Ghosts That We Knew [4/6]
Title: Ghosts That We Knew
Author: greymcdreamysgh
Pairing: MerDer
Rating: PG-13
Summary: MERDER. Picks up after 9x11. A short multi-chapter fic that deals with being a family, preparing for a new baby, recovering from the plane crash, and dealing with survivors' guilt.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
But hold me still, bury my heart on the coals
And hold me still, bury my heart next to yours
When they told Zola that she was getting a baby sister, Meredith did not anticipate how difficult it would be to continually explain to a two-and-a-half-year-old with no concept of time how long nine months is.
Zola asks about her baby sister almost every day. Sometimes she is satisfied with the explanation that her baby sister needs to grow more and she will be here when she’s big enough. Other times, she is impatient and wonders if there are other ways to get baby sisters that don’t take so long.
With three months to go, Zola is furious that Baby Sister is not here yet. The only thing that Meredith can think of to do is to take Zola back to the library. She has tried to take her once every other week, and she lets her pick out whichever books she wants. Zola gets greedy sometimes, wanting to check out like twenty books at once, but Meredith lets her. She wants to promote Zola’s language acquisition as best she can and she is sure that all this reading is helping Zola become such a good talker.
The children’s librarian had always seemed to recognize Zola from the first time Meredith brought her in at seven months old. Sometimes Meredith worries that Zola is only recognizable because she is a black child with a white mother, but other times, when Zola walks around trying her best to hold on to ten or twelve books at once, she is so cute that Meredith figures that this is what is really memorable.
When they went to the library the weekend after they found out they were having another girl, the librarian, a surprisingly young-ish woman who seems to defy a lot of librarian stereotypes, greeted Zola with what she must have thought were just simple pleasantries.
“Hi, honey,” she had said as Zola and Meredith walked into the children’s section.
“Hi!” Zola had replied. “I’m getting a baby sister.”
Meredith hadn’t been able to help but stifle a laugh. Zola had been bursting to tell this news to absolutely everyone she encountered. Cristina had to pretend like it was brand new information when Zola shouted it in the elevator on the way to daycare, and the poor teenage boy who bagged their groceries that week had no idea how to respond at all.
The librarian, though, had responded perfectly.
“Wow! That’s great!” she had said, looking up to smile at Meredith. “Are you excited to be the big sister?”
Zola nodded vigorously.
“You know what?” the librarian had said. “I think I have some books that you will really like.”
Now, a month and a half after that visit, when Zola cannot understand why Baby Sister is not yet here, Meredith takes her back to the library to try to buy some time.
The same librarian, who now knows Zola by name, greets her when they come in.
“Ask her for what you want,” Meredith urges. “Nicely.”
“I can have those books about baby sisters again, please?” Zola asks.
Fifteen minutes later, she and Zola are headed home with a stack of books that Meredith realizes they will probably need to just purchase eventually. After all, they do have three more months to go.
That night, Meredith sits on Zola’s bed with her back against the wall and Zola melded so close to her that it seems like she wants to be part of her. Zola can’t fit on Meredith’s lap anymore, but after a tough few days, she seems to have made her peace with sharing the space.
“Zo, you can have two books,” Meredith says, exhausted after a long day. “Not all of them.”
They have already read almost all of the baby sister books-eight of them so far-since coming home from the library that morning, and if Meredith didn’t say no, they’d be reading them all again now, in addition to the ones they haven’t gotten to yet.
Meredith doesn’t like reading the ones that express ambivalence about a new baby. Although she supposes it is good for Zola to know that the baby will cry and poop and not really be able to play, she is so excited and Meredith really doesn’t want to put any ideas in her head that this might not be as good as she thinks it will be.
It speaks to the unusualness of their situation that the library doesn’t have a children’s book that deals with it. They have read books that feature the traditional nuclear family, and even one or two where the second child is the adopted one, but they haven’t been able to find one where the second child is biological one.
Zola chooses one re-read and one new book as bedtime stories for the evening, and after going through the first one, a whimsical picture book that explains how important and loved the big sister is while also explaining what life will be like with a new baby in the house, they start on the next one. As they flip through page after page of pictures and words about pregnancy, they get to a page that shows a series of profile shots of what a growing baby looks like inside its mother.
“What’s that?” Zola asks.
“That’s how a baby grows. See how it gets bigger and bigger inside the mama until it’s ready to come out? We still have to wait a little bit longer for our baby, but soon she’ll be big like that one,” Meredith says, pointing to the last picture of a full-term baby, “And then she’ll be ready to come out.”
Zola nods.
It is easier than she thought it would be to answer that question, and Zola seems perfectly fine with her response. They’ve been talking about the baby growing inside Meredith for months.
But Zola’s next question floors Meredith.
“I did that too?” Zola asks.
They have talked to her about adoption before. But suddenly, it doesn’t seem like they have done it enough, because she clearly doesn’t understand. Ever since she got pregnant, Meredith has started to think of Zola as the big sister, as someone older. But she is not even three years old yet, and now it seems obvious that this would be confusing to her. They haven’t talked about it enough, and up to this point, Meredith has been kind of proud of it because maybe it means that Zola has never felt different. But they probably should have talked about the difference between adoption and birth, maybe even as early as when they told her about the baby for the first time. But they didn’t, because Zola was so excited and, truthfully, the distinction between Zola and Baby is one that Meredith does not care to make because it feels nonexistent. Or it felt nonexistent, until now.
She cannot lie to her child. Zola is just curious, after all. Meredith takes a deep breath, realizing that Zola has presented her with an opportunity.
“Well, sometimes babies grow in their mama’s belly, and sometimes they grow in their mama’s heart and they grow in another belly instead. You didn’t grow in my belly,” Meredith says.
“I didn’t?” Zola asks, and Meredith feels like she might panic-Zola sounds so disappointed-but she wills herself to keep going.
“No, but you know what?”
“What?”
“I wanted to be your mama so much. And I am so happy that I’m your mama because I love you more than anything. The same as Baby.”
Zola is at a loss for words, and Meredith kicks herself, blaming everyone from the librarian-did she not screen the stupid books before she sent them home with her daughter?-to herself for not talking about this more in the first place.
Meredith has always thought that it is good that Zola sees so many different kinds of families. She is sure that it is the reason why Zola has never wondered why Sofia has two moms, or why she has never seen Tuck’s daddy. The people in Zola’s life are white, black, Asian, Latina, gay, and straight. And maybe that’s why it doesn’t bother her that she doesn’t look the same as her parents do. She has never asked about any of it before now.
“I wanted to be in your belly too,” Zola says helplessly. Her eyes fill with tears, and Meredith can hear that she is struggling to keep it together. She hates herself for making Zola feel this way, like she might be less a part of Meredith than her sister will be.
Meredith closes the book about babies, and asks Zola, “How about a big sister Zola story instead of a baby sister one?”
Zola nods, and Meredith tries as best she can to lie down in Zola’s bed, trying to situate Zola next to her. It’s a tight fit since it’s only a toddler bed, but she tries her best. Meredith turns on her side, wanting to look into Zola’s eyes, but Zola crawls into Meredith’s arms so they are practically nose to nose.
“When you were a baby,” Meredith says softly, “You grew in another mama’s belly in a place called Malawi, but then the people who were taking care of you couldn’t take care of you anymore. They loved you, and so they wanted you to have a family who could love you and take care of you forever. So when you were a little baby, you rode on an airplane, and you know where you came?”
“Where?” Zola whispers.
“Right to our hospital. And guess who was taking care of you when you got there?”
“Who?” Zola asks.
“Daddy.”
“Daddy taked care of me?”
