Now is the Start [3/?]
Title: Where You Belong
Author: greymcdreamysgh
Pairing: MerDer
Rating: PG-13
Summary: MDZB. Formerly "Where You Belong," now continued as a short multi-chapter fic. Exploring parenthood/child relationships: what it means to be a parent, to lose a parent, to almost lose a parent, and to have a deep connection with a child.
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.
Kiss with a mouth full of shooting stars
All the lost and the broken parts
After losing her heart-liver transplant and fighting with Derek and Cristina, Meredith feels off-balance and exhausted. It only takes a few minutes of her and Derek yelling at one another for them both to realize that neither has the energy to fight. Derek leaves her to go take a shower, but as tired as she is, she doesn’t go up to bed herself.
Instead, she rattles around in the kitchen for a few minutes alone. She unloads the dishwasher, and starts trying to sort through the pile of mail that has been building on the counter for weeks. She doesn’t make much progress, though, before Bailey starts crying.
Upstairs, she lifts Bailey out of his crib and settles into the rocking chair in the corner of his room with him in her arms. As he starts to nurse, he lays his hand across her chest and looks up at her. His eye contact has gotten so much better over the past few weeks, and it is still exciting to her to know that when he looks at her, he is doing it because he knows her.
“Hi,” she says quietly. “Hi, little guy.”
She has been stressed all week; the idea of sending him to daycare, of letting someone else hold him and feed him and comfort him, has worn her out. What if he doesn’t want her anymore? Or, what if he wants her so much and doesn’t understand why she isn’t there? She may be imagining it, but to her, Bailey has seemed more wound up at the end of the day since they returned to work. She wonders if he is missing them. In any case, it has taken longer to settle him down at night, and he seems to need this time with her more than he did even a week ago.
This moment with Bailey forces Meredith to slow down, to be quiet, and to relax. She smoothes her hand over his head before pulling him close to her and encircling him with both arms. She looks down at him for a second, but then stares off into space as Cristina’s words from earlier that day come back to her: how quickly Cristina told her that she wasn’t as good of a surgeon as she was, how Cristina told her that she had let up.
It’s not the notion that Cristina is a better surgeon than she is that rankles. If she is being honest, she knows that Cristina has pushed herself so hard, has dedicated herself so completely to her profession, that it is the objective truth that she is more skillful.
It’s not even Cristina’s suggestion that Meredith has let up that bothers her. She loves these babies. She cannot imagine her life without them. They are the best thing that she has ever done.
It’s just-Cristina said it earlier-there’s her own mother to think about. Since becoming a mother herself, she has tried so hard to make different choices, to say and to show her love for her children as much as she possibly can so that they will feel it and know it. In that way, she does not want to be her mother, but in other ways, she very much does.
It’s difficult not to work in the same professional circles as her mother once did and not take to heart the borderline-reverence that so many people, even in her own generation, have for Ellis Grey, even though she has been dead for six years, and out of the field even longer than that. It’s harder still to ignore the implied comparisons and expectations, from others and from herself. She wants to be a talented, gifted, extraordinary surgeon too. And she does not measure up.
The way she sees it, there are two possibilities here. The first is that her mother might have really loved her, and might have tried to be a good mom, at least at first. In a way, it has always been almost easier for Meredith to think that Ellis didn’t love her, at least not the same way that she loves Zola and Bailey. If Ellis didn’t love her like this, then it explains everything about her childhood in a way that makes sense. But if Ellis did love her, if she tried, then Meredith is terrified for what her life might become, and what it will be like if she always falls short.
She has had five days back at work to show her that thinking differently and trying hard might not be enough. Five days have been enough to show her that it doesn’t matter how much she loves Zola and Bailey, that her job might cause them not to feel that love sometimes.
If Ellis really tried, the way Meredith is trying now, then Meredith doesn’t see a way to succeed. Maybe it just cannot be done.
The second, and more likely possibility, is that Ellis Grey probably realized very quickly that it might be impossible to perform at an elite level in more than one thing. After all, what was the expression? You can have anything in life, if you’re willing to sacrifice everything else for it. There is no expression for having two things.
Her mother, almost always practical to a fault, might have come to understand that she had to make a choice: her child or her career. And she went with what she was already good at. She would go on to win the Harper Avery twice, to publish article after article, to be one of the world’s most sought-after surgeons while Meredith was raised mostly by nannies.
Cristina was right; Meredith does not want to be her mother. And if it comes down to making a choice, she would choose Zola and Bailey over the hospital. And she wouldn’t do it just because she often deliberately chooses to do the opposite thing her mother would have done just to prove a point and reinforce positive habits. She would do it because of course she would, because there is no other way.
