Amelia Shepherd's phone rang as she was exiting St. Ambrose Hospital, and seeing who was calling made her turn on her heel, and walk back into the lobby. She sank into a chair, took a breath, and hit the green circle.
"Hey, bro." She tried to find the right mix of levity and dismissal, made difficult by how dry her mouth had already gone. "What's up?"
"Amy. I…um…. I didn't expect you to pick up."
"Do you want me to hang up so you can talk to my voicemail? Or, here…. Hi, you've reached Dr. Amelia Shepherd, please leave a message!"
"Am—"
"Beeeeeep."
"For Chr— Fine. Amelia, it's Derek. Give me a call when you have a chance. I, ah, have…a proposition for you, and, uh, something else I…I need your advice on. I know not picking up is fair turnabout, but I think this will be worth your while."
"Hmm, see, you needing my advice is rare enough that I'd probably wait until you start texting to call. But a proposition? I'm intrigued enough to bypass making you sweat it out. I'd call you back immediately on that one."
"That's a…well, we'll get to that. Excellent. Amelia, thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I'm proposing some…alterations to the department. This past year has made it clear that our SCI treatment protocol could benefit from significant revamping. Additionally, we're working to get a training program approved by ACGME—"
"A neurosurgery residency?"
"Yup. We, uh, had interest in the past, and…ah…. Screw it. Meredith needs to switch specialties—"
"Needs?"
"She wouldn't put it that way, but…." He sighed, a sigh that was heavier than any she'd heard from him, even in the days she'd been causing them. "You remember the Alzheimer's trial?"
"Sure. Your procedures were violated and you had to pass it to Carl Baumann."
"Meredith did it."
"What?"
"It's…complicated. The patient was Adele…Webber? You remember—"
"Of course." Amelia flashed to waiting for Derek to get off work during his residency, and being introduced to a sophisticated-looking woman who exuded warmth. "I heard about her passing."
"Mm. That was…. There's an investigation happening, actually. On the care home. They're supposed to be the best in the area—and at a point they were. No one who chose it for their relative—Ah, sorry. I don't need to reassure you about that."
"Meredith, again?"
"She worries that she missed something. She toured it after her internship interview, which she thought didn't go well, and she was freaked out. Obviously, it went fine; Seattle Grace was getting their top Match choices constantly—Anyway, I've told you Richard had a history with her mom. Mer's…empathetic to a fault and when Richard hinted that she could do something more, after everything…. She swapped things to give Adele the drug. She made the choice. I haven't forgotten that, but…. Zola's adoption got put on the line. They'd let her come home, but when I moved out to get my head around her…uh, her side of things, the social worker found out. The day we tell everyone about was her second homecoming. We didn't have visitation, or anything like that."
What an irony, Amelia thought, that Addison and Meredith both had a guy's volatility affect an adoption.
"That's why I couldn't come down that fall—"
Amelia's stomach sank. She'd wondered how long they would've waited before declaring her missing. She could hear her sisters saying Oh, she's done this before, even if it'd been fifteen years. Kathleen might've reassured herself thinking oh, Derek's out there. Liz had actually apologized in November. "You've gone radio silent before, and it's had nothing to do with drugs. But we should've realized that if we were assuming you were on a bender, you needed us all the more."
They'd just all gotten used to everyone keeping their own problems close to the chest, because the family had been through enough. Hearing Derek say that he had a real reason for not coming down to look meant something.
"Jesus, Derek, that's…that must've been awful."
"Yeah. We came out of it okay, but I think we'd have figured it out more quickly without that. What we….What I determined was that I couldn't trust her at work. When she said, okay, I won't be on your service…."
"The simplest solution."
"Not always the best. At the time…I don't know, things were rough for a few weeks, but on balance….If it's what made me able to be there for her, I don't regret that. We needed each other. She was happy with general."
"Then the plane crash?"
"That's the refrain. Truly, it's not just that—She has so much potential. Wherever she is, it won't be wasted, but it'll be a gift to the field. There have been some other things; Richard is her superior, and I worry that either he'll use her in some way, or have her do something—That makes her sound…. She's incredible, she just…. Right and rules don't always line up. But it's.… It's not what I thought it was.
"She's not the one I don't trust. I am. When it comes to Meredith. I want to protect her from people who don't understand her, and I want her to have a better sense of self-preservation. It's improved, with Zola…. But the truth is, when Meredith commits to a patient, their best interests are her priority. She's a remarkable surgeon, and if she wants to come back to neuro, I'll do whatever I can to support her.
