Searching for a Seattle Sky (9/10)
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, waltzmatildah for the fanmix and onlywordsnow for the fanart!
Written for the Big Bang at: ga_fanfic
Fanmix:
Fan Art:
They landed at JFK at nine pm, and though it was only six Seattle time, Meredith felt as though she could sleep for a week. Zola was wide-awake. She’d woken up an hour or two after take-off, and Meredith had walked her up and down the aisle of the plane to give her things to look at. She’d spent so long in one place in the orphanage, and again in the hospital, that Meredith thought stimulating her must be important. It was all guesswork, but the motion kept Zola from crying at least.
“Changing a diaper in an airplane bathroom should be a challenge on one of those stupid survival shows,” she told Lexie while they stood in the cab line. Derek had offered to come meet them, but she’d told him it would be stupid to spend the money on both cab rides. Really, she wanted the additional thirty minutes to get herself together after the flight. How the half hour would do more than the week he’d been gone, she wasn’t sure.
Eventually, of course, the cab pulled up in front of the Hilton near Manhattan General. The bellman pulled open the door with a, “Good evening, Miss.” She deposited the strap of the diaper bag into his proffered hand, and slid out of the cab herself, lugging Zola’s car seat. Lexie came around with their other carry-ons. “Do you want a cart?” the bellman asked, eyeing their stuff. Meredith flashed back to a time when she’d gallivanted around the world with only a backpack. Those were the days.
“No, we got it,” she said, ignoring Lexie’s expression of disbelief. She also ignored the stares of everyone involved when she set the car seat down on the ground and unstrapped Zola. She didn’t want Derek’s first image of them to be her swinging the baby in a car seat by her side. She couldn’t have explained this feeling, but it was strong.
With the baby on one hip, two bags on the opposite shoulder, and one hand on the handle of her suitcase, she knew she didn’t look together, but at least she had control of everything.
At least until she saw him.
Derek paced the lobby in front of the revolving door, one hand clutching his phone and the other running through his hair. While Meredith watched him, she thought how out-of-place he seemed in the elegant lobby, with its gold chandelier and red velvet walls. He needed to shave, though she always liked him scruffy, and his hair was standing on end. But her eyes focused on his fingers, wrapped around the phone.
Her heart leapt with the realization that it’d been a week since she’d felt those hands on her skin-the longest time they’d been apart since they’d gotten engaged, and yet she stood frozen on the giant welcome-mat, while the other hotel guests sauntered past.
If Zola’s babbling hadn’t caused Derek to turn his head just enough to spot them, she wasn’t sure how long she’d have stayed there. He swallowed, visibly, and then smiled. It wasn’t his confident I-am-man smile. It was tentative, like he no longer knew the steps to the dance they were doing, but he wouldn’t give up yet.
“I’ll go check into my room,” Lexie murmured. Meredith nodded-at least she must have, because Lexie headed for the front desk.
Derek stood inches away from her, and yet a river still could have been separating them. He reached for Zola, but the baby nestled her face against Meredith’s shoulder. A week ago, Zola would have lunged for Derek without question. She couldn’t help the small spark of triumph in her heart. Meredith would have felt worse about this feeling if she hadn’t known that soon enough Derek’s charm would win her. He always did.
“Hi,” he said, taking the car seat from her. A poor second-best.
“Hi,” she echoed, meeting his eyes. The amount of pain and worry in them almost floored her, and she knew that whatever they had to resolve would have to wait. There were too many other things in the mix. As per usual, she couldn’t find the words to tell him this.
All she could do was blurt, “She needs to be cathed,” words that should have sounded wrong and technical in the warm light of the hotel lobby, but to her the medical terms were more reassuring than anything else she could have said. “And to have a bottle.”
“Of course,” Derek said. He put a hand on her back to lead her to the elevator, and her spine stiffened. He lowered his hand and there was a swish as it brushed the leg of his pants. “I...uh…got them to send up a port-a-crib.”
“Oh. She hates those. She’s been sleeping with me. It’ll make the eventual crib transition hard, I guess, but we both sleep better.”
Zola lifted her head when she heard the elevator bell, and then stared at the mirrored walls, her tiny mouth open in awe.
“Do you see yourself? Do you see Zola?” Meredith angled herself so Zola could reach out to touch the shiny glass. The baby’s breath fogged the glass as she giggled at her reflection.
