There were hearts everywhere. Fake hearts, mostly, festively decorating bulletin boards in the halls of the institutions where Lexie spent her life. At the hospital, a few services had managed to make anatomical hearts into something cutesy. They all reminded her of Mark. Not because of any romantic Valentine's Day memories. (She wished. They'd only been together for the one, while she'd still been sneaking him in and out of Meredith's attic.) No, hearts and Mark didn't make her think of romance, at all.
"Would you believe that I've always hated Valentine's Day?"
"Depends." Cristina eyed first Lexie and then the cafeteria employee carrying her tray for her. Lexie nodded for Raymond to put it down, with a one-handed salute of thanks. "Was it because you couldn't take cupcakes to school on your birthday?"
"You'd think." Lexie snagged the bag with her silverware from the pouch on the side of her powerchair. "But family lore says that Mom went into labor late on the night of Sunday the thirteenth, and I came out ten minutes after midnight on the fifteenth. I refused to be a Valentine's baby, and my teachers had to deal with two days of hyper kids. Mer says she's glad she didn't have to be the one to teach me to share."
"Speaking of, aren't you afraid you'll be charged with fraternization?"
"No. Derek seems to be more pissed at you than she is, but that's all I know. Did you have foreknowledge of Cahill?"
"As if. I don't think there's actual policy about what the chief can tell his wife, but since I no longer qualify, Mr. Taciturn has become…."
"Mr. Mum?" Lexie offered. "Oh."
Cristina's eyebrows rose, and she smiled around her fork. "He'd do it. Be a mom, if men could carry. Like that's…. I could handle a pregnancy."
Lexie wrinkled her nose. "I dunno, I don't envy Mer. It's like she's an attending but to her body it's an internship. She's exhausted, she's still sensitive to smells that a general surgeon deals with all the time, and she's not even showing, yet. She looked like hell this morning, and she still wouldn't just stay home. Uf some complication comes up—"
"Wait, she's here?"
"Not officially. If you haven't seen her, it's good. Means Derek got her locked in his office."
"Is it…? What's going on with her?"
"She had a migraine last month, so possibly that? She definitely wasn't up to operating the day after." Derek had said he was going to stock up on Zofran, which tracked with how out-of-it she'd been this morning. Lexie hadn't felt great either. It'd been the muscle relaxant she'd borrowed off one of Faye's crew had been what made her loopy, so it wasn't the worst hangover she'd ever had. She'd been more apprehensive about Derek starting in on her than anything, but all of his concerned looks had been going to her sister. Which was good. She didn't need him to lecture her over one mistake.
It'd been nice, before the floatiness became grogginess. The muscle relaxants she had for spasms made her upper body feel so sluggish that they might as well have been relaying below C-7. She might see if someone would let her switch.
"Does Shepherd think it's the pregnancy? She never had them before this summer… Or, maybe she did. What do I know?"
"Plenty, which is why you should know that if you want answers, you go to a primary source."
"Which is why I'm asking you."
"A. No one tells me things, and B. I'm minding my own business."
"Which is?"
"Asking you how Mark died."
"He was in a—"
"He presented with a cardiac tamponade. Meredith performed a pericardiocentesis with a straw, and it was effective."
"It was." Cristina stabbed her salad with each word. "He tried to die on us a couple times."
"I remember."
"Oh, no, you don't, McSteamy!"
"Shut up! She's awake."
"He's…he's—?"
"Shhh, sweetie. You just breathe, I can't do compressions on two people…."
"Get over here! She wants him breathing, too."
"I can help Don't hurt yourself."
"The alternative being? Him dying, your hand falling off?"
"Hey, wha's all the fuss about?"
"You, idiot. Learn to stay away from the goddamn light."
"He…He told Mer it was all a ploy to have her kiss him without Derek breaking his nose again. She said to see if she revived him again. But she did."
"Of course she did," Cristina said, in the gentle tone she she used on patients' families. It was modeled off Callie's. It irritated Lexie, until she realized that in Cristina's eyes, she was a patient's family member. She didn't feel like it. Her desire to know more wasn't academic curiosity, or the dread-tinged interest she'd felt while Meredith walked her through her mother's death note. It was a thought that'd become an obsession that gnawed at her almost all the time. She was hungry with it. Truly a Grey ghoul.
"He went into cardiogenic shock. We left the woods, but he didn't get out of them, after that."
"So, but…. It wasn't…. This might sound…." She scraped her mind for the word. Selfish, narcissistic, egotistical….
"Pericardial Decompression Syndrome is a possibility. There needs to have been two hundred fifty hundred milliliters of fluid involved. For obvious reasons, we don't know if that was the case. Teddy did a pericardial window when we got back here, and that's more likely to cause PDS than a pericardiocentesis. It wouldn't mean Mer—"
"No." Lexie's erase that gesture currently resembled shaking an etch-a-sketch, which she sort of liked. "Of course not! That's not…. It's…. I thought maybe…Takotsubo." She'd never said it aloud. The weeaboo she'd dated sophomore year at Harvard had never hesitated to tell her that her Japanese pronunciation sucked.
