Where Does the Good Go
According to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, when we're dying or have suffered a catastrophic loss, we move through five distinct stages of grief. The order might shift and we all express our loss in different ways, but the steps remain the same.It's been a while since Meredith's done this, standing in front of the bookshelf and carefully scanning row after
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Nothing tonight could have prepared George for hearing Izzie speaking as he was leaving the kitchen and he paused, pilfered pie-filled tupperware clutched between his hands, and listened.
You just did that because I have cancer. You didn't mean it.
He barely remembered setting the pie back on the counter, or moving into the rec room to take in Izzie -- not the Izzie he knew, but the Izzie from a future George was never too naive to admit would eventually happen -- on the projector screen until, suddenly, Denny was talking. And Izzie was talking back, as if he weren't dead, or she hadn't spent months mourning him. The confusion was enough to jolt George out of his trance, and he looked around until he saw Meredith.
She was real, at least, even though all the evidence said neither of them were, that their crappy, awful lives were nothing but entertainment. He really shouldn't have been surprised.
"Who's getting married?" was all he could manage to ask.
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It hurt, it actually, physically hurt, to see Izzie like this. The treatment might have been working so far, but it wasn't enough, wasn't what it could have been if they had caught the cancer sooner, if they'd had the foreknowledge Meredith had tried to give her. Even that, though, hadn't numbed her enough to stop the rest of the hurt, the inevitable flood of confusion that came with standing there and watching herself and Derek, standing in a church, talking about their own impending wedding. Talking about getting married. Her and Derek.
It had been terrifying, if absurd, when he joked about it on the pier the day she'd fallen in the water, every half-serious proposal he'd made during their relationship sending her into either petulance or a total freak-out. Now it was just kind of bewildering and a little painful. She didn't want it, but to hear herself saying things like I'm excited about the marriage was just too surreal to allow for any proper reaction.
"I'm the one getting married."
He deserved better, he deserved an explanation, but all she could do was stand and stare.
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Sure, Meredith and Sean seemed to be doing pretty well in the whole stable, long-term relationship thing, but George knew her. It would take her ages to be okay with getting married, if she ever was. Izzie being the happy bridesmaid, that George could understand.
That was barely half the question, and unimportant in the large scheme of things. George had better questions, such as why were they on TV where everyone could see, why Meredith was watching it, and why he couldn't look away, espeically when Callie appeared. As he made his way over to the nearest couch to sit down, he realized he'd given her less than a few moments thought in months -- and hadn't truly missed her until now.
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"I don't know, I don't know," she said again, and there it was, panic washing over her as she finally turned away from the screen to stare at George instead, wide-eyed. "Oh my god. Oh my god, I told you, he's going to show up here and think we're married. George, you missed it, you missed the part where I said marriage is exciting. I can't - what happened?"
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"Maybe you had a horrible accident and were never the same again," he suggested. It was weak, but the first thing that came into his mind because he was right there with her, just with a lot less freaking out. "I don't know, but just the idea of it is weirding me out a little."
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Except, of course, the part where she hadn't told him that they were, in fact, fictional characters living in some soap opera version of their lives, complete with happy music and dramatic scores as they went about trying to save lives.
"When were you going to tell me?"
He's quiet for the moment, saving the disappointment and anger for later. Because he knew, on some level, Meredith not telling him was the same as him not telling Izzie, when he had the chance. Staying quiet because they couldn't figure out the hows and whens of telling someone was something George was well-versed in.
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"I don't know," she admitted. "I'm sorry. George, I... I know I should have, I was going to, I just... didn't know how." There was never a good time. Or, at least, there was always a good excuse, a reason he didn't yet need to hear it.
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"You know, just, 'George, our lives are a TV show just like Buffy,' and it would have been fine. I-- you should have told me."
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Somewhere Izzie was dying, too sick almost to speak, and some future version of herself was whole and healed and getting married. These things were too much to handle, too much to tell. They shouldn't have known them, and still Meredith knew she couldn't stop watching, not completely.
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Maybe, if he calmed down and thought about it for a few seconds he'd understand and even feel the same way, but if Meredith didn't want to know these things about her future, then he saw no reason why she should be watching that crap.
Even if said crap was his own life.
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In fact, knowing she wasn't getting better was almost as bad as not knowing in the first place.
A familiar knot found its way back into George's chest, and he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes to try to keep some semblance of control over himself. "She's not okay and she's not - she has cancer, Meredith, what were we thinking? She's not going to be okay."
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Sitting beside him, she draped an arm over his shoulder, pulled him close against her. "We don't know," she said again. "People do recover, people survive and Izzie - Izzie's a fighter. They'll take care of her. They'll fix this. She's in better hands there."
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