Zola’s eyes widen like this is the best story she has ever heard. Meredith smiles, because it is the best story she has ever heard.
“Yes, and you know what he thought when he saw you?”
“What?”
Zola runs her hand up and down Meredith’s side, from breast to waist, over and over. She does it for comfort sometimes, and Meredith just lets her go. She worries that maybe this story is not age-appropriate for Zola, but so far, she seems to understand. At the very least, she isn’t about to cry anymore.
“Daddy thought, ‘Zola is the baby we’ve always wanted.’ As soon as he saw you, he just knew that he was your daddy. And then he said to me, ‘Meredith, I think Zola is our little girl. Let’s adopt her.’ Adoption means making a family forever. And that’s what we wanted to do.”
“Adoption means that?”
“Yes, adoption means a family forever. You had to stay in the hospital for a little while before you could come home, but we came to see you every day. One night, I came to see you and you were lying in your crib and when I picked you up, I told you that I wanted to be your mama. But you know what?”
“What?” Zola asks.
Meredith runs her fingers over Zola’s hair and kisses her forehead. “That night, I just held you and held you and held you, until you fell asleep. And I already knew that I was your mama.”
“You did?” Zola asks. She curls into Meredith’s arms, and even though it’s a snug fit with Meredith’s belly in the way, Zola manages to cling to her, resting her head on Meredith’s shoulder and burrowing into the crook of Meredith’s neck.
“Yes,” Meredith says. “You are my baby.”
“No, I’m big,” Zola mumbles sleepily into Meredith’s skin.
Meredith laughs. “You’re right. You’re big.”
She stays with Zola, rubbing her back until she falls asleep, and holding her the same way she did in the hospital two years before. She stays long enough that Derek pokes his head in a little while later to check on them.
“Is she ok?” he asks, watching her hold their daughter in the low lamplight. “Are you coming to bed?”
“She’s ok,” Meredith replies. “But can you help me lift her? I want her in our bed tonight.”
Derek tiptoes inside and gently lifts Zola out of her arms, just long enough so she can crawl out of Zola’s bed herself. As soon as she stretches for a second though, she wants Zola back. She carries their sleeping daughter upstairs into their bed, and when Derek joins them a few minutes later, Zola is still peacefully asleep, clinging to her mother.
*
One Saturday afternoon in the late spring, when Meredith is seven months pregnant and exhausted and Callie and Arizona are both on call, Derek takes Zola and Sofia to the park.
He has loved Zola so much and for so long that it takes him a little bit by surprise that these feelings could ever intensify and that he could get more joy from her than he already does. But as he sits on the bench on the outskirts of the jungle gym and watches his daughter play, it’s thrilling to be proven wrong.
Zola hides behind one of the platforms on the jungle gym and pops out to scream with delight at Sofia, who laughs and chases Zola around the gym’s perimeter. There are a few other children playing around them, but they only have eyes for each other. Zola climbs up the rungs to get to the slide and he wonders if he should spot her, just in case, but then he realizes that Sofia is doing it for him. There’s room for them to climb side by side and when Sofia realizes that she has gotten a bit ahead of her friend, she slows down and waits.
“Come on, Zola!” she cries, but she never leaves her behind.
Zola is a miracle. He forgets sometimes, when he and Meredith both get caught up in the daily work of parenting, of taking her to daycare and cooking her dinner and making sure her teeth are brushed at night. He doesn’t always take the time to appreciate it, but the fact that she exists, and that she is not only walking but running, and that he is her father-these things are miracles.
“Daddy, watch me!” Zola shouts as she stands at the top of the slide.
“I’m watching,” he calls back. It was not long ago that she needed him right there, asking him to catch her rather than just watch. But she is almost three years old now and she is quick to remind him that she is a big girl.
Zola tumbles out the bottom of the slide laughing. Sofia follows quickly behind, colliding with Zola, who hasn’t actually exited the slide yet.
Together, they climb back up, paying no mind to the bigger kids who are also playing in the same area. He sees her reaching for the monkey bars, but she’s too little to grasp them.
He pops up and jogs over to her; for this, he can help. “Want to try that, Zo?”
“Help, Daddy!” she cries. He picks her up and allows her to reach up and grab the bars, guiding her lightly as she crosses. When he sets her down on the other side, he turns back to Sofia, who is standing at the beginning, watching them.
“Do you want to try too, Sofia?” he asks. She nods, and he carries her across as well.
He misses Mark in this moment, not for himself, but for Mark. He knows that a lot of fathers wish their children’s baby years away so they can get to these more fun moments when their kids are able to play sooner. Mark was never like that; he loved every second of Sofia’s babyhood. But he would have loved this too, maybe more, so Derek tries to enjoy it for him.
They are boundless. They play hard, and even though Zola can’t run as quickly or as long as Sofia can, they both have so much fun that it doesn’t seem to matter. Derek notices sheens of sweat starting to form on both of their foreheads, but he lets them go. Zola has had so much energy lately, much more than he has, or especially Meredith has, and he wants her to tire herself out before he brings her home.
Later, he tries to corral them so he can buy them ice cream, but even the promise of ice cream isn’t enough to calm them down at first. He can get a hold of Sofia, but not Zola, and then vice versa and he wonders what it will be like when this is his life all the time.
Finally, he sits them both on a park bench, popsicles in hand, and he positions himself in front of them to make sure they don’t get up and run away.
“How is it, girls?” he asks.
“Yum,” Zola says. She bites off the top part of the popsicle, and it’s too much for her to fit in her mouth all at once. The treat hits her shirt and then starts to melt in her lap, but Zola can’t be bothered about getting sticky or ruining her clothes. She picks up that piece and shoves it back into her mouth with her fingers.
Sofia is a little more demure with her popsicle, but she’s a mess too. He hopes that Callie and Arizona won’t mind that he will be returning a sweaty, dirty kid to them a little bit later.
His phone beeps with a text message from Meredith.
“Who’s that, Daddy?” Zola asks with her mouth full.
“It’s Mommy,” he replies and unlocks his phone.
Going out to get some summer clothes for Z and B. Need anything?
She’s been nesting a lot over the past few weeks, which for Meredith means trying and failing to bring the house up to OR levels of sanitation, and making a lot of trips to Target.
Don’t think so, he types. Still at the park. See you when you get home?
“Can I talk?” Zola asks before he can hit send.
“I’m just texting her,” Derek replies.
“No, talk,” Zola says.
There’s no reason not to, so he dials Meredith and then holds the phone up to Zola’s ear.
“I can hold it,” she says, with a melting popsicle still in one hand.
“No, I’ll hold it. You’re sticky,” he says.
“Hey, do you need anything?” he hears Meredith ask when she answers the phone.
“Mommy, it’s Zola!” Zola cries.
“Hi, Lovebug,” Meredith says with surprise. “Do you have Daddy’s phone?”
“I have a blue popsicle,” she says.
“Sounds good, Zo,” Meredith says with a laugh. “Where’s Daddy?”
“Holdin’ the phone cause I got blue on me. Mama, me and Sofia are playing.”
“Are you having fun?” Meredith asks.
The popsicle is dripping down Zola’s hand in the warmth of the afternoon sun, and Derek grins as Sofia taps Zola on the shoulder and points to the melting mess she’s holding. Zola extends her hand, and whether Sofia originally wanted a bite of Zola’s treat or not, she takes one now that Zola has offered. Sofia returns the favor, and Zola takes a bite of Sofia’s popsicle too.
“I’m eating a popsicle,” Zola says with her mouth full.
“That sounds fun,” Meredith replies enthusiastically. “I’ll see you when you come home from the park. Can I talk to Daddy now?”