Cristina's expression made Lexie want to retract it all. This was why she hadn't talked about him at Roseridge; she'd known people would think they knew how she felt. There, she'd expected dismissal. She was young. They hadn't been together, officially. Here, it was the other end of the spectrum, as though everything she did must be about him. It was easy to see where the assumptons came from, but it wasn't true.
Shouldn't it be true?
"I'm not Altman. I don't need you to go over it a thousand times. I just…wondered."
"Clinically, Takotsubo, aka Broken Heart Syndrome can look like PDS. Both affect the left ventricle, and there have been cases of overlap leading to cardigenic shock. He responded to pressors for a while, went back to Stage C for long enough to be weaned off of them, and then the hypotension and hypoperfusion increased again."
"Would you have done an ECMO? Or a P-VAD? IABP, at a minimum?" Every one of those interventions could've helped his heart beat while he recovered, or…or waited.
(For a transplant. Not for her.)
(Not just for her.)
"I don't know! I didn't see his echocardiogram."
"Yeah, right. I've seen you walk through the CICU looking for interesting echos."
"He was on life support before the antipsychotics started working, so, no. I wasn't looking at anyone's chart."
"Oh. No one ever…I never put together the timeline." She didn't apologize. If she'd been awake, Cristina would've been monitoring him.
"There might be more information in the legal paperwork. What's your excuse? You've got three copies of it in that house."
Lexie pressed her lips together. Derek had one set in a safe deposit box; another was in the safe with Zola's adoption paperwork and their other eimportant paperwork. Lexie's was in the manilla envelope she'd found when she broke into the locked door of Dad's desk to find her Social Security card to sign for the Crapartment.
"What you want to know," Cristina said. "Is: if there was Broken Heart Syndrome involved, was it primary? Was the tamponade the result of stress cardiomyopathy, or was he recovering from the effusion when you went unresponsive on us? I wish I could give you certainty, but that was part of what made those days hellacious.
"We had no idea what was going to happen or why anything did. Meredith and I had probably done more field medicine than most residents, but none of us were trauma surgeons. You can't see what's under the skin if there's no incision."
"You're cardiac Sherlock!"
"With tests. With scans, and numbers, and images! You told Sloan he infected you, right? That's what you told him?"
"Yeah, so?"
"You weren't the only one who was susceptible. There were weeks where I couldn't think of anything or anyone else. Where I couldn't sleep. Where every heart was his. I wasn't in love with him, but that doesn't mean I haven't considered this from every possible angle.
"Cardiac shock is a cycle that can be hard to break out of, I don't think Shepherd or Torres would've objected if Russell or Teddy had advocated for something that took the strain off his heart, but…. What's the biggest complication related to VA-ECMO?" she asked. Now she was addressing a resident again. Lexie wanted to shrug off the comfort that cloaked her.
"Bleeding. Thromboembolism. Ischemea. Stroke. DVT. Renal failure."
"Another cause of renal failure?"
"Dehydration. But Mer found water."
"Drinking water, and the brook wasn't close. When it came to IV fluids…. We all ended up dehydrated, Three. The energy his heart needed to recover in those first few days went to keeping the rest of his organs from failing. Robbins's leg wasn't taken off because of the open fracture; it was the infection. A systemic thing. With that kind of trauma, there can just be too much damage:"
"No kidding?"
"What do you want me to say? We did all we could for both of you. There's always a point where the dice just fall. It's not fair, but if you expect fair, you're in the wrong field."
Lexie wasn't in any field, but she didn't want to get into that. Cristina had only had psychological issues to get past when she'd tried taking on another job; she wouldn't get it.
"You have a stepfather."
"Uh, yeah, unless Mom finally sent him running from the Hills."
"Did your dad…? Did they get along?"
"Well, I was nine when my dad died, and they were both pretty quiet nerds, but I think the cordiality was real."
"And you still saw your dad?"
"Weekends and holidays. Now, it might've been fifty-fifty, but then the bachelor-dad wasn't trusted to get the kid to school."
"If your mom had moved—?"
"Can we stop pretending this is about me?"
"Dad told me he thought Ellis and Richard were together for, like, decades. He made it sound like…like that have meant she was better off without him, but I—"
Cristina held up a hand. "Stop there. The person you need to take that to is not me, and the opinion that matters is not yours."
"He's my dad! It matters to me that he just…let my sister go, and why he did it—"
"Will not change any decisions you made in the past, and if you end up in that position, is his the perspective you're gonna care about?"