"I didn't mean to spend this call selling you on Mer, but it's not a bad lead in. I can teach her—I love teaching her. Sometimes feels like I can only teach Greys, and Zola can't pronounce neurosurgery yet. We're getting there. The…The thing is…I can't supervise her."
"Derek…. What are you saying?"
"It's more…what I'm offering."
"And what are you offering?"
"In the simplest terms? My job."
Amelia jumped out of her chair. "Shut up!"
Derek laughed. Amelia sat back down. "What, uh, what are the complicated terms? If you're offering this to me because you want a marionette—"
"No. No, you'd have full hiring and firing autonomy, department structure, all that—I have a permanent position on the board as the neurosurgery department representative. My job there would be to advocate for you. If I think a proposal is crazy, I'll tell you, but that's all. However—"
Here it comes….
"In addition to the board position, I'm staying…unless you have significant objections, I'd be staying on as Director of the Spinal Care Initiative—that's what we're going with since it's still in development, and as a nod to the hospital's focus on progress."
"Spinal care? Not neuroncology?"
"I'll still keep clinic hours, take patients, take out tumors—there should be enough to go around, Meredith is a magnet—We're not large enough for sub-specializations. Not yet."
"Is there room for growth?"
"Absolutely. Taking that literally, the facilities people said we can build up; the foundation will support it. Not right away, but it's in our long term plans."
"Okay, okay, um…." There were technical questions to ask. Salary, how the doctor-owned thing worked, timelines. Moving to Seattle hadn't been anywhere close to her radar. Those were not what came out of her mouth. "Can you trust me?"
"Yes."
"Because two years ago, you were erasing my name off your surgery board because of something that happened when I was a teenager."
"I know."
"And I'm not quite eighteen months clean, so that's a hell of a lot more recent."
"I know—"
"I don't need you lording it over me every time I make a decision you don't like."
"Amy—Amelia…Amy, listen. The other thing…I don't actually need your advice on this. It's more…I owe you an apology."
Some part of Amelia's brain must have been attending to her surroundings, because when a hand touched her shoulder she didn't jump. She looked up to find her ex-sister-in-law looking at her with raised eyebrows.
Derek, she mouthed. Addison's eyes widened, and then she squeezed through the gap between Amelia's chair and the one perpendicular to it. Once she sat down, Amelia held out her hand. Addison took it, and squeezed reassuringly, even as her expression became more quizzical.
"An apology?" she repeated, for Addison's benefit. "For what?"
Derek laughed, a single ha that she'd have called self-deprecating coming from anyone else. "I'm aware that just saying everything isn't sufficient, but it's my first thought.
"Lexie developed a dependency on her pain meds. She got a substance use disorder diagnosis, mostly because insurances are so picky about Suboxone being prescribed for pain…. That's what we've said, constantly, for the past week or so: she has pain. So did you. And by the time you really felt it, we all thought we'd moved on."
"Thought?"
He huffed again. "I'm a dad. We're expecting another one. I've technically started a business. I think of Dad all the time. What he'd think of me…. I think I'm doing a better job making him proud now than I did in Manhattan, but I also think he'd be damned disappointed in the way I treated you. In all the times I yelled at you, and told you to get yourself together. The times I punished you, as though you weren't going through enough."
"I-It was the nineties. That was how people saw it. You were working a hundred and twenty hour weeks—"
"I was your brother. My job was to support you without judgement. I was supposed to defend you. I…I protected you. I tried to shelter you when I should've been meeting you on your level. Helping you find that. You had Mark. He loved you as much as any of us, but…he wasn't your big brother. I was. I wasn't your dad. You had one of those, even if he was gone."
It was funny, of all the things he was saying, that resonated in her the most deeply. She couldn't remember anyone ever giving her ownership of their father. "It's not all on you."
"I'm sorry for the parts that are. I'm sorry for being unprofessional when you came out here. I'm sorry they didn't keep you updated this summer—if I'd defended you more, they wouldn't have dared shut you out like that. I can't go back in time. I can only say that I want to do better. I'd like the chance."
"That why you're offering me a job?" Addison's mouth dropped open. "You want absolution?"
"I'm offering you a position at the hospital that represents the biggest gamble I've ever taken, because I believe you can do it."
That made it hard to hold on to her cynicism. Derek hated failing. They all did, but Derek the strongest reactions, especially if he thought he'd let other people down. Sure, he'd fling the blame around, but even Amelia could see that was because he didn't know what else to do with it.
