"Well, well, if it isn't Baby Godiva."

"That," Derek said, glaring at Callie over the toddler in his arms. "Is a misrepresentation that feeds into the Wench's narrative."

"You sound exactly like Grey!" Torres's laughter made Sofia echo her. Zola sensed that she'd missed something, and possibly that it was about her. He caught her hand before it could lash out.

"Sofi bein' mean," she snapped. Her lip popped out when Sofia ignored her, and she gave him a look that said, "I used my words, they were ineffective, now can I pinch her?"

"Okay, yeah, we don't make fun of people, ladies," Torres lied.

Five minutes later, when the girls were happily mixing up toys from different activity areas, she nudged him. "Come on, it's funny."

"It…will be funny. When she's twelve, and we can tease her about starting an underwear show and tell ring at daycare. At the moment it's…well, it's one complication too many."

Callie frowned. "The stuff I know about gives you every right to say that. Why does it sound like there's more?" Derek shifted his briefcase into his left hand. Using it as much as possible without overdoing it outside of the OR was a balancing act. Maybe when he figured it out, he'd feel less like he was having to juggle everything in his life one-handed. "You're married to Meredith Grey. There's always more," she answered herself.

"Yeah," he agreed, slumping against the bar in the back of the elevator. "There really is."

He shouldn't be thinking about having this conversation. Maybe he could seek out Karev? He and Cristina had had a mostly unspoken understanding of what went back to Meredith. He wasn't sure with Karev, and the last thing he wanted would be for his actions to cost her a confidante.

Workmen were putting cameras in unoccupied patent rooms. As if theu needed to be reminded that the walls had ears around here. "How long do you have?"

"If I get a resident to round on my post-ops, I'm good 'til nine or so."

He looked at his watch, nodded, and then had to look at it again, because he didn't remember the time it had displayed. "Okay. Let's…Let's go to my office."

Through the walk to the admin side of the floor, he kept expecting to run into Meredith, even though her early surgery was the reason he'd dropped Lexie at Roseridge and taken Zola to daycare.

Lexie had decided to split her therapies; doing PT there and double OT, there and at Seattle Grace. Roseridge didn't have access to everything he'd gotten their rehab team outfitted with over the past few years, but he'd also been saying that they weren't going to retain patients if they didn't have a dedicated inpatient unit. Any suggestion about a partnership with Roseridge would have to wait for Cahill to be gone.

Is this our fault?

Maybe Callie would have a helpful answer to that.

"Is this going to explain Yang taking off on Christmas? I didn't dare ask her to come to the mall with ue, but I have to admit I missed her. She would've hated the inordinate amount of time we spent picking out boring toddler underwear, but it would've been funny."

" You did a good job," he commented, unlocking the office door. "Zola hates all of them."

"She liked the purple ones at the store. Cheered her up. I'm glad Arizona is spending Mommy time with Sof, but I have no idea why she couldn't have done it another time."

"Zola didn't mind the attention, I promise. She does love the purple, which is why they're on the weekend side of the drawer."

"God, I wish Mark was here to hear you talk about weekend panties."

His office was the place where he could most believe Mark was there; in the time before rounds or at the end of a day seeing pre- and post-ops. Meredith called it their "guy gossip time." She wasn't wrong.

It was larger than the one he'd had in his first two years at Seattle Grace; a concession for not being appointed chief—"Who cares if you didn't want it?" Meredith had said. "You're getting a couch!"—but it'd become just as cluttered. He'd spent too much of his six-ish years supposedly working for himself at a desk.

"It's going to be too much like we're Seattle Grace Private Practice. You'll hate it, and you'll blame me."

"It won't be exactly like working in a practice," he said aloud.

"Of course not. We take Medicare."

"Mark and I took Medicare. Were we getting many referrals for patients using it as their primary insurer? I'd have to check our records."

"They're in here somewhere, aren't they?"

"Uh. Actually…I burned basically every piece of paper in the house that night, including a few from the fire safe box. Left Addison's passport, hoping she'd be inclined to use it. My lawyer had to get copies of the financials from our office coordinator."

"Did you start the flame with your mariage license?"

"No, I wanted it to be court record that she destroyed our marriage." He moved a stack of folders off of a chair for Callie, and stared at the top one. Spinal Neuroblastomas was written in Lexie's loopy handwriting. A Post-it on the front said, "1st article cites age of 1 as as a "poor prognostic factor! HE'S 11!"