"I just…. Mark and Arizona…. I can't imagine them letting Sofia go, regardless of who'd be raising her, and I…I wonder. My mom told Mer she wanted Dad focused on them, because they were new—and they were. They almost split up a couple of times when Moll and I were little—they pretended it wasn't that bad, but it was—and with Dani…, It's not hard to think that if they hadn't made it, he might've done it again."
"He hasn't."
"Yeah, but…you always hear of people staying for the kids. It's like…like Mom wanted us, and he…he did all the dad things. Recitals, softball games, homework…. We can't have been more lovable than Meredith. Molly had colic! And Mom definitely did more of the work with us than a resident in the early eighties possibly could have.
"And you're right, there's a point where it doesn't matter, because that wasn't our experience. Except, he never changed. He loves us, but I don't think he'd care if we'd never come home after Mom died, in terms of…of caring about us as people."
"Does he know you as a person? An adult?"
"Do your parents? Your mom and stepdad?"
Cristina took a long drink from her soda. "They do."
"Oh."
"They didn't always. They love me, and they support me, but they're not…scientists. I might be the only Korean woman whose mother didn't want her to to be or bang a doctor. She'd maybe have been happy if I'd decided to do plastics and gone into business in LA.
"You're not the only one who moved across the country for college. I went to a women's college so Mom would stop asking about boys. She decided I was a lesbian for a while. I assumed that we had nothing to talk about, so what was the point of trying?
"Then, I discovered Owen hadn't told his mother he'd come home. George died. I faced down a guy with a gun. And I thought, you know, if I'd died…they wouldn't really know me. My mom's intense and pushy. She drives me crazy, but she's no Ellis Grey. She tried. She cares if I'm happy. I wanted her to know I was, even if my life wasn't what she'd imagined for me. So, I go home for one holiday a year. I let her fret over my hair, explain for the millionth time why I can't keep a manicure…. She wants me to be happy," she repeated, with a slight shrug. "I just don't usually take her advice about how to get there.
"Karev showed me what your step-goldigger was up to. You get that she's afraid of you taking your father's attention back? Infantalizing you, centering herself as his rock…. That he's not good at balancing people benefits her. It's not likely that he'll spontaneously figure out how to meet you in the middle. If you want him to know you, it's gonna be up to you to make that happen."
"Sucks when the answer to adult problems is to be an adult."
"Aun' 'Istina!" The gleeful exclamation came with the sound of toddler footsteps just a little different from the ones Lexie was used to. Sofia rocketed into Cristina's arms to be lifted up and sat on the table. Their harsh whispers made Cristina's interaction with Sofia stand out even more. "Goddaughter inspection! Show me your head." Sofia planted her hands on her head.
Callie, who had been rushing after her, paused to talk to one of the P.T.s. Lexie didn't recognize them, but she did recognize tone. The atmopshere here was the merger was happening all over again. It was depressingMaybe she should drop O.T. with Steffi. A couple extra hours of FENS wasn't going to give her back the dexterity she'd need to mcome back to work, whether she wanted it to or not. On the other hand, the doubling up made sure all of her time there was accounted for; the vocational rehabilitation people didn't know what to do with her, but they desperately wanted to do something to claim her as a success.
"Show me muscles!" The flex came with a grrr. "Say, I am strong."
"I strong!"
"I am smart."
"I smar'."
"I am creative."
"I kay-tive."
"I am independent."
"Innapenant."
"Excellent! Inspection passed." Cristina kissed Sofia on the cheek, and then tickled her.
"No tickle, no dank you."
"Extra credit awarded!" Cristina held her hand up for a high-five. "If you don't want to be tickled, you use your voice."
"Yeah. Hi, Leckys."
"Hey, Sof. Did you have lunch with your moms?" Lexie asked as Sofia crawled over the table toward her.
"The almond butter breath give her away?" Callie joked.
"Leckys pretty nose." Sofia rested out, and Lexie let her manipulate the sternum ring. Your StepLexi would not have that, baby, Lexie thought. At the same time, she popped her tongue out, and imagined how much funnier the little girl would find it if there was a bauble, there, too.
("I hope supporting this identiy crisis is the right call," Meredith had asked when she had mentioned it. Then, she'd added, "Your lips would suit a Monroe. Mine are too thin. Weirdly why the eyebrow ring worked."
"Are there pictures?"
"In the boxes upstairs. I'll show you some time."
She'd wanted to demand to see them. She didn't care what Meredith said about her younger self; the thirteen-year-old in Lexie was thrilled: her big sister was cool!
"Mom would've shat a cat, " Molly said, The camera showed only her upper half and the wall of the apartment balcony, not the gorgeous view off in the direction of the smoke she blew away. Her little sister was cool, too. "And 'not under my roof' doesn't seem to be what Meredith would've responded to from a stepmother.")