Zola nods, and Derek takes the phone back.
“Hey, I don’t think I need anything,” he tells Meredith. “We’re almost out of milk though.”
“Ok, I’ll get some,” she replies.
“She’s definitely going to need some new clothes,” Derek says. “She’s got more popsicle on her shirt than in her mouth, I think.”
“Yeah, she’s getting too tall for a lot of her leggings. And the baby has basically nothing.”
“Well I’m sure you’re going to have a shower or something,” Derek says, hoping that she won’t come home with the store’s entire inventory.
“I know, but I’m not going to fully rely on that,” she says. “It sounds like you’re having a good afternoon.”
“We are,” he replies.
Suddenly, Zola crinkles her nose and shuts her eyes tightly, shaking her head back and forth.
“Is your head getting tingly?” he asks.
Zola nods.
“What’s wrong?” Meredith asks quickly.
“Nothing,” Derek says, laughing at the face Zola is making and the strange look Sofia is giving her. “Your daughter is having her first brain freeze.”
“Oh,” Meredith sighs with a giggle. “So she’s ok?”
“Yes, she’s fine,” he assures her. “Zola, you’re ok. Your brain got too cold from the popsicle. If you look up for a minute, you’ll feel better.”
Zola looks up at the sky for a few seconds, and the brain freeze must start to dissipate because when she looks straight ahead again, she licks what remains of her popsicle and then licks her hand to try to get at all of the sticky congealed liquid there.
Sofia has already given up. She puts her popsicle on the bench next to her and watches it melt and seep onto her clothes. She is sticky everywhere too, and she looks up at Derek helplessly, like she might cry.
“You know, this two-kid thing is no joke,” Derek says to Meredith, rummaging around in the bag he brought with him for wet wipes, or anything to try to clean them both up a little before he puts them in the car.
“Yeah?” Meredith asks.
“What are we supposed to do when they run in different directions?” he asks.
“I’ll go one way; you go the other?” she offers, and he can tell she is smiling.
*
When Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital announces that it will stop accepting Medicaid patients at the start of the hospital’s 2014 fiscal year in July, Meredith knows she has to do something.
The hospital has limped along for months while has been tied up in counter-litigation with the insurance company and the plane manufacturer. They have laid off support staff, and nurses, and even doctors all the way up to attending to try to stay afloat. And now the patients are going to pay.
She understands the logic behind it-that they can’t get reimbursed from Medicaid at the same rates they can from private insurance companies, and so there’s nothing in it for them-but poor people get hernias and have accidents and need appys and craniotomies and valve replacements too. And Seattle Grace Mercy West will no longer be providing these people with services.
Some of the doctors and other hospital staff wonder why it has taken so long to do this. A few people are not shy at all about saying that the hospital should have done this years ago, or at least as the first line of defense before cutting personnel. After all, this is the way to get paid. But it doesn’t sit right with Meredith.
She feels like her hands are somewhat tied, because they are the ones who did this (they are not, Cristina keeps reminding her). She feels worse because she isn’t that busy, and they’re booking surgeries for Callie and Jackson back to back because plastics and sports medicine always bring in the money. Worst of all, the nurses and support staff-everyone who is left-are being run ragged trying to keep up with the increase there while still maintaining other services.
Meredith pulls Derek aside after rounds that morning, into an empty stairwell, where she hisses at him: “We have to do something.”
“About what?” he says.
“Did you hear that the hospital isn’t accepting Medicaid patients anymore?”
“Yes, I did. But I’m not on the board and I’m not chief of surgery anymore. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Derek!”
“Meredith, what do you want me to do?”
She raises her eyebrow and cocks her head towards him.
“No,” he says. “Meredith, no.”
“Come on, Derek. It’s just sitting there. We don’t need it.”
“No,” he says matter-of-factly. “Meredith. We have two kids who are going to have about twenty years of school. Each.”
“I know,” she says. “Good thing their parents are both doctors. We can put them through school, Derek. But maybe not if we don’t have jobs.”
“We’re not going to lose our jobs, Meredith.”
“We might,” she replies. “Plus, it’s just wrong what they’re doing, Derek! And we can stop it.”
He sighs. And he is about to reply when her pager goes off. She walks down two steps-her page is coming from the ER, the floor right below them-and then turns to face him.
“Please, just think about it,” she says. “It’s not right.”
When she gets downstairs, she is pretty sure that the teenage girl who is curled up in the fetal position on the gurney has got a bad bowel obstruction. But she has to rule out everything from pregnancy to drug abuse to a kidney infection first. Murphy is on her service today, so she asks her to do a full lab workup and to try to get her in for a CT as soon as possible. She gives Murphy instructions to page her as soon as the results come in, and then she moves on to other patients.
When Meredith sees three other patients and has lunch with Cristina and Murphy still hasn’t paged, Meredith pages her instead.
“Murphy, where the hell are my labs and CT results for my bowel obstruction girl?”
“The lab hasn’t paged yet to let me know they’re ready, and we’re on the schedule for a CT today, but I don’t know when they’ll get to us.”
“So the girl’s still in the ER?”
“Yeah,” Murphy replies.
“Murphy! The poor kid came in four hours ago and is laying there writhing in pain, and we haven’t even diagnosed her yet?”
“We have like half the orderlies and techs that we had before. We’re doing our best, Dr. Grey, but this is the way it is now. I don’t know what you want me to do!”
Murphy cringes as soon as she finishes, like she knows she might have gone too far and she is waiting for Meredith to blow back hard. So far, it’s worked in Meredith’s favor that the interns have all been afraid of her-it helps get things done-but Murphy is right; there is nothing they can do.
Meredith sighs. “Page the lab and get an update on her bloodwork. Get an estimate on how much longer it’s going to take for a CT. Book an OR for later this afternoon, because I know she has a bowel obstruction and who knows how long it’s going to take to get her into surgery if we wait for the diagnosis?” she says. “And go check on the patient. Tell her that we are sorry and we are trying as hard as we can to get this fixed as soon as possible.”
A few hours later, after she has finally operated on her bowel obstruction girl, she catches Derek coming out of a patient’s room as she writes her post-op note at the nurses’ station.
“It took me six hours to get a teenager with a bowel obstruction into surgery,” she says.
He shakes his head a little, but doesn’t say anything.
“The kid sat in the ER all day,” she says.
“I know, Meredith,” he says wearily.
When Meredith gets home that night, Derek is spooning steamed carrots onto Zola’s plate while Zola starts on her chicken.
“Just in time,” he says. “Want some dinner?”
“Yes,” she sighs. “I’m starving. Hi, Zozo,” she says, sliding into the empty seat next to her daughter.
“Hi, Mommy,” Zola says. “Want some carrots?”
“No, those are yours. I’ll have my own.”
She fixes herself a plate, and alternates between eating her own food and making sure Zola is eating too.
“How was the rest of your day?” Derek asks.
“Fine,” she says. “My bowel obstruction kid didn’t have a gangrenous intestine, despite spending practically all day in the ER. So she got lucky. The next patient might not.”
“Do we have to talk about this now?” he asks. “Meredith, I’m having the same kinds of days you’re having. We all are.”
“We don’t have to be.”
“We also don’t owe them anything,” he says. He is so even-tempered when he says it that it stuns her.
“Are you serious?”
“It’s the place where we work,” he says. “Don’t make it more than it is.”
She stares at him at a total loss for words. She does not know how to explain because, before now, she did not think this would ever need an explanation. Her mouth falls open, and it takes her a second to collect herself, but he stops her before she can say anything else.
