Searching for a Seattle Sky (2/10)
Title: Searching for a Seattle Sky
Author: chicleeblair
Rating: PG
Summary: During the turmoil of trying for a baby, adopting Zola and nearly tearing apart her marriage, Meredith forgot her fears about becoming a mother. Now she remembers, and Lexie’s the only one who can help rid her of them for good.
Pairings: Meredith/Derek, Mark/Lexie
Thanks literary_critic to for beta, waltzmatildah for the fanmix and onlywordsnow for the fanart!
Written for the ga_fanfic Big Bang:
Fanmix
Fan Art:
In Boston, Meredith had been the only one of her friends who loved the intermittent rains. And, as paradoxically as ever, she hated thunderstorms. Those sent her to the back of the closet, lost in the memory of warm, strong arms around her-one of only a few non-repressed memories of her father. On the other hand, the pitter-patter of little raindrops on the window could combat her usual insomnia.
She wondered if Zola would be the same way, but she wouldn’t find out this first night. The April sky above Seattle was clearer than she’d ever seen it. Funny, how she now realized it was the Seattle skyline she’d searched for all over the world. Also funny how on this night, the one that would define the rest of her life, it was not behaving as a Seattle sky should.
“You probably won’t like the rain, huh Zola?”
Zola watched her lips move through half-open eyes, and Meredith smiled as she watched her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks. The baby’s weight had become comforting in the few hours since she’d taken her out of the hospital crib for the last time. “I don’t think it rains much in Malawi. But you’re lucky. You’re so little now. You won’t remember. You won’t always be looking for what’s missing. At least, I hope you won’t. I hope we can give you…well…as much as possible.”
She didn’t say “it all.” Meredith may have learned to believe she could have much more than she ever thought she deserved, but she’d never have it all, as proven by the fact that her husband wouldn’t answer his phone.
She wouldn’t admit it, but she was really glad she’d agreed to the legal-marriage thing. Whatever had happened, she still had the right to call him her husband.
The door slammed downstairs, and Zola shrieked loudly in her ear. Meredith fought the urge to shoot to her feet. It was almost two in the morning, and she’d given up hoping for Derek.
Really. She had.
Also, she didn’t want him to see her with Zola and then be rendered unable to have the conversation they needed to have. They couldn’t fake it for the baby. They needed to work through things. But she’d barely thought this before Zola started to whimper, and Meredith realized again how out of her league she was. If it was Derek, he could help her, and they’d talk after Zola slept. Or after she slept.
God. Sleep would be so freaking good. Her eyelids felt heavier than they normally did after a forty-eight hour shift, and she’d only been on for twelve. Each of those had felt like four, though, so maybe it worked out.
“Okay, Zola. Let’s go see who’s home. Maybe it’s April. She will be my boss by the time they let me go back to work, so try not to keep her awake too much, okay?”
Her voice wavered while she climbed over the bags she’d dropped on the floor, but Zola’s whimpering eased a little. Maybe she just needed to be reminded she wasn’t alone in the dark. Meredith knew that feeling.
“Oh my God, I’m surrounded by babies,” the new arrival said when Meredith peeked out of the bedroom door. Lexie shook her head opened the door to the attic. Then she glanced back over her shoulder. “Wait, what am I saying? Is that…? Oh my God! You got Zola!”
At the sound of her name said so loudly, Zola obviously felt she had to compete in the volume contest. “It’s temporary,” Meredith said over the sudden noise burst. “Temporary custody.”
“Until the adoption gets finalized, right? That’s amazing! Is Derek…?” Meredith pressed her lips firmly together, and her emotion must have shown on her face, because Lexie’s eyes went wide in the way they always did when she knew she’d said too much.
“He’s-,” Meredith started, but Zola saved her from having to answer. Unfortunately, she saved her by switching her whimpers into a full-fledged cry. “Shh, Zola. What is it?” she crooned, wishing the baby could talk back. It’d be easier when she could say what she wanted. Assuming she didn’t have the same issues explaining these needs as her moth-as Meredith did.
“Is she dirty?”