"Sofia! Don't touch!" Robbins's tone made the toddler clasp her hands.
"It's okay," Lexie said. "She's not picking my nose. Are yoy?" She wrinkled the feature, and Sofia griggled.
"Still." Robbins picked up her daughter. "I'm going to take her back. Maybe bring back one of the toddler teachers to deal with Sammi."
Callie watched them go, and then shot Lexie a chagrinned look. Across the table, Cristina was giving her a different one, expecting her to ask about Mark.
If she wanted to go to Callie, she would've gone to Callie.
"She's stressed. We've got a challenging patient. A gymnast. Well. Former gymnast. Actually, Lex—"
"No. I'm a bad role model."
"I don't need you to give her career counseling. We're trying to get her out of bed. You do that every day."
"Eh. Most days. Sometimes, someone pulls, and it's easier not to resist. Not what you want the kid to hear."
"I dunno. Maybe the honesty would resonate. Not knowing what comes next hasn't made you totally stagnant, Wheelchair Kneveal."
Lexie almost smiled. She might have if that didn't mean either her sister or Derek was talking about her like she was their kid.
She had fun with Faye's crew; not being the only person who stood out, or even—she was woman enough to admit—the one who stood out the most, made it easier not to care what she'd looked like on the club floor. The strobes made it hard to see any part of her body consistently, and in every stripe there was somewhere she could move. The music had drowned out everything else.
Other nights, she'd started hanging out with Damien. It'd turned out that not only did he kick ass at wheelchair parkour; he'd been a skater—a real one—before his accident. During his rehab, he'd discovered WCHMX, a budding sport that was, essentially, BMX in a wheelchair. The first time she'd gone down a ramp at the park in her manual chair, she'd gotten her a shot of exhilaration she hadn't felt since the last time she'd scrubbed in. She'd felt alive. More than that, she'd been glad to feel it.
The rest of the time, she felt like that while they were both unconscious, Mark had been given Lexie's heart and then died with it in his chest.
They left Wyatt's office with a new plan that Meredith was determined not to need.
"I should go up and handle the emails Kepner's been sending me before we go home," Derek said. " Do you want to wait in the car?"
"I'll go with you." She could tell he expected her to argue for going up. To insist that time in the skills lab wouldn't be exactly strenuous. She didn't. She felt shaky, like she'd had a fever break, and she wasn't sure she was ready to hold a scapel. Not because she'd use it. Just that the thought still brought the image of seeing Zola while she did.
In his office, she stood in the middle of the floor, not sure where she wanted to be. The pull of the couch was almost magnetic, but she bypassed it to sit on the corner of Derek's desk. His hand rested idly on her knee while he scrolled through his emails. "Kepner's emails suggest that, at some point, I do need to speak to some department heads. I can take you home, or—"
"I'll stay up here, if that's okay."
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"I don't know.… Just…. I'm sorry. For…For all of it, but especially for scaring you. I told you not to start doing something reckless after Mark. It's different, but…not. And I…I know you love me like I love you, so…so it's the same fear. I know you don't really understand why I can't just not do it, but you believe me. It's…it means more than…. No one would've said you'd done the wrong thing if you'd grabbed Zola and left last night."
He turned his chair fully away from the computer, and put his hands on her knees."If we put aside that I…." He paused and something she didn't recognize passed over his face. "That I would never leave someone in the state you were in—"
"Lexie."
"Yeah, no, your passed out, paralyzed sister would not count in that situaiton. Putting that aside, I have done things I'm not proud of. I've hurt people on purpose, and completely obliviously, but taking Zola? I cannot believe there wouldn't be an alternative to hurting you like that, or that it would ever be in her best interest. I will never do that. Not even for a night. I won't let anyone else do it either.
"When she came home, it was such a relief, and we were so busy. We sort of let those four months of not having her slide into the past—"
"Derek?"
"—but they didn't, did they? Then, she almost lost us again. And everything else, from my hand, to Adele dying—"
"Derek."
"Even my wanting to make it all up to you—"
"Derek! I…um…I don't…. C-Can you…. It is called Complex PTSD, because, you know, complex, and we should definitely talk about this, I swear I'm not avoiding. Something's wrong."
"Wrong, how? Are you…is there pain? Have you been…?" Downplaying, ignoring, not feeling?
Had she? Was there anything this morning? Her numbnesss wasn't anything like what Lexie experienced—or didn't experience—Certain pain helped, but dull, everyday aches…. Would she have felt cramps? For sure? Yes. Yes, she'd have felt that. Noticed. She was being paranoid about delusions.
Derek touched her cheek, guiding her face toward his. "Talk to me, Mer."
"Nothing hurts. Not yet. I would've…. It's not—It's just…it's like a flutter? It's not…not normal. I-I've been producing stress hormone soup for fourteen hours, and that's…it's how the miscarriage…."