“Let’s talk about it later,” he says, motioning to Zola, who is mashing her carrots into a pulp before shoveling them into her mouth with her fork.
A few hours later, after Zola is in bed, it does not take long for the conversation they have been putting off all day to turn into a full-fledged fight.
“Meredith, your sister is dead,” Derek shouts. “That’s why we sued. Because that plane crash killed your sister, and it killed Mark, and it could have killed us too.”
“Keeping the money isn’t going to bring them back, and it isn’t going to keep us alive,” she replies heatedly.
“Neither is giving it to the hospital,” Derek shoots back.
“Having it makes me feel worse,” she says. “We shouldn’t have sued in the first place. It didn’t help.”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he says quietly.
“What?”
“You don’t know what it’s like. Sofia’s father loved her and now he’s dead. Do you know what that’s going to be like for her? Do you know how easily that could have been us? It could have been Zola. We’re not getting rid of this money just because you hate having it.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not as much as I hate the thought of something happening to us and leaving the kids with nothing. It’s a place where we work,” he says. “We owe them a day’s work. That’s it.”
“We’re not going to die,” she says firmly. It scares her that he keeps thinking this way, but she doesn’t know what else to do except to keep saying those words. “And we don’t need this money to make sure that the kids have something to fall back on. This is too much. We don’t need it.”
She can hear Zola walking around in her room, and she sighs. She leaves Derek and goes downstairs to check on Zola, who is padding across her floor in the dark with a few stuffed animals and books in her arms.
“What are you doing?” Meredith whispers.
“I want these in my bed,” Zola says.
Meredith laughs a little and rolls her eyes. “You need to get back in your bed. It’s bedtime, and you need to lie down.”
“I can have these though?” Zola says.
“You can have them, but no lights on and you have to stay in bed.”
“Ok,” Zola replies in a sing-song voice.
“Zola,” Meredith says. “No more getting up.”
“I’m not,” she says indignantly.
“Ok,” Meredith replies. “I don’t want to come down here again.”
When she gets back upstairs, Derek asks, “Is she ok?”
“She’s hoarding.”
Derek smiles, and somehow the tension from a few minutes ago has diffused a bit.
“It’s not just a place where we work,” she says calmly.
“It should be.”
“Maybe. But it’s not, Derek. We fell in love there. We got married there, and had a baby there, and almost died there. It’s not just a place where we work, and it’s not crazy to want to save it from becoming this second rate chop-shop, or from going out of business altogether.”
“I’m not giving the hospital thirty million dollars.”
“Come on, I thought you liked hopeless cases.”
He smiles despite himself, and when he shakes his head, she knows she has hit a nerve.
“I can’t, Meredith.”
“Why not?”
He sighs, and looks up at her with such sadness in his eyes. “What are we going to do if you get Alzheimer’s?” he asks. “Maybe we won’t have health insurance anymore. You won’t be able to work. I won’t be able to work.”
“Derek.”
“I have to take care of you. And the girls.”
“I’m fine,” she says firmly. “And the girls will be fine too. It’s too much money, Derek. We don’t need it, and it’s wrong to keep it from people who do.”
He sits down on the edge of the bed and puts his head in his hands. She’s not sure if she should push any harder, and when he doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, she sits down on the bed next to him, but doesn’t touch him.
Finally, he looks up and says, “We invest. I’m not just writing a check. If you make a gift, there’s only so much you can do. They’ll slap your name on a building or something and then that’s it. But if you invest, you can influence decisions. It sounds bad,” he says, “But I don’t just want to be a philanthropist. I used to be chief; I’ve seen the books. We’ve been struggling since before we merged with Mercy West and I’m not giving them thirty million dollars with no strings attached. I want some skin in the game; I want to be a shareholder; I want to make decisions.”
“Ok,” she says. These are terms she can accept. “Is thirty million enough to get a seat at the table?”
“I don’t know,” he says quietly. “Maybe.”
“Then why bother?” she says in frustration. “If you’re not sure, then what’s the point?”
“Because I think you’re a pretty good salesman. And if you make this pitch to the others, then I think we’ll be able to get something going.”
*
It takes a few weeks, but Meredith finally convinces them all. She can’t get the whole $75 million back. Frankly, he would have been amazed if she did.
But Cristina’s all in. After all, she says, she’ll probably only leave the hospital in a hearse anyway and the best way she can think of to spend $15 million is to help the hospital stock itself full of sick people.
She gets most of Callie and Arizona’s shares too. They are worried about Arizona’s leg, and Sofia’s education, and the ethical dilemma of half of their money really belonging to Sofia, not them. He can’t blame them at all, and Arizona is so persuasive that he convinces Meredith that they have to leave some of their $30 million out too. But in the end, Callie and Arizona are in for a little less than half of their winnings, and he and Meredith are in for almost all of theirs.
It takes longer than he anticipates to make it all official-and it doesn’t happen the way he originally thinks it will-but a month before Meredith starts her maternity leave, they convene their first meeting of the newly created physicians’ council. Designed to function as an extension of the hospital’s board of directors, they will oversee all aspects of patient care, quality control, and peer review. Its creation was the sole condition of their commitment to invest almost $60 million in Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital.
At first, it feels a little bit like a bribe or a hostage-taking-after all, they won’t complete the transaction until the hospital agrees to their terms-but the hospital’s situation is quickly deteriorating and it does not take long for Derek’s qualms about the whole thing to subside. The five of them bring on other doctors from trauma, psych, OB/GYN, cardio, gastro, and internal, and together, they agree to elect him as chair of the council. He is the one who really has the gravitas and the savvy to play politics with the board and to implement the changes that they all know need to be made.
It’s not perfect. To avoid conflicts of interest, they can’t all actually be on the board and their overall power over the hospital’s financial decisions is limited. But they have influence, and he, as the physicians’ council chair, does get to vote in board meetings. It’s slow progress, and their individual places on the council might not last forever. But they’ve raised the bar; the council exists in the first place. And its first act is to present a strategic plan for the hospital’s next five years. It includes aggressive hiring goals; targeted investments in emergency medicine, neurology, and other departments; and the renewal of a government contract to accept Medicaid payments for fiscal year 2015 onward.
He believes the hospital will actually be afloat by this time next year, and in five years when the goals of their plan are, hopefully, fully realized. And when he votes for it to be adopted as policy in the fourth quarter board meeting, he is so proud and relieved. When he scrubs in for surgery later that afternoon and says “It’s a beautiful day to save lives,” he means it for the first time in a long time.
**
A/N: Thank you all so much for your kind words so far, and for sticking with this fic. It’s definitely a new kind of work-kind of like trying to constantly jump on a moving train as the show keeps going-and I appreciate so much the fact that so many of you are taking the time to tell me what you think! Ok, so there’s a lot happening in this chapter. I thought it would be really important for Zola to have some time with her mama and daddy, just her, before the arrival of Baby Sister in the next chapter! So I spent a lot of time on those two things, and tried to find a way to have those moments weave in other aspects of the plot as well.
Finally, this is, in large part, the end of what I want to do with the money/lawsuit storyline. I don’t work in healthcare or law, but I do work in philanthropy, so while I’m not 100% sure the way I did things is kosher-boards are supposed to be independent-I read a lot about hospital boards of directors and came up with what I think is a plausible and (probably) legal solution to their dilemma. That said, all mistakes are mine and hopefully if any of you are legal, business, or healthcare experts, you’ll be able to suspend your disbelief. It’s similar to what they've done on the show, but I think it’s a bigger leap to think “Oh, we’ll just buy the hospital” than it would be to say “Ok, we’ll become shareholders in the hospital.”