She would give it all up if she had to, but she senses acutely that she is her mother’s daughter when the thought of a life without surgery almost makes her panic. She would do it. If she had to. But she doesn’t want to have to, and that makes her feel selfish. Just as she would stand in front of an oncoming train for Zola and Bailey, it doesn’t mean that she is actively looking for the tracks.
Either way, what makes her heart pound is the idea that no matter what, she might turn into her mother anyway, that she won’t be able to help it. She lets a breath go and looks down at the baby in her arms.
“You’re happy, right?” she asks Bailey as she hears the shower turn off down the hall.
Bailey stares up at her with such trust in his eyes that it makes her want to cry.
***
Derek crawls into bed after his shower and waits for Meredith. Over the baby monitor, he can hear her get up and tiptoe across Bailey’s floor to put him in his crib. Although he has heard her in his room so many times since he was born, this somehow feels like an intrusion.
“Goodnight, little guy,” he hears her say. “See you in a little bit.”
She starts undressing as soon as she returns to their bedroom, unbuttoning her shirt and slipping a tank top on instead, and trading her jeans for yoga pants.
“Is he ok?” he asks.
“Yeah, he’s asleep again,” she replies.
She turns to use the bathroom without another word, but before she can go in, he stops her.
“I’m sorry you missed your surgery.”
There are pieces of himself that have surfaced today that he recognizes from a previous life, pieces of himself that he is ashamed of. He was selfish and short-sighted today, if not intentionally inconsiderate than just unthinking.
Even when he finally got Meredith’s voicemail that Zola needed stitches, he felt badly but reasoned with himself that it was just two stitches and Meredith had been there. He never connected Meredith being with Zola to her not being in the OR herself. Now that it’s all over, though, he sees that today, he reminded himself of the husband he used to be when he was married to Addison. He has disappointed himself.
Meredith looks back at him. Fiery during their fight, she simply looks exhausted now. “I need you to answer your phone when I call you,” is all she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I didn’t know what to do. I had all these guys in from all over for the AVM.”
“I don’t care, Derek,” she says, her voice worn out. “I knew you had an AVM. I called you in the middle of it because it was important.”
“Meredith.”
“I need you,” she says, cutting him off. “I can’t do this by myself.”
He is taken aback. Is that really how she sees this? He doesn’t know what to say. Meredith stares at him expectedly, but before he figures out how to respond, they both hear Zola over her monitor.
“Mom,” Zola croaks in a sleepy voice, before her voice breaks and she starts crying. “Mama.”
Meredith sighs, and leaves him there to comfort Zola. A moment later, he hears her open Zola’s door and say in a quiet voice, “What’s the matter, Lovebug?”
“Head hurts,” Zola whimpers.
“Ok, you’re ok,” Meredith says. “Want Mommy to lie down with you for a little while?”
Zola must nod, because he hears the mattress of Zola’s bed creak as Meredith climbs in.
“Can I look at your head for a minute?” Meredith asks. After a pause, she says, “You’re my brave girl. Do you know that? You’re going to feel a lot better in the morning, and in a few days, you won’t have these stitches anymore.”
“I don’t want stitches,” Zola cries.
“I know; I don’t want you to have stitches either.”
Derek doesn’t want to let Zola cry for long. He jumps up and grabs the children’s Tylenol out of their medicine cabinet, and lets himself into Zola’s room.
Their daughter is curled up with Meredith in bed, with her head on Meredith’s chest and with one arm slung across Meredith’s stomach. Meredith has one arm wrapped around Zola, but covers her face with her free hand as she lies propped up in Zola’s bed.
“I got the Tylenol,” he says.
Meredith nods, and removes her hand from covering her eyes. “Zola, we have some medicine to help you feel better, ok?”
“No,” Zola howls. “No medicine, Mommy.”
“It’ll make your head stop hurting,” she says. “Derek, measure out the dose.”
He pours the red liquid into the small cup, and holds it out to Zola. “See?” he asks. “Just one sip, and you’ll feel better. Mommy told me how brave you were today. Can you be brave again?”
Zola nods and rubs her face against Meredith’s shirt, smearing snot across her front. She swallows the medicine still with her head against Meredith’s chest.
“Good girl,” Derek praises. “How about Daddy holds you for a little while until you feel better?”
Meredith winces when Zola reaches out for him. As he scoops Zola into his arms, he turns to Meredith and says, “Why don’t you go relax? I can take it from here.”
She looks torn for a moment as to whether or not she should go. In the end, she must decide that it’s ok though, because she kisses Zola and pulls the door closed behind her.
He settles into Zola’s rocking chair with her in his arms. She’s getting too old to really use this chair, but on a night like tonight, he’s glad they bought another one for Bailey rather than just giving him this one.
“I’m sorry you hurt your head, Zo,” he says as he starts to rock back and forth, patting her back gently as he does.