"Okay, hold on. Take a breath."
"My appendectomy, too. I told Lexie months ago that that was probably stress-induced—"
"Stop. Breathe…. Good. Again…. Okay, listen. You said it's like a flutter? Yes or no."
"Uh-huh."
"No cramping, or anything like that?"
"No, but—"
"You're at twenty weeks."
"Halfway. Nowhere close to far enough. Derek…."
He smiled, and she started to relax before he explained. "It's quickened. Absolutely, one-hundred percent normal. The baby's moving."
"Really? You…You're sure?" She wasn't sure why she asked that, when the way the smile left no room for concern. If he'd had any doubts, they'd be halfway to OB.
"I can't promise you nothing is going to go wrong. But in all likelihood, we're going to have a baby in twenty weeks, and this is only the first weird, but miraculous moment. Your body is not a toxic place. You're strong. You're healthy. You knew you were pregnant earlier than most people do, and you haven't done anything risky. I am right here with you, and I'll be here for all of it, especially if something unexpected happens.
"I know you're scared. I also know you researched every step of the procedures Callie did on my wrist, and you were able to believe she'd succeed. If we start going over what to expect—like we did with the parenting stuff—will you feel more like you're preparing than jinxing? We could revive our study dates."
"You're already teaching me neur—"
"That's different. We'd be learning together. We could revive our study dates."
They'd had to rush through classes to be able to adopt, and a lot of it they'd gone over again. It hadn't been the obsessive reading she'd done after Zola was taken. It'd been fun. She'd always liked studying with him, even as an intern. He hadn't judged what she didn't know, and he'd retained a lot from his residency.
She'd shared some of what he taught her with her cohort, but not all of it.. She, Alex, and Cristina were no longer in competition, but…old habits. They didn't hear the stories she'd found herself slipping into—about a lecture she'd gone to while studying in Milan, or hiding in the hallway, listening to her mother talking to Aunt Marie.—Everything was like that, to one degree or another. Derek would never have all of her, but he had the most.
"It's not like I'm clueless. I did an OB-GYN rotation, and got more than my required hours here. But...I guess it has been a while since my focus wasn't on either getting pregnant, or delivering babies."
"That, and you're a surgeon. A lot of your OB and neonatal hours were done while we had a fetal medicine specialist on staff. Those are not your 'what to expect' cases."
"What, Laura's not average?"
"Laura is a delight whose genome, I fervidly hope, is full of alleles she inherited from her father or maternal grandmother."
"I'd take the strawberry-blonde curls."
"No baby of yours will need the cute boost."
"Their sister set the bar pretty high."
Derek brought his hand to her cheek again, this time as reassurance. "She loves you so much. She will never doubt that you love her. Her as she is. And that you believe in her."
"You taught me how to do that. That it was possible."
He gave her the smile that said he didn't quite believe that. He'd never known her as a lost cause.
Had she been? Really? She'd left college with all her pre-med reqs. She'd done them early, often being the only lower-classman in the room. Her grades hadn't been what her mother wanted, but they were high on the curve. Her other grades got her honors, if not the highest ones—"Mom, if I'd tried to higher than some of the people here, I'd have OD'd."Her mother hadn't appreciated the joke, maybe because it'd been made over the phone, and she hadn't been there to smell the weed floating around at commencement. (Meredith had handed off her last graduation ticket a week earlier. She'd learned long before that arranging for a last-minute seat was a lot less stressful than staring at an empty one.)—She didn't earn a Ph.D over the years she took off, but if she hadn't had real-world experience, her mother would've suffered in the four years that followed. Meredith would've been totally screwed—more than she had been. How lost could I have been? shewonderedwith Derek's lips on hers. He found me.
His hands were already under the hem of her t-shirt, making the hoodie that had been a comforting weight feel heavy and hot. She yanked it off and flung it to the couch in one movement.
"Crap." She'd forgotten that all she had on under it was the short-sleeved t-shirt Derek had replaced her bloodied Henley with at some point after moving her to their bedroom. "Sorry."
"What?"
She flicked her eyes over her wrapped forearm, and the rectangular Band-Aid covering the mangled scar on her shoulder. "Wouldn't you rather not see that?"
"The options here are more Meredith—" He slid his chair back and pushed her shirt up to kiss the visible bump it revealed. She squirmed at the brush of beard against that skin, and he drew back just enough for the next kiss to land somewhere unpredictable. "—or less Meredith?"He smoothed the tee back into place, his hands moving around to her back "I'm for more Meredith. Do I hear a rebuttal?"
"Pretend I came up with something better than 'I'll rebuttal you.'"
"I can do that." He moved his hands to her thighs, hindering her quest to adjust her perch to compensate for the unfamiliar fit of these jeans. The seam was not cooperating. "Remember the first time you sat there? You'd finally gotten cleared after the shooting."
