Be Be Your Love: You Drive Me Crazy - Ch 5
This chapter was more or less impossible to write. Sarah is going to read this and be like ‘this isn’t any of the chapters that you sent me, this doesn’t look like anything that we talked about” and she would be right. But this is the only thing that worked and the only thing that as I was writing I didn’t have to force and the only thing that once I wrote I knew I couldn’t change.
So this is what you get.
Did I mention that this is the last chapter of the section?
No?
It’s the last chapter.
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On August 23rd Adrienne Montgomery ceased to be Meredith Grey’s therapist and became simply her friend.
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4 (-ish) AM.
The Butterfly Effect says that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Australia it could cause a tornado in Canada. I’m the tornado in Canada, I’m waiting for Derek and Addison to flap their wings so I’ll know what direction I’m suppose to go in.
If she asked him to go, then they are together. Alex said that she moved out of his apartment and into her own place, so if they are together then they are probably living together. I should have been expecting this, but I wasn’t. Everyday that passed I thought I would hear something about them being together, or not being together. I know I’ve said this before, but I wish they had just gotten together months ago when this was all fresh. I could have handled it then, everything would have been flying at me at once and I would have just dealt or died. Now they’ve spent 6 months deciding if they want to be together and I hate that. He cheated on me and if he had to cheat on me I want it to be because he loves her. But, I don’t see any other reason that he would cheat on me with Addison. I know I could forgive him if it was with someone else, so I need him to love her.
If she didn’t ask him to move to Mercy West then they aren’t together and he is going to get away from her. He never had to move to get away from me. I know he loved me. I know he loved me. I know. But not enough to move I guess.
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“I’ve decided to get married.”
“Oh really,” Cristina turned slightly towards Izzie and attempted not to look as interested as she was. Annoying as Izzie could be, she was a source of entertainment on a slow day.
“I’m going to be 30 in exactly one month--”
“And you want to be married before that?”
“No,” Izzie replied as if Cristina was the one that was making insane statements, “I want to be married by the time I’m 32, which means I need to meet someone right now.”
“So they can get to know you?” Cristina asked in a slightly patronizing fashion.
“So we can fall deeply and madly in love.”
“32 seems old. Better stick with 30. A quickie marriage will trap him before he realizes you are deeply and madly deranged.”
“Cause that worked so well for Callie.”
“In my defense, I married George,” Callie picked up a pair of scrub pants, “Are these seriously low-rise scrubs?”
“Gimme,” Cristina grabbed them from Callie’s hand and held them up in front of her, “Are you planning on marrying George? It might be the easiest route. He knows you but likes you anyway, and you are already living together so you don’t have to move… maybe you could have an open marriage.”
“Quickie marriages don’t work,” Izzie argued.
“They work for some people,” Cristina argued back simply for the sake of arguing.
“For who?” Callie continued to peruse the new section on scrubs with distaste, “Wearing empire waisted scrub tops with pattern accents is going to make me feel like I need to do my hair and wear nice shoes to work,” she looked mournfully at her ratty tennis sneakers.
“Mark and Sydney are still married. They didn’t even date,” Cristina pointed out, “At least Izzie wont have to tailor her scrubs anymore.”
“Hey,” Izzie protested, “I’m not the only one that does that! And Mark and Sydney aren’t normal human beings.”
“Derek and Addison,” Meredith joined the conversation -- she’d been behind a screen trying on some of the new styles, “They only dated a few months.”
Her friends where silent.
“Would we consider them successful?” Cristina asked.
“Are you considering Sydney a human?” Meredith shrugged, “They’re still together. It counts for something I guess.”
“Are they together?” Callie asked, feigning disinterest.
“I guess.”
“Hey. Did you guys hear that he was fired?” Izzie asked suddenly.
“No!” All three spun to face her.
“I heard that Montgomery was leaving.” Cristina offered.
Meredith shook her head, “No, she’s staying, I asked Alex this morning. He didn’t say anything about Derek being fired though. Just that he was leaving. And Addison moved out of Alex’s,” she offered, “Yesterday.”
