Searching for a Seattle Sky (10/10)
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 slept on opposite sides of the big bed, with Zola in the middle. Although Meredith could tell by his uneven breaths that Derek lay awake at least as long as she did, she let the familiar noise of Zola’s soft snores lull her to sleep. At four, she fixed Zola’s bottle as quietly as possible, hoping Derek wouldn’t make an attempt to start a conversation, but a little disappointed that he didn’t.
She awoke in the morning to a text from Cristina. Owen’s taking me, it said simply. A reminder of all she had to deal with back home, but also a tiny ray of hope. Maybe things could be fixed.
Derek and Zola stayed asleep while she dressed, preparing herself to rally for his sake. Today couldn’t be about their problems. Zola began to stir almost as soon as Meredith had slipped on her shoes. Meredith gently picked her up before she could cry. “Morning, Zo. Should we wake up your-Derek?”
Zola gurgled, and Meredith walked to the other side of the bed. She sat on the edge, and placed Zola on her stomach next to Derek. His eyes flickered open as Meredith squeezed her hand, and then opened wider when babbled at him. “I think that’s Zola-speak for good morning,” Meredith said.
Derek chuckled-a sound that seemed to catch in his throat, and she imagined he’d realized what day it was. “Good morning to you, Zola,” he said, slipping one of his fingers into fist. “And you.”
“I ordered room service,” Meredith responded, tugging Zola’s clothes out of the suitcase. “I mean, I put the thing on the door last night. It should be here in fifteen minutes, so you shower and I’ll get her ready.”
Derek sat up, pulling Zola onto his lap. “Are you sure? I can help with her if you need-”
“Derek.” Meredith gestured emphatically, a pink onesie balled up in her hand. “When we get home, you can take care of her as many mornings as you want, but today you have nothing to do but take care of your mom, okay?”
He blanched. “Okay.”
He held out Zola, and while they shifted the baby between them, there was a moment where their faces were inches apart. Her instinct told her to kiss him, and his eyes went murky, suggesting he had the same thought, but he let Zola settle in her arms and kept walking. A second later, water began pounding into the shower.
Meredith sighed, shifting Zola onto her hip. “What do you think, Zola? Frog shirt for luck?” Zola blew a raspberry, and Meredith laughed, wondering what she’d ever done before she had this kid to distract her.
Wallowed in your misery.
“Shut up, mental Cristina,” Meredith said, and turned back to the bed to wrestle Zola into her overalls before the room service came.
While feeding Zola a bottle, Meredith stood over Derek menacingly to make sure he ate at least three spoonfuls of the Muesli she’d requested. The words they weren’t saying floated in the air like bothersome flies that never got close enough to be swatted. She forced herself to ignore them.
“Where is everyone meeting?” she demanded once they’d cleared up the plates. She shifted Zola again, glancing around for the Snuggie.
“The lobby. I’ll take her.” Derek held out his hands. They were shaking.
“Later. It’s easier to put her in here,” Meredith said. She slipped it on, and let Derek slide Zola in. “Ready?”
“No.” He coughed, and she saw the emotion the sound hid swimming in his eyes: fear, sadness, uncertainty. She knew them all so well. Without a word, she took his hand and opened the door. He clung to her long after she’d led him onto the elevator.
The cluster of Shepherds was hard to miss, though what most drew Meredith’s attention was her sister, standing slightly apart from the gaggle of women, her arm laced firmly though Mark’s. There would be many things for Meredith to say about this. Later.
“Is this everyone?” she said instead, after she’d counted enough people to theoretically make up the adult portion of the Shepherd clan. One nod was all she needed to start the parade down the block to the main entrance of the hospital. It surprised her that her supposed sisters-in-law followed her willingly, but she imagined it had something to do with the fact that Derek stood beside her.
She navigated them to the surgical floor, but hung back with Zola once they’d reached the room. Derek stopped too, his fingers still gripping hers so tightly she thought she might lose circulation. “Zola,” she said, in response to his questioning glance. “I don’t think the hospital wants a baby in there any more than Richard would. We’ll go stake out a place in the waiting room.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek hoping it would transfer reassurance into him.
“It’s going to be a long day,” she said to Zola as she searched for the waiting room. The familiar lighting made it hard not to take the same turns she’d take at Seattle Grace, but to give way to the twists of a new labyrinth. “I’ll try to make sure you don’t get too bored. Also, you might get passed around a lot, so let’s keep a handle on the screaming thing.”
In the nearly empty waiting room, she spread a blanket out on the carpet and set Zola on it. She figured if they were going to be here all day, she’d let it be known now she wouldn’t be the one trying to confine the baby to someone’s lap or her car seat. She’d been confined enough in her short life.
“Let’s build a tower,” she said, stacking the brightly colored blocks she’d brought. Zola had mastered only the knocking-down part of tower construction, but Meredith had to admit she liked this part better too.
Nancy was the first of the Shepherds to meander into the waiting room. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she eyed Meredith and Zola angrily, as if she couldn’t figure out why they were there. Meredith’s heart sank, as she suddenly wondered whether Derek’s sister might see Zola as the same sort of outsider they believed Meredith to be.
“How is she?” she ventured.
The older woman shrugged. “She won’t say, but I’m sure she’s scared. She must be.”
“She wants to be strong for you. Moms are like that.”