"Huh. That's kind of ironic."
"I was thinking more along the lines of what happened next…."
"Oh…. You have to work to do. I didn't mean to distra—" He stretched his left thumb to her crotch, and pressed down, perfectly, exactly. "—ack—t you….You hafta go talk to people."
"Eventually."
"I…I didn't…." Moving in any direction was incredibly counterproductive; he pushed back, and made her want to break away less, to move more. When she managed to freeze, he took over, his thumb moving back and forth, almost idly. She had to bite her lip to keep her mouth closed while she found the word in her brain, and override her body—not her strength lately.—and forcing it out was equally difficult. "Telfa."
It came out in a rasp, barely a whisper. He jerked his hand away like she'd shocked him. A whine of frustration escaped her to coincide with the tears that had been a wobbling sheen in her eyes. Pathetic to safe-word out of nothing, a nothing that felt better than almost anything. That might've helped her stop thinking—but she hadn't thought— hadn't meant—
"Mer, hey, what's wrong?"
"Nothing."
He sat back and tilted his head at her, his hands folded and eyebrow raised. Try again.
"It's…I don't know how you.…You…You've spent the past two months trying to prevent the past twelve hours, and I really want to promise you it's over, but I can't."
"Meredith, you understand that for me the goal has been supporting you, not…protecting Zola from you, or anything like that? God, I wish I'd gone in there as soon as Cristina said that."
She looked down at her hands, not wanting him to see that she wished that, too. She didn't need him to defend her. "It's not a hard connection to make."
"But it's a wrong one. Your mother was dealing with her own mental health issues, and she used a tool that was readily accessible. That's the only similarity. To make a false equivilency—all that could ever do was hurt you. She knew you were hurting yourself, and she didn't think to make sure someone checked on you?" He clenched his jaw, and she could see him counting to five. "Last night would've upset you regardless. You work so hard to keep Zola from being affected by anything you're going through. You'd already given a hundred and ten percent here. You're growing a person. It's impressive to me that you have the energy to fight as hard as you do." He ran a hand over his mouth, "Or to not fight. That you were willing… That you didn't make me drag you when you had any suspicion that I'd tricked you with the goal of having you admitted..." He sat forward to put his eyes in her sightline. "I would never do that without talking to you about it. Unless you genuinely could not cnsent...even then, I'd need to be sure there wasn't another option. I should've considered that after that you might need time—"
"I don't!" Immediately after making the protest, she covered her face with her hands. "That wasn't why…." She held her left arm out, and then crossed both of them over her chest. "Stupid horny hormones…I'm always…. It's…H-How can you want to…?" She swallowed, but the tears making her throat pinched rose anyway. Not covering her face again was an active choice.
"I see," he said, putting a hand on her knee. He was touching her life he had after the crash. Like he needed to be sure she was real. He wasn't mad at her for that? For failing so spectacularly? "How can I want to help you relax enough to get some rest? To let your mind process things without you driving it in circles? How can I want to show you that these—" He ran the back of his finger over the bandages on her arm. "—have no effect on how gorgeous you are to me? If you don't feel like it, that's perfectly understandable. But there's nothing wrong with you if you do."
"You can't really think that."
"But I do. You're having a hard time beliving how loved you are. Let me show you. Going down on you is one of my favorite ways to do that. If I'd thought you'd had it in mind, I wouldn't have bothered bringing up that day. You're pretty direct—"
"—have to be, with you—"
"—and you are not always into it, stupid hormones or no. I don't think you would've been last night. But if you had been? That would've been okay. It's stress relief. You've been experiencing a lot of that."
"It feels like not enough to justify…."
"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder." He moved one hand to her lower back, and his lips to her neck. His other hand went back to its place on her thigh. Before she'd given a full thought to it, anticipation started to pool in her stomach. "I want you to get a break. I want you to feel how precious you are to me. I want you to remember that having your skin buzz can be a good feeling." Each statement was followed by him kissing her somewhere else, leaving gaps long enough that she could stop him if she wanted. Her collarbone, behind her ear, the pulse point at her temple. He kept his thumb moving along the inside of her thigh. "You, Meredith Grey, are good. You are beautiful. You are still, today, my sunshine. Can I start making your day better? Make up for misleading you?"
"Taking me for a ride?"
He flicked the tip of her nose. "I promise this one will be better."
"If…If you need to go…."
"I want to take care of you. For you to get a moment where you're not second-guessing everything. Am I right that you'd like that?"
Her "yes" caught as, rather than putting his thumb back, he rubbed two knuckles under her fly, rolling the seam. One of them, or chance landing on her side for once, had aligned it with her clit. Under all of it, she felt the response of blood rushing into the tissue around the nerves he was teasing. She walked her hands back, pushing her pelvis up toward him, balancing with her shoes on the side of his chair. He widened his range, pressing—mashing.