“Addison was living with Alex?” Izzie asked in surprise.
“Ya. Something was going on with them, I think.”
“No, surprise there,” Callie muttered under her breath.
“Speaking of secret liaisons,” Izzie smiled sweetly, “Callie, where have you been spending your nights lately? You never came home for our girls night last weekend.”
Callie blushed and exchanged a glance with Cristina, “Is that my pager?” she asked, looking at her silent pager, “I need to go. Emergency.”
“Smooth Cal,” Cristina rolled her eyes as Callie left the room.
“I look pregnant in this shirt,” Meredith said quietly as she examined her reflection in the mirror.
“You!” Bailey stormed through the door and pointed to a chair in the corner of the room, “Sit there.” Tuck meekly sat in the corner and settled a book in his lap. “Damn babysitters -- bronchitis. Do any of you have an extra intern that can babysit?”
They all shook their heads.
“We bogged them down with the impossible so we could come see the new scrubs,” Izzie offered, “But we’re free.”
“Great,” Bailey turned on her heel and abruptly left the room, pausing only long enough to kiss her son on the forehead.
Cristina turned slowly to face Izzie, “Why are you the way that you are?”
The sound of pagers filled the room. Cristina and Izzie glanced at their waists, then looked guiltily at Meredith.
“Sucker.”
“Noooo,” Meredith followed Cristina and Izzie into the halls leaving Tuck alone with his book, “You can’t leave me alone with him. And I’m done. I want to go home!”
“Meredith! I need an intern!” Mark gave her a charming smile and flashed his dimples.
“My interns are passed out after working 48 hours.” Meredith grinned back.
“So you aren’t working right now?”
“Dr. Sloane!” A nurse down the hall yelled at Mark, a twin on one hip and the other by the hand.
“Sloane!” Richard roared from the opposite direction.
“Mer…” Mark pleaded.
“I can’t! I’ve already got Tuck.”
“Great! I’ve got to go,” Mark grabbed his daughters from the nurse, kissed them each on the cheek, and ordered them to behave with Aunty Meredith, before disappearing as quickly as he appeared.
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Between 9 and 10 AM
When you lose someone other people think that it’s in your best interest never to think about the person that you lost. Maybe this is unique to doctors. We lose people every day. We go to the bar, we go to bed, we carry on and the next day we forget. I don’t know if this is normal, I grew up around doctors.
I’ve never played with the twins. Mark and Sydney took them home from the hospital the day that Julie died. No one wanted me to remember that I should have had what they have. Like I could forget.
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Meredith tightened the harness around Bea and checked that Tuck was buckled before climbing into the front seat of Mark’s SUV and jamming the key in the ignition. She glanced in the mirror as strains of overly energetic children's songs filled the car. She groaned inwardly as she caught her reflection along side 3 children -- looking every bit the soccer mom.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said enthusiastically.
By the time she pulled off the ferry and turned towards Mark and Sydney’s house she was singing along with the CD (under her breath of course) and praising Tuck on his reading skills. The twins were fast asleep.
Sydney answered Tuck’s persistent ringing of her doorbell to find Meredith holding both drowsy twins cuddled against her chest and faint tears in her eyes.
Sydney took Roxie from Meredith’s arms and watched her apprehensively,
Meredith brushed her fingers through Bea’s ponytail, “I’m okay. They’re just so …”
“I need ta pee,” Tuck squirmed from one foot to the other.
Sydney laughed, momentarily forgetting Meredith, “Well then we better get you to a toilet,” she ushered Tuck inside leaving Meredith to wander in on her own.
Meredith walked slowly, rubbing Bea’s back and whispering to her.
Derek was sitting at the kitchen table when she entered, rumpled and gripping his black coffee like it was his lifeline.
The air between them was charged as Meredith and Derek locked eyes over the baby’s head.
“Derek…” she said softly.