This kept Meredith from having to consider the symbolism of elevators.
“I should have done her cathing an hour ago,” she said once they’d entered the hotel room. She dumped the diaper-bag onto the bed-a King, what would that mean for the night?-, and spread out the changing pad with one hand. “But airport bathrooms are so far from sterile; I didn’t want her getting a secondary infection. They were yucky, yucky bathrooms, weren’t they Zola?”
Zola cooed, the flipper of the stuffed frog in her mouth once more.
“I don’t blame you,” Derek said, and she let out a breath. “Do you need-Is there something I can do?”
“Um. This is a one-person job, but you can fix her a bottle. There’s one in the pocket of the diaper bag that just needs hot water.” Meredith sanitized her hands, slid on gloves and adeptly took care of the catheterizing, while she listened to Derek fiddle with the microwave on the other side of the room. Once she’d taped on a fresh diaper, she held Zola’s legs in the air, moving them in a bicycling motion. “The PT suggested this,” she said to Derek, who’d come back armed with the bottle. “It helps strengthen her legs. She likes it. Mostly. Not so much if she thinks there’s something else going on in the world that she might be missing.”
Zola’s determination to see everything gave Meredith faith that she’d make her way in the world, no matter what it took, like Meredith had. After all, didn’t people always comment on how much she saw? And she’d done okay, watching people, learning how to help them in spite of challenges. She could have shared this thought with Derek, but it felt too intimate given the level of tension in the room.
How had something become too intimate for them?
She took Zola’s hands to pull her into a sitting position. She bobbed there for a second, and Meredith kept her hand behind her back until she steadied. Derek held out the bottle, but she shook her head. “Antibiotics first. She hates the taste, so we use her bottles as a chaser.” Without thinking, she shot Derek a teasing grin, and he laughed. “Open up, Zo,” she said once she’d measured the pink liquid into the little syringe. Zola made a face, but let Meredith shoot the medicine into her mouth.
“Bottle,” she said. Derek slapped it into her hand like a surgical nurse passing a scalpel, and Meredith scooped Zola up and plopped the bottle in. Then she swiped a burp cloth from the diaper bag, and sat down on the bed. Zola sucked greedily on the bottle.
“If you’re not quick on the draw with that it can turn into a scream-fest,” Meredith said. “But she’s at least good about taking it in the first place.”
Derek shook his head and sank into the chair near the foot of the bed. “I’m impressed.”
“Because you didn’t think I could do it?”
He sucked in a breath, long and ragged. “No. I didn’t doubt you.”
She choked on the bitter laugh she didn’t want Zola to hear.
“I didn’t…when I left…after I saw you with her…. I may never get over what you did, but for me to expand that into saying you would be a bad mother was…well, it was wrong. When I said I didn’t know how to raise a child with someone who-.”
“Stop,” she interrupted. “I know what you said.” The words were ingrained on deep into her mind, repeating themselves every time she did something for Zola and wondered is this right?
“I didn’t think about the fact that you know exactly what’s right and wrong for a kid. My mom, she did what she could and we all turned out fine. Mostly. I can’t say if what she did was the cause of it. But you turned out all right in spite of Ellis Grey. It’s so clear to you what she did wrong that you’ll do whatever it takes not to make her mistakes, including trying to fix Richard and Adele. So, it doesn’t matter to me that it was Adele in terms of the trial, but in terms of us? In terms of our life with Zola? It does.”
They were, in so many ways, the words she’d wanted to hear since he stood in the locker room and spat accusations at her. A year or two ago, she might have accepted them and moved onto the next step, afraid of losing him if she rocked the boat further. Now with Zola as a heavy reminder in her arms, she couldn’t let it lie to placate him. “Did you have a deep heart-to-heart with your mom that led to these revelations?”
He cocked his head, obviously not expecting her harsh tone. “No. We’ve talked, some, and I talked to Bailey, but…”
Bailey. She remembered the conversation they’d had on the way back to Meredith’s house, when she’d asked Bailey what she thought.
It’s not how I raised you, Grey she’d said, staring straight ahead at the Seattle traffic. But there comes a time when I’ve got to respect your choices on your own. Was it right? Was it wrong? It’s not for me to say. All I know is that you gave someone a chance who might not have otherwise had one. I don’t appreciate the way you did it, but I can’t fault you for doing it. Derek’s words didn’t exactly echo hers, but the point she had to make was still there.