Wes Connors. The child whose case had made him flip a coin for Lexie, whose response might as well have been "never tell me the odds." He'd gotten an email from the boy's mother in June. It hadn't said if they'd made it to Normandy.

"Jee-zus," Callie said. He dropped the folder and sat on the couch. "You and Grey really are a match, aren't you? Ha, a match, get it? Because, pyros?"

"P-Pyros?" He coughed to mask his stumble over the word. The burn was a tiny pink mark that no one was ever likely to notice, and they'd have to be flat-out told that she'd lifted the lighter. Whatever he told Callie, he'd leave that out of it.

He'd noticed how many times she'd chosen somewhere that could be symbolic of injuries other people had sustained. Not in extreme ways, thank God. She could go deeper. She could introduce infection. She wouldn't. It was a saving grace that her due date was after the one-year anniversary. He'd mentioned the corollaries to Wyatt, who'd agreed that he might have something, but nit likely wasn't conscioous. She wasn't making light of what they'd gone through. (He hadn't needed a third-party to tell him that.)

"Yeah. All those candles around your wooden house out there last month? That was asking for combustion."

"Oh, those were perfectly safe." Derek clasped his hands, catching himself about to bite the edge of his thumbnail, which he hadn't done in a long time. He hadn't done this in a long time, figured out how to confide in someone, and how much. With Mark it had been everything, until it was nothing.

"I'm sorry Lit—Lexie had a bad experience with the gang downstairs. I don't know them as well as the in-patient crew, but they do good work. Might not be the worst thing. Brent is her type, and he's got some growing up to do."

"So does she. It's a little like having a taciturn seventeen-year-old around, but other times, all twenty-eight years are right there in her eyes. Not unlike Meredith as an intern, except…Lexie isn't trying to fit into some model of an adult, or a tetraplegic, or what have you. Meredith says it was like she had all these different versions of herself that had to synthesize. Lexie's been actively working toward being a doctor since she was sixteen—if not younger. She didn't have on blinders, necessarily, but 'going to be a surgeon' is a significant part of her identity.

"If there wasn't a benefit in doing them sooner, I'd suggest she wait for any rehabilitative surgeries. They're experimental, and she'd get better results in a few years. Also, she'll be better off if she goes in knowing that if it doesn't work perfectly, her life won't be over."

"Did you know that?"

"I did. I wouldn't have at twenty-eight."

"I can't remember if I'd even picked 'surgeon,' yet. Definitely thought I'd be going back to Botswana."

"In…March or maybe April, Lexie told me that if he stayed, she'd like to help Alex expand the program in country, since we can't provide acute care. That we should be teaching as well as swooping in to save. She could still do a lot of good work, but she wanted to be on the ground, there. And I don't know how much of it was…."

"Mark. That's true. On the other hand, yeah, travel is going to be difficult for her, but people do use wheelchairs in other places. Look at what's his name…." She snapped her fingers by her face. "John Hockenberry! The reporter. She can use a manual chair, can't she? So even if a place isn't perfectly accessible, she can manage if she has strong wheelchair skills."

"That's another reason she wanted to return to Roseridge for PT. They've got a gym that she describes as a wheelchair parkour course. You're right. But I see ADA violations everywhere, stuff I never noticed in years of working with SCIs and TBIs. The literature says that most places aren't designed for wheelchair users, which is why patients should have 'real world' experience before leaving a rehab facility. They're so matter-of-fact. We're not architects or politicians, but shouldn't we also be encouraging them to advocate, not just accept that that's how it is?"

"I've thought about that. The ableism stuff. Especially before Arizona got her leg, and just flat-out refused to leave the apartment. I'd love to be part of giving Lexie her grip dexterity back, but I don't think she needs it to contribute to the world. I knew an EMT with one arm at my internship hospital. But the thing is. you have to be able to live in the world to change it. Or, at least to have an environment you can live in. They have to learn what's out there, if it can get home, back to work, or even just in a place to who at needs to change."

"Know the rules before you can change them?" He'd always lived by that, and then only if the rules were unjustifiable. Even Meredith usually had a passing acquaintance with the rules she broke. He'd been incredibly off the mark, saying she didn't know the difference between right and wrong; she knew it too well. She had strong instincts, and that had been all she had to work with—Far more Ellis-isms applied to surgery than to real life.