Derek stood abruptly.
“Derek,” Meredith spoke again, stronger this time.
Derek simply stared at her, holding a baby so naturally. The guilt was suffocating.
He walked out the door and didn’t look back.
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Around 2 in the afternoon
I HATE DEREK SHEPHERD.
HATE. HATE. HATE.
HATE. HATE. HATE.
HATE. HATE. HATE.
HATE!
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“Screw him!”
Adrienne stood to the side and allowed Meredith to storm into her hotel suite, Tuck following meekly behind her. “Your boyfriends are getting kinda young don’t you think? I know it seemed to work for Addison, but hers were… well, legal.”
“I don’t have the patience for your snark right now!” Meredith exclaimed in rage, “He just walked out on me! No. Ran. He ran out on me! Like I was the one that did something to OFFEND HIM! He cheated on me! He was the one screwing--”
“Meredith!” Adrienne cut in, “Tuck,” she reminded her.
“Sorry,” Meredith’s voice cracked, “Sorry, I’m just… I just-- I need a time out.”
Adrienne laughed at her kid censored terminology, “I’ll call Ruby and see if she can take the kids for the afternoon.“
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About 2:35 in the afternoon.
I know that Adrienne’s stupid rules for ‘staying sane’ state that I should never say ‘what if’, but seriously? SERIOUSLY? Her rules are retarded. I was standing there holding a baby -- a baby that is the EXACT SAME AGE as our daughter -- and he just walks out on me! What if that HAD been OUR daughter I was holding. What if Julie had lived? Would he still have walked out on me? What if I hadn’t found out that he was screwing her right under my nose, would he have eventually left me, or would he have just carried on not caring that he was making a fool out of me. What if he left? I couldn’t have taken care of her on my own. She’s a whole PERSON that needs to be cared for. I can’t be responsible for a whole PERSON all by myself. I’ll screw up. I will cause irreversible damage to a child left in my care.
When you stare blankly into space then things become clearer. It’s ironic that unfocusing brings things into focus.
I wouldn’t have screwed her up. I loved her to much to screw her up. I won’t cause irreversible damage. I can’t. Because I’m a mother, a real mother. Not a doctor who’s a mother, but a mother who happens to spend her day’s as a doctor. Julie changed me and made me stronger. I don’t need Derek anymore.
Derek changed me too. I thought he made me weak and dependent. But he made me want things that I never wanted before -- a family and a home and Julie. Those things made me stronger, they made me feel connected to other people when I was so used to being alone. I thought that being independent meant that I didn’t need people. I need people, but I don’t need to depend on them to make me happy. I depended on Derek when I should have depended on myself. If Derek left me with Julie we would have been okay, we would have been happy together because we would have loved each other unconditionally.
Derek and I love each other with conditions, and I can’t live up to his. He wants me to make him not love Addison, and I can’t do that. I loved him on the condition that he take care of me and fight my demons -- and I can’t do that anymore. I need to do it myself.
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“Are there people with rocks at the hospital?” Tuck asked as he patiently coloured in his Landmarks of America colouring book while they waited for Adrienne to get off the phone with her eldest daughter and official childcare provider.
“Rocks?”
“Mama said people can get rocks inside them.”
“Oh,” Meredith nodded in understanding, “Kidney stones.”
“Yeah. Where are those people?”
“I don’t know if there is anyone with Kidney stones at the hospital today. Why?”
“I like rocks,” Tuck explained simply, “I have lots of rocks at home. I have one thats really smooth and round like a ball, and one that is all black with no other colours and one that Daddy says is glass, it’s all green and you can kinda see through it, and one that has orange lines all through it, and--”
“I had a pet rock once,” Meredith spoke over him, he didn’t mind and never stopped talking. Meredith doodled in the corner of her journal which she had dug out of her purse.
“They are all in a box and I really want a rock from a person.”
“Really? Why?” Meredith half listened to Tuck as she wrote out her scattered thought one or two words at a time.