“Is this how it’s going to be?” She shifted Zola to her shoulder and patted the baby’s back in rhythm with her words. “I make a choice you don’t approve of, and you disappear until you’ve received wisdom from someone who gets me in ways that you can’t seem to?” She thought of Lexie, the sister who’d believed in her long before anyone else. If she could believe after every time Meredith screwed up, why couldn’t her husband?
“How is it any different to your going straight to Cristina?”
“Because I don’t. I go to you. I’ve gone to you about everything, as soon as I knew.” He opened his mouth, but she held up a hand. “Don’t bring up the vision thing. I didn’t want to admit that to myself, much less you. And after that, I realized how stupid I’d been not to tell you in the first place.”
“You didn’t tell me you switched the drugs.”
“Because I wanted to protect the trial.” She offered Zola the nipple of the bottle again. It took the baby a second to take it, her eyes flicking back and forth between Meredith and Derek, but then she began to suck. “I wanted to keep you blind, and help Adele. I wanted to have it all. I guess that was stupid.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat, the one that had lain dormant for a week. “I guess I can’t have everything.” She stood abruptly. “She needs a bath.”
Zola hadn’t finished the bottle, but she headed to the bathroom anyway, intending to gather her thoughts and finish feeding her while the water ran. Derek, never able to sense when she wanted to be alone, followed. To drown out anything he might say, she turned the water on so it blasted into the bright white tub.
Zola grinned around the bottle in her mouth once she heard the sound, waving her arms happily. “It’s your favorite time of day,” Meredith said, kissing the baby’s forehead. “Can you get her bath stuff?” she shot at Derek. “It’s all in my suitcase.”
He nodded and shuffled out with only one hangdog look her way. She shut the door behind him, inhaling the steam in the air in the hopes that it would relax the tight muscles in her chest. “You should know I’m going to fix this. I don’t want you to have parents who fight all the time. I’d let it go, if I could. As soon as every word stops feeling like he’s shoving a scalpel in my heart, maybe I’ll be able to.”
She stuck her free hand into the water, and felt a tinge of disappointment when it didn’t scald her flesh.
***
Lexie paced her hotel room expectantly, one eye focused on the phone sitting on her dresser. She hoped for Meredith’s name to pop up on the screen, based on lack-of-response to the text Lexie had sent over an hour ago asking Do I have to kill him? She was so tuned-in to awaiting a sound from her phone, that she almost missed the sound of someone knocking on her door.
She slid back the deadbolt and opened it for her sister. In the split second before Meredith stepped inside, Lexie thought how weird it was to see her without Zola attached.
“You have one of our bags,” Meredith said by way of greeting. Even though the backpack sat right next to the door, she sank onto the bed, letting herself fall backward with a soft thump.
Lexie lay down next to her. “You okay?”
Mer rolled over, tucking one hand under her cheek. “I guess. I just needed to breathe. Having him in there…it’s suffocating. Partially because a stupid part of me missed him so much I just want to jump him.” Lexie raised an eyebrow and Meredith giggled (a much lighter sound than Lexie had heard from her lately). “We’ve been having a lot of sex lately, okay? Luckily, Zola’s there, so I can’t give into that. And I wouldn’t. I keep hearing those words in my head, over and over. He said he didn’t know if he wanted to raise a child with me and for months that’s been all I wanted.”
“Do you still?”
Meredith blinked at her, her expression so blank that Lexie wondered if she’d spoken a foreign language. “Of course. Derek’s it for me. He’s the only one. The only one I’ve ever wanted kids with. For better or for worse. We both said it. This is just…worse.”
Lexie put her hand over Meredith’s, and if she felt surprised when Meredith linked their fingers, she attributed to the lingering part of her that was admiring an aloof older girl from the shadows. “Is it worse than everything else you’ve gone through?”
For a while the only sound came from the buzzing hotel air-conditioning. Then Meredith swallowed. “No,” she said. “No, because there’s Zola. I’m fighting for her as much as for myself. Someone has to fight for her.”
“Oh, Meredith,” Lexie breathed, squeezing her hand. “You are such a good mom.”
Meredith sat up, smiling tightly. “I’d better go, or he’ll think I abandoned him. It’s probably one of the warning signs he’s looking for.”
“Mer-.”
“Don’t. I heard you, Lexie. I heard you, and I’m even starting to believe you. But right now, I need to prove it. I’ll see you later.”