"When do you need a decision?"
She heard him swallow, and then clear his throat. When he spoke again, she had professional Derek. "I'm taking my proposal to the board at the end of the month. I'd like to have an answer by then, so, let's say the twenty-eighth? I'll email you all the paperwork now."
"Okay. Thanks. I'll get back to you ASAP."
"Please do. And Amelia?"
"Yup?"
"Love you much."
She laughed, a high-pitched laugh that she might let someone call a giggle. "Love you much, bro."
Addison had given her hysterical giggle a suspicious look, the one Amelia recognized as uniquely Do I have to kill Derek? It softened at the sign-off. Amelia started to hang up, but then she heard Derek say something else.
"What?" she asked. He didn't reply, and when she heard his voice it was distant. Then, "Lovamuch, Aun' Ah-me'ya!"
Amelia laughed again. She hadn't even met her niece, yet, and with Derek around she'd probably become Aunt Amy to her, the way she was with all the niblings—Nancy's just called her Amy, because even though she was older than the eldest by seventeen years, Nancy couldn't seem to change the way she referred to her. She didn't have the same trouble saying Aunt Kathleen, Aunt Liz, or Uncle Derek. Hell, even Uncle Mark had come easier to her.
Once Amelia touched the red circle to end the call, Addison gave her maybe ten seconds before she started jiggling her hand eagerly. "What was that? Derek offered you a job?"
"Derek offered me his job,"
"Shut up!"
"Exactly!"Amelia said, and then gave her a condensed run through of the situation. "I used to think…. I used to hope that once I proved I could do it, he'd let me join the practice. Teach me, and maybe eventually he'd move on—he was clawing the walls; I saw that from Hopkins. I just didn't know how to fix it. Then, I thought if he'd stuck around for another year, I'd have been done with my fellowship, I could've taken over for him. That's insane, I see it now; I couldn't take over for someone with nine years more experience. I know he had to leave when he did. I still hated him for it. Still wanted his job."
"I remember. You'd already convinced Mark when I took off."
"I didn't tell Derek that."
"If you ever feel the need, do it with Grey around. She's good at getting him to be rational."
"So're you."
"Oh, I was better. His instinct is to protect her, it makes him slightly more aggressive—not her fault—and he wants to impress her. But she'll defend you. Not because she won't think it's disloyal—it was, a little—but because she'll get that Mark was your family, too. And she knows the whole complicated story. At least…most of it."
"Huh. Can you believe he's stepping down for her?"
"Actually, I can. I think…I think life would've been easiest for Meredith Grey if she'd wanted to go into…ortho, maybe. Cardio would've put her in direct competition with her best friend. Plastics was never her thing. She hasn't had much of a chance to be her own person. Her mother's shadow is huge, and I can't imagine—Richard had all of us wrapped around his little finger, particularly the ones with daddy issues. The ones like Derek."
Amelia had been looking at the window across from them, which has been displaying clearer and clearer versions of their reflections as the sun set outside. At that, she turned back to Addison. She'd never thought—but of course Derek had daddy issues, even if they wouldn't look the same as, say, her's.
"Richard favors Grey, but he's not against using his favorites. I…know a few things about his rock bottom, not long before we started at Manhattan Gen. Interns doing liquor store runs; residents being given surgeries they weren't ready for, because he wasn't up to it. He's a good man, and an incredible surgeon, but…." She shrugged. "Everyone has their things. Miranda Bailey is one of his protégés; otherwise, I'd say she'd look out for Grey. There's split loyalty there. Not that Grey needs looking out for, in most cases. She's savvy. Talented." She tapped her phone against her leg. "More than once when we were fighting I told him he just saw her as a version of you. That wasn't fair. It wasn't true. It broke my heart to watch him trying to revive her when she drowned—"
"She what?"
"Oh, right you two weren't speaking. She was doing triage care on-site at a ferry crash, and got slammed into the water. Went hypothermic."
"Yikes."
"That's Grey. She's been through a lot. Really chafed against her mom's expectations, and Ellis Grey was ice cold. I wouldn't be willing to put my money on her ever having said 'I love you' to her daughter. She took her from her father at five, raised her—a phrase I use loosely, she can be…feral around the edges—"
"I've always considered to be that pretty all or nothing."
"You've only spent a few hours around Meredith. I get the impression that when she says she tried 'everything but surgery….'" She spiraled her free hand out in front of her. "She could out-drink Mark."