Nancy blew her nose, and made a scoffing sound into the crumpled Kleenex. “You don’t have to pretend, Meredith. It’s not like you can understand. Derek says you hated your mother.”
Don’t take the bait, Meredith thought, squeezing the leg of Zola’s frog. To her surprise, she heard someone else saying the words that had begun to form in her head. “Meredith loved her mother, in spite of everything, and she didn’t want her to die any more than we want Mom to. She understands, Nancy.”
Nancy didn’t reply, but the glower she shot at Derek was enough to say she’d heard. Meredith raised her eyes to Derek’s in surprised thanks. He held a hand out to her. “Mom wants to see you.”
“Oh. But-”
“I’ll stay with Zola. We need bonding time.” He crouched on the floor. “Hi, Zola. What are you playing?” Zola eyed him nervously, leaning forward with one arm on the blanket to support her sitting position. Meredith kept watch, wary for any chin trembling. “I see you’ve got blocks. Do you like them?”
Zola watched Derek’s lips for a moment, and then reached one hand out for a bright green block. She licked it solemnly, and then held it out to him. When he took it, she grinned. Meredith’s chest relaxed and she turned to make her way to her mother-in-law’s hospital room.
She hesitated outside of Mrs. Shepherd’s room, thinking-morbid, Meredith, morbid-of how Derek had been the only one in the room when her mother died. But Mrs. Shepherd turned her head at her and smiled. Her eyes were so vibrant that Meredith managed to convince herself there would not be a similar performance.
“I hear I have another granddaughter.”
“We hope. There’s still paperwork that has to go through, but…. we’re hopeful. At least I am.”
“You’re worried my stubborn son isn’t?”
“He as much as said so a week ago,” Meredith admitted. “I guess he told you…everything.”
“He did. I’m ashamed of him, honestly. We had a talk when I came to Seattle about his need to understand the way you see the world.”
“Yeah. He mentioned that. I guess in practice it wasn’t so easy. Or maybe he’s right. Maybe I took it too far. I don’t know anymore.” Why am I admitting all this? No one must have been able to keep a secret in the Shepherd household, with those knowing eyes on them all the time.
“I’m not going to pass judgment on you, Meredith. I don’t fully understand the ramifications of what you did, and I’m not sure Derek does either. That’s what scares him most, I think. The uncertainty of the whole trial bothered him enough, and this made it worse.”
“It didn’t have to. If they hadn’t figured out who it was…” Meredith stopped, aware of the defensive note in her voice.
“If they hadn’t discovered it was personal, you mean? It was personal for Derek to begin with, and for you. I imagine if the FDA had known the stake you both had in this, they’d have taken it from you far sooner.”
Meredith shrugged, not wanting to think of Derek’s words in the conference room. This is your disease. Like he’d already decided she had it. Like all the promises to remind her of who she was only stood if he’d done all he could to cure it, at whatever cost-and what did that mean for Zola?
“But what’s done is done. We all make mistakes. Maybe you made one. Maybe he did. But the biggest mistake would be to lose each other over it, or worse to lose my granddaughter.”
The thought of losing Zola made tears prickle up in Meredith’s eyes. She had a sudden image of herself standing next to an empty crib, staring at a floppy frog with no owner, and a bunny that wouldn’t be patted again. The nausea the image caused reminded her of the gut-wrenching fear that’d washed over her while Derek bled out on the catwalk.
“That’s not going to happen. None of those things are going to happen,” she said, the realization as strong as the decision to go to med school had been the day she’d rode in an ambulance with a little boy who didn’t have anyone else to hold his hand.
“Good to know. I have faith in you, Meredith.”
“Someone has to,” Meredith said before she could stop herself. She felt her cheeks go hot, but before she could amend the statement someone coughed behind her. She spun to face Preston Burke.
“Meredith. Nice to see you again.”
“Dr. Burke. It’s… well…. Take care of my husband’s mother, won’t you?” If the word “husband” surprised him, he didn’t let on.
“Will do. Ready, Mrs. Shepherd?”
“I’ll go tell everyone she’s going back,” Meredith said. She’d almost made it out the door before he called her name.
“How is she?” he asked once she’d, reluctantly, turned.
Meredith thought of the expression of despair Cristina had worn for the past week and she fought to keep her voice from betraying any of this. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business,” she said, and headed back down the hall.
The Sisters Shepherd, plus Derek and Mark left to follow Mrs. Shepherd as far back as they could, leaving Meredith, Lexie and the husbands she’d never been properly introduced to. She sank down on Zola’s blanket, with Lexie facing her.
The parade of Shepherds returned soon. Meredith’s heart sped up when she saw Derek, his eyes watery and his hair standing on end. This time was not the time for the words on the tip of her tongue, waiting to spill out, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to swallow them. She’d done too much keeping silent this year.
“Watch Zola for a minute?” she said to Lexie, and there must have been desperation in her voice, because Lexie didn’t make a crack about Zola’s tears. She nodded, and Meredith stood. “Derek? I need to talk to you.”
“Now is not the time,” Nancy snapped.
“I don’t think that’s your business, Nancy,” Mark piped up. “Grey knows what’s going on here. If she has to talk to her husband, it’s her prerogative.”
Every pair of eyes turned to Mark. He shrugged. “I have a kid, it’s softened me. Cheerio, Zola?” He popped a piece of dry cereal into Zola’s mouth, and grinned at her.