“Slide is bad,” Zola says.
“No,” he replies. “The slide isn’t bad; it was just an accident. Accidents happen sometimes.”
“Head hurts.”
“I know, but you’ll feel better soon,” he says.
Zola hiccups as her crying slows down, and he spends a moment or two just shushing her and rocking back and forth with his hand lightly on her back.
As he holds Zola in the dark, he starts to realize that this is different for Meredith, that she has seen all of this differently than he has. She has not perceived this as one of those days that happens to be worse than the rest. For her, maybe this doesn’t feel like an outlier, but like a norm, like the start of a show she has seen before.
Growing up in a family of five children, even with the most attentive parents, Derek didn’t take it personally that his parents had to work. Especially after his father died, it was just a necessity, a reflection of his parents’ selflessness if anything, not their selfishness. Maybe for Meredith, it isn’t like that. Because even when he was twenty-eight and got into a minor motorcycle accident-one that left a scar in the same place that Zola will likely have one now-his mother had rushed to the hospital to be by his side.
Just when he thinks Zola is asleep again, something startles her out of it enough to make her whimper and moan again.
“Shh,” he murmurs. “You’ll feel better soon.”
It takes a few more minutes for her to really fall completely and totally asleep. He lays her back down in her bed, and pulls her door closed behind him.
Back in their bedroom, although the lights are off, Meredith isn’t yet asleep. When he gets into bed next to her, she doesn’t turn to face him like she normally does if she’s still awake, but just stares off into space without a word.
“She’s asleep. She’s ok,” he says. He sees her nod, but she doesn’t respond any more than that. He lets a moment’s silence go by before he says, “I’m sorry. You’re not by yourself.”
She nods, but brings a hand up to her face again and doesn’t turn around.
“It’s just a bad day,” he says. In those few words, he tries to communicate everything else he knows she needs to hear: that it won’t always be like this, that it will get better, that it’s not her fault, that her children love her, that she is good, that she is not Ellis. “It’s just one bad day,” he repeats. “That’s all. Just one bad one.”
She sighs, and when he moves closer to her and wraps his arms around her, she lets him.
***
The next morning, Meredith still feels anxious about the events of the previous day. But there are children demanding breakfast, so there isn’t much time to fix anything, and at least it’s Saturday. She won’t have to deal with all of this again until Monday.
In their kitchen, Derek pours Zola more cereal and Meredith nurses Bailey while eating from her own bowl. She still feels badly about Zola missing her princess tea party yesterday, though with Zola’s injury she doesn’t seem too angry about it. Thankfully, she seems to be feeling much better this morning.
“Hey, Zo,” Meredith says, “Do you want to pick out a Halloween costume today?”
Zola’s eyes light up. With a mouthful of cereal, she nods.
This is the first year that Zola really understands Halloween, or at least the first year that she is excited about dressing up and getting free candy. She has been talking through costume ideas for a few weeks, but they’ve put off actually buying one, partially because Meredith doesn’t want her to change her mind a million times before Halloween but mostly because they just haven’t had time to go out. But Meredith has decided that today is the day. She can at least do this.
She and Derek pack up the car later that morning to take a trip to Target. They need to run other errands too, and neither of them has the time or the energy to go to multiple stores anymore.
Once they get there, because all the Halloween stuff is right at the front of the store, Zola’s eyes widen in excitement. Meredith wonders if she will regret telling Zola she can pick any costume she wants when she looks at the selection, a pretty large one for not even being a Halloween store. Zola looks longingly at the displays, pulling on Meredith’s hand while she and Derek load Bailey, car seat and all, into an empty shopping cart.
“Ok, so diapers, cleaning stuff-” Derek says, trying to run through a mental list.
“Mommy, come on,” Zola whines.
“Zola, hold on a second,” Meredith says as she rummages in the diaper bag for a pacifier for Bailey. The task should be a simple one but doing it one-handed while her other hand grips Zola, who is trying hard to get away, makes it a little more challenging.
“Do you want to just go separately?” Derek asks Meredith. “I’ll take the baby and get the diapers and everything else. Do you think that would be enough time to pick a costume?”
“I think so,” she says. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “You have fun with her. We need some father-son bonding time anyway. Zola, why don’t you go look at costumes with Mommy? I’ll stay with Bailey and get his diapers.”
“I don’t need diapers. I’m a big girl.”
Derek laughs. “I know you are. Go have fun with Mommy.”
Meredith smiles. “Come on, Zo. Derek, don’t forget to get some C-A-N-D-Y.”
“I don’t think we’re going to have many trick-or-treaters,” he says, “The house is in the middle of nowhere.”
“Not for us. She needs it for daycare. They’re having a little P-A-R-T-Y. Remember, they sent an email?”