"She's ninety pounds soaking wet!"
"And yet. She has similarities to him, too. She's…She's good for the person Derek is now. Her view of the world doesn't line up directly with his, and it can take him a while to change. He thrived teaching her. I don't really know the little sister—"
"She's good. She was the intern on my case. Was good, I suppose. I can't imagine losing everything that way…. I'd have a hard time staying clean." She wouldn't be able to. She was self-aware enough to know that. Addison likely knew it too. She let the half-truth stand.
"What about James?"
What about him? was what Amelia wanted to say, because she wanted to avoid that line of thought. "I don't know. James is great. We're serious. Are we moving to Seattle serious? Stay for him serious? Not a clue."
James could be her future. But Derek wasn't her past like it'd started to seem. He was her brother; part of her past, present, and future. The question was, how much of it?
"How's it going in here?" Jackson swooped into the room with his hands in his pockets, but Lexie noticed that he then straightened up and crossed his arms. Lexie couldn't stop herself from smiling at the computer screen. Since he'd brought pastries to the first board meeting, she'd realized that his leadership philosophy was "imitate Sloan."
"Great," Lexie said, at the same time Bugsy said, "Dr. Avery, wouldn't it make more sense to have techs or nurses do this? I mean, they're more familiar with—"
Lexie had had enough of this girl. "We need nurses."
"You need us!"
"Do we? Has it occurred it you that in the weeks between classes, and, in fact, the months where you have no idea what you're doing, the surgeries still happen? You know why? Nurses. Techs. Night floats."
"Okay, Dr. Grey, while that is true, without interns we'd have to do our own scutwork, and I, for one, don't miss it," Jackson said.
Lexie's jaw clenched. She'd give a lot to go back to intern year, even when that meant arriving at four or five for hand-off, and spending whole days—multiple days—doing nothing but pre- and post-op work.
"However, with that being limited right now, you're getting an opportunity to glimpse forty years of medical history. There's plenty to learn from it."
The intern rolled her eyes, but went back to feeding old charts into one of several high-volume scanners borrowed or rented from somewhere. The truth was that they wouldn't get through all the records before the reopening, and whatever they didn't finish would be sent to a company that specialized in digitizing medical records. Using it for interim intern busywork was penny-pinching, but she'd spent a significant amount of time with the budget; they needed to pinch.
"Dr. Avery, a word?' Lexie asked, once he'd made a point of talking to every intern so he could moon at Edwards without being quite as painfully obvious.
"Of course, Dr. Grey." He nodded toward the door. Lexie went around him to turn a corner. "What can I—?"
"I don't—"
They both stopped, both smiled awkwardly. Out of nowhere, she thought Jackson isn't the last man I slept with anymore. It should've made what she needed to ask him more difficult, but going off the pills hadn't given her new insight into the existence of her heart.
(Metaphorically. Literally, it was probably a brain thing. Every neurosurgeon in this hospital probably saw her scans at some point, but scans didn't show everything.)
"I…need a hand with something personal." Jackson blinked at her, momentarily deer-in-the-headlights awkward. "I have a medication I need administered sublingually."
"You…. Oh, right,…ah, where…?"
She almost repeated sublingually, but then realized he was looking between her cupholder and side pouch. She hooked a finger around the strap of her bag. "This part I can do." It'd been strange to see how perfectly that pocket fit the rectangular packets. She took out the baggie the pharmacist had given her. That, and Meredith's smirk the first time she'd slipped half of the film under her tongue made her feel more like a druggie than tipping pills into her mouth in a club bathroom.
(Faye had texted her to let her know PowerWheels was going to be at the Jewelers that night. She didn't know what to say to The Thorns about all of this.)
"Thanks," she said, suppressing a shudder at the mix of fake-orange and chemical flavor of the tab. According to Derek, the ritualization of taking the pill that provided relief fed into opioid dependency—she wasn't an addict. Just…no—and the bad taste helped curtail that. On the other hand, if it tasted too bad, aversion might affect compliance. "I could've gotten an intern to do it, but they already don't take me seriously."
"Are they not listening to you? I can talk to—"
"Calm down, and don't you dare talk to your puppy."
"My—"
"Have you seen her look at you? Puppy-dog eyes."
Jackson's smile was almost bashful. He liked this girl. She definitely couldn't judge the attending/intern thing—although she agreed with Meredith, who'd said, "There's just something weird about it being first-year attendings they're all dating. Like, shouldn't the suck-ups be aiming higher? If it's being attracted to a more mature guy…. Alex and Jackson are not where I'd land."