Callie nodded. "Speaking of, when this whole thing at the daycare blows up, we're on your side. Sofia's not going to be trained before two like your potty prodigy, but she has already requested Minnie Mouse panties."

"Yeah, we heard she had 'Disney diaps.'"

"This isn't about the War on Welch, is it?"

"No. If anything, that's…helpful. Makena, from the Namboze program? She was with Mer when she got called in for 'the first time Zola got sent to the principal.' Makena also thought it was cute that Zola is so excited about her new clothes that she wanted to show them to her friends. Putting her in underwear she won't care to brag about was her idea.

"She was very impressed by Zola. She took her while Mer finished her liver transplant, and said what we knew: her progress this year is incredible."

"Not that you're bragging."

"On her. On Mer. I do my part, but…. They floor me, Callie. Together, and on their own. I don't know how I got so lucky. The other day, I handed a patient off to Ramsey, because I didn't want to miss dinner and bedtime. When I compare that to the way I used to squeeze every second out of the day…." He shook his head. Dinner hadn't been anything special. They'd figured they were safe letting Zola feed herself chicken tenders, but had left with a honey-mustard scented toddler.

"So, what's going on with Grey?"

"She…. Did you know she went on a plane last week?"

"You told me at your birthday thing. Three times."

"Right. Right, yeah. She…She did. And, she was…she is proud of it. She didn't…didn't pretend it didn't mean anything. I'm operating, she can fly, Lexie's home. We're going to have another baby. She's shining in the O.R. Zola knows half the organs in her Anatomy doll, and some letters. Mer deserves all the credit for that. There shouldn't be anything….

"After the crash, she had…moments. I guess flashbacks, but they weren't…they aren't all the woods. All the trauma she's gone through, and the survivor's guilt, Yang's…whole thing…. It's not about the crash, entirely. It's…Meredith…. She went through as much as any of us, but she wasn't severely injured in a visible way. She keeps going. So, she did.

"I saw that she wasn't okay, thank God. Enough to know that this time was different. I didn't know how it would….I saw…flags. She fought it, but she didn't have enough replacement skills, and I-I was wrapped up in my own concerns about the surgery."

"Derek—"

"Meredith…she started hurting herself around Thanksgiving." He hadn't said it aloud, and what he hated most about it was that he couldn't say when, exactly. Had he been home, and technically able to intervene? Had he been in the hospital, while she paced up and down the halls, with no good options for getting her thoughts to stop going in the same circle?

"Likely, Adele dying was the impetus. Stuff with that whole…rhombus…triggers her most self-destructive tendencies. And since she's pregnant…."

God, it might've been better if she'd just swiped a bottle from Bailey's open bar.

"She's seeing Wyatt, but it's not a matter of just stopping. She gets in her head about something, and I think it's like…. Out there, that darkness? It stays with you. Even with my hand fixed, I'm not the same person I was that day. For Meredith, there's so much of that…. She takes on so much, because to her, she's the one who can handle it. She gets lost in it, and can only see one way out."

"The pain she thinks she deserves," Callie said, and Derek thought his chest might cave in after his breath whooshed out of him. She got it. But the way she'd phrased it…. No. Meredith had done this before he'd made such a big deal about facing consequences.

"She had a migraine the night you took Zo—"

"Damn, I owe you another birthday present."

"Mer not being able to convince herself she was being a bad mom because she needed quiet was a gift. It was her first since the summer, and she's only had those few. I think it was stress—Hopefully not pregnancy-related, since she's not halfway through. I was afraid I'd have to figure out getting IV meds at two a.m. because she was hardly keeping anything down, and she didn't…seem to care. She'd say she shouldn't be complaining! It was nothing compared to what the rest of us went through—I told her honestly, seeing her have them, I'm not sure I have been in that much pain. Not even when she'd had to pin my wrist closed. I meant it, but I don't think she believed me.

"As soon as the meds started working, she spiraled. She was sure it was a isgn that her brain had taken a hit that hadn't shown up on Boise's scans, and I swear she sounded relieved at that. It wasn't—obviously she didn't cause any of that, but it gave me a glimpse into what she's thinking when she does, and….For her to feel like there was some sort of justice in that…."

"God. I'm sorry. Even if it was a pregnancy migraine, it could be the only one. Stock up on pain meds and Zofran. Not that it solves the base problem."

"It's treatable. From my perspective, that's a blessing."

"How's that related to Yang the Grinch?"