“I don’t guess I could talk you into letting Shepherd bond with the kid and going to the bar with me, for old time’s sake?”
Meredith laughed. “Not this time. Adult, remember? But you should go. You never know who you’ll meet at those places.”
You mean a sexy neurosurgeon who’ll put me through the ringer? Lexie watched Meredith walk down the hall to the elevator, and then retreated into the empty room, figuring she’d order room service or something.
Half an hour later, she found herself sitting on a barstool, tipping her head back to down a third shot of tequila. The only other patrons at the bar seemed to be from an LBGT convention, so no chance of meeting someone … although there was a woman on the other end of the bar who could have persuaded her to do a Callie when she was a few years younger, and a lot drunker. (Or maybe any time, if she were honest with herself).
She wasn’t looking for Mark. She didn’t want the one who constantly put up roadblocks. She was done.
Except, from the moment he’d mentioned Mrs. Shepherd’s surgery she’d been unable to bear the thought of him sitting in a hospital waiting room with only the Shepherd Sisters for comfort.
Her phone buzzed in the right side pocket of her jeans. She fumbled for it, her fingers impeded slightly by alcohol. The text hadn’t come from Meredith as she’d expected. Instead, Jackson’s name flashed on the screen. She winced.
Cristina says you’re in NYC. Were you planning on telling me?
She sighed, and tapped her list of reasons into the phone.
You were on-call all day. It was kind of unexpected. Meredith needed me.
They all seemed like flimsy excuses. No matter what this trip to New York was, or what it led to, she knew things would soon be over with Jackson. He should have been the person she wanted, but something in her couldn’t be as passionate about him as she knew she should.
He’s your vet.
“Excuse me?” The deep voice haunted her thoughts so much that she almost thought she’d managed to let fantasy blend into reality through tequila. “You look just like someone I know.”
She turned on the bar stool, wobbling a little too much for it to be the intense movie-moment. In the moment Mark’s eyes widened in surprise, (proving he honestly hadn’t known it was her) she had the giddy thought that this time she was the girl in the bar, and he was the guy.
Hadn’t she always dreamed she’d be exactly like her big sister?
Part Seven|| Table of Contents || Part Nine
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, waltzmatildah for the fanmix and onlywordsnow for the fanart!
Written for the Big Bang at: ga_fanfic
Fanmix:
Fan Art:
They landed at JFK at nine pm, and though it was only six Seattle time, Meredith felt as though she could sleep for a week. Zola was wide-awake. She’d woken up an hour or two after take-off, and Meredith had walked her up and down the aisle of the plane to give her things to look at. She’d spent so long in one place in the orphanage, and again in the hospital, that Meredith thought stimulating her must be important. It was all guesswork, but the motion kept Zola from crying at least.
“Changing a diaper in an airplane bathroom should be a challenge on one of those stupid survival shows,” she told Lexie while they stood in the cab line. Derek had offered to come meet them, but she’d told him it would be stupid to spend the money on both cab rides. Really, she wanted the additional thirty minutes to get herself together after the flight. How the half hour would do more than the week he’d been gone, she wasn’t sure.
Eventually, of course, the cab pulled up in front of the Hilton near Manhattan General. The bellman pulled open the door with a, “Good evening, Miss.” She deposited the strap of the diaper bag into his proffered hand, and slid out of the cab herself, lugging Zola’s car seat. Lexie came around with their other carry-ons. “Do you want a cart?” the bellman asked, eyeing their stuff. Meredith flashed back to a time when she’d gallivanted around the world with only a backpack. Those were the days.
“No, we got it,” she said, ignoring Lexie’s expression of disbelief. She also ignored the stares of everyone involved when she set the car seat down on the ground and unstrapped Zola. She didn’t want Derek’s first image of them to be her swinging the baby in a car seat by her side. She couldn’t have explained this feeling, but it was strong.
With the baby on one hip, two bags on the opposite shoulder, and one hand on the handle of her suitcase, she knew she didn’t look together, but at least she had control of everything.
At least until she saw him.
Derek paced the lobby in front of the revolving door, one hand clutching his phone and the other running through his hair. While Meredith watched him, she thought how out-of-place he seemed in the elegant lobby, with its gold chandelier and red velvet walls. He needed to shave, though she always liked him scruffy, and his hair was standing on end. But her eyes focused on his fingers, wrapped around the phone.
