Thistle & Weeds, part I
As children, it's the monster under the bed we fear - the thing that goes bump in the night, the shadows in your closet. It's the things we don't know and can't explain that scare us. We don't know better. It's not until we get older that we find that the known can be just as terrifying. That, sometimes, what's behind us haunts us worse than any imagined ghosts.
This is not the dream.
Meredith dreams of these things with alarming regularity: the slow progression of water toward her feet, closing in on her as she stands in the endless, echoing hallways of a hospital bereft of the living. In her dreams, she makes her way down to the morgue with uncharacteristically precise and certain steps, finds herself laid out on a slab, dead mouth forming dead words. In her dreams, she's already gone and still finds ways to hurl insults down on herself.
In her dreams, she watches people she once knew try to save the man she now loves, and then she watches them fail.
This is not the dream, but she knows it all the same.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of an ill-lit hall, she looks down at the water flowing toward her, not much but still steady in its forward movement, and thinks I know this. She gets to her feet and makes her way down the hall, pace dragging though she's trying to outrun the waves; they don't try to catch her. How she makes it to the pit, she isn't quite sure, because the whole thing is as tenuous as a dream. By that point, though, she knows it isn't one.
She knows this path because she's done this before.
The past doesn't stay in the past. It follows, it lingers, it turns up in unexpected corners. It may not have fangs or claws, but it hides beneath our beds as surely as any unknown beast.
From the moment she opened her eyes to look down at the water, a kind of calm settled over Meredith. Something shatters it now - seeing Denny, she thinks, sitting on a hospital bed and looking at her with those sad eyes, like he's been waiting for her, knowing she'll make a wrong choice when she doesn't know what the question is. Seeing Bonnie and her mother's scrub nurse doesn't help either (what was her name? It's been such a long time since the woman died).
The panic can't be turned back, can't be fought. It floods her utterly, unremitting and inescapable, and she shakes her head at them again and again, willing them desperately to say something, to stop looking at her like that. Hands pressed to her chest, she chokes back a sudden sob (that was it, she thinks in some distant part of her brain, the bit of her watching as the rest descends into another fit of despair; this is the last time she fell apart so completely. She couldn't remember when it happened again, that night in the clinic with Sean. She didn't want to remember, and now she can't breathe again).
"I'm not supposed to be here," she says. She was thinking that, but it still catches her off guard to hear the words come out of her mouth. If it's a memory, she shouldn't be able to change it. If it's a dream - but it's not a dream. She's not asleep. Somehow, the recollection what she just left is foggy right now, but she knows she's awake and this isn't right. "I'm not, I can't - I need to go back, please, just send me back."
There's so much pity in Denny's expression. He wants so badly to help her, she thinks, and he doesn't understand at all. She isn't dead. She's not like them. She shouldn't be here.
For a moment, anger cuts through the anxiety and she wants badly to claw the sympathy right off his face. "Send me back," she yells, fists clenched tight against her chest, almost but not quite a compression to keep her lungs going. "Goddammit, I'm not supposed to be here. This is not happening."
"Meredith," he says, so, so sorry, "we've gone over this. You drowned. You died."
It haunts our dreams. It sneaks into our conversations. It colors everything we see and do and say and think. Whether you believe in nature or you're firmly in the camp of nurture, what we've done and where we've gone shapes who we are and what we become.
"I didn't," she insists. "I - that was years ago, this happened years ago. I shouldn't be here, I want to go home." She almost chokes on the sob punctuating that word. The next knocks the remaining breath out of her as, through the window of the E.R. doors, she sees her mother walk past.
Denny nods and moves alongside her. "I know," he says, "I know." He lays a hand on her shoulder and leads her into the hall where her mother is waiting. "Go on."
Walking it takes forever, though it's not really very long. The hospital looks so eerie this way, not the place she loves anymore, but the panic ebbs as she makes her way toward Ellis. "You're not supposed to be here," her mother says.
"I told them that." The death was so long ago and Meredith had accepted it then, doped to high heaven by a dream state and the pain meds and the overwhelming sense that they were both released by it, but it shakes her now to see her mother in front of her again, as healthy and whole and present as she's been in a long, long time.
"Just keep going," Ellis says. "Don't be a damn -" Meredith all but holds her breath. This part, she remembers all the time. This is why she needs this to have been real last time it happened. When Ellis' arms fold around her, she presses her face into her mother's hair and clutches her tight, no hesitation this time. "You are... you are anything but ordinary, Meredith. Now run. Run."
We can try to hide from it, ignore the whisper of the past, pretend we don't see it right there, but at the end of the day, there's no getting away from it. Sooner or later, what's behind us always finds a way of catching up.