"Christmas Eve was mostly a really good day, but, uh, with…with Richard there…. God, you can't tell anyone about this. Any of it, but I'll…I'll make sure Mer knows you know."

"Tell her I guessed."

"Yeah, that's not…. She's paranoid enough about the cameras."

("It's not a thing in the O.R. but if…My brain has been hormone-hijacked. I'm crying all over the place, and if our weird Truman Show watchers see this? You're the only one who noticed the scars, and I try not to do it where it's all cry-for-help visible. Just, I can't, always. I can't even do that. No one would know if I carved a pentacle in my thigh, and I can't k-keep it…fuck I shouldn't be laughing, I'm so stupid-crazy. I can't keep it in my pants.")

Callie whistled.

"Hm? Oh." He followed her gaze down to her extended arm. "Callie…."

She shrugged, and held it out for another moment before she tugged her sleeve back down. "Told you I was the kid in the back eating her own hair. We're all messed up in as teenagers, aren't we? Just, gives her reason to buy it."

"No. I'll tell her the truth. She deserves it.

"On Christmas Eve Lexie decided she was a free agent, and could give Richard a shovel talk about manipulating her sister. I thought if I could defuse the situation—but the bomb wasn't outside with them.

"I didn't know until I overheard her asking Cristina to stitch her up the next day. That…didn't go over well. Cristina compared her to Ellis, said she shouldn't have the baby, and told her to work harder."

"Seriously? She's had PTSD, and that's not even the worst of it."

"Thank you! Mer is being preemptively forgiving her, and I understand she doesn't want to lose her best friend over something that has always been part of her, even if she didn't think she'd do it again. She didn't grow out of it, because it wasn't about what was happening then. It's on a faultline she's had…for a long time." He wasn't sure Callie knew what Ellis had done, but you didn't have to to know how badly she'd treated her daughter.

"That why you're not freaking out? I say this with full respect, I'd expect you to be pushing inpatient care, protecting her from herself type stuff."

As he drew in one breath he flashed through dozens of moments; Amy trembling in a hospital gown. Bundling her into a car in the middle of the night when she'd finally said yes to that place upstate. Arguing with his mom, saying he could take care of her, and his mother, the strongest woman he knew, saying she couldn't bear to see her daughter in so much pain.

"Isolating her further wouldn't help. And even if that treatment took—there's not a lot of proof that any drugs work to curb self-injury, if there's not an underlying condition, and they're very med-reliant upstairs—If I did push for that, and she relapsed, or had any instance of depression or anxiety. she'd hide it. She'd put effort into it, and I'm not sure—I don't want to give her a reason to be anything but honest with me."

Callie's lips pressed together, and he tried to figure out what to say if she didn't believe that was enough. She was Mer's friend, and not siding with Yang didn't mean—"You don't always know what's going to do that."

"Arizona?"

"She'd been having phantom pain for weeks, but she only told me once Hunt had her set up with mirroring, and mindfulness, and all the tricks I could've taught her. I'm an orthopedic surgeon!"

"You're her wife. They say it all the time at Roseridge: Sometimes having a spouse as a caregiver is the best option, but other times it changes the dynamic too much. And even once that's dealt with…she's not going to be exactly the same. Maybe she didn't want you to think that was the last hurdle."

"I just want her to be okay. To be happy."

"She will. But it might not look the same as it did. Even going through it right beside Meredith, I wasn't in her head. I just know the kinds of things I was dreaming about…hallucinating…. She's done a lot to muffle the Ellis she carries in the back of her mind, but she…we were together, but we were also alone. If she was awake, I might not be, or the reverse. Yang was always awake, but she got quiet.

"When we got back, we talked about being out there, but not what we…. Where we went in our heads. Yang retreated so far afterward, and in comparison, Mer was with me. I made her give in and rest for the concussion. We took his and hers antibiotics. This was another infection, and I didn't recognize the symptoms."

"Well, no, but you've never seen her at that point before."

Derek pressed his lips together and ran his hands over his face. "You weren't part of that gang when Addison showed up."

"Not yet. I'd…worked with a couple of them, and I heard stuff."

"Everyone did. Everyone. They all heard about her mother's condition. She'd kept that secret through med school, and then within three months here, it came out. The only benefit was that it meant she could talk to her friends about it, because up to then, I was the only person in her life who knew.