Her heart leapt with the realization that it’d been a week since she’d felt those hands on her skin-the longest time they’d been apart since they’d gotten engaged, and yet she stood frozen on the giant welcome-mat, while the other hotel guests sauntered past.
If Zola’s babbling hadn’t caused Derek to turn his head just enough to spot them, she wasn’t sure how long she’d have stayed there. He swallowed, visibly, and then smiled. It wasn’t his confident I-am-man smile. It was tentative, like he no longer knew the steps to the dance they were doing, but he wouldn’t give up yet.
“I’ll go check into my room,” Lexie murmured. Meredith nodded-at least she must have, because Lexie headed for the front desk.
Derek stood inches away from her, and yet a river still could have been separating them. He reached for Zola, but the baby nestled her face against Meredith’s shoulder. A week ago, Zola would have lunged for Derek without question. She couldn’t help the small spark of triumph in her heart. Meredith would have felt worse about this feeling if she hadn’t known that soon enough Derek’s charm would win her. He always did.
“Hi,” he said, taking the car seat from her. A poor second-best.
“Hi,” she echoed, meeting his eyes. The amount of pain and worry in them almost floored her, and she knew that whatever they had to resolve would have to wait. There were too many other things in the mix. As per usual, she couldn’t find the words to tell him this.
All she could do was blurt, “She needs to be cathed,” words that should have sounded wrong and technical in the warm light of the hotel lobby, but to her the medical terms were more reassuring than anything else she could have said. “And to have a bottle.”
“Of course,” Derek said. He put a hand on her back to lead her to the elevator, and her spine stiffened. He lowered his hand and there was a swish as it brushed the leg of his pants. “I...uh…got them to send up a port-a-crib.”
“Oh. She hates those. She’s been sleeping with me. It’ll make the eventual crib transition hard, I guess, but we both sleep better.”
Zola lifted her head when she heard the elevator bell, and then stared at the mirrored walls, her tiny mouth open in awe.
“Do you see yourself? Do you see Zola?” Meredith angled herself so Zola could reach out to touch the shiny glass. The baby’s breath fogged the glass as she giggled at her reflection.
This kept Meredith from having to consider the symbolism of elevators.
“I should have done her cathing an hour ago,” she said once they’d entered the hotel room. She dumped the diaper-bag onto the bed-a King, what would that mean for the night?-, and spread out the changing pad with one hand. “But airport bathrooms are so far from sterile; I didn’t want her getting a secondary infection. They were yucky, yucky bathrooms, weren’t they Zola?”
Zola cooed, the flipper of the stuffed frog in her mouth once more.
“I don’t blame you,” Derek said, and she let out a breath. “Do you need-Is there something I can do?”
“Um. This is a one-person job, but you can fix her a bottle. There’s one in the pocket of the diaper bag that just needs hot water.” Meredith sanitized her hands, slid on gloves and adeptly took care of the catheterizing, while she listened to Derek fiddle with the microwave on the other side of the room. Once she’d taped on a fresh diaper, she held Zola’s legs in the air, moving them in a bicycling motion. “The PT suggested this,” she said to Derek, who’d come back armed with the bottle. “It helps strengthen her legs. She likes it. Mostly. Not so much if she thinks there’s something else going on in the world that she might be missing.”
Zola’s determination to see everything gave Meredith faith that she’d make her way in the world, no matter what it took, like Meredith had. After all, didn’t people always comment on how much she saw? And she’d done okay, watching people, learning how to help them in spite of challenges. She could have shared this thought with Derek, but it felt too intimate given the level of tension in the room.
How had something become too intimate for them?
She took Zola’s hands to pull her into a sitting position. She bobbed there for a second, and Meredith kept her hand behind her back until she steadied. Derek held out the bottle, but she shook her head. “Antibiotics first. She hates the taste, so we use her bottles as a chaser.” Without thinking, she shot Derek a teasing grin, and he laughed. “Open up, Zo,” she said once she’d measured the pink liquid into the little syringe. Zola made a face, but let Meredith shoot the medicine into her mouth.
“Bottle,” she said. Derek slapped it into her hand like a surgical nurse passing a scalpel, and Meredith scooped Zola up and plopped the bottle in. Then she swiped a burp cloth from the diaper bag, and sat down on the bed. Zola sucked greedily on the bottle.