"Mer, we might need to rework your positioning, here."
"Unh-uh."
"You're one good stretch away from falling on your ass."
"Just a sec. Just…oh, harder. Yeah, yeah, there…. Aggh."
"Got you. Told you, but got you." He moved her legs more securely onto his chair, and she leaned back onto her elbows, squirming involuntarily until he brought his hand back. "You feel close, huh?"
"Uh-huh. That's okay?"
"You know it. But I think we oughta consider taking these jeans off of you."
"Nuh-uh. S'what feels good."
"I bet. You've got all those nerves pressed right here." He rolled the heel of his hand against her. "But they're not gonna stay there, are they? You'll get right to the edge, and I won't be able to find you through this. Denim's a lot less pliable than a bathing suit. Remember how that goes?"
"Got there. Scared that bird."
"You did," he admitted. "But that took—"
"Shhh. Not the same. So…So much closer."
She knew what he meant; to get to climaxes that made her shiver pleasurably with the memory, there'd been a lot of straining at fabric without the right give, almost too stimulated, ready to risk the fate Miranda had met on her honeymoon. But this was different. She could feel it every time the seam bumped against her, couldn't stand the thought of pausing for a second.
"Just, just, press all of me, okay? Right at the base of—Yeah, yeah, yeah, there, there, there, please, harder, harder, it's right there, right there, Derek, please, please find, oh yeah, oh-oh-yes-yes—agh—Okay, okay, don't stop, rub, yeah…ow, ow fuck—no more bumping, just up and down. Yeah, that's it, that's it—ow— just gotta get it—" She squirmed, trying to offset the seam so it would stay pressed the side of her clit. "There. Hey, no, I fixed it." She reached up, trying to grab for Derek, but he'd leaned back too far. She kicked at him, which just led to him tucking her foot under his arm.
"You gave me 'ow,' and you think I'm not going to back off and recalibrate?" His nails scratched the sides of her belly, so obnoxiously lightly. It was nothing…almost nothing like... tiny tingly soft shuddery sparks. "That feel nice?"
"Sorta." Some part of her, the part furthest from the throbbing in her clit cringed. It did, and it wasn't his fault her body and brain were so freaking addled—
"Okay, grumpy cat. You're going to let me pull these off—" One tug and her jeans flumped to the floor. Her panties followed, a promise he meant business. He glanced around and with a triumphant ha nabbed Zola's old pack'n'play blanket off the filling cabinet. "Up."
He'd ditched the chair by the time she'd arranged herself on the blanket, and she almost couldn't deal with the way he grinned at her while kneeling between her legs.
"Oh, baby, no wonder. Here, give me your finger." She hesitated, but only for a second before leaning back on her right forearm and holding out her left hand. Without commenting on her choice of finger, he guided her downward, gently holding her wrist. "Right here. Feel that? Those lips are nice and soft, but they couldn't keep up with this." He dragged her finger over the glans of her clit. Her gasp became more as he used her finger to circled the swelling around it. "That's better. Not surprised I got ow with only your 'boring underoos' between that and a ridge of denim." He let go of her wrist, and she braced for his fingers.
She got more than that. The heat of his mouth almost undid her in one breath. "Fuck, you can't just…just do that. Just do that. Crap, so good; how'd I…? Ooo-ooo-ooo-oooo, that feels… s'incredible. So-oo not ow, so good. Try…try swirls—ahh, yeah, ahh, yeah, yeah, yeah that's it that's so— oh, oh, oh, okay, okay, just can you just suck for—yeah, so fast I'm-I'm right there…Don't wanna be— don't wanna be done—wanna get there. now now now. Gotta…gotta…gonna come…don't stop…harder, yeah, yeah little more, tha'sit mmm so warm fastest ever Derek Derek Derek I'm coming, coming yeah-yeah-ye—aaaaahhhh fuuuuuck yessss…. Ahhh, Derek, lemme go…You…you gotta go."
"Thought you didn't want to be done."
"Won't cry about it. Floaty. Good floaty, not like…not cuckoo's nest Meredith."
"I'll let you get away with that, unless you can tell me," he murmured against the inside of her thigh. "That you don't want more."
"I…I…what I want…ooooooh." He'd slid his mouth over, humming softly, the light vibration soothing on her clit. "Can't lie, that's really nice. Really, really is, but you can…can be done."
"Mmm-hmm…."
"Crap…. Can you…tongue just a little? I just need…. Oh, perfect. Little more, just tap a few more…. Ow!" She jerked back from the fingers twisting her nipple, tilting her quim upward. He retaliated with suction, and she moaned. "Yes, okay? I want you to suck me off again, and maybe after that, because I don't stay off anymore, even after losing my damned mind. I should be in the skills lab or with Zola, or…or…. They're gonna think we've been up here all morning. That you just wrung me…." He sucked and twisted his pursed lips. "Ohhhh that's…you're doing that. Definitely wringing me—wring it out of me, wring it out so ha-ahhh!"