"I watched her. More than I should've, except I knew… I knew I'd hurt her more than it would've hurt Addison to end our marriage. Mer says I needed to try. To know it wasn't only the adultery that came between us. I think I royally fucked up, and set us all up for a year that was predominately miserable. Regardless, the more I know about her history, the more it amazes me that she got where she is, and the more I see what a mess I caused. Kept causing. But nothing I've done to hurt her was as bad as what I did not wanting to hurt anyone.

"She's never explicitly…. I…I'm not brave enough to ask, but she's said…she's said this wasn't the first time she's done it…that it's happened in adulthood. And she doesn't mean…. She always said that she hadn't really grown up, until her mom's diagnosis. That a few years of arrested development balanced out the time she'd had to work to please her mom as a teenager."

"Med school's stressful as hell, her mom was sick…."

"I'm not ruling it out. It's ebbed and flowed her whole life."

He could see her giving in at the beginning, especially. Adjusting to being a student again, with her mother still mostly herself. Some part of her would've been attracted to the poetry of reversing that pivotal day of her childhood, but unlike her mother, she wouldn't risk leaving someone who was dependent on her alone. It was also a period where she'd avoided attachments, regularly taken something when her insomnia made it harder to study, and was, he'd gathered, incredibly lonely. She'd also been in her element, around people with understandable expectations for the first time in her life.

"That spring, I found a new scar, almost immediately," he said, remembering sliding his hand over her bare hip in the bath, thinking only of encouraging her to define the terms in her no-sex declaration. "She said she'd been drunk and banged into the corner of a table."

"One-hundred percent plausible."

"That was what I thought." She'd had bruises there often, thanks to the cluttered house, and, yes, José Cuervo, but primarily that while moving around the world her own body had been the last thing she considered. "I'd…. The scars on her arms are almost invisible. She had control with a blade in both hands at fifteen."

She'd been so uncertain about letting him explore her in the light of a Saturday morning. Stiff and jumpy, until he gave in to the sure-fire method for making her go boneless for the time it took her to relax into touch that wasn't tied to an immediate end goal.

"I knew what they were. Even knowing, almost nothing about her past, I wasn't surprised, but I didn't think of the scar on her hip that way. It's almost faded, now. A table could've opened a straight line, but the end is jagged." Like the one on her shoulder. Like she was never as alone as she believed.

"You get that you're not to blame?"

"I am, for more than I accepted then. You can't control someone's actions, only influence them. I've fallen back on that for a long time. I do think I could've noticed something…. I knew it was in her history. There must've been signs in the fall, between the first mention of a donor nerve, and Liz showing up. But…I thought if she'd said something about everything going on in her head, I could've helped her avoid acting on it. Maybe that's true, but there'd no guarantee.. Last night made that incredibly clear."

"If it helps, you don't look as rough as you did coming out of that acoustic neuroma."

"I'd hope," he said, dryly. "Although, I'd prefer back-to-back twenty-three hour procedures. In surgery I know if I'm making something worse from moment to moment."

"When Arizona was 'displaying depressive symptoms,' I'd spend hours googling what to say, how to help, and the next thing I knew, I'd be doing exactly the opposite. She's having to adjust to being in a body that's so different, and I love her residual limb as much as the rest of her."

"Huh. I didn't see neither of us loving this as a bonus. Not that—Mer and I talk about it once a day, unless she initiates more. She keeps a log for Wyatt, and talking it through seems to help keep her from going back into that headspace. CBT is helpful as for her, because she's a strong auditory learner, but her own words can influence her, too."

She'd gotten better at identifying emotions since she'd last gone to Wyatt, but sometimes her uncertainty made him want to homeschool Zola. Totally illogical. Teachers in 2014 Seattle, or Boston even, would not be the same ones Meredith had in 1984. He'd be sure of it. She'd have teachers who'd notice if a kid came to them with minimal feelings words.

"Doesn't mean either of us only thinks about it once a day. I try to be around when she finishes with Wyatt, but that's when it's the last thing she wants to discuss. She just does better if she's not alone immediately. At night, I check on anything that's healing, change dressings, and that's it."

"She…lets you? I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's probably foreplay for you two."

"Uh..."

"Not surprised."

"I follow her lead, but when I'm taking care of her, she's not just a patient. She's my wife. It's intimate by default. If she wasn't pregnant; if I hadn't figured it out, and asked her directly, the whole thing might've gone differently. It's…It's not a 'cry for help' thing, but I don't think…. Being cared for is something she's not great at asking for, either. She wasn't consciously considering hiding it from me when she did it, and she didn't try to lie. She was embarrassed…ashamed…but she'd done all she could on her own."

