Searching for a Seattle Sky (6/10)
Title: Searching for a Seattle Sky
Author: chicleeblair
Rating: PG
Summary: During the turmoil of trying for a baby, adopting Zola and nearly tearing apart her marriage, Meredith forgot her fears about becoming a mother. Now she remembers, and Lexie’s the only one who can help rid her of them for good.
Pairings: Meredith/Derek, Mark/Lexie
Thanks literary_critic to for beta, onlywordsnow for the fanmix and waltzmatildah for the fanart!
Written for thega_fanfic Big Bang!
Fanmix:
Fan Art
Meredith had no idea that holding a baby all day could be exhausting, but here she was at the end of the day, holding a baby and exhausted. Zola refused to eat in her highchair. She wouldn’t bounce in the swing Meredith and Lexie had painstakingly set up the night before, positioning it between the kitchen and living room so Zola could see Meredith if she were in either room. She wouldn’t stay on her blanket on the floor, even when enticed with her frog or the toys with bright lights and loud noises.
And Meredith wasn’t exactly against holding her, but she would like to, say, be able to pee at some point other than during Zola’s infrequent and fitful naps. She tried to call Derek during one of these, but he answered only long enough to say, “I’m with Mom now. Is something wrong?”
Meredith gave herself a lot of credit for not commenting on his assuming something had gone wrong. Zola’d woken up three minutes later, anyway, and wailed from the bedroom until Meredith had gotten there to take her in her arms once more.
“It shouldn’t be positioning,” she said while Bailey took Zola from her. “Not with the shunt in place.”
“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with that.” Bailey stroked Zola’s cheek. Everyone did this when they first met her. Her chubby cheeks were irresistible. Meredith felt a weird sense of pride thinking this. It wasn’t like her genetics had led to those cheeks.
Bailey stepped backward to sit on the sofa. Meredith sank down next to her, flexing her arms. Zola lunged for her, a tiny whine escaping her lips. Meredith reached her hands out, but Bailey held Zola firmly in her lap. “She’s right here, baby girl,” she said. “What’s she calling you?”
“Meredith. For now. I don’t want to confuse her if…” Meredith swallowed. The if had gotten harder and harder to think about.
“Meredith’s right there. See her? Think about it from her perspective, Grey. Six-month-old babies are just starting to get clingy, but she’s had two familiar places stripped away from her in six weeks. You’re the only thing that’s gone from one of those places to the other. She’s going to latch onto you. Once she realizes you’re not going anywhere, she’ll relax. Won’t you, you beautiful little thing?”
Meredith smiled at the reassurance, but it would’ve made her feel a lot better if she knew for sure she could keep the promise not to go anywhere.
“I hope she does it soon,” Meredith sighed, letting Zola have one of her fingers, which the baby immediately began to gnaw. “They want me to take her in for an evaluation tomorrow morning, for Early Intervention services. I’ve read a little bit about what to expect.” She nodded toward the laptop, which had been christened with Zola-drool more than once that day. “It’s sort of overwhelming. Physical therapy, assistive devices, adaptive learning…It’s a lot.”
And Derek’s not here, she thought. Derek had been the one doing the research, filling out the paperwork for Zola. He’d met with the contractor every time there was a delay on the house. She followed his lead on all of it, only caring that they got the baby, somehow, or that the tub was deep enough. The years hadn’t stripped her of the attitude she’d had at the first meeting at the nursing home with her mother, she was way out of her league.
“As it happens, I’m off tomorrow.”
She whipped her head over to Bailey. “Oh, I wasn’t asking-!”
“I know you weren’t. You can handle it all, Grey, even if you think you can’t. You handled your mother’s treatments. You got Shepherd back in form after the shooting. You can do it all on your own, but you don’t have to. I’ve been on my own with a child, it’s not easy, no matter how temporary it is.”