I’m, of course, eager to hear what you think about all of it, not just the lawsuit. Next up: one baby sister :)
Author: greymcdreamysgh
Pairing: MerDer
Rating: PG-13
Summary: MERDER. Picks up after 9x11. A short multi-chapter fic that deals with being a family, preparing for a new baby, recovering from the plane crash, and dealing with survivors' guilt.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
But hold me still, bury my heart on the coals
And hold me still, bury my heart next to yours
When they told Zola that she was getting a baby sister, Meredith did not anticipate how difficult it would be to continually explain to a two-and-a-half-year-old with no concept of time how long nine months is.
Zola asks about her baby sister almost every day. Sometimes she is satisfied with the explanation that her baby sister needs to grow more and she will be here when she’s big enough. Other times, she is impatient and wonders if there are other ways to get baby sisters that don’t take so long.
With three months to go, Zola is furious that Baby Sister is not here yet. The only thing that Meredith can think of to do is to take Zola back to the library. She has tried to take her once every other week, and she lets her pick out whichever books she wants. Zola gets greedy sometimes, wanting to check out like twenty books at once, but Meredith lets her. She wants to promote Zola’s language acquisition as best she can and she is sure that all this reading is helping Zola become such a good talker.
The children’s librarian had always seemed to recognize Zola from the first time Meredith brought her in at seven months old. Sometimes Meredith worries that Zola is only recognizable because she is a black child with a white mother, but other times, when Zola walks around trying her best to hold on to ten or twelve books at once, she is so cute that Meredith figures that this is what is really memorable.
When they went to the library the weekend after they found out they were having another girl, the librarian, a surprisingly young-ish woman who seems to defy a lot of librarian stereotypes, greeted Zola with what she must have thought were just simple pleasantries.
“Hi, honey,” she had said as Zola and Meredith walked into the children’s section.
“Hi!” Zola had replied. “I’m getting a baby sister.”
Meredith hadn’t been able to help but stifle a laugh. Zola had been bursting to tell this news to absolutely everyone she encountered. Cristina had to pretend like it was brand new information when Zola shouted it in the elevator on the way to daycare, and the poor teenage boy who bagged their groceries that week had no idea how to respond at all.
The librarian, though, had responded perfectly.
“Wow! That’s great!” she had said, looking up to smile at Meredith. “Are you excited to be the big sister?”
Zola nodded vigorously.
“You know what?” the librarian had said. “I think I have some books that you will really like.”
Now, a month and a half after that visit, when Zola cannot understand why Baby Sister is not yet here, Meredith takes her back to the library to try to buy some time.
The same librarian, who now knows Zola by name, greets her when they come in.
“Ask her for what you want,” Meredith urges. “Nicely.”
“I can have those books about baby sisters again, please?” Zola asks.
Fifteen minutes later, she and Zola are headed home with a stack of books that Meredith realizes they will probably need to just purchase eventually. After all, they do have three more months to go.
That night, Meredith sits on Zola’s bed with her back against the wall and Zola melded so close to her that it seems like she wants to be part of her. Zola can’t fit on Meredith’s lap anymore, but after a tough few days, she seems to have made her peace with sharing the space.
“Zo, you can have two books,” Meredith says, exhausted after a long day. “Not all of them.”
They have already read almost all of the baby sister books-eight of them so far-since coming home from the library that morning, and if Meredith didn’t say no, they’d be reading them all again now, in addition to the ones they haven’t gotten to yet.
Meredith doesn’t like reading the ones that express ambivalence about a new baby. Although she supposes it is good for Zola to know that the baby will cry and poop and not really be able to play, she is so excited and Meredith really doesn’t want to put any ideas in her head that this might not be as good as she thinks it will be.
It speaks to the unusualness of their situation that the library doesn’t have a children’s book that deals with it. They have read books that feature the traditional nuclear family, and even one or two where the second child is the adopted one, but they haven’t been able to find one where the second child is biological one.
Zola chooses one re-read and one new book as bedtime stories for the evening, and after going through the first one, a whimsical picture book that explains how important and loved the big sister is while also explaining what life will be like with a new baby in the house, they start on the next one. As they flip through page after page of pictures and words about pregnancy, they get to a page that shows a series of profile shots of what a growing baby looks like inside its mother.
“What’s that?” Zola asks.
“That’s how a baby grows. See how it gets bigger and bigger inside the mama until it’s ready to come out? We still have to wait a little bit longer for our baby, but soon she’ll be big like that one,” Meredith says, pointing to the last picture of a full-term baby, “And then she’ll be ready to come out.”
Zola nods.
It is easier than she thought it would be to answer that question, and Zola seems perfectly fine with her response. They’ve been talking about the baby growing inside Meredith for months.
But Zola’s next question floors Meredith.
“I did that too?” Zola asks.
They have talked to her about adoption before. But suddenly, it doesn’t seem like they have done it enough, because she clearly doesn’t understand. Ever since she got pregnant, Meredith has started to think of Zola as the big sister, as someone older. But she is not even three years old yet, and now it seems obvious that this would be confusing to her. They haven’t talked about it enough, and up to this point, Meredith has been kind of proud of it because maybe it means that Zola has never felt different. But they probably should have talked about the difference between adoption and birth, maybe even as early as when they told her about the baby for the first time. But they didn’t, because Zola was so excited and, truthfully, the distinction between Zola and Baby is one that Meredith does not care to make because it feels nonexistent. Or it felt nonexistent, until now.
She cannot lie to her child. Zola is just curious, after all. Meredith takes a deep breath, realizing that Zola has presented her with an opportunity.
“Well, sometimes babies grow in their mama’s belly, and sometimes they grow in their mama’s heart and they grow in another belly instead. You didn’t grow in my belly,” Meredith says.
“I didn’t?” Zola asks, and Meredith feels like she might panic-Zola sounds so disappointed-but she wills herself to keep going.
“No, but you know what?”
“What?”
“I wanted to be your mama so much. And I am so happy that I’m your mama because I love you more than anything. The same as Baby.”
Zola is at a loss for words, and Meredith kicks herself, blaming everyone from the librarian-did she not screen the stupid books before she sent them home with her daughter?-to herself for not talking about this more in the first place.
Meredith has always thought that it is good that Zola sees so many different kinds of families. She is sure that it is the reason why Zola has never wondered why Sofia has two moms, or why she has never seen Tuck’s daddy. The people in Zola’s life are white, black, Asian, Latina, gay, and straight. And maybe that’s why it doesn’t bother her that she doesn’t look the same as her parents do. She has never asked about any of it before now.
“I wanted to be in your belly too,” Zola says helplessly. Her eyes fill with tears, and Meredith can hear that she is struggling to keep it together. She hates herself for making Zola feel this way, like she might be less a part of Meredith than her sister will be.
Meredith closes the book about babies, and asks Zola, “How about a big sister Zola story instead of a baby sister one?”
Zola nods, and Meredith tries as best she can to lie down in Zola’s bed, trying to situate Zola next to her. It’s a tight fit since it’s only a toddler bed, but she tries her best. Meredith turns on her side, wanting to look into Zola’s eyes, but Zola crawls into Meredith’s arms so they are practically nose to nose.
“When you were a baby,” Meredith says softly, “You grew in another mama’s belly in a place called Malawi, but then the people who were taking care of you couldn’t take care of you anymore. They loved you, and so they wanted you to have a family who could love you and take care of you forever. So when you were a little baby, you rode on an airplane, and you know where you came?”
“Where?” Zola whispers.
“Right to our hospital. And guess who was taking care of you when you got there?”
“Who?” Zola asks.
“Daddy.”
“Daddy taked care of me?”