“No, I just changed her. She may be hungry. Her bottles are in my room,” Zola interrupted her with a wail and stuck her fingers in Meredith’s face as if to remind her that she was the one to whom attention should be paid.
“I’ll get them. Meet me downstairs. We’ll take care of you, Zola.”
Meredith’s chest relaxed a little at the way Lexie said ‘we.’ She didn’t want to be alone in the dark any more than Zola did. Lexie ducked into the darkened room, and Meredith reached for the stair railing. She had to admit that though she’d hoped Derek would be the one to come through the door, she didn’t object to the person who’d actually showed up.
She went through the dining room to get to the kitchen, to give Cristina the chance to ignore them if she wanted to. She needed to talk to her, to remind her she’d made the right choice, but first she had to calm Zola down. Zola had to come first.
Step number one to not becoming her mother.
Lexie reappeared before she could fall too far down that rabbit hole. “Okay. Have the bottle. Do you have any stipulations about how I heat it? Molly was all into heating the formula, not the plastic, but I know some moms don’t care and-.”
“Lexie! We need to feed the baby. End of story.”
“Right.” Lexie slammed the microwave door.
Meredith sank into a kitchen chair, rubbing circles on Zola’s back. “Food’s coming. We’ve got this, okay? You and I. And Lexie. Lexie’s gonna help us out. I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lexie said after the microwave beeped. “You’ve always been pretty good with kids.” She checked the temperature of the bottle with her hand. Would Meredith have remembered to do that? Of course she would. She’d fed babies before.
But would she?
“Always?” she said, distractedly touching the bottle to Zola’s lips to make her suck. The milky formula must have been comforting to her-something familiar somewhere so strange. Meredith had to admit, the scent made her realize all over again that this baby was in her kitchen and would be in her kitchen, hopefully, for a long time.
Lexie braced herself against the counter and got the caught-in-the-headlights look she’d freaking perfected. Meredith didn’t know why, and she didn’t have time to figure out. She could only let out a sigh of relief as Zola latched onto the bottle, and immediately wrapped her fist around Meredith’s index finger.
“Oh, you know, in the hospital-.” The door opening again cut her off. Meredith’s heart sped up for the split second before she heard Jackson yell, “Why are all the lights on?”
“I feel like I’m back at Joe’s, wanting him to pick me,” Meredith murmured to Zola, whose wide eyes made her even easier to ramble at than the sympathetic bartender. “But he did pick me. He did. He picked us,” she added to the baby, thinking of the hundred-watt smile Derek had worn as his lips formed the words “let’s adopt her.”
“You okay?” Lexie asked, sitting down next. She’d begun attempting an answer when Jackson came in, armed with a fast-food bag. In any other life, this would have been unusual at two am.
“I will be.” For once, she thought it might be true. Zola’s steady gaze made it really damn hard to be glass (or bottle) half-empty. “We will be.”
Jackson spun a chair around and sat backward in it, biting into his hamburger in the same motion. “There’s a baby in here.” A drop of ketchup fell onto the table and he lapped it up with a finger. More life in five minutes than the table had seen for the twenty years before she took the house over. “That’s a baby, right?”
“That is what they call a person under the age of two,” a fourth voice snapped.
Meredith raised her eyes to Cristina who stood in the doorway of the kitchen. People who linger in doorways are coming from nowhere and going nowhere, her mother’s voice said in her head. God, Ellis Grey could be so wrong sometimes. Cristina had come so far, and had so far to go. “Mer, do you have any olives?”
“Yeah. Derek…” She swallowed, wishing that saying his name didn’t make her eyes sting. “We had something with olives the other night.” To cover the awkward silence, she shifted Zola to her shoulder and began patting her back steadily. After Cristina sat down, Meredith surveyed the table. So many different people had sat here since the day she first allowed George and Izzie to move in. Always collecting strays, her mother had said the millions of times she let friends having a tough time crash in their guest room.
It’d served her pretty well in the end she figured, right before Zola let out a burp that shouldn’t have come from someone so tiny. Jackson guffawed, Lexie grinned widely and Meredith even saw a tiny smile emerge on Cristina’s lips before she popped an olive between them.