“It’s important,” Meredith said to Derek. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t.”
He nodded, and slipped his hand into hers. Her spine stiffened. Would she be rocking the boat too much, again?
They went out into the hall, and around a corner to be out of earshot of the waiting room. “What’s going on?”
Meredith bit her lip. Now it seemed so stupid to have drawn him out here for this. They needed to have the conversation, but did it have to happen now, with his mom sick, and all the other problems they already had?
“Mer?”
“I don’t… we can’t…” Tears rose in her eyes, the ones she’d suppressed thinking about losing Zola. “We can’t fix her.”
Derek stepped back. “What?”
“Zola, we can’t fix her.” Derek furrowed his eyebrows, and she could read the assumptions he was making on his face so clearly that she put her finger on his lips to keep him from judging her aloud again. “I don’t want to. What I’m saying is I don’t want to always be trying to fix her. No clinical trials. No quest for a cure. No getting so wrapped up in the medical stuff we forget to live. That’s what we’ve done all year, Derek. With you recovering from being shot, and the trial, and the trying for a baby. We haven’t been living, haven’t been seeing each other clearly. I think… I think that’s part of why it all exploded in our faces.
“So I’m not saying we don’t get her the therapy she needs or anything like that. But I’m saying we take her to the park. We let her get in the pool, if that’s what she likes and we don’t make it about muscle tone, or making up for other things.
“And, if one day someone who isn’t us finds something that will help her, definitely help her, then I’m all for it. But there will not be any kind of ‘Zola’s Treatment’ being discovered while our kid thinks her parents believe she has something so wrong with her they have to devote all their energy to fixing it.”
“Mer, where is this coming from? I don’t want to fix her. I love her the way she is.”
The tears started flowing down her cheeks. She pinched the bridge of her nose, hating the day she’d become so emotional. Were the damn fertility drugs still coursing through her system? “That’s what you said about the Alzheimer’s thing, and it sure as hell started to feel like you thought there was something wrong with me.”
Derek grasped her wrists, forcing her to meet his eyes. “I didn’t want to lose you.”
“I know. I know that, and I don’t want you to go through loving someone with Alzheimer’s. But Derek…we can’t live our lives trying to hold the shoe up before it drops. It’s what we’ve been doing, whether we admit it or not. Both of us are too close to this thing to make it work.
“Fine, I messed it up by being too personal with Adele and Richard, but you’ve been too personal from the start.”
“I haven’t-,” he started, but then paused. His grip on her wrists slackened, and without warning he turned, banging both fists onto the wall next to them. Meredith jumped. A passing nurse scrutinized them, but hurried on. “Fine. It was personal. But Mer… I don’t… I want… I want to raise Zola with you. I want to watch her grow up with you by my side. I want to die in your arms when I’m a hundred and ten, and I want you to be there.”
“I will be. No matter what, somehow, I will be. We don’t even know if I have the gene.”
“And if you do?”
“Then I do. And if we’re lucky someone else will cure it, but Derek it can’t be us. I can’t live my life like that. It wouldn’t be living.”
He stayed turned away from her for a long time. Slowly, his arms fell back to his sides. She leaned back against the wall, pressing her hands against it to keep herself upright while she steadied her breathing.
“Okay,” he said, his voice raspy but determined. “Okay. I’ll call Richard, and my contact with the FDA. I don’t know what they’ll do with it but… I know some people who might be willing to take over.”
She nodded. It felt like all the words she had had been squeezed out of her. She watched him walk away, pulling his phone from the pocket of his jeans, but she stayed there another few minutes before she trusted herself to go back into to the waiting room.
Lexie made space for her on the floor, and took one look at her face before plopping Zola into her lap. The silence of the Sisters Shepherd threatened to suffocate her as much as being in the hotel room alone with Derek the evening before had been.
“Hi Zola,” she whispered, resting her chin on the top of the baby’s head. Zola craned her neck backward, grinning at seeing Meredith’s face upside down. She reached up one hand and touched it to Meredith’s cheek, patting gently like she could feel the tear streaks there. Yet again, Meredith wondered what she’d ever done before Zola.
Her smile faltered when Derek came back, his boots seeming to echo on the waiting-room carpet. To her surprise, he sank down beside her. One arm snaked around her waist, and it didn’t feel wrong. Amy slid down onto the floor next to him, then Kathleen, Elaine, and finally Nancy. Silence kept her reign for a few moments, until Amy said, “Lexie says you’re teaching her to sign. How does that work?”
Meredith exhaled. For the first time, she’d found something she could talk about with Derek’s sisters. While they discussed Zola, who beamed up at them like she knew she was the topic of conversation-the little charmer even let Nancy-the-undeserving hold her-Meredith felt Derek’s eyes on her. She called him on it that afternoon, once the She-Shepherds had gone on a food run, and Lexie’d gone in search of hot water for Zola’s bottle.
“I just… you know so much about her already.”
She shrugged. “We’re a team, Zola and I. We’re learning together, but we’re both fast learners.”
He nodded, but his eyebrows drew together, broodingly.
“Derek? What is it?”
“It’s stupid. I know I’m the idiot who didn’t come home, then had to fly across the country, but… you dealt with it so well. It’s like you don’t need me.”