Zola’s eyes widen like this is the best story she has ever heard. Meredith smiles, because it is the best story she has ever heard.
“Yes, and you know what he thought when he saw you?”
“What?”
Zola runs her hand up and down Meredith’s side, from breast to waist, over and over. She does it for comfort sometimes, and Meredith just lets her go. She worries that maybe this story is not age-appropriate for Zola, but so far, she seems to understand. At the very least, she isn’t about to cry anymore.
“Daddy thought, ‘Zola is the baby we’ve always wanted.’ As soon as he saw you, he just knew that he was your daddy. And then he said to me, ‘Meredith, I think Zola is our little girl. Let’s adopt her.’ Adoption means making a family forever. And that’s what we wanted to do.”
“Adoption means that?”
“Yes, adoption means a family forever. You had to stay in the hospital for a little while before you could come home, but we came to see you every day. One night, I came to see you and you were lying in your crib and when I picked you up, I told you that I wanted to be your mama. But you know what?”
“What?” Zola asks.
Meredith runs her fingers over Zola’s hair and kisses her forehead. “That night, I just held you and held you and held you, until you fell asleep. And I already knew that I was your mama.”
“You did?” Zola asks. She curls into Meredith’s arms, and even though it’s a snug fit with Meredith’s belly in the way, Zola manages to cling to her, resting her head on Meredith’s shoulder and burrowing into the crook of Meredith’s neck.
“Yes,” Meredith says. “You are my baby.”
“No, I’m big,” Zola mumbles sleepily into Meredith’s skin.
Meredith laughs. “You’re right. You’re big.”
She stays with Zola, rubbing her back until she falls asleep, and holding her the same way she did in the hospital two years before. She stays long enough that Derek pokes his head in a little while later to check on them.
“Is she ok?” he asks, watching her hold their daughter in the low lamplight. “Are you coming to bed?”
“She’s ok,” Meredith replies. “But can you help me lift her? I want her in our bed tonight.”
Derek tiptoes inside and gently lifts Zola out of her arms, just long enough so she can crawl out of Zola’s bed herself. As soon as she stretches for a second though, she wants Zola back. She carries their sleeping daughter upstairs into their bed, and when Derek joins them a few minutes later, Zola is still peacefully asleep, clinging to her mother.
*
One Saturday afternoon in the late spring, when Meredith is seven months pregnant and exhausted and Callie and Arizona are both on call, Derek takes Zola and Sofia to the park.
He has loved Zola so much and for so long that it takes him a little bit by surprise that these feelings could ever intensify and that he could get more joy from her than he already does. But as he sits on the bench on the outskirts of the jungle gym and watches his daughter play, it’s thrilling to be proven wrong.
Zola hides behind one of the platforms on the jungle gym and pops out to scream with delight at Sofia, who laughs and chases Zola around the gym’s perimeter. There are a few other children playing around them, but they only have eyes for each other. Zola climbs up the rungs to get to the slide and he wonders if he should spot her, just in case, but then he realizes that Sofia is doing it for him. There’s room for them to climb side by side and when Sofia realizes that she has gotten a bit ahead of her friend, she slows down and waits.
“Come on, Zola!” she cries, but she never leaves her behind.
Zola is a miracle. He forgets sometimes, when he and Meredith both get caught up in the daily work of parenting, of taking her to daycare and cooking her dinner and making sure her teeth are brushed at night. He doesn’t always take the time to appreciate it, but the fact that she exists, and that she is not only walking but running, and that he is her father-these things are miracles.
“Daddy, watch me!” Zola shouts as she stands at the top of the slide.
“I’m watching,” he calls back. It was not long ago that she needed him right there, asking him to catch her rather than just watch. But she is almost three years old now and she is quick to remind him that she is a big girl.
Zola tumbles out the bottom of the slide laughing. Sofia follows quickly behind, colliding with Zola, who hasn’t actually exited the slide yet.
Together, they climb back up, paying no mind to the bigger kids who are also playing in the same area. He sees her reaching for the monkey bars, but she’s too little to grasp them.
He pops up and jogs over to her; for this, he can help. “Want to try that, Zo?”
“Help, Daddy!” she cries. He picks her up and allows her to reach up and grab the bars, guiding her lightly as she crosses. When he sets her down on the other side, he turns back to Sofia, who is standing at the beginning, watching them.
“Do you want to try too, Sofia?” he asks. She nods, and he carries her across as well.
He misses Mark in this moment, not for himself, but for Mark. He knows that a lot of fathers wish their children’s baby years away so they can get to these more fun moments when their kids are able to play sooner. Mark was never like that; he loved every second of Sofia’s babyhood. But he would have loved this too, maybe more, so Derek tries to enjoy it for him.
They are boundless. They play hard, and even though Zola can’t run as quickly or as long as Sofia can, they both have so much fun that it doesn’t seem to matter. Derek notices sheens of sweat starting to form on both of their foreheads, but he lets them go. Zola has had so much energy lately, much more than he has, or especially Meredith has, and he wants her to tire herself out before he brings her home.
Later, he tries to corral them so he can buy them ice cream, but even the promise of ice cream isn’t enough to calm them down at first. He can get a hold of Sofia, but not Zola, and then vice versa and he wonders what it will be like when this is his life all the time.
Finally, he sits them both on a park bench, popsicles in hand, and he positions himself in front of them to make sure they don’t get up and run away.
“How is it, girls?” he asks.
“Yum,” Zola says. She bites off the top part of the popsicle, and it’s too much for her to fit in her mouth all at once. The treat hits her shirt and then starts to melt in her lap, but Zola can’t be bothered about getting sticky or ruining her clothes. She picks up that piece and shoves it back into her mouth with her fingers.
Sofia is a little more demure with her popsicle, but she’s a mess too. He hopes that Callie and Arizona won’t mind that he will be returning a sweaty, dirty kid to them a little bit later.
His phone beeps with a text message from Meredith.
“Who’s that, Daddy?” Zola asks with her mouth full.
“It’s Mommy,” he replies and unlocks his phone.
Going out to get some summer clothes for Z and B. Need anything?
She’s been nesting a lot over the past few weeks, which for Meredith means trying and failing to bring the house up to OR levels of sanitation, and making a lot of trips to Target.
Don’t think so, he types. Still at the park. See you when you get home?
“Can I talk?” Zola asks before he can hit send.
“I’m just texting her,” Derek replies.
“No, talk,” Zola says.
There’s no reason not to, so he dials Meredith and then holds the phone up to Zola’s ear.
“I can hold it,” she says, with a melting popsicle still in one hand.
“No, I’ll hold it. You’re sticky,” he says.
“Hey, do you need anything?” he hears Meredith ask when she answers the phone.
“Mommy, it’s Zola!” Zola cries.
“Hi, Lovebug,” Meredith says with surprise. “Do you have Daddy’s phone?”
“I have a blue popsicle,” she says.
“Sounds good, Zo,” Meredith says with a laugh. “Where’s Daddy?”
“Holdin’ the phone cause I got blue on me. Mama, me and Sofia are playing.”
“Are you having fun?” Meredith asks.
The popsicle is dripping down Zola’s hand in the warmth of the afternoon sun, and Derek grins as Sofia taps Zola on the shoulder and points to the melting mess she’s holding. Zola extends her hand, and whether Sofia originally wanted a bite of Zola’s treat or not, she takes one now that Zola has offered. Sofia returns the favor, and Zola takes a bite of Sofia’s popsicle too.
“I’m eating a popsicle,” Zola says with her mouth full.
“That sounds fun,” Meredith replies enthusiastically. “I’ll see you when you come home from the park. Can I talk to Daddy now?”