The warm light of the kitchen seemed to negate the cold darkness outside, took them away from the devastation of the day to the safety of the room where Izzie had once baked endless cakes to soothe their feelings after awful shifts, and George had fixed coffee for Meredith on mornings when she could barely lift her head up to thank him.
How weird that these memories felt safer to her than the ones of being protected from thunderstorms by her father.
A few minutes later, Zola’s eyes began to close. Meredith hoped this meant she felt safe in the kitchen too.
“Can I put her down?” Lexie cut her eyes pointedly at Cristina. She must have been able to sense something was wrong.
She nodded. Lexie clapped her hand twice in front of Zola. “Let’s go sleepy, baby girl,” she cooed.
Zola’s grip on Meredith’s finger took a moment to break, and Meredith’s heart warmed even as her arms grew cold and empty.
“This is really bad timing,” she said to Cristina once Lexie had gone upstairs, trailed by Jackson. “I’m sorry.”
Cristina balled her hands in front of her and spoke to them instead of Meredith. The hunch of her spine reminded Meredith of the defeat she’d seen in her after the shooting. How much changed in a year. How much didn’t. “Please. Don’t. It’s not your fault. It’s…” She pressed her hands firmly against her forehead, but Meredith saw the single tear drop falling down her cheek. The rain she’d wished for earlier in the night.
Meredith reached up and gripped Cristina’s hand, tightly with her own. Cristina’s eyes were full of pain, and a tinge of self-loathing. Meredith only recognized it because she’d seen it in her own eyes.
“I made him tell me he loved me first. He says he loves me. But if he loved me, wouldn’t he get me? It’s just like Burke.”
The name made Meredith flash back to the day, almost exactly three years ago, when she’d held Cristina-held her together-after the failed wedding.
“It’s not like Burke,” she said now. “It can’t be like Burke, because not getting us… it can’t mean they don’t love us.” Not after the look Derek had given her, like he just didn’t comprehend her and he never would. That couldn’t just be it. “And he does get you…mostly. This…about this…”
Her tongue stuck to her dry lips as she faltered. She didn’t know about this. She didn’t know what it would have been like if she hadn’t wanted kids and Derek had. She’d wanted kids with him-specifically with him-from the start, and he’d felt the same.
Until now.
So, she didn’t know.
“Doesn’t that make it worse?” Cristina said.
“I don’t know. But I know we’ll get through this.” She forced a smile. “After all, I made it through my first night with a baby. Meredith Grey, with a baby. Who’d have thought?” Not Derek, apparently.
“Me,” two voices said at once. Cristina to her left, and in the doorway Lexie. “Meredith,” Lexie added, holding something out on her palm. At first Meredith thought it was a baby monitor, until she remembered she didn’t have one of those.
Then she saw it was her Blackberry.
One missed call: Derek Shepherd (Cell).
***
“Do you want me to take Zola upstairs so you guys can fight?” Lexie asked, watching her sister pace the living room with Zola in her arms. It was after three in the morning. Zola had slept for about fifteen minutes, but her hatred of the port-a-crib had shown through again. A few minutes earlier, Meredith had directed Cristina to Alex’s empty room. Lexie heard the linen closet open and shut. (Would her first resident now be her roommate? Stranger things had happened in the world of Seattle Grace.)
Meredith shook her head. The pallor of her face reminded Lexie of the time Derek’s mom had visited. (Of course, now the baby she clutched could have been her life vest, rather than a bottle of tequila). Ever since Lexie had met Meredith, she’d wanted to show her family didn’t have to be a scary thing. At the moment, Shepherd wasn’t helping her with this goal.
The slam of a car door made Meredith jump. Zola made a tiny chirping noise, and Lexie wondered if Meredith knew her shoulders relaxed at the sound.
Lexie started to stand up when she heard keys in the doorknob, but Meredith shot her hand out. “Stay there. I don’t want… I can’t fight with him right now.”