"They think this is below them, and until this point I've been the weird, crip chick allowed to open staff-only doors. I've also dated both of their…well, you and whatever Alex is to Bu—Wilson."
"He's good at just being friends with gi—women. Not that—I'm also friends with women. You—"
"You've screwed me."
"But we're friends! And, April is my friend, even though we've—she's my friend. And, hey, your sister!"
"My sister probably changed your diaper." Lexie didn't mean to sound as petulant as she had. That Jackson had even met her sister as a child, much less seen her several times in some years got under her skin. She envied him, but she also got irrationally irritated at the idea of Mer knowing him first. At coming to work at her hometown hospital, and meeting everyone first. Early on, she'd checked Facebook regularly to see if someone she knew ever friended her sister, because they'd been neighbors, or gone to daycare together. It wasn't envy, exactly. It was how few degrees of separation existed, independent of their father, and it'd still taken twenty-three years.
"She did not! I was four wh—" He cleared his throat and crossed his arms again. "Uh, anything else, Dr. Grey?"
Leah Murphy ran by, holding up a pager, explaining the shift in his demeanor.
"Actually, yes. That reminds me: have we signed the HillRom contract yet?" They had a ton of ground-breaking equipment on order, but for some of the basics the contracts that the Foundation had for their clinics weren't practical for an inner-city hospital.
"No, we're still negotiating, why?"
"I have an idea."
Jackson's eyebrows went from thoughtful "v" to arced as she made her case. Meredith had finally come clean to her about her potential switch to neuro, and when she gave her proposal to the board, she might not get the shocked reaction Jackson gave Lexie.
"When you had this idea, were there pink elephants in the room?" She'd expect that from Alex, but not Jackson. She was almost proud until he added, "Sorry, that was uncalled for. I just…. I've heard…. And I've met… They won't contract with the Foundation, anyway."
"So, don't be the Foundation. Use my name."
"If you say so."
"Seems like once you'd take that over using the Avery name."
"Yeah, well, things change."
Lexie rolled her eyes. "No kidding?"
"Yeah, that was stupid. Sorry." He ran a hand over the top of his head. "What else could I do? If I'd gone to Boston, I'd never have as many opportunities to operate. And, this hospital…it's important to me. All of us who could've left, we stayed for a reason. I'm glad I can be a part of keeping it here.
"I know you guys didn't want me in on it—I was sprung on you without having put in the work, or going through what you went through—"
"That's not why —"
"You sued so something like that wouldn't happen again. What's a better way to do that than creating a hospital that values its doctors? The changes you all came up with—they're going to make a difference."
"I hope so. What Mer's doing with the daycare definitely will."
"Your work on patient morale, too. That affects everyone. You wrote the line about how we don't believe in hopeless cases, didn't you?"
"I pecked the words into a keyboard, but Derek's the one who taught me that."
"That's the point, isn't it? We do what we can to use and spread what they teach us." He shrugged. "I didn't plan on being on a hospital board in my first year as an attending, but I figure…. It's crazy, but I think about what he'd tell me to do. Sloan, you know? And when Mom did this…I could almost hear him saying I had two options. I could flat out refuse, give Mom control, and see this place become more like an Avery Clinic—we do good work, but it's research-oriented, not as patient-focused, and not academic. I don't think she'd have ended the residency programs, but…. Anyway, I could have a tantrum and do that, or I could just roll with it. And rolling with it while Shepherd looked like he wanted to kill him was Sloan's M.O."
"Rolling with it is the only way I get anywhere these days."
Jackson chuckled, his hand going to his forehead. "Okay, I guess I—"
"Walked right into that one?"
"I'm going to let you go give that sass to the interns." He pulled his phone out of a pocket and swiped it open. "If they're brats, it's because they haven't had enough of you setting them straight." He flashed his dimples at her, and jogged toward the elevator bay. Lexie was grateful that he didn't stick around to see her react. He wouldn't have caught his mistake, because he hadn't made one. Not really.
This was her Chief Resident year. She should've been third to the chief and their attending to these newbies—and they'd be newbies to her until they'd passed their intern exams, at least—If she was involved in this undertaking at all, she'd be using the downtime to study for her boards. If her life was how it was supposed to be, this wouldn't be happening. There wouldn't have been a plane crash. No plane crash, no buying the hospital.