She almost choked on her laughter. His complaint seemed so banal in comparison to everything else they’d been arguing about. “Seriously? Of course I need you. I’ve handled it because I have to, like I always do. I wasn’t raised to ask for help, but that’s one of the things I know was wrong, because having people makes things so much better. I’d have been a wreck without other people this week.”
She waited for the “no shit” from Lexie before remembering her sister wasn’t there.
Derek’s eyes were on Zola. Meredith slipped her hand into his to draw his attention back. “Derek Shepherd, I hate how much I need you. I can’t raise this kid on my own, if only because I don’t want to deal with two years of dirty diapers alone.”
He laughed, surprised, and she reveled in the sound.
“We have a lot to work on,” he said.
“I know.”
“It might take a while for me to be able to trust you implicitly.”
Stab. “I’m still not going anywhere.”
He nodded once. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she echoed. Then she caught her lips in his, parting them with her tongue. The inside of his mouth felt so familiar, so warm, so-Zola shrieked, and Meredith barely removed her tongue before Derek’s teeth clamped down in shock.
“Zola,” Lexie said, coming over with the bottle. “If you’re going to object every time they kiss in front of you, you’ve got a long eighteen years ahead of you.”
Eighteen years. What would their world look like then, Meredith wondered. Would Zola be going off to college? Would they still live in the house on the land Derek had bought with no plans in mind, reeling from his divorce?
Would she be lucid enough to know the answers?
She didn’t know. All she could do at the moment was slide onto Derek’s lap while she fed their baby, and hope one day she’d be saying the words, “I’d do it again,” under much more positive circumstances.
***
Lexie sat on the waiting room floor with her head resting on Mark’s knee. Meredith held Zola on her other side. The baby had fallen asleep not long before, and the snuffling noises were the only sound in the room until Mark swore under his breath. Lexie raised her eyes to his iPhone, which he’d started shaking. “Damn pigs.”
“Angry Birds?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah. I had every shot right, except the last one, but the stupid game doesn’t care about that. You have to execute every maneuver perfectly. No going back to fix your mistakes.”
“Good thing life’s not like that,” Lexie murmured.
“Yeah,” Mark agreed, letting his finger slide across the screen again. Lexie watched a bird flip into a pile of wood flying into the green blob that was supposed to be a pig. A chain reaction sent other green blobs smashing, and soon the whole screen had cleared. “But it is the same in some ways. Like you never know when you’re going to win, so you just have to keep trying.”
“Even when you start to look like an obsessed freak?” Amy asked from across the room.
Mark laughed. “Especially then.”
Lexie smiled, thinking of how she’d balked against Mark’s preoccupation with her. How had she been so certain moving on would be the right decision? With him so close, the days she’d believed she was over him seemed to belong to another life.
“Shepherds?”
Their whole cluster raised their heads to see Preston Burke standing in the doorway. Lexie reached up to take Mark’s hand, and next to her she heard Meredith shifting nearer to Derek, but their support wouldn’t be necessary. Burke was smiling. Six of the doctors in their group gathered around him asking questions, but Lexie stayed on the floor with Meredith.
“So,” Meredith said, her face bright pink with relief. “Mark?”
“Mark,” Lexie agreed.
“McSteamy is your McDreamy.”
“Huh?”
“Long story. Have you spoken to Jackson? He should know.”
Lexie winced thinking of the conversation she’d had the night before. He deserved better than the half-drunk admittance she’d given him, but Mark had been there, and she couldn’t stop herself from-and Jackson had to know before that happened. “Yeah. I mean… it wasn’t something I wanted to do over the phone but…”
Meredith smirked. “But you and Mark wanted to make up for lost time and you thought you had to break it off first?”
Lexie nodded, pressing her hand into her forehead.
“Well. You were right. Trust me. I’ve been there.”
“One day I will manage to do something that doesn’t mirror you in some way,” Lexie murmured.
“Oh Lexie. I hope you never go through half the hell I’ve been through.” Meredith put her hand on Lexie’s shoulder. “But I’ll admit there are some freakish coincidences.”
She gestured at Mark and Derek who turned to them and said, “Ready?” at the exact same moment. The men laughed, but Lexie knew her face mirrored Meredith’s expression of horror.
“You know what’s weird?” Lexie said, while Mark helped her up.
“Huh?” Mer said, carefully putting Zola in Derek’s arms so she could stand.
“From the start, I never doubted you were my sister. The day you saved me from the tram, I met your eyes and I just… knew. Maybe I saw myself somewhere, or something.”
“Life’s like that sometimes,” Meredith said, looping the diaper bag over her shoulder. “Derek knew, with Zola, and I think I did too, once I stopped being afraid.”
“I knew with you too,” Shepherd said quietly. Lexie watched him run his thumb over the top of Meredith’s palm. “The day at Joe’s, I knew. You’re the one who took convincing.”
“I took you divorcing your wife,” Meredith said. Lexie saw a spark of mirth in her eye that didn’t mesh with what she said. This problem, which she knew from hospital gossip had broken her sister had become banter. Somehow this told Lexie they’d all be okay. If Meredith could deal with the wife and the ring in the woods, she could learn to deal with Sofia. (After all, she had a feeling whenever the house got sold, she’d go through baby withdrawal).
While they walked down the hospital hallway, she heard a voice in her head, one belonging to Death.
It’s okay, the voice said. You’re okay.
And for the first time in a long time, Lexie truly believed it.