She nods, breath shaky as she pulls away, not glancing back to where Denny is surely still waiting and watching. Stepping forward, she feels the panic hit her again. There's too much she wants to say, too much she's never said, and she doesn't know now what's on the other side of this because she hasn't drowned. She hesitates, stops, turns to look behind her.
This is not the dream.
Meredith dreams of these things with alarming regularity: the slow progression of water toward her feet, closing in on her as she stands in the endless, echoing hallways of a hospital bereft of the living. In her dreams, she makes her way down to the morgue with uncharacteristically precise and certain steps, finds herself laid out on a slab, dead mouth forming dead words. In her dreams, she's already gone and still finds ways to hurl insults down on herself.
In her dreams, she watches people she once knew try to save the man she now loves, and then she watches them fail.
This is not the dream, but she knows it all the same.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of an ill-lit hall, she looks down at the water flowing toward her, not much but still steady in its forward movement, and thinks I know this. She gets to her feet and makes her way down the hall, pace dragging though she's trying to outrun the waves; they don't try to catch her. How she makes it to the pit, she isn't quite sure, because the whole thing is as tenuous as a dream. By that point, though, she knows it isn't one.
She knows this path because she's done this before.
The past doesn't stay in the past. It follows, it lingers, it turns up in unexpected corners. It may not have fangs or claws, but it hides beneath our beds as surely as any unknown beast.
From the moment she opened her eyes to look down at the water, a kind of calm settled over Meredith. Something shatters it now - seeing Denny, she thinks, sitting on a hospital bed and looking at her with those sad eyes, like he's been waiting for her, knowing she'll make a wrong choice when she doesn't know what the question is. Seeing Bonnie and her mother's scrub nurse doesn't help either (what was her name? It's been such a long time since the woman died).
The panic can't be turned back, can't be fought. It floods her utterly, unremitting and inescapable, and she shakes her head at them again and again, willing them desperately to say something, to stop looking at her like that. Hands pressed to her chest, she chokes back a sudden sob (that was it, she thinks in some distant part of her brain, the bit of her watching as the rest descends into another fit of despair; this is the last time she fell apart so completely. She couldn't remember when it happened again, that night in the clinic with Sean. She didn't want to remember, and now she can't breathe again).
"I'm not supposed to be here," she says. She was thinking that, but it still catches her off guard to hear the words come out of her mouth. If it's a memory, she shouldn't be able to change it. If it's a dream - but it's not a dream. She's not asleep. Somehow, the recollection what she just left is foggy right now, but she knows she's awake and this isn't right. "I'm not, I can't - I need to go back, please, just send me back."
There's so much pity in Denny's expression. He wants so badly to help her, she thinks, and he doesn't understand at all. She isn't dead. She's not like them. She shouldn't be here.
For a moment, anger cuts through the anxiety and she wants badly to claw the sympathy right off his face. "Send me back," she yells, fists clenched tight against her chest, almost but not quite a compression to keep her lungs going. "Goddammit, I'm not supposed to be here. This is not happening."
"Meredith," he says, so, so sorry, "we've gone over this. You drowned. You died."
It haunts our dreams. It sneaks into our conversations. It colors everything we see and do and say and think. Whether you believe in nature or you're firmly in the camp of nurture, what we've done and where we've gone shapes who we are and what we become.
"I didn't," she insists. "I - that was years ago, this happened years ago. I shouldn't be here, I want to go home." She almost chokes on the sob punctuating that word. The next knocks the remaining breath out of her as, through the window of the E.R. doors, she sees her mother walk past.
Denny nods and moves alongside her. "I know," he says, "I know." He lays a hand on her shoulder and leads her into the hall where her mother is waiting. "Go on."
Walking it takes forever, though it's not really very long. The hospital looks so eerie this way, not the place she loves anymore, but the panic ebbs as she makes her way toward Ellis. "You're not supposed to be here," her mother says.
"I told them that." The death was so long ago and Meredith had accepted it then, doped to high heaven by a dream state and the pain meds and the overwhelming sense that they were both released by it, but it shakes her now to see her mother in front of her again, as healthy and whole and present as she's been in a long, long time.
"Just keep going," Ellis says. "Don't be a damn -" Meredith all but holds her breath. This part, she remembers all the time. This is why she needs this to have been real last time it happened. When Ellis' arms fold around her, she presses her face into her mother's hair and clutches her tight, no hesitation this time. "You are... you are anything but ordinary, Meredith. Now run. Run."
We can try to hide from it, ignore the whisper of the past, pretend we don't see it right there, but at the end of the day, there's no getting away from it. Sooner or later, what's behind us always finds a way of catching up.
She nods, breath shaky as she pulls away, not glancing back to where Denny is surely still waiting and watching. Stepping forward, she feels the panic hit her again. There's too much she wants to say, too much she's never said, and she doesn't know now what's on the other side of this because she hasn't drowned. She hesitates, stops, turns to look behind her.