It could lead to good things. Without it, Mer might not have been going back to neuro. The baby might not be coming. Did it make Lexie a shitty aunt if she didn't know if she could say she was grateful? Maybe she just didn't believe Mer wouldn't be pregnant in that alternative universe.
She wasn't at all surprised to see Edwards and Bugsy standing by Wilson's stations, chatting, while Wilson fed papers into the scanner without stopping to ensure they were straight or right-side up.
"When a patient dies because they're unconscious, and we have a name, but their deadly allergy didn't make it into the digitized chart, do you think Dr. Avery will be interested in how gorgeous his eyes are?"
"You think that's going to be a problem with a chart from…1982?" Wilson scoffed.
"Stranger things have happened around here," Lexie snapped, and headed back to her own station. In addition to intern oversight, she was in charge of what seemed like every tedious detail of the refurbishment. Documentation, merchandising, revising copy. It wasn't exactly stimulating, but it was something to do while she was at the hospital. She was spending less time at Roseridge, even though one of her more interesting tasks was arranging their partnership with the Emerald City Community Hospital Spinal Care Initiative. She went for meetings and therapies. She just wasn't spending as much time on the obstacle course, even though the Suboxone controlled more pain than she'd anticipated. She pretended that she made up for it by chasing Zola around the paved paths the contractor had put in last summer—before they even knew Lexie would wake up—but the weather had only made that possible on a few days.
Meredith and Derek had been incredibly supportive. Even lying awake at three a.m. wishing she could just take something to escape, she knew that. She was making more of an effort to avoid shutting herself in her room. If they wanted to be alone, they'd find a way. In spite of the hospital still working at a lower capacity, they were all wiped out by the time Zola went to bed, and usually ended up watching some movie they'd missed by nature of having lives that revolved around a hospital and a two-year-old. (Why her sister and brother-in-law had laughed more than necessary at the fondue joke in Captain America, she never wanted to know.)
"Oh, whoa, is this…? Oh." Bugsy went from staring, wide-eyed, at the chart in her hands to closing it abruptly as Edwards approached.
"What is it?"
"Nothing. I thought it was a hemicorpectomy, but I misread the type."
Edwards snorted. Wilson was quick, Lexie would give her that. She was also totally lying. "That's how they know the Black Dahlia murderer was a surgeon," she offered. "The body was positioned in two sections. You don't know to avoid bone by going through the fifth and sixth vertebrae if you don't have medical training. The pedestrian who found her thought she was a broken mannequin."
"Whoa. That's gruesome," Wilson said. Lexie couldn't tell if she thought that was a positive or a negative.
"Uh, what's the Black Dahlia?" Edwards asked.
Before Lexie could share what she'd read up in the attic in the weeks after Gary Clark shot eighteen people while hunting for her, Wilson said, "Elizabeth Short, this woman who was killed in LA in the forties. The most likely suspect was a powerful doctor, with a lot of friends in high places. In the surrealist movement, hosted tons of orgies. Probably paid people off. Also probably molested his daughter, but he got acquitted of that."
"Ooookay," Edwards drawled.
"Like you don't have any weird interests?"
"Yeah, March Madness, not murder."
"An interest in mysteries is actually good for a surgeon," Lexie said, though why she was defending Bugsy she didn't know. "You use the same skill making diagnoses."
That silenced Edward's, and the interns went back to work. When they were heading off for lunch, Wilson put the chart she'd put on the pile that had the wrong name on scans, or some other error that needed to be checked out. Lexie had almost forgotten about her exclamation. She waited to hear the elevator again before opening it.
Ellis Grey. Of course, it wasn't unlikely for her to have been hospitalized over five years. Look at Meredith. But the only time that Lexie knew of would've been Meredith's birth, and that'd been back east. Then, it came to her, and she wanted to bash her head on the desk. Of course. The suicide attempt. She kept reading only to find out what Wilson might've found out.
"Depression. 72-hour holddischarged to follow-up with out-patient…Advised patient of pregnancy.…."
"Shit." Lexie jammed the back of her hand against her mouth. She didn't want to know this. She didn't want to know this. She did not want to know this.
She'd never exactly asked, hey dad, were you and Ellis still screwing while she screwed you over? but all signs pointed to definitely not. Had she aborted Webber's baby without telling him? How far along was she? She couldn't make herself flip the pages. Anything she saw would live in her head, forever. She'd already read the letters of recommendation Meredith hadn't seen—glowing, in spite of there only being four—and this was far beyond that.