"Arizona talked to Owen."

"I suggested we go to Owen, to preclude the fallout she's afraid of the cameras will bring, before they were even on the table."

"I doubt it was her worrying about getting benched. He wasn't out there with you. He's the one who chose the airline!"

You could say, for instance, that by forcing Alex to give her his spot, Arizona had been the reason the insurance wouldn't pay out. Regardless of what Derek believed about things, Derek had gotten proficient at countering any blame statements related to the crash.

"Look…baring in mind that I'm not the one who has been a caregiver for most of the past six months, do you want to know what I see?"

"Yeah, obviously."

"In this whole conversation, you haven't said anything about Arizona that didn't have to do with her leg."

"And? You've been talking about Meredith cutting."

"I have. Broadly, that she went on a plane has to do with her PTSD. Her meeting with the Wench didn't. Her surgeries don't. Her skill with Zola." Callie bobbed her head in acknowledgement. "I'm not saying you're not aware of Robbins as a whole, but…. If she doesn't like having you touch her residual limb, don't. She'll get there eventually, or she won't. If you want her to know you love all of her, let her decide where your attention goes. She lost a lot of power, and you can give some of it back. Earn her trust. Don't ask for it, or assume you have it.

"When you're hyper-aware of how easily you could lose everything, you don't want to be reminded of the worst four days of your life. Arizona might still feel it in every step, or it could be a rare reminder, which might be worse. Don't make it easy for her to stay there. Ask her about her cases. Involve Sofia. Let her be a mom, and a surgeon, and when it makes the most sense, ask her how the treatment is going, or share something you read about prosthetic manufacture. Then, go back to 'hey, did you call your mom back?' Her leg isn't all she is, and it doesn't have to be all that your marriage is."

While Zola was gone, he and Meredith had gotten to a point where their marriage had almost no other sustenance. By the time she'd come home, they'd reconfigured. Gotten stronger? Maybe. He still wished that period had gone differently.

"Is that…? You and Addison weren't about any one thing."

"In the end, we weren't about anything. Addison and I worked while we were students. She was brilliant, and confident. Didn't take herself too seriously. She could go toe-to-toe with my sisters, and she got my sister Amelia to like her at a time where that was like taming a feral cat.

"She was happy as a poor student in the way anyone who has a trust fund is. Uh—"

"Not offended, I know what you mean."

"We thrived, for a while. With Mark and I choosing our own hours, never having to worry about money, making appearances at the galas. She had to bow out often, to deliver a baby, which made it less notable that I don't dance in public."

"There's a trauma behind that."

"Correct, and it's staying in Mark's grave."

Callie snorted.

"They always had live jazz bands and priceless wines—can't tell you how many sommeliers Mark took home. All the single women at those things were widows of a certain age. On the Upper West Side the wives were lawyers and doctors, too. We'd end up talking politics in someone's library

"Upper East Side was where we got most of our patients. Finance people and their spouses. Twice, we ran into former sommeliers who'd gone home with Mark a few years earlier—one as a bigwig at an insurance firm, and one as a wife. There were more and more events on that side of town. Our friends across the park had kids. Addison did her fellowship. She did another. She became sought-after, all over the city, and then the tri-state area.

"My job was the 'stable' one. Not much chance for innovation. I didn't go in for the inoperable tumors, because we were still 'getting off the ground.' I did a lot of discectomies. A lot of lumbar fusions. It got repetitive. I resented being left at parties with people I had nothing truly in common with when Mark and Addison went their separate ways. I started taking more on calls. Our office was about ten blocks north of Lennox Hill and ten south of Mt. Sinai. Wasn't hard to get up to Harlem. My sisters' kids were almost all around ten or older. I could be on the sidelines of something every weekend, and play nanny on weekdays. I'd spend time with the kids in Connecticut just to have a chance to drive. it was so easy. We stopped being home at the same time, and if we were, we didn't talk about our cases, or our lives, because we had to discuss the logistics. Where we had to make an appearance. What we were going to avoid by being in the Hamptons. Who had a recital important enough for her to make a point of attending. We weren't fighting. I would've said we were fine. Busy, but who wasn't? I can tell you honestly: I never thought about another woman.