Zola nods, and Derek takes the phone back.
“Hey, I don’t think I need anything,” he tells Meredith. “We’re almost out of milk though.”
“Ok, I’ll get some,” she replies.
“She’s definitely going to need some new clothes,” Derek says. “She’s got more popsicle on her shirt than in her mouth, I think.”
“Yeah, she’s getting too tall for a lot of her leggings. And the baby has basically nothing.”
“Well I’m sure you’re going to have a shower or something,” Derek says, hoping that she won’t come home with the store’s entire inventory.
“I know, but I’m not going to fully rely on that,” she says. “It sounds like you’re having a good afternoon.”
“We are,” he replies.
Suddenly, Zola crinkles her nose and shuts her eyes tightly, shaking her head back and forth.
“Is your head getting tingly?” he asks.
Zola nods.
“What’s wrong?” Meredith asks quickly.
“Nothing,” Derek says, laughing at the face Zola is making and the strange look Sofia is giving her. “Your daughter is having her first brain freeze.”
“Oh,” Meredith sighs with a giggle. “So she’s ok?”
“Yes, she’s fine,” he assures her. “Zola, you’re ok. Your brain got too cold from the popsicle. If you look up for a minute, you’ll feel better.”
Zola looks up at the sky for a few seconds, and the brain freeze must start to dissipate because when she looks straight ahead again, she licks what remains of her popsicle and then licks her hand to try to get at all of the sticky congealed liquid there.
Sofia has already given up. She puts her popsicle on the bench next to her and watches it melt and seep onto her clothes. She is sticky everywhere too, and she looks up at Derek helplessly, like she might cry.
“You know, this two-kid thing is no joke,” Derek says to Meredith, rummaging around in the bag he brought with him for wet wipes, or anything to try to clean them both up a little before he puts them in the car.
“Yeah?” Meredith asks.
“What are we supposed to do when they run in different directions?” he asks.
“I’ll go one way; you go the other?” she offers, and he can tell she is smiling.
*
When Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital announces that it will stop accepting Medicaid patients at the start of the hospital’s 2014 fiscal year in July, Meredith knows she has to do something.
The hospital has limped along for months while has been tied up in counter-litigation with the insurance company and the plane manufacturer. They have laid off support staff, and nurses, and even doctors all the way up to attending to try to stay afloat. And now the patients are going to pay.
She understands the logic behind it-that they can’t get reimbursed from Medicaid at the same rates they can from private insurance companies, and so there’s nothing in it for them-but poor people get hernias and have accidents and need appys and craniotomies and valve replacements too. And Seattle Grace Mercy West will no longer be providing these people with services.
Some of the doctors and other hospital staff wonder why it has taken so long to do this. A few people are not shy at all about saying that the hospital should have done this years ago, or at least as the first line of defense before cutting personnel. After all, this is the way to get paid. But it doesn’t sit right with Meredith.
She feels like her hands are somewhat tied, because they are the ones who did this (they are not, Cristina keeps reminding her). She feels worse because she isn’t that busy, and they’re booking surgeries for Callie and Jackson back to back because plastics and sports medicine always bring in the money. Worst of all, the nurses and support staff-everyone who is left-are being run ragged trying to keep up with the increase there while still maintaining other services.
Meredith pulls Derek aside after rounds that morning, into an empty stairwell, where she hisses at him: “We have to do something.”
“About what?” he says.
“Did you hear that the hospital isn’t accepting Medicaid patients anymore?”
“Yes, I did. But I’m not on the board and I’m not chief of surgery anymore. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Derek!”
“Meredith, what do you want me to do?”
She raises her eyebrow and cocks her head towards him.
“No,” he says. “Meredith, no.”
“Come on, Derek. It’s just sitting there. We don’t need it.”
“No,” he says matter-of-factly. “Meredith. We have two kids who are going to have about twenty years of school. Each.”
“I know,” she says. “Good thing their parents are both doctors. We can put them through school, Derek. But maybe not if we don’t have jobs.”
“We’re not going to lose our jobs, Meredith.”
“We might,” she replies. “Plus, it’s just wrong what they’re doing, Derek! And we can stop it.”
He sighs. And he is about to reply when her pager goes off. She walks down two steps-her page is coming from the ER, the floor right below them-and then turns to face him.
“Please, just think about it,” she says. “It’s not right.”
When she gets downstairs, she is pretty sure that the teenage girl who is curled up in the fetal position on the gurney has got a bad bowel obstruction. But she has to rule out everything from pregnancy to drug abuse to a kidney infection first. Murphy is on her service today, so she asks her to do a full lab workup and to try to get her in for a CT as soon as possible. She gives Murphy instructions to page her as soon as the results come in, and then she moves on to other patients.
When Meredith sees three other patients and has lunch with Cristina and Murphy still hasn’t paged, Meredith pages her instead.
“Murphy, where the hell are my labs and CT results for my bowel obstruction girl?”
“The lab hasn’t paged yet to let me know they’re ready, and we’re on the schedule for a CT today, but I don’t know when they’ll get to us.”
“So the girl’s still in the ER?”
“Yeah,” Murphy replies.
“Murphy! The poor kid came in four hours ago and is laying there writhing in pain, and we haven’t even diagnosed her yet?”
“We have like half the orderlies and techs that we had before. We’re doing our best, Dr. Grey, but this is the way it is now. I don’t know what you want me to do!”
Murphy cringes as soon as she finishes, like she knows she might have gone too far and she is waiting for Meredith to blow back hard. So far, it’s worked in Meredith’s favor that the interns have all been afraid of her-it helps get things done-but Murphy is right; there is nothing they can do.
Meredith sighs. “Page the lab and get an update on her bloodwork. Get an estimate on how much longer it’s going to take for a CT. Book an OR for later this afternoon, because I know she has a bowel obstruction and who knows how long it’s going to take to get her into surgery if we wait for the diagnosis?” she says. “And go check on the patient. Tell her that we are sorry and we are trying as hard as we can to get this fixed as soon as possible.”
A few hours later, after she has finally operated on her bowel obstruction girl, she catches Derek coming out of a patient’s room as she writes her post-op note at the nurses’ station.
“It took me six hours to get a teenager with a bowel obstruction into surgery,” she says.
He shakes his head a little, but doesn’t say anything.
“The kid sat in the ER all day,” she says.
“I know, Meredith,” he says wearily.
When Meredith gets home that night, Derek is spooning steamed carrots onto Zola’s plate while Zola starts on her chicken.
“Just in time,” he says. “Want some dinner?”
“Yes,” she sighs. “I’m starving. Hi, Zozo,” she says, sliding into the empty seat next to her daughter.
“Hi, Mommy,” Zola says. “Want some carrots?”
“No, those are yours. I’ll have my own.”
She fixes herself a plate, and alternates between eating her own food and making sure Zola is eating too.
“How was the rest of your day?” Derek asks.
“Fine,” she says. “My bowel obstruction kid didn’t have a gangrenous intestine, despite spending practically all day in the ER. So she got lucky. The next patient might not.”
“Do we have to talk about this now?” he asks. “Meredith, I’m having the same kinds of days you’re having. We all are.”
“We don’t have to be.”
“We also don’t owe them anything,” he says. He is so even-tempered when he says it that it stuns her.
“Are you serious?”
“It’s the place where we work,” he says. “Don’t make it more than it is.”
She stares at him at a total loss for words. She does not know how to explain because, before now, she did not think this would ever need an explanation. Her mouth falls open, and it takes her a second to collect herself, but he stops her before she can say anything else.
“Let’s talk about it later,” he says, motioning to Zola, who is mashing her carrots into a pulp before shoveling them into her mouth with her fork.