It felt weak, somehow, to accept the offer, like it’d be proving she couldn’t do it all herself, that she needed more help than Zola’s “true” mother would need. But the idea of having another adult present at the meetings, particularly if Zola decided to have yet another screaming fit…. It was tempting.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“It takes a village to raise a child. Luckily, you’ve got a village.”
Meredith smiled. “You have a point.”
“I’m Doctor Bailey. I always have a point. Now let’s see if we can get this little darling used to her highchair.”
As soon as Zola’s hand left Meredith’s she began to squall. Meredith sighed. It would be a long evening.
As it turned out, the miracle needed to make Zola tolerate the chair wasn’t Bailey’s singing, or Meredith’s cajoling. It was the sheer joy she got from flinging spoonfuls of strained peas at the walls.
“Will those stains ever come out? I don’t think the next owners are going to like them.” Meredith tugged out the tray of the chair and took Zola in her arms to give her a bottle. The consequence of giving Zola the spoon had been that she didn’t get much of the gloppy food into her mouth. Bailey said the important part was her learning to grip the spoon and guide it, since her bottles gave her most of the nutrients she needed.
“You’re really selling this place?”
“I meant to do it five years ago. Once our house is finished…” Meredith shrugged. “I’ve thought about continuing to rent it out-milk, Zola?” she added, squeezing her hand in the sign for the word. “But it was meant to be a family home. My parents bought it for that, after all.”
“Makes sense. And I imagine there are memories you’d rather not hold onto.”
She shrugged. “I dunno. Sometimes it feels like George is still here. I find his stuff lying around sometimes. Izzie’s too. Actually, I still have a few pairs of her shoes.”
Bailey stood up with the empty bowl of peas, and began to run water into it. “Interesting. Very interesting, Grey.”
“What? That I believe in ghosts? I don’t. That would be crazy. Ghosts are definitely crazy.”
“Not ghosts. You didn’t say Denny Duquette was running around here. I meant that you replaced your old memories of this place when you decided to stay here. It’s an interesting way of dealing with things. That’s all.”
Meredith shrugged again. With the mention of Denny Duqette she remembered Izzie covering the kitchen in muffins. Bailey had come here then, to save her. Bailey saved them all, at one point or another, and she never asked them for thanks. This made Meredith realize she had had at least one positive example of how to be a mother. She started to say something to this effect, even just thank you, but Bailey was putting on her coat, and Meredith couldn’t find the words.
“I should go home. I’ve got to pick up my little man from his daddy’s house.”
Meredith stood to show her out, shifting Zola to her shoulder. “Say bye-bye Zola,” she said waving exaggeratedly at Bailey. “Bye-bye.”
Zola burped.
“I’ll take that.” Bailey laughed.
After she drove off, Meredith sank down onto the swing next to Lexie, who was staring raptly at the phone in her hand.
“You’re covered in green stuff,” Lexie observed.
“It’s better than blood…. I think. Zola sat in her high-chair tonight.” She blew lightly on the crown of Zola’s head. Zola let out a shriek of laughter. Shifting so the baby sat facing her, Meredith took the tiny hands in hers and tapped them together. “More? More?” she said, narrating the sign. Zola let out another shriek, and Meredith blew again.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Lexie’s wistful smile. “You’re good with her.”
“I didn’t feel like it most of today. Every time I tried to put her down somewhere she looked so totally betrayed. I felt as in over my head as I was the first day of my internship. More, really. It’s like going into that OR with only a few days of med school under my belt.”
“That’s an absolutely terrifying thought.”
“Exactly. And now there’s one life on the line, and somehow she means more to me than any patient I’ve ever had.”
As if to confirm the point, Zola shrieked once more. The ear-splitting sound was eons better than crying. Meredith wouldn’t mind if she could just keep her from crying again for a few hours. With the next item on their agenda, it didn’t seem likely.
“Come on, Zo,” she said. “Let’s see how much you hate the bath.” She stood, but halfway to the door she turned to Lexie. “Were you talking to Mark again?”