"Meredith and I connected as people. By that point only baristas knew me only as Derek. And here was this woman who said my name like I was just some guy. She told me she had no story. I was sure that wasn't true. I was also sure she believed it. This woman who seemed entirely confident, didn't think she was a main character. It was unfathomable, because in my eyes, she had a spotlight over her."

"Geez, McDreamy, leave some romance for the rest of us."

He held his hands up. "Nothing but the truth."

"Duh. I have seen you look at her from across a room.

"Have you been talking to someone? I'm a good listener, but I can only advise as…a person with a story. Seeing her hurt herself must be killing you."

"I went with her once, and Dr. Wyatt recommended Dr. Carr, upstairs. But as of now, just my sister. Kathleen might think I'm talking about Lexie. In the population of those with SCI there's anywhere from a two-to-five percent higher rate of ideation. She's been fairly clinical, but she hasn't treated many self-harm cases.

"She said the biopsychosocial model of self-harm identifies five dimensions that influence, trigger, and maintain the behavior: environmental, biological, cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Knowing that helps with the blame thing. Helps Mer with the blame thing. No one can change her biology; I can't shield her from everything. I can only influence her thoughts, mood, and actions. I'm trying to find ways to integrate the stuff that helps into our routine. Zola's gonna be incredibly emotional aware child, because I'm telling her stuff I think Mer needs to hear. It's totally unsubtle, but it gets through to her.

"Don't get me wrong, I hate it. I do. I hate that she got hurt at all out there. I hate that she was on the plane. I hate that she ever wanted, or felt like she needed, to cause herself pain. I despise her mother for never telling her she had value, and her father, who never prioritized her. And, God help me, Callie, I'm angry at her."

Saying it brought the feeling forward, and his body tensed. Meredith had pegged him;,talking about his hockey nickname. There was still an ember from the fire that had taken him over on the rink, and hiding how strongly it was burning from her was the hardest part. He wanted to yell at her for not calling him, or Yang, or someone, anyone. For holding onto the corrosive thoughts until they burned through her. For fighting on everyone's behalf except her own.

"Of course you are. You love her; you're going to be mad at the person hurting her."

"What good does it do, when that is her?"

"It motivates you to help her stop!"

Derek pressed his palms against his eyes. The burst of color was as intense as the white-hot flash of momentary rage he'd fought off last night. "She's trying. More than. I wish…. She's changed so much in five years; I'm trying to keep up. Sometimes, I think we're going to end up better than we were.

"The past few days haven't been the best for anyone around here, but yesterday Mer was with Karev on an African kid with Crohn's. Textbook procedure. We had a normal evening. She fell asleep before I did. I woke up around two-thirty."

These days, he slept with one earplug, and the other pressed against the pillow. That usually let him hear Zola, or Meredith, when her nightmares were at their worst.

"Her spot was warm. Her phone was plugged in. There was no reason for the light under the bathroom door would mean something was wrong. I just…had a feeling."

The question of whether or not to knock had made him pause long enough that he might've missed an opportunity, but he couldn't fault himself for being afraid of the consequences of startling her. He hadn't risked it.

"I hadn't seen her do it. It's quick. Precise. She didn't show a sign of it hurting. It was scar tissue, so maybe it didn't. Might be why…. She was about to draw it over her skin again. but I couldn't watch her do it."

She'd been sitting on the floor with her back against the mirrored door of her closet. He'd closed his hand over hers, the way he used to do adjusting the pressure of her scalpel in the skills lab. At some point, his presence had registered, because she didn't startle. When he'd started moving the blade away from her arm, she'd resisted. He'd almost let go, for fear of making the situation into a disaster. Then, her hand had gone limp. The disposable scalpel had clattered onto the tile between two rugs. He had no idea where it had come from. It had to have been in the bed- or bathroom. Her closet? His closet? Was it the one, or a box of them? If he found and dumped it, would that backfire?

"She started crying. Not the angry tearing-up thing she's been doing." It was cute, the way her face crumpled, and the hormones were a scapegoat that kept her from getting mad at herself for crying so easily. He'd hoped it was helping take the edge off the breakdown he'd been anticipating for weeks. If it had, he hated to imagine what last night would've been like otherwise. "Devastated crying. Meanwhile, her arm was bleeding. Usually, she's prepared. Getting bandages and alcohol wipes is almost ritualistic. It's a justification. If she's taking care of the wound, it's not that bad. Sometimes, the delay helps her catch herself. Last night, nothing. I ended up taking my shirt off to press against it so I could stay with her."

