any of them—More! It was worse, wasn't it, that she'd wondered? Lexie's increased tendency to retreat to her room. Snapping at Zola. Avoiding Derek. She'd ignored it all, because the return of babbling Lexie, repeating facts from her new friends, had been a relief after months of broody silence. She had seen a difference, and before this morning, she'd thought it was improvement. Like she'd thought she was improving.

There was so much irony involved. That she'd once asked Lexie if she was a secret cutter. That she'd never been able to tell if Sadie had snorted her allowance—she'd thought it was because Sadie was always kind of manic—That she was sitting on this porch, like she didn't know how to be anywhere else while her life fall apart.

It wasn't her life. Not really. Lexie's problem wasn't hers. Her sister was the one with a fight in front of her. Lexie was in legitimate pain; treating dependence wouldn't be a matter of willpower and NA.

More irony: The truck that pulled up wasn't Alex's.

Meredith had parked on the street, and the porch was dark. She went unobserved as Owen and Cristina climbed out and meandered up the walk. Cristina laughed at him grabbing her waist. Meredith was glad. Cristina's worry for him had been so genuine; maybe this was best for both of them.

They didn't notice her until they were halfway up the steps. She was the one caught, but Cristina froze like an animal in a hunter's sires.

"Cristina? Oh. Grey. This is…unexpected?"

"Yeah. Alex wasn't at the hospital, so I thought…."

"He's taking shifts at the urgent care," Cristina said, and finally came the rest of the way up.

"I knew that." She hadn't remembered it, but she'd known. "Just not…when."

"I'll get going, then," Owen said, with a tight smile. Meredith would bet anything he'd decided she was responsible for the stress and secrecy of the past few weeks.

He was right, sort of.

"Don't—" Meredith stood up, overbalanced, and caught herself on the railing. A splinter made its way into her finger. "Crap. Thanks, kid," she muttered in the fetus's direction. Cristina and Owen exchanged a look. "I'll go."

"Don't be a moron," Cristina said. "You've been sitting here in the cold for a reason."

Meredith hadn't been cold. Could've been hormones. She doubted it. If she said that aloud, they'd doubt it more.

"Here." Owen crossed behind Cristina to approach her, holding out a multi-tool.

"Were you a scout, or is it a military thing?"

"He's a boy scout whether he was officially enrolled or not," Cristina said. In Owen's bashful expression, Meredith could see the boy he'd been, learning basic first aid. Had he practiced on his sister?

"Hey, if Mark and Derek hadn't earned their wilderness badges, we'd have been a lot worse off." As she said it, Meredith remembered the makeshift fishing hook she'd fashioned for Derek. It'd been a symbol that she believed in his ability to problem solve, and he wasn't alone.

If she'd gone home, she'd be part of the problem.

Owen plucked the splinter out and smiled at her. "See? No problem." He propelled her toward the house, closing his hand on her forearm to help her over the threshold. Relatively, it didn't hurt that much. It wasn't even a bad cut, and there were three layers of padding there—jacket, sweater, gauze—None of that mattered. Cristina turned around before she'd gotten her wince under control, and she immediately felt the blood drain from her face in reaction to the scrutiny.

Cristina had had the pieces positioned, and it took only a second for her to snap them into place. When she turned away, Meredith was sure her expression held disappointment of a sort she most associated with her mother.

Shouldn't she be feeling that toward herself? She'd been okay. Hell, she'd woken up this morning hoping to find Derek ready to know the details of the dream that had gotten her so turned on the night before. She hadn't needed his assistance, and based on the books, she would soon. Having him awake had made it notably better, and not just because she'd been able to give up on trying not to disturb him. He'd had the voice. The gravely tone that was even hotter tinged with sleep did a lot for her. She'd been ready to match him once she was awake enough to describe exactly how they'd defiled the O.R. in her subconscious. Instead, she'd been woken by a hungry Zola, and a gloomy sky that meant Derek wasn't out catching breakfast.

He had been making it. She'd tried to shake off the sense of something being wrong, until she'd been on the stairs, and heard him tell Lexie, "You're gonna need the protein."

With no awareness of the situation, she'd wanted to retreat back into the conversation she and Zola were having about the colors of Muppets. Comparing Elmo's orange nose to Ernie's felt and his red nose to Elmo's fur might not have been solving world hunger, but she could believe it said something about the world—especially once you added in the very exciting fact that Zoe's fur was "al-Zo" orange.

"Al-Zo" was Zola's word of the month. Generally meaning "me too," and following the toddler logic of: ZO-la should AL-so—AL-ways—get/do/have what she'd seen someone else get/do/have. Sofia has a juice box? "Al-Zo, juice!" Daddy's heading for the car? "Al-Zo go!" Wiggling her little butt between them on the sofa? "Al-Zo sit."