Part Eight|| Table of Contents
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 slept on opposite sides of the big bed, with Zola in the middle. Although Meredith could tell by his uneven breaths that Derek lay awake at least as long as she did, she let the familiar noise of Zola’s soft snores lull her to sleep. At four, she fixed Zola’s bottle as quietly as possible, hoping Derek wouldn’t make an attempt to start a conversation, but a little disappointed that he didn’t.
She awoke in the morning to a text from Cristina. Owen’s taking me, it said simply. A reminder of all she had to deal with back home, but also a tiny ray of hope. Maybe things could be fixed.
Derek and Zola stayed asleep while she dressed, preparing herself to rally for his sake. Today couldn’t be about their problems. Zola began to stir almost as soon as Meredith had slipped on her shoes. Meredith gently picked her up before she could cry. “Morning, Zo. Should we wake up your-Derek?”
Zola gurgled, and Meredith walked to the other side of the bed. She sat on the edge, and placed Zola on her stomach next to Derek. His eyes flickered open as Meredith squeezed her hand, and then opened wider when babbled at him. “I think that’s Zola-speak for good morning,” Meredith said.
Derek chuckled-a sound that seemed to catch in his throat, and she imagined he’d realized what day it was. “Good morning to you, Zola,” he said, slipping one of his fingers into fist. “And you.”
“I ordered room service,” Meredith responded, tugging Zola’s clothes out of the suitcase. “I mean, I put the thing on the door last night. It should be here in fifteen minutes, so you shower and I’ll get her ready.”
Derek sat up, pulling Zola onto his lap. “Are you sure? I can help with her if you need-”
“Derek.” Meredith gestured emphatically, a pink onesie balled up in her hand. “When we get home, you can take care of her as many mornings as you want, but today you have nothing to do but take care of your mom, okay?”
He blanched. “Okay.”
He held out Zola, and while they shifted the baby between them, there was a moment where their faces were inches apart. Her instinct told her to kiss him, and his eyes went murky, suggesting he had the same thought, but he let Zola settle in her arms and kept walking. A second later, water began pounding into the shower.
Meredith sighed, shifting Zola onto her hip. “What do you think, Zola? Frog shirt for luck?” Zola blew a raspberry, and Meredith laughed, wondering what she’d ever done before she had this kid to distract her.
Wallowed in your misery.
“Shut up, mental Cristina,” Meredith said, and turned back to the bed to wrestle Zola into her overalls before the room service came.
While feeding Zola a bottle, Meredith stood over Derek menacingly to make sure he ate at least three spoonfuls of the Muesli she’d requested. The words they weren’t saying floated in the air like bothersome flies that never got close enough to be swatted. She forced herself to ignore them.
“Where is everyone meeting?” she demanded once they’d cleared up the plates. She shifted Zola again, glancing around for the Snuggie.
“The lobby. I’ll take her.” Derek held out his hands. They were shaking.
“Later. It’s easier to put her in here,” Meredith said. She slipped it on, and let Derek slide Zola in. “Ready?”
“No.” He coughed, and she saw the emotion the sound hid swimming in his eyes: fear, sadness, uncertainty. She knew them all so well. Without a word, she took his hand and opened the door. He clung to her long after she’d led him onto the elevator.
The cluster of Shepherds was hard to miss, though what most drew Meredith’s attention was her sister, standing slightly apart from the gaggle of women, her arm laced firmly though Mark’s. There would be many things for Meredith to say about this. Later.
“Is this everyone?” she said instead, after she’d counted enough people to theoretically make up the adult portion of the Shepherd clan. One nod was all she needed to start the parade down the block to the main entrance of the hospital. It surprised her that her supposed sisters-in-law followed her willingly, but she imagined it had something to do with the fact that Derek stood beside her.
She navigated them to the surgical floor, but hung back with Zola once they’d reached the room. Derek stopped too, his fingers still gripping hers so tightly she thought she might lose circulation. “Zola,” she said, in response to his questioning glance. “I don’t think the hospital wants a baby in there any more than Richard would. We’ll go stake out a place in the waiting room.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek hoping it would transfer reassurance into him.
“It’s going to be a long day,” she said to Zola as she searched for the waiting room. The familiar lighting made it hard not to take the same turns she’d take at Seattle Grace, but to give way to the twists of a new labyrinth. “I’ll try to make sure you don’t get too bored. Also, you might get passed around a lot, so let’s keep a handle on the screaming thing.”
In the nearly empty waiting room, she spread a blanket out on the carpet and set Zola on it. She figured if they were going to be here all day, she’d let it be known now she wouldn’t be the one trying to confine the baby to someone’s lap or her car seat. She’d been confined enough in her short life.
“Let’s build a tower,” she said, stacking the brightly colored blocks she’d brought. Zola had mastered only the knocking-down part of tower construction, but Meredith had to admit she liked this part better too.
Nancy was the first of the Shepherds to meander into the waiting room. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she eyed Meredith and Zola angrily, as if she couldn’t figure out why they were there. Meredith’s heart sank, as she suddenly wondered whether Derek’s sister might see Zola as the same sort of outsider they believed Meredith to be.
“How is she?” she ventured.
The older woman shrugged. “She won’t say, but I’m sure she’s scared. She must be.”
“She wants to be strong for you. Moms are like that.”