Lexie’s face went red, and she opened her mouth to answer, but the sound of a motor made her eyes flicker to the driveway. Jackson got out of his car, armed with a bag of take-out food. Lexie stood up and ran to meet him.
Meredith would know that look of guilt from hundreds of miles away. She’d worn it herself, the moment before she fled from Finn at the prom.
***
That night after they’d eaten, Lexie sat with Jackson in his room, listening to the evening noises in the house around them. She recognized April’s shriek followed by hurried apologizing. In response, Cristina said, “What? Haven’t you ever seen a baby naked?”
Lexie smirked, thinking of what April had almost seen the time she’d barged into Lexie and Jackson in the bathroom.
“It’s a madhouse in here,” Jackson said, tossing a tiny basketball into the hoop above his door. Lexie stretched her legs out in front of her, touching her hands to the tips of her toes in an exercise she assumed came from a forgotten ballet class. “April and I moved in because our apartment felt too quiet after… After what happened, but now… It’s bursting at the seams.”
Lexie shrugged. The frathouse feeling of Meredith’s had comforted her, after the life she’d built with George-and then Mark-collapsed. She didn’t have to make it homey with stolen hospital items. In a way, they were all stolen from the hospital, flitting in and out, but never alone.
“I had a thought… and you don’t have to say anything right now, okay? It’s just a thought, but Shepherd and Grey are building a house, right?”
“They’ve been building a house for a over year.”
“But with the kid, they’ll be rushing it, right? And until then, this place is going to keep looking like Babies R Us threw up inside it.”
“Cristina won’t be here long. They’ll give Zola that room,” Lexie said, though Meredith had said they wouldn’t.
“Unless Karev wants the room back. There’s always someone.”
“You were the someone, once. We all were.”
“And I’m grateful. But there’s a reason it’s a revolving door.” Jackson slid from the bed into the spot behind her, so his legs straddled her. “People move out. They move on. I thought maybe…maybe we could move on.” He kissed her neck to punctuate the sentence. Her hand automatically went to the side of his face. She cupped his cheek, tilting her head toward his in a way that had become familiar. Outwardly, she knew she’d responded the way he wanted.
Inside, she screamed, because she had no idea if she wanted this. She should have. Jackson was such a good guy. She should be able to see him in a space that was theirs, in an apartment somewhere, properly furnished, where her sister would be a visitor, where, maybe one day, they’d bring kids of their own, kids with Jackson’s eyes.
She’d had these thoughts before, though, so recently that the baby she glanced down at in her dreams still had Mark’s gray eyes-no matter how done with him she was-and she didn’t know how to replace them with Jackson’s.
But she should, she should, she should.
“Lex? You okay?”
“Hmm?” she said, trying to sound light. “Yeah. I’m just gonna….gonna go see if Meredith needs help.”
Jackson released her with a heavy sigh. “When Shepherd gets back, will I have dibs on you again?”
She shot him a look while she pulled up on his dresser. “Jackson, she’s my sister. If she needs help, I’ll be there. That’s a debt that goes way back.”
He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything more. She gently shut his door, but then plastered herself against it, breathing so erratically that she had no idea how she’d kept her cool in there. All she could think was he has plans.
Over her own rattled breathing, she heard the familiar chiming of Meredith’s phone. She ducked her head into the bedroom, in case Mer needed a hand to get it. At least then her words to Jackson wouldn’t be a lie.
The scene she saw in the bedroom took her breath away. Meredith sat in the rocker that’d been stuffed into the corner between the dresser and the wall. Zola’s head was pillowed on her arm, and Meredith’s eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling in slumber.
The phone rang again, and Lexie grabbed it before it could wake them. “Hello?”
“Mer, it’s me.” Shepherd’s voice sounded as raw as Mark’s had earlier in the day. “Sorry about earlier.”
“It’s not Meredith. It’s Lexie.”
“Lexie? Is something wrong?”
“No, but she’s sleeping and I’m not waking her up for you to guilt her more.”
“She’s asleep already? It’s eight-thirty there.”