Meredith hated Mer-ry, Mer-iner and Mer-de jokes as much as Zola loved Z'okay, Zo funny, and Zo my! There was a lesson in that, related to naming the next one, but she didn't know what.

"Why don't I make you girls something warm to drink and you can catch up. " Owen opened a pair of cabinets where she'd kept the nice plates Izzie had bought at a yard sale. Funny, Alex had a liquor cabinet. Side bars had always been more her speed. Did that need to change now? She didn't know. She hadn't asked.

"We have cocoa mix or…."

She watched him move bottles around, hyperaware that Cristina must think she needed watching. If she wasn't pregnant, would she have gone to Joe's, in place of the supply closet? Maybe. But if the same mechanism was involved, she wouldn't have been able to stop herself for the benefit of the fetus.

Cutting was messed up, but, hell, doctors had bled expectant mothers as recently as two hundred years ago, trying to treat the water retention she had and the crotch shock she dreaded. Had it increased the deaths in childbirth? Yes, but America wasn't doing great there in the twenty-first century. Whatever she'd done to herself was nominal in that regard.

Owen stopped rummaging with a sigh. "Yeah, that's it. Tea's at my place."

"Cocoa's fine."

Like this didn't already remind her of those months of intern year while they all danced around the hospital lying to themselves. Freaking juju.

"You gonna take that jacket off at any point?" Cristina asked, and then jerked her head toward the living room.

"Sure."

It felt strange, still, moving through this house when it wasn't hers. It had been the house house that meant home to her for most of her life, even though she'd lived in Boston far longer. She'd fantasized about running away to it as a teenager, sure she was already totally independent—the difference between ordering takeout and dealing with property taxes beyond her—Now she was a guest, edging her sleeve along her left arm, even though she had way more faith in her abilities as a doctor than to think she'd bled through a non-stick gauze pad and a third of a roll of gauze. She'd steri-striped the incision—"wound," Wyatt reminded her—and it'd be healed before the adhesive of the benzoin wore off. (She wasn't supposed to use that stuff, if she could avoid it. She liked the smell, and that added to the ritual of the action. She hadn't been able to locate mastisol in her frenzied shelf-raiding.)

Hanging her coat, she could see the corner of the kitchen where her mother's wrists had puddled on the tile.

If she was her mother, she'd have sent a cryptic text. Don't come home! Definitely don't look at the swing. Maybe she'd have let herself in and—

She had a key. She'd sat out there, with a phone telling her it was in the thirties, and whether she'd felt it or not…. Well, the fetus hadn't been at risk of freezing. She was just trending toward self-destructive, and what was new about that?

How are you defining new?

She'd have an answer when Wyatt was actually the one asking.

She tugged the cuffs of her sweater down, remembering being seventeen and cutting thumbholes in over-sized hoodies.

She headed for the single couch. At least she could still pull her legs up without putting her shoes on the cushion. Why hadn't she just shucked her boots? They weren't tight. Not yet. But that would put one more step between her and the door. She shouldn't have come here. Thinking all of that only made her feel more messed up, and the buzzing under her skin had already started again.

"So?" Cristina appeared in the doorway. "What'd you need Evil Spawn for?"

"Nothing. I mean…. I'm a terrible sister."

"Oh?" Cristina raised an eyebrow and sat across from her. Not contradiction. Also, not duh, I know that better than anyone, which she'd expected. She wished Owen would appear. She wanted the burning mug.

"Lexie's a pill-popper."

She wanted to course correct as soon as the glib phrase crossed her lips. It was the same as any proclamation she'd made to Cristina over the years. Derek's married, my mommy's a whore, my father's a lush. She hadn't considered herself judgmental, just honest. It wasn't like she'd been speaking from a high horse. A carousel horse, maybe, never fully removed from being a crazy, slutty, home-wrecking cutter.

She wasn't honest. She was horrible. A hypocrite. There'd been summers of beaches, of festivals, of clubs, a blur of sweat, skin, and sound, and she'd popped whatever she'd been given.

"Why's that got you all…" Cristina spiraled one hand in the air; her eyes falling on Meredith's. She stopped pinching the skin between her fingers.

Why? The voice was Wyatt's—Why-Why Wyatt. She's your best friend, this frightens her. Let her know you're improving.

"It helps," she said, deciding not to throw around therapy terms; Cristina didn't want to be part of that. "And, why wouldn't it? She's my sister."

"Yeah…?"

"That's…. It's…." She sighed. Alex would've gotten it. He talked to Aaron's doctors in Iowa, for Pete's sake! "She's living with me. I help her shower! I should've noticed!"

"How? She lost her McSt— No, he was her McDreamy. She lost her career. There's no normal for her, yet. How were you supposed to knowwhat was abnormal? You're not the member of your household trained in pain management. With all you've be—"

"Don't." Meredith's jaw clenched along with her fists. She was sick of hearing about all she'd gone through. "Nothing's happened to me. I wasn't blown up. I didn't drown…permanently. Derek got through being shot. Zola came home. I didn't so much as break a bone in the plane crash."