“Mommy!” Zola whines. “Please let’s go!”
“Zola, one more second,” Meredith says before turning back to Derek, and raising an eyebrow.
“The email,” he says, “Right! Ok, so C-A-N-D-Y.”
“Yes, nothing with nuts in it. Two kids in her class have peanut allergies. Ok!” she says with much more enthusiasm, looking down at a now very impatient Zola. “Costumes!”
Meredith and Zola part ways with Derek and Bailey, and Meredith leads Zola by the hand down the costume aisle.
“Did you think about what you want to be?” Meredith asks.
Zola nods excitedly, but doesn’t say a word.
“Ok, what are you thinking about?”
“Costumes,” Zola says with a delighted smile.
Meredith laughs. Zola is almost three years old, but knowing her, she has probably run through three hundred possible costumes in her head.
“Ok, well let’s look around,” Meredith says.
Meredith starts holding up costume after costume-everything from the cute to the funny to the surprisingly slutty, even for a toddler-and Zola likes them all. She does not want to explain to Zola that she is only getting one costume. She is pretty sure that is a tantrum waiting to happen.
Finally, she starts holding up just two costumes at a time and asking Zola which one she likes better. It takes forever, but finally, after a long process of elimination, the last costume left standing is anbrughtly colored butterfly outfit. Zola seems satisfied.
“Is this the one you like the best?” Meredith asks.
Zola nods, but then quickly asks, “Do you like it?”
“I do,” Meredith says. “I love it.”
“I can wear it right now?” Zola asks.
Meredith hesitates. The whole thing comes in two packages, one for the outfit itself and one for the wings and antenna. She’s not going to change Zola in the middle of the store, but she figures it won’t be a huge problem if she opens the wings and antenna. They’re planning to buy it anyway, and with no princess tea party, she feels like she should try to make it up to Zola in some other way.
“How about just the wings for now?” Meredith says. “That way we can keep some of it special just for Halloween?”
“Wings are the best part,” Zola replies excitedly.
Meredith sets her bag and the rest of the costume on the floor while she opens the package and helps Zola slip on her wings. At the beginning of the costume search, Meredith felt badly about buying a costume at all. Some of the crafty moms in Zola’s class were making their kids elaborate costumes, and they could not help but share in a sort of passive-aggressive braggy way how much work it was going to be but how positively adorable their children were going to look.
Now, though, with Zola staring up at her with a huge grin on her face, it doesn’t seem to matter as much that Zola’s costume isn’t handmade. Meredith may be biased, but she is sure that Zola is going to be the cutest kid at the Halloween party and that those overachieving moms have nothing on her.
“You,” Meredith says, kneeling down so she can straighten Zola’s wings. “Look great. Are you excited for Halloween?”
“Yes,” Zola nods.
“Good.” Meredith stands up and adds, “Daddy and I are excited too. Hey, should we pick out a costume for Bailey while we’re here?”
Zola wrinkles her nose, and Meredith senses a protest coming on-things are better between Zola and Bailey but still not perfect-but she wants her son to have a Halloween too. As long as Bailey is full, warm, and dry, he is a happy boy, so Meredith feels absolutely no qualms about what she says next: “You can pick out his costume too.”
This seems to be a good trade-off for Zola, who doesn’t feel like dealing with Bailey, but also could have shopped for Halloween costumes for the rest of the morning. Eventually, she picks out a bear costume for him, a fuzzy sleeper complete with ears and paws. She hasn’t even dressed him in it yet but she smiles in anticipation of how adorable he will be.
“Zola, you did a great job,” Meredith says. “Should we go find Daddy and Bailey?”
She calls Derek, who tells her that he and Bailey are in the laundry detergent aisle, and they will wait there for them. Meredith is pretty sure she knows where the detergent is until they walk around for five minutes and don’t find it. Every time she’s been in here lately, it’s been in a total fog of exhaustion. It’s a miracle she found anything at all, and so it makes sense that she has not retained much information about where various products are located.
Finally, she hears Derek call out, “Meredith!” and she looks ahead to see him, with Bailey in his arms, just a few aisles up. Zola breaks out into a run, and leaves her behind as she rushes up to Derek.
The joy on Zola’s face as she shows off her butterfly wings, and the joy on Derek’s face as he takes her in, are almost palpable.
“There’s my big girl!” Derek says. “Are you a butterfly?”
“Yes!” Zola cries.
Meredith catches up to Zola, drops the costumes in the cart, and scoops Bailey out of Derek’s arms. Zola spins around to show off her wings, and then reaches up to Bailey to exclaim excitedly that he is her baby bear. In this moment, it is hard for Meredith to remember what she is mad about, or what she is afraid of. This little moment in the laundry detergent aisle feels like a longed-for victory.