Nancy blew her nose, and made a scoffing sound into the crumpled Kleenex. “You don’t have to pretend, Meredith. It’s not like you can understand. Derek says you hated your mother.”
Don’t take the bait, Meredith thought, squeezing the leg of Zola’s frog. To her surprise, she heard someone else saying the words that had begun to form in her head. “Meredith loved her mother, in spite of everything, and she didn’t want her to die any more than we want Mom to. She understands, Nancy.”
Nancy didn’t reply, but the glower she shot at Derek was enough to say she’d heard. Meredith raised her eyes to Derek’s in surprised thanks. He held a hand out to her. “Mom wants to see you.”
“Oh. But-”
“I’ll stay with Zola. We need bonding time.” He crouched on the floor. “Hi, Zola. What are you playing?” Zola eyed him nervously, leaning forward with one arm on the blanket to support her sitting position. Meredith kept watch, wary for any chin trembling. “I see you’ve got blocks. Do you like them?”
Zola watched Derek’s lips for a moment, and then reached one hand out for a bright green block. She licked it solemnly, and then held it out to him. When he took it, she grinned. Meredith’s chest relaxed and she turned to make her way to her mother-in-law’s hospital room.
She hesitated outside of Mrs. Shepherd’s room, thinking-morbid, Meredith, morbid-of how Derek had been the only one in the room when her mother died. But Mrs. Shepherd turned her head at her and smiled. Her eyes were so vibrant that Meredith managed to convince herself there would not be a similar performance.
“I hear I have another granddaughter.”
“We hope. There’s still paperwork that has to go through, but…. we’re hopeful. At least I am.”
“You’re worried my stubborn son isn’t?”
“He as much as said so a week ago,” Meredith admitted. “I guess he told you…everything.”
“He did. I’m ashamed of him, honestly. We had a talk when I came to Seattle about his need to understand the way you see the world.”
“Yeah. He mentioned that. I guess in practice it wasn’t so easy. Or maybe he’s right. Maybe I took it too far. I don’t know anymore.” Why am I admitting all this? No one must have been able to keep a secret in the Shepherd household, with those knowing eyes on them all the time.
“I’m not going to pass judgment on you, Meredith. I don’t fully understand the ramifications of what you did, and I’m not sure Derek does either. That’s what scares him most, I think. The uncertainty of the whole trial bothered him enough, and this made it worse.”
“It didn’t have to. If they hadn’t figured out who it was…” Meredith stopped, aware of the defensive note in her voice.
“If they hadn’t discovered it was personal, you mean? It was personal for Derek to begin with, and for you. I imagine if the FDA had known the stake you both had in this, they’d have taken it from you far sooner.”
Meredith shrugged, not wanting to think of Derek’s words in the conference room. This is your disease. Like he’d already decided she had it. Like all the promises to remind her of who she was only stood if he’d done all he could to cure it, at whatever cost-and what did that mean for Zola?
“But what’s done is done. We all make mistakes. Maybe you made one. Maybe he did. But the biggest mistake would be to lose each other over it, or worse to lose my granddaughter.”
The thought of losing Zola made tears prickle up in Meredith’s eyes. She had a sudden image of herself standing next to an empty crib, staring at a floppy frog with no owner, and a bunny that wouldn’t be patted again. The nausea the image caused reminded her of the gut-wrenching fear that’d washed over her while Derek bled out on the catwalk.
“That’s not going to happen. None of those things are going to happen,” she said, the realization as strong as the decision to go to med school had been the day she’d rode in an ambulance with a little boy who didn’t have anyone else to hold his hand.
“Good to know. I have faith in you, Meredith.”
“Someone has to,” Meredith said before she could stop herself. She felt her cheeks go hot, but before she could amend the statement someone coughed behind her. She spun to face Preston Burke.
“Meredith. Nice to see you again.”
“Dr. Burke. It’s… well…. Take care of my husband’s mother, won’t you?” If the word “husband” surprised him, he didn’t let on.
“Will do. Ready, Mrs. Shepherd?”
“I’ll go tell everyone she’s going back,” Meredith said. She’d almost made it out the door before he called her name.
“How is she?” he asked once she’d, reluctantly, turned.
Meredith thought of the expression of despair Cristina had worn for the past week and she fought to keep her voice from betraying any of this. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business,” she said, and headed back down the hall.
The Sisters Shepherd, plus Derek and Mark left to follow Mrs. Shepherd as far back as they could, leaving Meredith, Lexie and the husbands she’d never been properly introduced to. She sank down on Zola’s blanket, with Lexie facing her.
The parade of Shepherds returned soon. Meredith’s heart sped up when she saw Derek, his eyes watery and his hair standing on end. This time was not the time for the words on the tip of her tongue, waiting to spill out, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to swallow them. She’d done too much keeping silent this year.
“Watch Zola for a minute?” she said to Lexie, and there must have been desperation in her voice, because Lexie didn’t make a crack about Zola’s tears. She nodded, and Meredith stood. “Derek? I need to talk to you.”
“Now is not the time,” Nancy snapped.
“I don’t think that’s your business, Nancy,” Mark piped up. “Grey knows what’s going on here. If she has to talk to her husband, it’s her prerogative.”
Every pair of eyes turned to Mark. He shrugged. “I have a kid, it’s softened me. Cheerio, Zola?” He popped a piece of dry cereal into Zola’s mouth, and grinned at her.