"Neither did—"

"You exhausted yourself. You were in bed for a while, and then you got up and moved to Rochester! You thought I was fine after the shooting, but to me, you went from the O.R. floor to being whole and healed because you caught a fish— Just because I didn'thave a visible breakdown…. I don't. I dodge, and I support the people who were hit—and I don't mind. I just…it'd be nice to see the ball coming for once! To be able to hit it back. But that's not how it works, and you…I…I've hit the ground so many times."

"Mer—"

"I thought I knew what'd be next," she continued, not wanting the sympathy, or pity, or whatever Cristina was offering. "I get why you couldn't deal with this." She held out her arm. Red had seeped into the white stockinette stitch of her sweater. "Crap." She hadn't felt it bleed through or reopen—

"What?" Cristina asked.

Meredith looked up at her and back at her arm. The sleeve was white. "Oh…. N-Nothing. Just, I think…I had a sweater like this as a kid. I wore it the night…. No, I already had on my nightgown…but, my shoes got all bloody…."

She'd sat criss-cross applesauce on the floor, her knees pointy under her jeans. Hopscotching over the puddles worked until she had to drag a chair over to the phone. "Grey residence, this is Meredith." "We have got to move that above your head." Mom screamed, and she'd spilled milk onto her nightgown. Mommy hadn't cooked all day. The nice janitor made her a grilled cheese and tomma-to. The paramedic helped her put boots on her bare feet. It was slushy out—but no. it was June when Mom slit her wrists. At night, after a day of manic rambling. She hadn't even had that long-sleeved nightgown until they were in Boston; Auntie had given it to her. Had Mom done something else, when Richard failed to chase them?

No. More likely, her brain was glitching.

" It doesn't matter." You already know I'm falling apart. "What I was saying is, I get it. But can I just…?" No. No 'can I?' Just say it. "It's never over. For me, it's never over. I'm so…so ready for disaster—hyper-vigilant, that the small ones seem bigger than they are, and…and they're either my fault, or not…not actually as bad for me…. I don't—My reactions get out-of-whack. Catastrophe is an inconvenience. Inconvenience is a catastrophe. I plow through, and whatever strength I have left goes into spinning the Wheel of Coping Mechanisms with Pat Sajak chanting, 'big money, big money!' There are a lot more of them than there used to be, but sometimes I hit bankrupt. I'm trying as hard as I can to change what that means."

"You don't do anything by halves."

That was something she'd heard as much as with all you've been through and you're strong, but she didn't bristle. It'd become true. She was proud of that. Ironically, slacking off was something she had been half-assed about. Convincing people she didn't care had been more exhausting than caring as much as she did.

"Exactly. I have to keep going. I want to. That's why…it's…it feels fast. Easy. The amount of time I spend doing Wyatt's bidding suggests otherwise." She sighed. Looking down put her bump directly in her line of vision, and she swallowed bile. Her mind had been what made her body toxic last time. How could she sit here saying—

"Hey. Look at me."

Meredith raised her head and cast her eyes at the lamp behind Cristina. "I thought I had time before the next crisis. I notice every weird twinge, but I let myself think I had three months."

"You do! Let Derek deal with Lexie. Get Evil Spawn on board. We'll take turns driving Three to N.A., or whatever.. You're not the only person who loves her."

"And that means what?" Meredith smacked her arm down on the arm of the sofa. The throb of the abused wound thrummed with her heart, pounding like she was headed for a crash. " I just opt-out of being there for he?"

She wasn't sure if she'd meant to reference Cristina's pulling away to protect herself.. Meredith couldn't do it. It wasn't a value judgement. She just couldn't.

"Is Littlest Grey on her way here?"

"Of course not." Idiot, you need to call Molly.

"What are you not, Mer?"

That was an idea. She'd dealt with talking to Derek's sisters in enough emergencies; he could call hers. She should ask Lexie, first. This was a medical issue, unless she identified it differently.

"So, you don't expect her to drop her life—"

"I'm not dropping anything. Hell, I'm here while she's going through withdrawal."

Been here before, Derek had texted her, before she went in to her last procedure for the day. I'll do what I can for her symptoms, but the cliche is true. The only way out is through. She figured he'd probably heard the version active users bandied around: the only way through is out.

Meredith circled her fingers against her temple. She didn't want to argue. Cristina had never quite gotten Meredith's relationship with Lexie. Initially, it'd been a mix of jealousy, and fear—of losing her job, and of losing Meredith—all increased by Sadie popping up around the same time. She loved Lexie herself; she'd just admitted it, and maybe considered her a sister by-proxy.