Lexie took the phone into the hall; afraid that what she had to say, in the volume she had to say it, might wake her sister. “Yeah, and she’s exhausted. She’s been taking care of a baby all day, Derek, a baby who wasn’t prepared to be in an all-new environment and needs a lot of attention. On top that, she’s got the added worry that she’ll do one thing wrong and you’ll, like, take the baby away which probably isn’t helping.”
“I’d never-. She’s the one who said…. I don’t think Meredith will be a bad mother.”
“I’m not the one you need to be telling that too.”
“Which is why you’re not the one I called.”
Lexie bit her lip. This was true. “I know. I’ll tell her to call you.”
“Please do.” He spoke with the crisp tone he used when asking a nurse to run a test. Lexie knew she’d upset him, so she was willing to upset him a little more.
“Derek, I’m very sorry about your mom, but you should know that if you use this as a way to hurt my sister any more I will kill you.” She hung up, and then opened the door to replace Meredith’s phone. Instead of leaving to face Jackson again, or worse have him come looking for her, she shut the door and lay down on the bed with her hands behind her head.
She must have drifted off, because the next thing she knew it was dark, and Meredith was gently sliding the comforter out from under her. Lexie sat up, but Meredith put her hand on her shoulder. “Stay.” Always, she knew what Lexie needed.
Lexie shifted, feeling next to her for a pillow, which she assumed cushioned Zola. “Mer?” she whispered into the darkness.
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever think it would’ve been different if you’d…chosen differently? I mean… he’s hurt you, so deeply.” She wondered if she’d need to explain more, but Meredith didn’t miss a beat.
“He’s loved me even more deeply. I never used to believe in that great love, you know? The one with the highest highs and the lowest lows? I figured it was supposed to be the way it was with Finn. Easy, you know? But then I realized…. I wasn’t built for the equilibrium.”
Lexie turned this over in her mind for so long that the air had filled with the sound of Meredith’s snores before she could bring herself to ask aloud, “Am I?”
Part Four|| Table of Contents || Part Six
Author: chicleeblair
Rating: PG
Summary: During the turmoil of trying for a baby, adopting Zola and nearly tearing apart her marriage, Meredith forgot her fears about becoming a mother. Now she remembers, and Lexie’s the only one who can help rid her of them for good.
Pairings: Meredith/Derek, Mark/Lexie
Thanks literary_critic to for beta, onlywordsnow for the fanmix and waltzmatildah for the fanart!
Written for thega_fanfic Big Bang!
Fanmix:
Fan Art
Meredith had no idea that holding a baby all day could be exhausting, but here she was at the end of the day, holding a baby and exhausted. Zola refused to eat in her highchair. She wouldn’t bounce in the swing Meredith and Lexie had painstakingly set up the night before, positioning it between the kitchen and living room so Zola could see Meredith if she were in either room. She wouldn’t stay on her blanket on the floor, even when enticed with her frog or the toys with bright lights and loud noises.
And Meredith wasn’t exactly against holding her, but she would like to, say, be able to pee at some point other than during Zola’s infrequent and fitful naps. She tried to call Derek during one of these, but he answered only long enough to say, “I’m with Mom now. Is something wrong?”
Meredith gave herself a lot of credit for not commenting on his assuming something had gone wrong. Zola’d woken up three minutes later, anyway, and wailed from the bedroom until Meredith had gotten there to take her in her arms once more.
“It shouldn’t be positioning,” she said while Bailey took Zola from her. “Not with the shunt in place.”
“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with that.” Bailey stroked Zola’s cheek. Everyone did this when they first met her. Her chubby cheeks were irresistible. Meredith felt a weird sense of pride thinking this. It wasn’t like her genetics had led to those cheeks.
Bailey stepped backward to sit on the sofa. Meredith sank down next to her, flexing her arms. Zola lunged for her, a tiny whine escaping her lips. Meredith reached her hands out, but Bailey held Zola firmly in her lap. “She’s right here, baby girl,” she said. “What’s she calling you?”