“If you’re not quick on the draw with that it can turn into a scream-fest,” Meredith said. “But she’s at least good about taking it in the first place.”
Derek shook his head and sank into the chair near the foot of the bed. “I’m impressed.”
“Because you didn’t think I could do it?”
He sucked in a breath, long and ragged. “No. I didn’t doubt you.”
She choked on the bitter laugh she didn’t want Zola to hear.
“I didn’t…when I left…after I saw you with her…. I may never get over what you did, but for me to expand that into saying you would be a bad mother was…well, it was wrong. When I said I didn’t know how to raise a child with someone who-.”
“Stop,” she interrupted. “I know what you said.” The words were ingrained on deep into her mind, repeating themselves every time she did something for Zola and wondered is this right?
“I didn’t think about the fact that you know exactly what’s right and wrong for a kid. My mom, she did what she could and we all turned out fine. Mostly. I can’t say if what she did was the cause of it. But you turned out all right in spite of Ellis Grey. It’s so clear to you what she did wrong that you’ll do whatever it takes not to make her mistakes, including trying to fix Richard and Adele. So, it doesn’t matter to me that it was Adele in terms of the trial, but in terms of us? In terms of our life with Zola? It does.”
They were, in so many ways, the words she’d wanted to hear since he stood in the locker room and spat accusations at her. A year or two ago, she might have accepted them and moved onto the next step, afraid of losing him if she rocked the boat further. Now with Zola as a heavy reminder in her arms, she couldn’t let it lie to placate him. “Did you have a deep heart-to-heart with your mom that led to these revelations?”
He cocked his head, obviously not expecting her harsh tone. “No. We’ve talked, some, and I talked to Bailey, but…”
Bailey. She remembered the conversation they’d had on the way back to Meredith’s house, when she’d asked Bailey what she thought.
It’s not how I raised you, Grey she’d said, staring straight ahead at the Seattle traffic. But there comes a time when I’ve got to respect your choices on your own. Was it right? Was it wrong? It’s not for me to say. All I know is that you gave someone a chance who might not have otherwise had one. I don’t appreciate the way you did it, but I can’t fault you for doing it. Derek’s words didn’t exactly echo hers, but the point she had to make was still there.
“Is this how it’s going to be?” She shifted Zola to her shoulder and patted the baby’s back in rhythm with her words. “I make a choice you don’t approve of, and you disappear until you’ve received wisdom from someone who gets me in ways that you can’t seem to?” She thought of Lexie, the sister who’d believed in her long before anyone else. If she could believe after every time Meredith screwed up, why couldn’t her husband?
“How is it any different to your going straight to Cristina?”
“Because I don’t. I go to you. I’ve gone to you about everything, as soon as I knew.” He opened his mouth, but she held up a hand. “Don’t bring up the vision thing. I didn’t want to admit that to myself, much less you. And after that, I realized how stupid I’d been not to tell you in the first place.”
“You didn’t tell me you switched the drugs.”
“Because I wanted to protect the trial.” She offered Zola the nipple of the bottle again. It took the baby a second to take it, her eyes flicking back and forth between Meredith and Derek, but then she began to suck. “I wanted to keep you blind, and help Adele. I wanted to have it all. I guess that was stupid.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat, the one that had lain dormant for a week. “I guess I can’t have everything.” She stood abruptly. “She needs a bath.”
Zola hadn’t finished the bottle, but she headed to the bathroom anyway, intending to gather her thoughts and finish feeding her while the water ran. Derek, never able to sense when she wanted to be alone, followed. To drown out anything he might say, she turned the water on so it blasted into the bright white tub.
Zola grinned around the bottle in her mouth once she heard the sound, waving her arms happily. “It’s your favorite time of day,” Meredith said, kissing the baby’s forehead. “Can you get her bath stuff?” she shot at Derek. “It’s all in my suitcase.”
He nodded and shuffled out with only one hangdog look her way. She shut the door behind him, inhaling the steam in the air in the hopes that it would relax the tight muscles in her chest. “You should know I’m going to fix this. I don’t want you to have parents who fight all the time. I’d let it go, if I could. As soon as every word stops feeling like he’s shoving a scalpel in my heart, maybe I’ll be able to.”
She stuck her free hand into the water, and felt a tinge of disappointment when it didn’t scald her flesh.