(Had considered? Meredith didn't believe sisterhood ended, but that they saw the role differently was her underlying thesis.)

"I'd love to know if Molly suspected anything," she said, forking the conversation. "We don't know if she was overdoing it at Christmas or not. She purloined most of the leftover Vicodin from the summer, and Oxy from after Derek's surgeries. She replaced that Vicodin with Tylenol, but I definitely had a bottle from the liver transplant, and that's totally gone."

"She was telling herself that she wouldn't use the entirety of the second bottle," Cristina surmised.

"Maybe. Or she figured we'd forget that we hadn't combined them, or something." The older ones were a lower dose, though and after going off the birth control she'd used for decades, her menstrual cramps sometimes didn't respond to anything else. "But Derek's too…Derek for that.

"She's been getting Callie to prescribe her extra without knowing they were for at least a month.. She says she didn't have other sources, but everyone she hangs out with likely has something, for legitimate reasons. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk to them. I don't know how much she's lying—or her addiction is. Damn it, it's not as though I've never hung out with a ju—user, or lo-lived with one."

Cristina raised her eyebrow again, but Meredith passed that fork. "Love" was a word she didn't apply retrospectively; like historians refusing to identify people who'd had same-sex relationships as "gay" if there wasn't an understanding of the concept, then. She'd considered herself to be going out with a few people who chased dragons, and she knew her harm-reduction attempts could've been seen as enabling. She'd never put herself in charge of "fixing" anyone. Not with how messed up she'd been herself.

"We're gonna get her on Suboxone, but she has to have been off the opiates at least forty-eight hours, and I—"

"You have got to stop piling everything on yourself."

"She was already mine!"

"Fine, but—"

"You can't control them." Owen's deep voice made Meredith startle. How much had he heard? What had Cristina told him apart from that? "Sisters," he clarified, handing her a mug that was hot, but not enough for her to doubt that he'd delayed his entrance. "What they do. Who they love." Meredith winced, but a side-long glance at him made her think that wasn't as pointed as it felt. He'd stopped in front of the polyester folding chair Alex had standing in for the armchair he had on layaway, but didn't sit. His gaze was aimed at the window, but not on the house across the street. "When they follow your example." Cristina coughed, and he shook off the distant look."I didn't mean…obviously that's not the situation here, Grey."

"No," Meredith agreed. Lexie had been saved from Death.

Owen studied her. At least, he looked at her, and he made that feel like being studied. It made her think too much of his sister-tracking in the fall. She didn't need less work in the upcoming months. She might, physically, before too long. She didn't know how she'd possibly cope.

They went on to talk about the hospital until their mugs were empty. Then, Meredith escaped to the half-bath under the stairs, turning on the faucet to keep herself from honing in on the murmurs that they didn't want to reach her. She planned to leave from there, but she returned to find Cristina standing alone. She glanced at the sleeve Meredith was unfolding.

"I had to wash my hands," she said, evenly. Derek wasn't that obviously watchful, and she wasn't the one who'd turned out to need watching.

Okay, so there had been times where maybe she'd gotten—made—a new mark in the time it would take to swallow a pill, but it didn't go unnoticed.

It didn't go unnoticed, because she hadn't put effort into hiding it. She'd done that easily living in a shared dorm room. No one, not even Derek, had asked about the scars.

Her invisible ones were far more noticeable.

"How long since the wheel landed on dancing it out?" Cristina asked, brandishing the stereo remote.

"Uh, at least twenty-eight weeks." Meredith gestured at her belly.

Cristina rolled her eyes. "I'll make sure you don't fall on your ass."

"It's not my ass I'm worried about," Meredith grumbled, but it wasn't as though Cristina hadn't kept her balanced before. She continued into the room while Cristina jabbed buttons, and then connected her phone to the aux cord, muttering about updating Alex's technology for his birthday. The truck he'd driven until this year had had a cassette player.

Finally, she got it going. Matt Nathanson's Modern Love blasted through the living room. He was exactly the kind of prep-school pretty boy masquerading as a punk that had populated her adolescence. Could've been one of them. She'd definitely known guys from Lexington. She couldn't say if there'd been a Matt, but there'd definitely been spiked hair and faded band t-shirts.

They danced it out.

They danced something out.

Meredith wasn't sure about it. Maybe things were different now. "Did Owen leave?" she asked as the third song faded out.

"Yeah. I wasn't gonna let you sleep in Karev's bed. I haven't seen him change the sheets in months."

"Oh."

"If the sun don't light

And the night won't turn.

We'll get a room at the end of the world

And we'll rewrite all the wrongs we've

learned…"

"When you talk to him, tell him…. Screw it. I'll tell him: I'm glad he didn't quit."

"Yeah. Me, too."

Maybe not so different, after all.

"Come on come on

Come on and dance with me, love

Just come on and dance with me love

'cause I need it, I need it now…."