“-- and so I’m not allowed to have them in my room, not even when Daddy cleans them really really good. But Mama says that Kinney’s clean out your blood real good so that your blood isn’t intoxicated, so a Kinney rock would be real clean right? So I could keep it in my room.”.
“Right,” Meredith shrugged, she could see how that would make sense -- to a five year old. She jotted down a few more notes in her journal, maybe the simplicity of a five year old was just what she needed -- Adrienne was always encouraging her to try new venues in the vast world of therapeutics, but when it came right down to it Adrienne really just wanted to talk. And she was tired of talking about it.
“How do the Kinney rocks get into the people? And how do they get out?”
“Let’s go back to the hospital and we’ll find out. I bet we can even find one for you to take home.” She didn’t see the harm in giving a 5 year old a rock that passed through a human being’s urinary track. As far as five year olds went Meredith figured that an interest in kidney stones clearly revealed Bailey’s only child to be a genius. “Have you ever heard of Gall Stones?”
“No!” he exclaimed excitedly, jamming his colouring book into his bookbag, “This is so cool! You’re awesome!”
“Oh, you’ll really like those. They are really cool looking,” Meredith turned the page in her journal and wrote one last thing before closing it and leaving it in the center of the table for Adrienne. “Let’s go.”
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Derek walked across the grass taking care not to make any noise to disturb the peace of the graveyard.
“Hey.”
Derek winced at Meredith, sitting on the ground leaning against a nearby bench. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I watched you drive up. I thought if you saw me you’d turn around and leave.”
Derek didn’t deny it. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his lightweight jacket and let his eyes rest on the simple white plaque embedded in the earth.
“What did you bring her?”
Derek smiled in spite of himself and pulled a pair of tiny purple sneakers out of his pocket, “Mark bought the same ones for the twins--”
“But theirs are pink,” Meredith smiled.
“I thought you’d like the purple better.”
“I like the sparkles,” she looked at him quickly out of the corner of her eye but was careful not the make eye contact, “I love the locket you got her for her birthday. I took it home -- it’s in my jewelry box.”
“I was worried it would get lost in the snow before you got here.”
“We should have come together.”
Derek was silent.
“We weren’t okay were we? It had been awhile since we’d been okay.”
“Our daughter died, Mer.”
“But before that.”
“We were fine -- you were fine -- I wasn’t fine, but together we were fine.”
She winced, but didn’t dwell, “I brought her a book. She’s probably have ruined the pages, but I couldn’t find a board-book version for her.”
“Good Night Moon,” Derek smiled “She has so many books. I spend most visits reading to her.”
“I know,” Meredith smiled too, “I -- You found a board copy of I Love You, Forever, I looked all over town for that. It’s in her nursery at home.”
“I was in Connecticut visiting my mom a few months ago.”
“Would it be different if she’d lived?”
“Yes,” Derek said without hesitation, but with an edge of sadness.
“We would’ve been happy, wouldn’t we.”
“Yes.” Derek sighed, “I was a better man when I was her father.”
Meredith stood slowly, her eyes locked on the grave, “I’m happier being her mother.”
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Adrienne sipped her tea slowly as she read through final entries in Meredith’s journal. She’d been surprised to see that Meredith had left it, deliberately open to the first page. She set her teacup on the nightstand and readjusted her blankets over her legs. She was absorbed in Meredith’s personal reflections written in a protectively detached tone.
She could have a best seller if Meredith choose to publish.
Adrienne flipped to the last page, empty except for one sentence written in neat block letters in the center:
I’m going to have a baby.
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I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing here, but this is the end of the section. I wanted to do more with Addek, but I couldn’t go any further with Meredith without it being weird, and just dropping Meredith and making it all about Addek would have interrupted some weird flow that only I would have noticed. But hopefully now that I have decided on this course of action writing the next section won’t be as hard as writing this chapter.
So for review, which you know I want, I’d like you to tell me with characters you are most interested in keeping up with… say for an epilogue.
REVIEW.