****
****
Author: greymcdreamysgh
Pairing: MerDer
Rating: PG-13
Summary: MDZB. Formerly "Where You Belong," now continued as a short multi-chapter fic. Exploring parenthood/child relationships: what it means to be a parent, to lose a parent, to almost lose a parent, and to have a deep connection with a child.
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.
Kiss with a mouth full of shooting stars
All the lost and the broken parts
After losing her heart-liver transplant and fighting with Derek and Cristina, Meredith feels off-balance and exhausted. It only takes a few minutes of her and Derek yelling at one another for them both to realize that neither has the energy to fight. Derek leaves her to go take a shower, but as tired as she is, she doesn’t go up to bed herself.
Instead, she rattles around in the kitchen for a few minutes alone. She unloads the dishwasher, and starts trying to sort through the pile of mail that has been building on the counter for weeks. She doesn’t make much progress, though, before Bailey starts crying.
Upstairs, she lifts Bailey out of his crib and settles into the rocking chair in the corner of his room with him in her arms. As he starts to nurse, he lays his hand across her chest and looks up at her. His eye contact has gotten so much better over the past few weeks, and it is still exciting to her to know that when he looks at her, he is doing it because he knows her.
“Hi,” she says quietly. “Hi, little guy.”
She has been stressed all week; the idea of sending him to daycare, of letting someone else hold him and feed him and comfort him, has worn her out. What if he doesn’t want her anymore? Or, what if he wants her so much and doesn’t understand why she isn’t there? She may be imagining it, but to her, Bailey has seemed more wound up at the end of the day since they returned to work. She wonders if he is missing them. In any case, it has taken longer to settle him down at night, and he seems to need this time with her more than he did even a week ago.
This moment with Bailey forces Meredith to slow down, to be quiet, and to relax. She smoothes her hand over his head before pulling him close to her and encircling him with both arms. She looks down at him for a second, but then stares off into space as Cristina’s words from earlier that day come back to her: how quickly Cristina told her that she wasn’t as good of a surgeon as she was, how Cristina told her that she had let up.
It’s not the notion that Cristina is a better surgeon than she is that rankles. If she is being honest, she knows that Cristina has pushed herself so hard, has dedicated herself so completely to her profession, that it is the objective truth that she is more skillful.
It’s not even Cristina’s suggestion that Meredith has let up that bothers her. She loves these babies. She cannot imagine her life without them. They are the best thing that she has ever done.
It’s just-Cristina said it earlier-there’s her own mother to think about. Since becoming a mother herself, she has tried so hard to make different choices, to say and to show her love for her children as much as she possibly can so that they will feel it and know it. In that way, she does not want to be her mother, but in other ways, she very much does.
It’s difficult not to work in the same professional circles as her mother once did and not take to heart the borderline-reverence that so many people, even in her own generation, have for Ellis Grey, even though she has been dead for six years, and out of the field even longer than that. It’s harder still to ignore the implied comparisons and expectations, from others and from herself. She wants to be a talented, gifted, extraordinary surgeon too. And she does not measure up.
The way she sees it, there are two possibilities here. The first is that her mother might have really loved her, and might have tried to be a good mom, at least at first. In a way, it has always been almost easier for Meredith to think that Ellis didn’t love her, at least not the same way that she loves Zola and Bailey. If Ellis didn’t love her like this, then it explains everything about her childhood in a way that makes sense. But if Ellis did love her, if she tried, then Meredith is terrified for what her life might become, and what it will be like if she always falls short.
She has had five days back at work to show her that thinking differently and trying hard might not be enough. Five days have been enough to show her that it doesn’t matter how much she loves Zola and Bailey, that her job might cause them not to feel that love sometimes.
If Ellis really tried, the way Meredith is trying now, then Meredith doesn’t see a way to succeed. Maybe it just cannot be done.
The second, and more likely possibility, is that Ellis Grey probably realized very quickly that it might be impossible to perform at an elite level in more than one thing. After all, what was the expression? You can have anything in life, if you’re willing to sacrifice everything else for it. There is no expression for having two things.
Her mother, almost always practical to a fault, might have come to understand that she had to make a choice: her child or her career. And she went with what she was already good at. She would go on to win the Harper Avery twice, to publish article after article, to be one of the world’s most sought-after surgeons while Meredith was raised mostly by nannies.
Cristina was right; Meredith does not want to be her mother. And if it comes down to making a choice, she would choose Zola and Bailey over the hospital. And she wouldn’t do it just because she often deliberately chooses to do the opposite thing her mother would have done just to prove a point and reinforce positive habits. She would do it because of course she would, because there is no other way.