***
Lexie paced her hotel room expectantly, one eye focused on the phone sitting on her dresser. She hoped for Meredith’s name to pop up on the screen, based on lack-of-response to the text Lexie had sent over an hour ago asking Do I have to kill him? She was so tuned-in to awaiting a sound from her phone, that she almost missed the sound of someone knocking on her door.
She slid back the deadbolt and opened it for her sister. In the split second before Meredith stepped inside, Lexie thought how weird it was to see her without Zola attached.
“You have one of our bags,” Meredith said by way of greeting. Even though the backpack sat right next to the door, she sank onto the bed, letting herself fall backward with a soft thump.
Lexie lay down next to her. “You okay?”
Mer rolled over, tucking one hand under her cheek. “I guess. I just needed to breathe. Having him in there…it’s suffocating. Partially because a stupid part of me missed him so much I just want to jump him.” Lexie raised an eyebrow and Meredith giggled (a much lighter sound than Lexie had heard from her lately). “We’ve been having a lot of sex lately, okay? Luckily, Zola’s there, so I can’t give into that. And I wouldn’t. I keep hearing those words in my head, over and over. He said he didn’t know if he wanted to raise a child with me and for months that’s been all I wanted.”
“Do you still?”
Meredith blinked at her, her expression so blank that Lexie wondered if she’d spoken a foreign language. “Of course. Derek’s it for me. He’s the only one. The only one I’ve ever wanted kids with. For better or for worse. We both said it. This is just…worse.”
Lexie put her hand over Meredith’s, and if she felt surprised when Meredith linked their fingers, she attributed to the lingering part of her that was admiring an aloof older girl from the shadows. “Is it worse than everything else you’ve gone through?”
For a while the only sound came from the buzzing hotel air-conditioning. Then Meredith swallowed. “No,” she said. “No, because there’s Zola. I’m fighting for her as much as for myself. Someone has to fight for her.”
“Oh, Meredith,” Lexie breathed, squeezing her hand. “You are such a good mom.”
Meredith sat up, smiling tightly. “I’d better go, or he’ll think I abandoned him. It’s probably one of the warning signs he’s looking for.”
“Mer-.”
“Don’t. I heard you, Lexie. I heard you, and I’m even starting to believe you. But right now, I need to prove it. I’ll see you later.”
“I don’t guess I could talk you into letting Shepherd bond with the kid and going to the bar with me, for old time’s sake?”
Meredith laughed. “Not this time. Adult, remember? But you should go. You never know who you’ll meet at those places.”
You mean a sexy neurosurgeon who’ll put me through the ringer? Lexie watched Meredith walk down the hall to the elevator, and then retreated into the empty room, figuring she’d order room service or something.
Half an hour later, she found herself sitting on a barstool, tipping her head back to down a third shot of tequila. The only other patrons at the bar seemed to be from an LBGT convention, so no chance of meeting someone … although there was a woman on the other end of the bar who could have persuaded her to do a Callie when she was a few years younger, and a lot drunker. (Or maybe any time, if she were honest with herself).
She wasn’t looking for Mark. She didn’t want the one who constantly put up roadblocks. She was done.
Except, from the moment he’d mentioned Mrs. Shepherd’s surgery she’d been unable to bear the thought of him sitting in a hospital waiting room with only the Shepherd Sisters for comfort.
Her phone buzzed in the right side pocket of her jeans. She fumbled for it, her fingers impeded slightly by alcohol. The text hadn’t come from Meredith as she’d expected. Instead, Jackson’s name flashed on the screen. She winced.
Cristina says you’re in NYC. Were you planning on telling me?
She sighed, and tapped her list of reasons into the phone.
You were on-call all day. It was kind of unexpected. Meredith needed me.
They all seemed like flimsy excuses. No matter what this trip to New York was, or what it led to, she knew things would soon be over with Jackson. He should have been the person she wanted, but something in her couldn’t be as passionate about him as she knew she should.
He’s your vet.
“Excuse me?” The deep voice haunted her thoughts so much that she almost thought she’d managed to let fantasy blend into reality through tequila. “You look just like someone I know.”
She turned on the bar stool, wobbling a little too much for it to be the intense movie-moment. In the moment Mark’s eyes widened in surprise, (proving he honestly hadn’t known it was her) she had the giddy thought that this time she was the girl in the bar, and he was the guy.
Hadn’t she always dreamed she’d be exactly like her big sister?
Part Seven|| Table of Contents || Part Nine