“It’s important,” Meredith said to Derek. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t.”
He nodded, and slipped his hand into hers. Her spine stiffened. Would she be rocking the boat too much, again?
They went out into the hall, and around a corner to be out of earshot of the waiting room. “What’s going on?”
Meredith bit her lip. Now it seemed so stupid to have drawn him out here for this. They needed to have the conversation, but did it have to happen now, with his mom sick, and all the other problems they already had?
“Mer?”
“I don’t… we can’t…” Tears rose in her eyes, the ones she’d suppressed thinking about losing Zola. “We can’t fix her.”
Derek stepped back. “What?”
“Zola, we can’t fix her.” Derek furrowed his eyebrows, and she could read the assumptions he was making on his face so clearly that she put her finger on his lips to keep him from judging her aloud again. “I don’t want to. What I’m saying is I don’t want to always be trying to fix her. No clinical trials. No quest for a cure. No getting so wrapped up in the medical stuff we forget to live. That’s what we’ve done all year, Derek. With you recovering from being shot, and the trial, and the trying for a baby. We haven’t been living, haven’t been seeing each other clearly. I think… I think that’s part of why it all exploded in our faces.
“So I’m not saying we don’t get her the therapy she needs or anything like that. But I’m saying we take her to the park. We let her get in the pool, if that’s what she likes and we don’t make it about muscle tone, or making up for other things.
“And, if one day someone who isn’t us finds something that will help her, definitely help her, then I’m all for it. But there will not be any kind of ‘Zola’s Treatment’ being discovered while our kid thinks her parents believe she has something so wrong with her they have to devote all their energy to fixing it.”
“Mer, where is this coming from? I don’t want to fix her. I love her the way she is.”
The tears started flowing down her cheeks. She pinched the bridge of her nose, hating the day she’d become so emotional. Were the damn fertility drugs still coursing through her system? “That’s what you said about the Alzheimer’s thing, and it sure as hell started to feel like you thought there was something wrong with me.”
Derek grasped her wrists, forcing her to meet his eyes. “I didn’t want to lose you.”
“I know. I know that, and I don’t want you to go through loving someone with Alzheimer’s. But Derek…we can’t live our lives trying to hold the shoe up before it drops. It’s what we’ve been doing, whether we admit it or not. Both of us are too close to this thing to make it work.
“Fine, I messed it up by being too personal with Adele and Richard, but you’ve been too personal from the start.”
“I haven’t-,” he started, but then paused. His grip on her wrists slackened, and without warning he turned, banging both fists onto the wall next to them. Meredith jumped. A passing nurse scrutinized them, but hurried on. “Fine. It was personal. But Mer… I don’t… I want… I want to raise Zola with you. I want to watch her grow up with you by my side. I want to die in your arms when I’m a hundred and ten, and I want you to be there.”
“I will be. No matter what, somehow, I will be. We don’t even know if I have the gene.”
“And if you do?”
“Then I do. And if we’re lucky someone else will cure it, but Derek it can’t be us. I can’t live my life like that. It wouldn’t be living.”
He stayed turned away from her for a long time. Slowly, his arms fell back to his sides. She leaned back against the wall, pressing her hands against it to keep herself upright while she steadied her breathing.
“Okay,” he said, his voice raspy but determined. “Okay. I’ll call Richard, and my contact with the FDA. I don’t know what they’ll do with it but… I know some people who might be willing to take over.”
She nodded. It felt like all the words she had had been squeezed out of her. She watched him walk away, pulling his phone from the pocket of his jeans, but she stayed there another few minutes before she trusted herself to go back into to the waiting room.
Lexie made space for her on the floor, and took one look at her face before plopping Zola into her lap. The silence of the Sisters Shepherd threatened to suffocate her as much as being in the hotel room alone with Derek the evening before had been.
“Hi Zola,” she whispered, resting her chin on the top of the baby’s head. Zola craned her neck backward, grinning at seeing Meredith’s face upside down. She reached up one hand and touched it to Meredith’s cheek, patting gently like she could feel the tear streaks there. Yet again, Meredith wondered what she’d ever done before Zola.
Her smile faltered when Derek came back, his boots seeming to echo on the waiting-room carpet. To her surprise, he sank down beside her. One arm snaked around her waist, and it didn’t feel wrong. Amy slid down onto the floor next to him, then Kathleen, Elaine, and finally Nancy. Silence kept her reign for a few moments, until Amy said, “Lexie says you’re teaching her to sign. How does that work?”
Meredith exhaled. For the first time, she’d found something she could talk about with Derek’s sisters. While they discussed Zola, who beamed up at them like she knew she was the topic of conversation-the little charmer even let Nancy-the-undeserving hold her-Meredith felt Derek’s eyes on her. She called him on it that afternoon, once the She-Shepherds had gone on a food run, and Lexie’d gone in search of hot water for Zola’s bottle.
“I just… you know so much about her already.”
She shrugged. “We’re a team, Zola and I. We’re learning together, but we’re both fast learners.”
He nodded, but his eyebrows drew together, broodingly.
“Derek? What is it?”
“It’s stupid. I know I’m the idiot who didn’t come home, then had to fly across the country, but… you dealt with it so well. It’s like you don’t need me.”