"I can keep a secret."
Lexie startled, and turned to glare at Wilson.
"Sorry, I…I just wanted you to know that. I had to find a way to ditch Stephanie," the intern said.
"Did you…? Did you read all of it?"
"No! I didn't mean to—I thought…but Dr. Grey is the oldest, right? So, she'd…she's the five-year-old."
"Most people in my year were born in '83. A first-year attending could be, if they skipped like I did, but…yes. Mer went traveling before med school."
"Yeah, I've heard her talk to patients about Paris. So...this isn't…?"
"Not me. Half sister. I don't know if it's anyone."
"But…oh. Your dad—?"
"Not his," Lexie admitted, then realizing what that gave away, she added, "That's all you need to know."
"Of course."
"And if you pick up anything else, you don't know that either."
"How would I…?"
"By reading the rest of the chart," Lexie said. "I don't want…. The psych eval. See if you can figure out how far along she was, or if she says…what she'll do. I have an appointment, but…here." Lexie grabbed the chunky pen on her desk and wrote her number on a Post-it. "Text me."
Wilson nodded, looking shell-shocked. Lexie didn't blame her. It wasn't until she was on the elevator that she wondered if she could even tell her shrink about this.
Therapy had been the one thing Meredith insisted on. She'd said she more than understood not wanting to talk in a group, but Lexie needed to be talking to someone. With the turmoil, the someone they could get her in with at such short notice had been Dr. Wyatt.
She'd been one of three staff psychiatrists at a hospital that thrived on chaos and catastrophe. She could deal with some conflict of interest.
Meredith might not be Ellis Grey's only child. Lexie knew she wouldn't be able to stop thinking about that until she knew the truth. The question was, would Meredith want to know? Having her fathers' kids show up in her life might've been complicated enough for her.
But she'd been five. She'd have known if her mom had a baby, right? There probably wasn't anything to find out.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
She says it could be as far along as 18-20 wks! Says she hadn't had a period in months but she thought it was stress abt her boards & it gave her an edge.
Goes on abt how she has to be in Boston in a week. Doesn't have time. But he wants kids. He loves [Dr. Grey] [uh M Grey] better than her pansy-ass father. He just wanted to protect her. He'd want to protect his baby, wouldn't he? He'd want their child. Together they could do it. Almost sounds like she's talking to him.
Can I ask you one thing?
LEXIE GREY:
Sure.
BUG-EYES "BUGSY" WILSON:
I've heard she was awful. That she prioritized work over Dr. Grey & stuff? I figured…. Surgeons attempt suicide at a high rate women particularly, there are studies. But this doesn't have anything to do with work, does it?
LEXIE GREY:
No, it was the guy. A Hail Mary attention grab.
BUG-EYES "BUGSY" WILSON:
she said she'd never be able to love her daughter equally to her job & she felt guilty. That when she died, either her pathetic husband would have to step up, or her sister, but even strangers might be able to love a bright capable girl more than she could. But "she is bright & capable. She proved she has a mind of her own. I can raise an extraordinary woman & what I can't give her, she'll find on her own."
LEXIE GREY:
Oh.
BUG-EYES "BUGSY" WILSON:.
She says a lot about being alone, and how to be an extraordinary man you only have to be good at your job, but a woman has to be a wife and mother. Men say they support, but they all let you fall if you climb too high.
LEXIE GREY:
Anything else about the bb?
BUG-EYES "BUGSY" WILSON:
After she says the stuff abt Dr. Grey. She says the world could only benefit from a child with their genes. More about being alone. The doc says she has some time. She wants more time with him. She'll have to make arrangement. If their situation doesn't change she'll ensure this one gets what she can't give. What a partner is meant to do.
She's curt & all, but she seems genuinely overwhelmed.
Jeez. No wonder Mer had identified with Punky Brewster. Apart from the most salient detail of the baby—potential baby, for real in this case—Wilson's report wasn't totally new information. It did put more than a few things she'd heard into perspective. That Ellis had hoped for Richard to see her chart and come find her in time for them to be a family. That Mer was in care for at least that weekend.
She obviously hadn't told her she was going to have a little sister, or a baby who would go live with a different family—why not? Women with kids were surrogates. Likely, not in the eighties, but what did a kid know? It wasn't until she'd died that Meredith told the one secret she'd been charged with, no matter how much it'd hurt her. The other reveal, the Alzheimer's, was a decision made for her. Would Mer, by all accounts a curious kid, have been in so much turmoil that she didn't ask? Her Anatomy Jane doll had the same attachment as Zola's!