He could still feel how hard she'd been shaking, entirely on the other side of the spectrum from her control a minute earlier. She'd been determined to explain, wheezing, each sound more sob than word. "I-I-I didn't…. I c-c-couldn't let…let it cl-cl-close. I-I w-w-wasn't…. I c-c-couldn't…. I had to…. It c-c-couldn't close. C-Couldn't…I wasn't…I'm not…it's…not….not r-ready. S-Sounds crazy. Stupid, cr-crazy…."

"Meredith Grey," he'd said, grateful for a chance to be firm. This, they'd been doing for a long time. "What are you not?"

"R-Reopening a w-wound is—"

"Is something you do if it's not healing correctly. In that moment, did it feel right?" Not was it healing right? She hadn't been being a doctor in that moment. He'd picked those words carefully. He'd been working on that. Stopping to consider if his words were convincing, or would get the point across. She shook her head. "Okay."

"I didn't…. I don't…. You go."

"Shh, sweetheart," he'd murmured into her hair, lifting the shirt a little to check on the clotting process. "That's not how this works."

"Sh-Should be…. M-Make me d-deal w-w-with…. S'my m-mess."

"When Zola has an accident, do we leave her alone with it?"

"…only a b-baby."

"But she's learning to control a complicated connection between her body and her brain. There are a lot of things that go along with it. Sometimes, she messes up because she doesn't try to get to the potty. That's happening a lot less. Sometimes, she gets tangled in her overalls. Today, when I picked her up, she had one strap undone. Her teacher said she'd had it that way all day, because then she could slip the other arm out to go."

"Smart baby."

"She is. A problem-solver. Takes after her mom. Her mom, who puts her in pull-ups at night, no matters how much she pouts, because there are things she's not able to control yet. It won't be forever. She's having dry nights. There may be setbacks. She can get frustrated, and we don't know how the baby might affect things. But we'll be there, telling her that accidents happen. It doesn't make you bad. You didn't mess up. Next time, you can try something different in this situation. Like?"

"I d-don't know. I didn't…I didn't decide not to wake you up. I had this dream. I can't even... I know Cristina was in it." Her eyes had filled again, and it had been all he could do to keep his expression neutral. "I think so was Izzie? That's ridiculous. They didn't.… It's not remotely the same."

If he vanished 'ridiculous' to the land of 'stupid' she'd just find another work to deride herself with. That didn't make it less tempting.

"I woke up, and it…the scar… it was wrong. Like when my skin gets all buzzy and crawly, but localized. It was too tight, and I knew I had to reopen it and start over."

He made eye contact with Callie. "Maybe it's obvious that's the cut Cristina stitched. I steri-striped it last night. I don't think she'll do it again the same way, but…. That cut was…. The word 'important' feels wrong to say, but…. She went from Christmas Eve to the third or fourth of January with nothing. Ten days. And not even…I took the stitches out at two weeks

"The next one wasn't related. It was Zola. Not her, but that the African group might be able to take her away, or…. I don't know. The spiral went deep." Again he was hindered by what Callie knew, but also, what he knew—what Meredith knew. Her memories of the time betweem the confrontation at the carousel and being in Boston were generally foggy with moments of stark clarity. The general thread was the terror of being seperated from her mother. It made sense that it'd morphed to encompass her daughter. "Anyway. That cut was a big deal. And, really, nothing's about the crash anymore. At the same time, everything is.

"We didn't get back to bed until well after three. She slept. I didn't. We had a morning." She'd seemed okay, but he hadn't been certain until he got the texts saying:

Listened through "The Circle of Life" before I realized I don't have the kid.

Things You Ruined: Riding the ferry alone.

Can you explain more about what affects the shunt/stent choice for communicating hydrocephalus tonight? I'll make it worth your time.

"We'll have a day. Get Zola from daycare for lunch. Talk about it tonight. She's not sick, or off her game. She's just living at a nine. Her mind knows it's wrong, but for some reason, the solution is to transform it into physical pain."

"Phantom injuries," Callie murmured.

Derek inclined his head toward her. Yeah, in a way. But the last idea anyone needed to give Meredith was that stabbing anything would help.

A/N: If you have a chance, please review. I'm getting more spam comments accusing me of writing ChatGPT drivel than actual reader reviews...