She sounded so tired. Lexie remembered the exhaustion that had overcome her after the shooting. This was, in a way, Meredith needing her to sit by her bedside.
Shepherd’s voice (she was reluctant to admit) sounded equally as tired. “Meredith?”
The space between the foyer and the door of the living room seemed to have had all the air sucked out of it by a powerful vacuum. The expression on his face when he saw his wife holding Zola belonged to a private world Lexie didn’t belong in. She wasn’t sure what it meant that she’d been invited to join.
“Do you want to take her, Derek?” Meredith held the baby out. “In case my horrible mother vibes are contaminating her already?”
Shepherd’s eyes widened, and then settled into a saddened squint. Lexie wasn’t sure this matched the pain she heard underneath Meredith’s words. “No… I want to see you holding her. I… God, Mer. This is why you were calling?”
“I heard you say you needed space. I wasn’t so needy that I couldn’t give you that. I just thought you’d have wanted to be here when I brought her home.”
“I do. I would have. I can’t believe I missed it.” He stepped further into the room, and Meredith took a tiny step backward. Lexie reached out to pull a shopping bag full of baby things out of her way.
“Well. You did. You ran Derek. You told me I’d be a bad mother, and you ran. After we promised we wouldn’t. Like you did the night you called me a lemon and hit your mother’s wedding rings into the forest. Like-Derek?”
Lexie had been watching the intent expression on Meredith’s face, the way she kept her hand firmly planted on Zola’s back and jiggled the baby as she talked to keep her from fussing. At the concerned last word, Lexie turned to her brother-in-law (no longer just post-it-in-law). Tears streamed down his face.
“Der?” Meredith’s voice had softened so much it could have belonged to someone else, and Lexie saw the definitive difference between herself and her sister. She thought he deserved to cry. She’d seen the heartbroken look on Meredith’s face when his name was mentioned at the table. But Meredith went over to him, and put a gentle hand on his cheek. If her ability to put her own pain aside to heal someone else’s wasn’t the definition of a good mother, Lexie wasn’t sure what was.
“What is it?” Meredith asked, so, so gently.
“My mother. She had a heart attack. Kath called me an hour ago.” The right before I called you, was silent but Lexie saw Meredith’s hand tense.
“Oh my God. Is she…will she be…?”
“She’s in the hospital right now, in critical condition. I’m going to fly out as soon as I can.”
“You mean we are. Derek… I’ll go with you…that is…unless you don’t want me to?”
Derek exhaled, a sharp sound like the way Lexie remembered him breathing after the bullet was removed from his chest. “I do. Of course I do. But Zola… I don’t want her flying yet. It’s confusing enough for an infant, but it’s too soon after her surgery and she doesn’t need another new location.”
Meredith stepped away from him again, folding her hand into a fist. Lexie imagined her smacking it right into Derek’s face, but she didn’t. She never would. “Right. I guess a good mother would have thought of all that.”
“Meredith…”
“Here. Take her. I’ll go book a flight. You need one right?”
Derek nodded and sank into a nearby armchair. Meredith deposited Zola in his arms, but it took an additional second for the baby to let go of her finger. “Stay with Derek, Zola,” Meredith said. “He’s got you.”
Lexie watched Derek’s expression while this exchange went on, but she didn’t have the training at reading his expressions the way Meredith did. “Does Mark know?” she asked.
Derek’s eyes didn’t leave Zola’s face. “I left him a message. He’ll probably want to go out there. She-.”
“I know. She was a mother to him too; a good mother, one who took in people who needed to be taken care of… not unlike Meredith.”
Lexie left the room without waiting for a response, and knocked gently on the door of the study. Meredith didn’t respond. Lexie pushed it open to find her sister staring intently at the rotating hourglass on her computer screen. “Is William Shatner finding you the best deal for your travel needs?” Meredith barely moved at the noise. Lexie sighed and came all the way into the room. “Your husband is an ass.”
“Yeah. But he might be right. What if being a bad mother is genetic? Hell, Zola’s up at three-thirty in the morning. That’s strike one. Derek will come back from bonding with his happy, functioning family and realize again what a horrible person he married. I sympathize with serial killers. I put my hand in body cavity with a bomb. I ruined his trial. Clearly, there is something pathologically wrong with my brain, and I’ll pass it on to Zola.”