He changed his hold on her legs, keeping them firmly pinned against his sides. Her hands slid backward, knocking something to the floor. Nothing important. Couldn't be important. She curled her fingers over the top edge of the desk. The fluorescent over her head made the bandage on her arm blindingly white.
What would she have done if he hadn't found that bandage on her leg? The night before his surgery, he'd stripped her in the full light of their room, his eyes landing on every inch of her. The first time happened so soon after that; she'd known she was gojng through with it when she'd thought, I can make a game of no sex with the splint. It'll be healed by the time that comes off. (She'd been startled. It'd been going to happen anyway. Last night…. Did it really matter if it was different?)
Right now, right this second she couldn't imagine protesting if he indicated for her to remove the t-shirt that was all that shielded her entire upper-body. There hadn't been a way to give him full access to her clit without losing those jeans. So often lately he'd surfed his fingers over all unbroken skin as he checked her, and the age of the marks he tracked didn't affect what followed. In those first few weeks of telling him it'd been a one…two…ish…time thing; tossing unopened blades into the trash at work, only to find herself digging through old L.L. Bean bags at four in the morning.
There'd been one time when he'd taken a bandage off a cut that should've been ready to transition to scar and found the pink line sat parallel to a much fresher wound. He'd put his fingers to her lips before she could form the s of "sorry" and said, "That's why we're doing this, right? To help you keep track?" When she'd nodded, he'd gone through other questions, including why she'd made a new cut rather than reopening the other.
Half an hour later, she'd been riding him in the dark, and he'd lifted his left hand, his fingers shaky as they combed through her wild hair. "I've got you, precious." She didn't know what he'd seen, or known, but a second later she'd squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm with you," he'd said, again and again until she'd collapsed against his chest. When she'd opened her eyes, she'd seen the same thing she saw as he watched her unravel the day after she'd fallen apart: adoration. She had that after putting him through a nightmare. She couldn't immediately become the wife he deserved, or even that she had been, but she could do better. It wouldn't be hard to make tomorrow better than today. One day, it might not be that obvious, but who was she if she couldn't identify the negatives?
If he hadn't asked her about that first bandage so calmly while she was reeling, there would've been none of that. No checks—and if she'd even gone to Wyatt, would she have started leaving one or two incidents off the log, even as the secret made their numbers increase?—No grounding exercises that became sex, or didn't but were somehow as intimate. No moment of shame when yes, there was something he hadn't seen, but also no relief when the card castle didn't fall. No sex, maybe convincing herself she wasn't interested. Maybe not caring as she'd accumulated scars that she could only see as ugly. Twisted. It would've played out differently to the "no-sex" thought experiment she'd gone through for Lexie; the fear of being found out would preclude equal intimacy.
Derek would've been confused and hurt, which made him withdraw. She would've spun out. Cristina would've noticed first. She was sure of it. Even with Alex possibly on her side, it would not have taken last night for her to crash. Better for Zola? Where would she have landed? All she could picture was this morning, but with her misconception as the reality.
"Meredith? Are you with me, sweetheart?"
She opened her eyes, and then scrubbed at them to clear away the sticky sleep gunk. The light had changed since Derek had laid her down on the couch he was now crouched beside. He'd rendered her boneless, but she'd still expected not to sleep. The fetus must've been the recipient of the last of her energy stores; it had been the only movement she could sense beyond her sympathetic nervous system and the twitch in her leg that was always the last to peter out.
"Hey. It didn't go well?" She could see it in the crags on his face. His smile became small, but soft, for her.
"Not so much."
"Did April—?"
"It's nothing to do with her or with me, or the stats, or the patient testimonies. That was all…. Cahill wanted us distracted."
Meredith rubbed her eyes again like that would clear the fog left by solid sleep. "What d'you mean?"
"I should've heard it in the way she talked about the E.R.. In all of the cameras and the efficiency strategies. They're factory techniques. Industrial. She wants to make us look good to people who don't know anything about medicine."
"Like…? The fish dicks on the board are mostly retired doctors."
"She doesn't care about the board. They're going to jump ship. They just need her to secure an offer."
"An offer for…the hospital?"
"Yes. A buyout. It'll be Ascension or Pegasus—one of those that treat hospitals like they're Starbucks franchises."
Meredith snickered. "You keep correcting people who say that without an E.R. we all might as well be in private practices, and now we're gonna be a private hospital."
His smile was grim, and she sat up, gesturing for him to sit with her. He pulled her to his side and kissed the top of her head. After a minute or two, she felt another of the strange flutterings. Somehow, in spite of everything, that gave her more hope for the future than she'd had the day before.