“Meredith. For now. I don’t want to confuse her if…” Meredith swallowed. The if had gotten harder and harder to think about.
“Meredith’s right there. See her? Think about it from her perspective, Grey. Six-month-old babies are just starting to get clingy, but she’s had two familiar places stripped away from her in six weeks. You’re the only thing that’s gone from one of those places to the other. She’s going to latch onto you. Once she realizes you’re not going anywhere, she’ll relax. Won’t you, you beautiful little thing?”
Meredith smiled at the reassurance, but it would’ve made her feel a lot better if she knew for sure she could keep the promise not to go anywhere.
“I hope she does it soon,” Meredith sighed, letting Zola have one of her fingers, which the baby immediately began to gnaw. “They want me to take her in for an evaluation tomorrow morning, for Early Intervention services. I’ve read a little bit about what to expect.” She nodded toward the laptop, which had been christened with Zola-drool more than once that day. “It’s sort of overwhelming. Physical therapy, assistive devices, adaptive learning…It’s a lot.”
And Derek’s not here, she thought. Derek had been the one doing the research, filling out the paperwork for Zola. He’d met with the contractor every time there was a delay on the house. She followed his lead on all of it, only caring that they got the baby, somehow, or that the tub was deep enough. The years hadn’t stripped her of the attitude she’d had at the first meeting at the nursing home with her mother, she was way out of her league.
“As it happens, I’m off tomorrow.”
She whipped her head over to Bailey. “Oh, I wasn’t asking-!”
“I know you weren’t. You can handle it all, Grey, even if you think you can’t. You handled your mother’s treatments. You got Shepherd back in form after the shooting. You can do it all on your own, but you don’t have to. I’ve been on my own with a child, it’s not easy, no matter how temporary it is.”
It felt weak, somehow, to accept the offer, like it’d be proving she couldn’t do it all herself, that she needed more help than Zola’s “true” mother would need. But the idea of having another adult present at the meetings, particularly if Zola decided to have yet another screaming fit…. It was tempting.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“It takes a village to raise a child. Luckily, you’ve got a village.”
Meredith smiled. “You have a point.”
“I’m Doctor Bailey. I always have a point. Now let’s see if we can get this little darling used to her highchair.”
As soon as Zola’s hand left Meredith’s she began to squall. Meredith sighed. It would be a long evening.
As it turned out, the miracle needed to make Zola tolerate the chair wasn’t Bailey’s singing, or Meredith’s cajoling. It was the sheer joy she got from flinging spoonfuls of strained peas at the walls.
“Will those stains ever come out? I don’t think the next owners are going to like them.” Meredith tugged out the tray of the chair and took Zola in her arms to give her a bottle. The consequence of giving Zola the spoon had been that she didn’t get much of the gloppy food into her mouth. Bailey said the important part was her learning to grip the spoon and guide it, since her bottles gave her most of the nutrients she needed.
“You’re really selling this place?”
“I meant to do it five years ago. Once our house is finished…” Meredith shrugged. “I’ve thought about continuing to rent it out-milk, Zola?” she added, squeezing her hand in the sign for the word. “But it was meant to be a family home. My parents bought it for that, after all.”
“Makes sense. And I imagine there are memories you’d rather not hold onto.”
She shrugged. “I dunno. Sometimes it feels like George is still here. I find his stuff lying around sometimes. Izzie’s too. Actually, I still have a few pairs of her shoes.”
Bailey stood up with the empty bowl of peas, and began to run water into it. “Interesting. Very interesting, Grey.”
“What? That I believe in ghosts? I don’t. That would be crazy. Ghosts are definitely crazy.”
“Not ghosts. You didn’t say Denny Duquette was running around here. I meant that you replaced your old memories of this place when you decided to stay here. It’s an interesting way of dealing with things. That’s all.”