“Stop it!” Lexie exclaimed, louder than she’d intended.
Meredith paused midway through entering a credit card number. “What?”
Lexie came over and put her hand on Meredith’s wrist. “You’re listing off all the things I admire about you. You’re brave, you care about people and you see other perspectives. The fact that you’re so worried about not being your mother means you won’t be. Ellis Grey wouldn’t have sat by me for fifty hours while I slept. Ellis Grey wouldn’t have given my dad her liver. She wouldn’t even give him his daughter.”
Meredith’s mouth relaxed a little, and she exhaled shakily. “I can’t imagine that. Every time I see him with her it takes my breath away.”
“I don’t think your mother ever stopped long enough for her breath to be taken away.”
“Not by me, anyway,” Meredith said, and then pressed the mouse again. The mechanical noise of the printer spitting out Derek’s travel itinerary cut into Lexie’s thoughts, and Meredith had slipped out the door before she could come up with a response.
Prologue|| Table of Contents|| Part Two
Author: chicleeblair
Rating: PG
Summary: During the turmoil of trying for a baby, adopting Zola and nearly tearing apart her marriage, Meredith forgot her fears about becoming a mother. Now she remembers, and Lexie’s the only one who can help rid her of them for good.
Pairings: Meredith/Derek, Mark/Lexie
Thanks literary_critic to for beta, waltzmatildah for the fanmix and onlywordsnow for the fanart!
Written for the ga_fanfic Big Bang:
Fanmix
Fan Art:
In Boston, Meredith had been the only one of her friends who loved the intermittent rains. And, as paradoxically as ever, she hated thunderstorms. Those sent her to the back of the closet, lost in the memory of warm, strong arms around her-one of only a few non-repressed memories of her father. On the other hand, the pitter-patter of little raindrops on the window could combat her usual insomnia.
She wondered if Zola would be the same way, but she wouldn’t find out this first night. The April sky above Seattle was clearer than she’d ever seen it. Funny, how she now realized it was the Seattle skyline she’d searched for all over the world. Also funny how on this night, the one that would define the rest of her life, it was not behaving as a Seattle sky should.
“You probably won’t like the rain, huh Zola?”
Zola watched her lips move through half-open eyes, and Meredith smiled as she watched her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks. The baby’s weight had become comforting in the few hours since she’d taken her out of the hospital crib for the last time. “I don’t think it rains much in Malawi. But you’re lucky. You’re so little now. You won’t remember. You won’t always be looking for what’s missing. At least, I hope you won’t. I hope we can give you…well…as much as possible.”
She didn’t say “it all.” Meredith may have learned to believe she could have much more than she ever thought she deserved, but she’d never have it all, as proven by the fact that her husband wouldn’t answer his phone.
She wouldn’t admit it, but she was really glad she’d agreed to the legal-marriage thing. Whatever had happened, she still had the right to call him her husband.
The door slammed downstairs, and Zola shrieked loudly in her ear. Meredith fought the urge to shoot to her feet. It was almost two in the morning, and she’d given up hoping for Derek.
Really. She had.
Also, she didn’t want him to see her with Zola and then be rendered unable to have the conversation they needed to have. They couldn’t fake it for the baby. They needed to work through things. But she’d barely thought this before Zola started to whimper, and Meredith realized again how out of her league she was. If it was Derek, he could help her, and they’d talk after Zola slept. Or after she slept.
God. Sleep would be so freaking good. Her eyelids felt heavier than they normally did after a forty-eight hour shift, and she’d only been on for twelve. Each of those had felt like four, though, so maybe it worked out.
“Okay, Zola. Let’s go see who’s home. Maybe it’s April. She will be my boss by the time they let me go back to work, so try not to keep her awake too much, okay?”
Her voice wavered while she climbed over the bags she’d dropped on the floor, but Zola’s whimpering eased a little. Maybe she just needed to be reminded she wasn’t alone in the dark. Meredith knew that feeling.