She would give it all up if she had to, but she senses acutely that she is her mother’s daughter when the thought of a life without surgery almost makes her panic. She would do it. If she had to. But she doesn’t want to have to, and that makes her feel selfish. Just as she would stand in front of an oncoming train for Zola and Bailey, it doesn’t mean that she is actively looking for the tracks.
Either way, what makes her heart pound is the idea that no matter what, she might turn into her mother anyway, that she won’t be able to help it. She lets a breath go and looks down at the baby in her arms.
“You’re happy, right?” she asks Bailey as she hears the shower turn off down the hall.
Bailey stares up at her with such trust in his eyes that it makes her want to cry.
***
Derek crawls into bed after his shower and waits for Meredith. Over the baby monitor, he can hear her get up and tiptoe across Bailey’s floor to put him in his crib. Although he has heard her in his room so many times since he was born, this somehow feels like an intrusion.
“Goodnight, little guy,” he hears her say. “See you in a little bit.”
She starts undressing as soon as she returns to their bedroom, unbuttoning her shirt and slipping a tank top on instead, and trading her jeans for yoga pants.
“Is he ok?” he asks.
“Yeah, he’s asleep again,” she replies.
She turns to use the bathroom without another word, but before she can go in, he stops her.
“I’m sorry you missed your surgery.”
There are pieces of himself that have surfaced today that he recognizes from a previous life, pieces of himself that he is ashamed of. He was selfish and short-sighted today, if not intentionally inconsiderate than just unthinking.
Even when he finally got Meredith’s voicemail that Zola needed stitches, he felt badly but reasoned with himself that it was just two stitches and Meredith had been there. He never connected Meredith being with Zola to her not being in the OR herself. Now that it’s all over, though, he sees that today, he reminded himself of the husband he used to be when he was married to Addison. He has disappointed himself.
Meredith looks back at him. Fiery during their fight, she simply looks exhausted now. “I need you to answer your phone when I call you,” is all she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I didn’t know what to do. I had all these guys in from all over for the AVM.”
“I don’t care, Derek,” she says, her voice worn out. “I knew you had an AVM. I called you in the middle of it because it was important.”
“Meredith.”
“I need you,” she says, cutting him off. “I can’t do this by myself.”
He is taken aback. Is that really how she sees this? He doesn’t know what to say. Meredith stares at him expectedly, but before he figures out how to respond, they both hear Zola over her monitor.
“Mom,” Zola croaks in a sleepy voice, before her voice breaks and she starts crying. “Mama.”
Meredith sighs, and leaves him there to comfort Zola. A moment later, he hears her open Zola’s door and say in a quiet voice, “What’s the matter, Lovebug?”
“Head hurts,” Zola whimpers.
“Ok, you’re ok,” Meredith says. “Want Mommy to lie down with you for a little while?”
Zola must nod, because he hears the mattress of Zola’s bed creak as Meredith climbs in.
“Can I look at your head for a minute?” Meredith asks. After a pause, she says, “You’re my brave girl. Do you know that? You’re going to feel a lot better in the morning, and in a few days, you won’t have these stitches anymore.”
“I don’t want stitches,” Zola cries.
“I know; I don’t want you to have stitches either.”
Derek doesn’t want to let Zola cry for long. He jumps up and grabs the children’s Tylenol out of their medicine cabinet, and lets himself into Zola’s room.
Their daughter is curled up with Meredith in bed, with her head on Meredith’s chest and with one arm slung across Meredith’s stomach. Meredith has one arm wrapped around Zola, but covers her face with her free hand as she lies propped up in Zola’s bed.
“I got the Tylenol,” he says.
Meredith nods, and removes her hand from covering her eyes. “Zola, we have some medicine to help you feel better, ok?”
“No,” Zola howls. “No medicine, Mommy.”
“It’ll make your head stop hurting,” she says. “Derek, measure out the dose.”
He pours the red liquid into the small cup, and holds it out to Zola. “See?” he asks. “Just one sip, and you’ll feel better. Mommy told me how brave you were today. Can you be brave again?”
Zola nods and rubs her face against Meredith’s shirt, smearing snot across her front. She swallows the medicine still with her head against Meredith’s chest.
“Good girl,” Derek praises. “How about Daddy holds you for a little while until you feel better?”
Meredith winces when Zola reaches out for him. As he scoops Zola into his arms, he turns to Meredith and says, “Why don’t you go relax? I can take it from here.”
She looks torn for a moment as to whether or not she should go. In the end, she must decide that it’s ok though, because she kisses Zola and pulls the door closed behind her.
He settles into Zola’s rocking chair with her in his arms. She’s getting too old to really use this chair, but on a night like tonight, he’s glad they bought another one for Bailey rather than just giving him this one.
“I’m sorry you hurt your head, Zo,” he says as he starts to rock back and forth, patting her back gently as he does.