Meredith shrugged again. With the mention of Denny Duqette she remembered Izzie covering the kitchen in muffins. Bailey had come here then, to save her. Bailey saved them all, at one point or another, and she never asked them for thanks. This made Meredith realize she had had at least one positive example of how to be a mother. She started to say something to this effect, even just thank you, but Bailey was putting on her coat, and Meredith couldn’t find the words.
“I should go home. I’ve got to pick up my little man from his daddy’s house.”
Meredith stood to show her out, shifting Zola to her shoulder. “Say bye-bye Zola,” she said waving exaggeratedly at Bailey. “Bye-bye.”
Zola burped.
“I’ll take that.” Bailey laughed.
After she drove off, Meredith sank down onto the swing next to Lexie, who was staring raptly at the phone in her hand.
“You’re covered in green stuff,” Lexie observed.
“It’s better than blood…. I think. Zola sat in her high-chair tonight.” She blew lightly on the crown of Zola’s head. Zola let out a shriek of laughter. Shifting so the baby sat facing her, Meredith took the tiny hands in hers and tapped them together. “More? More?” she said, narrating the sign. Zola let out another shriek, and Meredith blew again.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Lexie’s wistful smile. “You’re good with her.”
“I didn’t feel like it most of today. Every time I tried to put her down somewhere she looked so totally betrayed. I felt as in over my head as I was the first day of my internship. More, really. It’s like going into that OR with only a few days of med school under my belt.”
“That’s an absolutely terrifying thought.”
“Exactly. And now there’s one life on the line, and somehow she means more to me than any patient I’ve ever had.”
As if to confirm the point, Zola shrieked once more. The ear-splitting sound was eons better than crying. Meredith wouldn’t mind if she could just keep her from crying again for a few hours. With the next item on their agenda, it didn’t seem likely.
“Come on, Zo,” she said. “Let’s see how much you hate the bath.” She stood, but halfway to the door she turned to Lexie. “Were you talking to Mark again?”
Lexie’s face went red, and she opened her mouth to answer, but the sound of a motor made her eyes flicker to the driveway. Jackson got out of his car, armed with a bag of take-out food. Lexie stood up and ran to meet him.
Meredith would know that look of guilt from hundreds of miles away. She’d worn it herself, the moment before she fled from Finn at the prom.
***
That night after they’d eaten, Lexie sat with Jackson in his room, listening to the evening noises in the house around them. She recognized April’s shriek followed by hurried apologizing. In response, Cristina said, “What? Haven’t you ever seen a baby naked?”
Lexie smirked, thinking of what April had almost seen the time she’d barged into Lexie and Jackson in the bathroom.
“It’s a madhouse in here,” Jackson said, tossing a tiny basketball into the hoop above his door. Lexie stretched her legs out in front of her, touching her hands to the tips of her toes in an exercise she assumed came from a forgotten ballet class. “April and I moved in because our apartment felt too quiet after… After what happened, but now… It’s bursting at the seams.”
Lexie shrugged. The frathouse feeling of Meredith’s had comforted her, after the life she’d built with George-and then Mark-collapsed. She didn’t have to make it homey with stolen hospital items. In a way, they were all stolen from the hospital, flitting in and out, but never alone.
“I had a thought… and you don’t have to say anything right now, okay? It’s just a thought, but Shepherd and Grey are building a house, right?”
“They’ve been building a house for a over year.”
“But with the kid, they’ll be rushing it, right? And until then, this place is going to keep looking like Babies R Us threw up inside it.”
“Cristina won’t be here long. They’ll give Zola that room,” Lexie said, though Meredith had said they wouldn’t.
“Unless Karev wants the room back. There’s always someone.”
“You were the someone, once. We all were.”
“And I’m grateful. But there’s a reason it’s a revolving door.” Jackson slid from the bed into the spot behind her, so his legs straddled her. “People move out. They move on. I thought maybe…maybe we could move on.” He kissed her neck to punctuate the sentence. Her hand automatically went to the side of his face. She cupped his cheek, tilting her head toward his in a way that had become familiar. Outwardly, she knew she’d responded the way he wanted.