A few hours later, after Zola is in bed, it does not take long for the conversation they have been putting off all day to turn into a full-fledged fight.
“Meredith, your sister is dead,” Derek shouts. “That’s why we sued. Because that plane crash killed your sister, and it killed Mark, and it could have killed us too.”
“Keeping the money isn’t going to bring them back, and it isn’t going to keep us alive,” she replies heatedly.
“Neither is giving it to the hospital,” Derek shoots back.
“Having it makes me feel worse,” she says. “We shouldn’t have sued in the first place. It didn’t help.”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he says quietly.
“What?”
“You don’t know what it’s like. Sofia’s father loved her and now he’s dead. Do you know what that’s going to be like for her? Do you know how easily that could have been us? It could have been Zola. We’re not getting rid of this money just because you hate having it.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not as much as I hate the thought of something happening to us and leaving the kids with nothing. It’s a place where we work,” he says. “We owe them a day’s work. That’s it.”
“We’re not going to die,” she says firmly. It scares her that he keeps thinking this way, but she doesn’t know what else to do except to keep saying those words. “And we don’t need this money to make sure that the kids have something to fall back on. This is too much. We don’t need it.”
She can hear Zola walking around in her room, and she sighs. She leaves Derek and goes downstairs to check on Zola, who is padding across her floor in the dark with a few stuffed animals and books in her arms.
“What are you doing?” Meredith whispers.
“I want these in my bed,” Zola says.
Meredith laughs a little and rolls her eyes. “You need to get back in your bed. It’s bedtime, and you need to lie down.”
“I can have these though?” Zola says.
“You can have them, but no lights on and you have to stay in bed.”
“Ok,” Zola replies in a sing-song voice.
“Zola,” Meredith says. “No more getting up.”
“I’m not,” she says indignantly.
“Ok,” Meredith replies. “I don’t want to come down here again.”
When she gets back upstairs, Derek asks, “Is she ok?”
“She’s hoarding.”
Derek smiles, and somehow the tension from a few minutes ago has diffused a bit.
“It’s not just a place where we work,” she says calmly.
“It should be.”
“Maybe. But it’s not, Derek. We fell in love there. We got married there, and had a baby there, and almost died there. It’s not just a place where we work, and it’s not crazy to want to save it from becoming this second rate chop-shop, or from going out of business altogether.”
“I’m not giving the hospital thirty million dollars.”
“Come on, I thought you liked hopeless cases.”
He smiles despite himself, and when he shakes his head, she knows she has hit a nerve.
“I can’t, Meredith.”
“Why not?”
He sighs, and looks up at her with such sadness in his eyes. “What are we going to do if you get Alzheimer’s?” he asks. “Maybe we won’t have health insurance anymore. You won’t be able to work. I won’t be able to work.”
“Derek.”
“I have to take care of you. And the girls.”
“I’m fine,” she says firmly. “And the girls will be fine too. It’s too much money, Derek. We don’t need it, and it’s wrong to keep it from people who do.”
He sits down on the edge of the bed and puts his head in his hands. She’s not sure if she should push any harder, and when he doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, she sits down on the bed next to him, but doesn’t touch him.
Finally, he looks up and says, “We invest. I’m not just writing a check. If you make a gift, there’s only so much you can do. They’ll slap your name on a building or something and then that’s it. But if you invest, you can influence decisions. It sounds bad,” he says, “But I don’t just want to be a philanthropist. I used to be chief; I’ve seen the books. We’ve been struggling since before we merged with Mercy West and I’m not giving them thirty million dollars with no strings attached. I want some skin in the game; I want to be a shareholder; I want to make decisions.”
“Ok,” she says. These are terms she can accept. “Is thirty million enough to get a seat at the table?”
“I don’t know,” he says quietly. “Maybe.”
“Then why bother?” she says in frustration. “If you’re not sure, then what’s the point?”
“Because I think you’re a pretty good salesman. And if you make this pitch to the others, then I think we’ll be able to get something going.”
*
It takes a few weeks, but Meredith finally convinces them all. She can’t get the whole $75 million back. Frankly, he would have been amazed if she did.
But Cristina’s all in. After all, she says, she’ll probably only leave the hospital in a hearse anyway and the best way she can think of to spend $15 million is to help the hospital stock itself full of sick people.
She gets most of Callie and Arizona’s shares too. They are worried about Arizona’s leg, and Sofia’s education, and the ethical dilemma of half of their money really belonging to Sofia, not them. He can’t blame them at all, and Arizona is so persuasive that he convinces Meredith that they have to leave some of their $30 million out too. But in the end, Callie and Arizona are in for a little less than half of their winnings, and he and Meredith are in for almost all of theirs.
It takes longer than he anticipates to make it all official-and it doesn’t happen the way he originally thinks it will-but a month before Meredith starts her maternity leave, they convene their first meeting of the newly created physicians’ council. Designed to function as an extension of the hospital’s board of directors, they will oversee all aspects of patient care, quality control, and peer review. Its creation was the sole condition of their commitment to invest almost $60 million in Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital.
At first, it feels a little bit like a bribe or a hostage-taking-after all, they won’t complete the transaction until the hospital agrees to their terms-but the hospital’s situation is quickly deteriorating and it does not take long for Derek’s qualms about the whole thing to subside. The five of them bring on other doctors from trauma, psych, OB/GYN, cardio, gastro, and internal, and together, they agree to elect him as chair of the council. He is the one who really has the gravitas and the savvy to play politics with the board and to implement the changes that they all know need to be made.
It’s not perfect. To avoid conflicts of interest, they can’t all actually be on the board and their overall power over the hospital’s financial decisions is limited. But they have influence, and he, as the physicians’ council chair, does get to vote in board meetings. It’s slow progress, and their individual places on the council might not last forever. But they’ve raised the bar; the council exists in the first place. And its first act is to present a strategic plan for the hospital’s next five years. It includes aggressive hiring goals; targeted investments in emergency medicine, neurology, and other departments; and the renewal of a government contract to accept Medicaid payments for fiscal year 2015 onward.
He believes the hospital will actually be afloat by this time next year, and in five years when the goals of their plan are, hopefully, fully realized. And when he votes for it to be adopted as policy in the fourth quarter board meeting, he is so proud and relieved. When he scrubs in for surgery later that afternoon and says “It’s a beautiful day to save lives,” he means it for the first time in a long time.
**
A/N: Thank you all so much for your kind words so far, and for sticking with this fic. It’s definitely a new kind of work-kind of like trying to constantly jump on a moving train as the show keeps going-and I appreciate so much the fact that so many of you are taking the time to tell me what you think! Ok, so there’s a lot happening in this chapter. I thought it would be really important for Zola to have some time with her mama and daddy, just her, before the arrival of Baby Sister in the next chapter! So I spent a lot of time on those two things, and tried to find a way to have those moments weave in other aspects of the plot as well.
Finally, this is, in large part, the end of what I want to do with the money/lawsuit storyline. I don’t work in healthcare or law, but I do work in philanthropy, so while I’m not 100% sure the way I did things is kosher-boards are supposed to be independent-I read a lot about hospital boards of directors and came up with what I think is a plausible and (probably) legal solution to their dilemma. That said, all mistakes are mine and hopefully if any of you are legal, business, or healthcare experts, you’ll be able to suspend your disbelief. It’s similar to what they've done on the show, but I think it’s a bigger leap to think “Oh, we’ll just buy the hospital” than it would be to say “Ok, we’ll become shareholders in the hospital.”
I’m, of course, eager to hear what you think about all of it, not just the lawsuit. Next up: one baby sister :)