She almost choked on her laughter. His complaint seemed so banal in comparison to everything else they’d been arguing about. “Seriously? Of course I need you. I’ve handled it because I have to, like I always do. I wasn’t raised to ask for help, but that’s one of the things I know was wrong, because having people makes things so much better. I’d have been a wreck without other people this week.”
She waited for the “no shit” from Lexie before remembering her sister wasn’t there.
Derek’s eyes were on Zola. Meredith slipped her hand into his to draw his attention back. “Derek Shepherd, I hate how much I need you. I can’t raise this kid on my own, if only because I don’t want to deal with two years of dirty diapers alone.”
He laughed, surprised, and she reveled in the sound.
“We have a lot to work on,” he said.
“I know.”
“It might take a while for me to be able to trust you implicitly.”
Stab. “I’m still not going anywhere.”
He nodded once. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she echoed. Then she caught her lips in his, parting them with her tongue. The inside of his mouth felt so familiar, so warm, so-Zola shrieked, and Meredith barely removed her tongue before Derek’s teeth clamped down in shock.
“Zola,” Lexie said, coming over with the bottle. “If you’re going to object every time they kiss in front of you, you’ve got a long eighteen years ahead of you.”
Eighteen years. What would their world look like then, Meredith wondered. Would Zola be going off to college? Would they still live in the house on the land Derek had bought with no plans in mind, reeling from his divorce?
Would she be lucid enough to know the answers?
She didn’t know. All she could do at the moment was slide onto Derek’s lap while she fed their baby, and hope one day she’d be saying the words, “I’d do it again,” under much more positive circumstances.
***
Lexie sat on the waiting room floor with her head resting on Mark’s knee. Meredith held Zola on her other side. The baby had fallen asleep not long before, and the snuffling noises were the only sound in the room until Mark swore under his breath. Lexie raised her eyes to his iPhone, which he’d started shaking. “Damn pigs.”
“Angry Birds?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah. I had every shot right, except the last one, but the stupid game doesn’t care about that. You have to execute every maneuver perfectly. No going back to fix your mistakes.”
“Good thing life’s not like that,” Lexie murmured.
“Yeah,” Mark agreed, letting his finger slide across the screen again. Lexie watched a bird flip into a pile of wood flying into the green blob that was supposed to be a pig. A chain reaction sent other green blobs smashing, and soon the whole screen had cleared. “But it is the same in some ways. Like you never know when you’re going to win, so you just have to keep trying.”
“Even when you start to look like an obsessed freak?” Amy asked from across the room.
Mark laughed. “Especially then.”
Lexie smiled, thinking of how she’d balked against Mark’s preoccupation with her. How had she been so certain moving on would be the right decision? With him so close, the days she’d believed she was over him seemed to belong to another life.
“Shepherds?”
Their whole cluster raised their heads to see Preston Burke standing in the doorway. Lexie reached up to take Mark’s hand, and next to her she heard Meredith shifting nearer to Derek, but their support wouldn’t be necessary. Burke was smiling. Six of the doctors in their group gathered around him asking questions, but Lexie stayed on the floor with Meredith.
“So,” Meredith said, her face bright pink with relief. “Mark?”
“Mark,” Lexie agreed.
“McSteamy is your McDreamy.”
“Huh?”
“Long story. Have you spoken to Jackson? He should know.”
Lexie winced thinking of the conversation she’d had the night before. He deserved better than the half-drunk admittance she’d given him, but Mark had been there, and she couldn’t stop herself from-and Jackson had to know before that happened. “Yeah. I mean… it wasn’t something I wanted to do over the phone but…”
Meredith smirked. “But you and Mark wanted to make up for lost time and you thought you had to break it off first?”
Lexie nodded, pressing her hand into her forehead.
“Well. You were right. Trust me. I’ve been there.”
“One day I will manage to do something that doesn’t mirror you in some way,” Lexie murmured.
“Oh Lexie. I hope you never go through half the hell I’ve been through.” Meredith put her hand on Lexie’s shoulder. “But I’ll admit there are some freakish coincidences.”
She gestured at Mark and Derek who turned to them and said, “Ready?” at the exact same moment. The men laughed, but Lexie knew her face mirrored Meredith’s expression of horror.
“You know what’s weird?” Lexie said, while Mark helped her up.
“Huh?” Mer said, carefully putting Zola in Derek’s arms so she could stand.
“From the start, I never doubted you were my sister. The day you saved me from the tram, I met your eyes and I just… knew. Maybe I saw myself somewhere, or something.”
“Life’s like that sometimes,” Meredith said, looping the diaper bag over her shoulder. “Derek knew, with Zola, and I think I did too, once I stopped being afraid.”
“I knew with you too,” Shepherd said quietly. Lexie watched him run his thumb over the top of Meredith’s palm. “The day at Joe’s, I knew. You’re the one who took convincing.”
“I took you divorcing your wife,” Meredith said. Lexie saw a spark of mirth in her eye that didn’t mesh with what she said. This problem, which she knew from hospital gossip had broken her sister had become banter. Somehow this told Lexie they’d all be okay. If Meredith could deal with the wife and the ring in the woods, she could learn to deal with Sofia. (After all, she had a feeling whenever the house got sold, she’d go through baby withdrawal).
While they walked down the hospital hallway, she heard a voice in her head, one belonging to Death.
It’s okay, the voice said. You’re okay.
And for the first time in a long time, Lexie truly believed it.
Part Eight|| Table of Contents