Inside, she screamed, because she had no idea if she wanted this. She should have. Jackson was such a good guy. She should be able to see him in a space that was theirs, in an apartment somewhere, properly furnished, where her sister would be a visitor, where, maybe one day, they’d bring kids of their own, kids with Jackson’s eyes.
She’d had these thoughts before, though, so recently that the baby she glanced down at in her dreams still had Mark’s gray eyes-no matter how done with him she was-and she didn’t know how to replace them with Jackson’s.
But she should, she should, she should.
“Lex? You okay?”
“Hmm?” she said, trying to sound light. “Yeah. I’m just gonna….gonna go see if Meredith needs help.”
Jackson released her with a heavy sigh. “When Shepherd gets back, will I have dibs on you again?”
She shot him a look while she pulled up on his dresser. “Jackson, she’s my sister. If she needs help, I’ll be there. That’s a debt that goes way back.”
He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything more. She gently shut his door, but then plastered herself against it, breathing so erratically that she had no idea how she’d kept her cool in there. All she could think was he has plans.
Over her own rattled breathing, she heard the familiar chiming of Meredith’s phone. She ducked her head into the bedroom, in case Mer needed a hand to get it. At least then her words to Jackson wouldn’t be a lie.
The scene she saw in the bedroom took her breath away. Meredith sat in the rocker that’d been stuffed into the corner between the dresser and the wall. Zola’s head was pillowed on her arm, and Meredith’s eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling in slumber.
The phone rang again, and Lexie grabbed it before it could wake them. “Hello?”
“Mer, it’s me.” Shepherd’s voice sounded as raw as Mark’s had earlier in the day. “Sorry about earlier.”
“It’s not Meredith. It’s Lexie.”
“Lexie? Is something wrong?”
“No, but she’s sleeping and I’m not waking her up for you to guilt her more.”
“She’s asleep already? It’s eight-thirty there.”
Lexie took the phone into the hall; afraid that what she had to say, in the volume she had to say it, might wake her sister. “Yeah, and she’s exhausted. She’s been taking care of a baby all day, Derek, a baby who wasn’t prepared to be in an all-new environment and needs a lot of attention. On top that, she’s got the added worry that she’ll do one thing wrong and you’ll, like, take the baby away which probably isn’t helping.”
“I’d never-. She’s the one who said…. I don’t think Meredith will be a bad mother.”
“I’m not the one you need to be telling that too.”
“Which is why you’re not the one I called.”
Lexie bit her lip. This was true. “I know. I’ll tell her to call you.”
“Please do.” He spoke with the crisp tone he used when asking a nurse to run a test. Lexie knew she’d upset him, so she was willing to upset him a little more.
“Derek, I’m very sorry about your mom, but you should know that if you use this as a way to hurt my sister any more I will kill you.” She hung up, and then opened the door to replace Meredith’s phone. Instead of leaving to face Jackson again, or worse have him come looking for her, she shut the door and lay down on the bed with her hands behind her head.
She must have drifted off, because the next thing she knew it was dark, and Meredith was gently sliding the comforter out from under her. Lexie sat up, but Meredith put her hand on her shoulder. “Stay.” Always, she knew what Lexie needed.
Lexie shifted, feeling next to her for a pillow, which she assumed cushioned Zola. “Mer?” she whispered into the darkness.
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever think it would’ve been different if you’d…chosen differently? I mean… he’s hurt you, so deeply.” She wondered if she’d need to explain more, but Meredith didn’t miss a beat.
“He’s loved me even more deeply. I never used to believe in that great love, you know? The one with the highest highs and the lowest lows? I figured it was supposed to be the way it was with Finn. Easy, you know? But then I realized…. I wasn’t built for the equilibrium.”
Lexie turned this over in her mind for so long that the air had filled with the sound of Meredith’s snores before she could bring herself to ask aloud, “Am I?”
Part Four|| Table of Contents || Part Six