“Slide is bad,” Zola says.
“No,” he replies. “The slide isn’t bad; it was just an accident. Accidents happen sometimes.”
“Head hurts.”
“I know, but you’ll feel better soon,” he says.
Zola hiccups as her crying slows down, and he spends a moment or two just shushing her and rocking back and forth with his hand lightly on her back.
As he holds Zola in the dark, he starts to realize that this is different for Meredith, that she has seen all of this differently than he has. She has not perceived this as one of those days that happens to be worse than the rest. For her, maybe this doesn’t feel like an outlier, but like a norm, like the start of a show she has seen before.
Growing up in a family of five children, even with the most attentive parents, Derek didn’t take it personally that his parents had to work. Especially after his father died, it was just a necessity, a reflection of his parents’ selflessness if anything, not their selfishness. Maybe for Meredith, it isn’t like that. Because even when he was twenty-eight and got into a minor motorcycle accident-one that left a scar in the same place that Zola will likely have one now-his mother had rushed to the hospital to be by his side.
Just when he thinks Zola is asleep again, something startles her out of it enough to make her whimper and moan again.
“Shh,” he murmurs. “You’ll feel better soon.”
It takes a few more minutes for her to really fall completely and totally asleep. He lays her back down in her bed, and pulls her door closed behind him.
Back in their bedroom, although the lights are off, Meredith isn’t yet asleep. When he gets into bed next to her, she doesn’t turn to face him like she normally does if she’s still awake, but just stares off into space without a word.
“She’s asleep. She’s ok,” he says. He sees her nod, but she doesn’t respond any more than that. He lets a moment’s silence go by before he says, “I’m sorry. You’re not by yourself.”
She nods, but brings a hand up to her face again and doesn’t turn around.
“It’s just a bad day,” he says. In those few words, he tries to communicate everything else he knows she needs to hear: that it won’t always be like this, that it will get better, that it’s not her fault, that her children love her, that she is good, that she is not Ellis. “It’s just one bad day,” he repeats. “That’s all. Just one bad one.”
She sighs, and when he moves closer to her and wraps his arms around her, she lets him.
***
The next morning, Meredith still feels anxious about the events of the previous day. But there are children demanding breakfast, so there isn’t much time to fix anything, and at least it’s Saturday. She won’t have to deal with all of this again until Monday.
In their kitchen, Derek pours Zola more cereal and Meredith nurses Bailey while eating from her own bowl. She still feels badly about Zola missing her princess tea party yesterday, though with Zola’s injury she doesn’t seem too angry about it. Thankfully, she seems to be feeling much better this morning.
“Hey, Zo,” Meredith says, “Do you want to pick out a Halloween costume today?”
Zola’s eyes light up. With a mouthful of cereal, she nods.
This is the first year that Zola really understands Halloween, or at least the first year that she is excited about dressing up and getting free candy. She has been talking through costume ideas for a few weeks, but they’ve put off actually buying one, partially because Meredith doesn’t want her to change her mind a million times before Halloween but mostly because they just haven’t had time to go out. But Meredith has decided that today is the day. She can at least do this.
She and Derek pack up the car later that morning to take a trip to Target. They need to run other errands too, and neither of them has the time or the energy to go to multiple stores anymore.
Once they get there, because all the Halloween stuff is right at the front of the store, Zola’s eyes widen in excitement. Meredith wonders if she will regret telling Zola she can pick any costume she wants when she looks at the selection, a pretty large one for not even being a Halloween store. Zola looks longingly at the displays, pulling on Meredith’s hand while she and Derek load Bailey, car seat and all, into an empty shopping cart.
“Ok, so diapers, cleaning stuff-” Derek says, trying to run through a mental list.
“Mommy, come on,” Zola whines.
“Zola, hold on a second,” Meredith says as she rummages in the diaper bag for a pacifier for Bailey. The task should be a simple one but doing it one-handed while her other hand grips Zola, who is trying hard to get away, makes it a little more challenging.
“Do you want to just go separately?” Derek asks Meredith. “I’ll take the baby and get the diapers and everything else. Do you think that would be enough time to pick a costume?”
“I think so,” she says. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “You have fun with her. We need some father-son bonding time anyway. Zola, why don’t you go look at costumes with Mommy? I’ll stay with Bailey and get his diapers.”
“I don’t need diapers. I’m a big girl.”
Derek laughs. “I know you are. Go have fun with Mommy.”
Meredith smiles. “Come on, Zo. Derek, don’t forget to get some C-A-N-D-Y.”
“I don’t think we’re going to have many trick-or-treaters,” he says, “The house is in the middle of nowhere.”
“Not for us. She needs it for daycare. They’re having a little P-A-R-T-Y. Remember, they sent an email?”