Lexie didn't know, and initially she wasn't sure how to find out anything else. Adoption records were sealed, and it sure as hell wasn't her business.
"Why are you so bothered, then?" Jean-Philippe asked her later that day on the familiar drive to Roseridge. "Your own curiosity?"
"Somewhat," she admitted. His eyes flicked to the rearview, and she shrugged.
"Tsk, tsk, Lucy."
Whenever he said it, he sounded…fond. Fond. Geez. Mer would've rolled her eyes so hard at that they'd have gotten stuck.
"It's not just that! If Mer has another sibling out there, I think she deserves to know. She was alone for a long time, and she'll say she was fine, but I don't buy it. She surrounds herself with people. I didn't think it was fair that she didn't know about …having her in your corner is a major asset."
"Say you find out more about this sibling. Enough to tell your sister, and she is not interested? Your little Zo-Zo is adopted, yes? Maybe Meredith doesn't want to disturb anyone's family. What do you do, Lexie Grey? Do you leave it? Or have you already contacted this person on Facebook at that point?"
Lexie almost spat out the frappucino she'd grabbed on her way out of the hospital. "Probably the second one. But if they don't want to be in touch, it's up to them. Don't you think everyone deserves all the information, though?"
She never knew what would make J.P. stop and think. He'd go quiet, the pads of his fingers would tap the steering wheel, and sometimes he'd still break the silence by saying, "I don't know what I think there. Let me get back to you."
What most struck her was that occasionally, he'd say, "hey, Lucy. You remember once you asked me...?" and he'd prove to have been considering something she had to think to remember saying.
The response he gave her once he'd unhooked her chair and she'd wheeled down the metal ramp to the sidewalk in front of Roseridge was, "You never know everything about family, Lexie Grey. And knowing is not always understanding."
"I do have evidence to support that claim."
He inclined his head and put a hand on her shoulder, an I know you do.
"Whoa, Doc! That was a vico-level wipeout," Damien crowed. He righted Lexie's wheelchair for her while she took stock. Of what she could feel, nothing felt broken.
"Yeah, I was distracted. Um. Hey. Can you…not classify my failed wheelies that way?" Lexie cringed at her legs as she arranged them in the best position to get back in her chair. It'd been easier to let people at the hospital know what'd happened—although she desperately hoped it wouldn't spread.
"Sure thing."
"Ready?" The PCA supervising the outpatient free hour came over to help Lexie return to her chair. She could manage it, but she'd gradually come to accept that sometimes doing things on her own was nothing but a waste of energy.
"Hey," she said. "You worked with my sister's mother, didn't you?"
The middle-aged blonde woman pressed her lips together. "I did."
"Can I talk to you, privately?"
Trying to emulate as much of Derek's charm as she could, she assured the woman that she didn't want to put her in any awkward positions. She understood that her job came with certain privacy concerns. Hers did, too. But she'd discovered something she thought her sister had a right to know about.
"She flashed back to the period after Dr. Webber left her a lot. Mer says she cried a lot, which was out of character. It wasn't only about him, was it?"
The PCA looked like she might not be going to crack, but eventually, she shook her head.
"She was pregnant. That's why she didn't pursue him further. She didn't want him to choose her because of that. Or…if she thought he didn't want kids, she didn't want him to tell her to get rid of it." What she'd said in the transcript made Lexie sure of that. Ellis had already been enamored with the idea of a Webber-Grey baby, and she couldn't say she blamed her. The PCA shrugged, but Lexie took that to be in reference to the second part of her deduction.
That night, Lexie went through her phone, looking for anyone from Harvard who might be able—and willing—to do work on the ground for her. She hadn't been super-close with anyone in her med school class, but she'd had friends. A lot of them were now in their last year as residents at area hospitals.
It was then that she realized that Jo's number hadn't been a 617 area code. It'd been 206. Seattle.
She'd once heard someone say that your phone number was tied to where you lived in 2005. Hers was. Her phone had been a gift from her parents the Christmas before she graduated from undergrad. Derek's was New York, like Mark's had been—"It's a 212," he'd told her once. "You don't give up a 212." Even Meredith's was a 617.
There were all kinds of reasons Jo Wilson might've wanted to start over. Wondering which it was would get Lexie nowhere. That didn't mean she could make herself stop.