“Mommy!” Zola whines. “Please let’s go!”
“Zola, one more second,” Meredith says before turning back to Derek, and raising an eyebrow.
“The email,” he says, “Right! Ok, so C-A-N-D-Y.”
“Yes, nothing with nuts in it. Two kids in her class have peanut allergies. Ok!” she says with much more enthusiasm, looking down at a now very impatient Zola. “Costumes!”
Meredith and Zola part ways with Derek and Bailey, and Meredith leads Zola by the hand down the costume aisle.
“Did you think about what you want to be?” Meredith asks.
Zola nods excitedly, but doesn’t say a word.
“Ok, what are you thinking about?”
“Costumes,” Zola says with a delighted smile.
Meredith laughs. Zola is almost three years old, but knowing her, she has probably run through three hundred possible costumes in her head.
“Ok, well let’s look around,” Meredith says.
Meredith starts holding up costume after costume-everything from the cute to the funny to the surprisingly slutty, even for a toddler-and Zola likes them all. She does not want to explain to Zola that she is only getting one costume. She is pretty sure that is a tantrum waiting to happen.
Finally, she starts holding up just two costumes at a time and asking Zola which one she likes better. It takes forever, but finally, after a long process of elimination, the last costume left standing is anbrughtly colored butterfly outfit. Zola seems satisfied.
“Is this the one you like the best?” Meredith asks.
Zola nods, but then quickly asks, “Do you like it?”
“I do,” Meredith says. “I love it.”
“I can wear it right now?” Zola asks.
Meredith hesitates. The whole thing comes in two packages, one for the outfit itself and one for the wings and antenna. She’s not going to change Zola in the middle of the store, but she figures it won’t be a huge problem if she opens the wings and antenna. They’re planning to buy it anyway, and with no princess tea party, she feels like she should try to make it up to Zola in some other way.
“How about just the wings for now?” Meredith says. “That way we can keep some of it special just for Halloween?”
“Wings are the best part,” Zola replies excitedly.
Meredith sets her bag and the rest of the costume on the floor while she opens the package and helps Zola slip on her wings. At the beginning of the costume search, Meredith felt badly about buying a costume at all. Some of the crafty moms in Zola’s class were making their kids elaborate costumes, and they could not help but share in a sort of passive-aggressive braggy way how much work it was going to be but how positively adorable their children were going to look.
Now, though, with Zola staring up at her with a huge grin on her face, it doesn’t seem to matter as much that Zola’s costume isn’t handmade. Meredith may be biased, but she is sure that Zola is going to be the cutest kid at the Halloween party and that those overachieving moms have nothing on her.
“You,” Meredith says, kneeling down so she can straighten Zola’s wings. “Look great. Are you excited for Halloween?”
“Yes,” Zola nods.
“Good.” Meredith stands up and adds, “Daddy and I are excited too. Hey, should we pick out a costume for Bailey while we’re here?”
Zola wrinkles her nose, and Meredith senses a protest coming on-things are better between Zola and Bailey but still not perfect-but she wants her son to have a Halloween too. As long as Bailey is full, warm, and dry, he is a happy boy, so Meredith feels absolutely no qualms about what she says next: “You can pick out his costume too.”
This seems to be a good trade-off for Zola, who doesn’t feel like dealing with Bailey, but also could have shopped for Halloween costumes for the rest of the morning. Eventually, she picks out a bear costume for him, a fuzzy sleeper complete with ears and paws. She hasn’t even dressed him in it yet but she smiles in anticipation of how adorable he will be.
“Zola, you did a great job,” Meredith says. “Should we go find Daddy and Bailey?”
She calls Derek, who tells her that he and Bailey are in the laundry detergent aisle, and they will wait there for them. Meredith is pretty sure she knows where the detergent is until they walk around for five minutes and don’t find it. Every time she’s been in here lately, it’s been in a total fog of exhaustion. It’s a miracle she found anything at all, and so it makes sense that she has not retained much information about where various products are located.
Finally, she hears Derek call out, “Meredith!” and she looks ahead to see him, with Bailey in his arms, just a few aisles up. Zola breaks out into a run, and leaves her behind as she rushes up to Derek.
The joy on Zola’s face as she shows off her butterfly wings, and the joy on Derek’s face as he takes her in, are almost palpable.
“There’s my big girl!” Derek says. “Are you a butterfly?”
“Yes!” Zola cries.
Meredith catches up to Zola, drops the costumes in the cart, and scoops Bailey out of Derek’s arms. Zola spins around to show off her wings, and then reaches up to Bailey to exclaim excitedly that he is her baby bear. In this moment, it is hard for Meredith to remember what she is mad about, or what she is afraid of. This little moment in the laundry detergent aisle feels like a longed-for victory.
****
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