“Oh my God, I’m surrounded by babies,” the new arrival said when Meredith peeked out of the bedroom door. Lexie shook her head opened the door to the attic. Then she glanced back over her shoulder. “Wait, what am I saying? Is that…? Oh my God! You got Zola!”
At the sound of her name said so loudly, Zola obviously felt she had to compete in the volume contest. “It’s temporary,” Meredith said over the sudden noise burst. “Temporary custody.”
“Until the adoption gets finalized, right? That’s amazing! Is Derek…?” Meredith pressed her lips firmly together, and her emotion must have shown on her face, because Lexie’s eyes went wide in the way they always did when she knew she’d said too much.
“He’s-,” Meredith started, but Zola saved her from having to answer. Unfortunately, she saved her by switching her whimpers into a full-fledged cry. “Shh, Zola. What is it?” she crooned, wishing the baby could talk back. It’d be easier when she could say what she wanted. Assuming she didn’t have the same issues explaining these needs as her moth-as Meredith did.
“Is she dirty?”
“No, I just changed her. She may be hungry. Her bottles are in my room,” Zola interrupted her with a wail and stuck her fingers in Meredith’s face as if to remind her that she was the one to whom attention should be paid.
“I’ll get them. Meet me downstairs. We’ll take care of you, Zola.”
Meredith’s chest relaxed a little at the way Lexie said ‘we.’ She didn’t want to be alone in the dark any more than Zola did. Lexie ducked into the darkened room, and Meredith reached for the stair railing. She had to admit that though she’d hoped Derek would be the one to come through the door, she didn’t object to the person who’d actually showed up.
She went through the dining room to get to the kitchen, to give Cristina the chance to ignore them if she wanted to. She needed to talk to her, to remind her she’d made the right choice, but first she had to calm Zola down. Zola had to come first.
Step number one to not becoming her mother.
Lexie reappeared before she could fall too far down that rabbit hole. “Okay. Have the bottle. Do you have any stipulations about how I heat it? Molly was all into heating the formula, not the plastic, but I know some moms don’t care and-.”
“Lexie! We need to feed the baby. End of story.”
“Right.” Lexie slammed the microwave door.
Meredith sank into a kitchen chair, rubbing circles on Zola’s back. “Food’s coming. We’ve got this, okay? You and I. And Lexie. Lexie’s gonna help us out. I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lexie said after the microwave beeped. “You’ve always been pretty good with kids.” She checked the temperature of the bottle with her hand. Would Meredith have remembered to do that? Of course she would. She’d fed babies before.
But would she?
“Always?” she said, distractedly touching the bottle to Zola’s lips to make her suck. The milky formula must have been comforting to her-something familiar somewhere so strange. Meredith had to admit, the scent made her realize all over again that this baby was in her kitchen and would be in her kitchen, hopefully, for a long time.
Lexie braced herself against the counter and got the caught-in-the-headlights look she’d freaking perfected. Meredith didn’t know why, and she didn’t have time to figure out. She could only let out a sigh of relief as Zola latched onto the bottle, and immediately wrapped her fist around Meredith’s index finger.
“Oh, you know, in the hospital-.” The door opening again cut her off. Meredith’s heart sped up for the split second before she heard Jackson yell, “Why are all the lights on?”
“I feel like I’m back at Joe’s, wanting him to pick me,” Meredith murmured to Zola, whose wide eyes made her even easier to ramble at than the sympathetic bartender. “But he did pick me. He did. He picked us,” she added to the baby, thinking of the hundred-watt smile Derek had worn as his lips formed the words “let’s adopt her.”
“You okay?” Lexie asked, sitting down next. She’d begun attempting an answer when Jackson came in, armed with a fast-food bag. In any other life, this would have been unusual at two am.
“I will be.” For once, she thought it might be true. Zola’s steady gaze made it really damn hard to be glass (or bottle) half-empty. “We will be.”
Jackson spun a chair around and sat backward in it, biting into his hamburger in the same motion. “There’s a baby in here.” A drop of ketchup fell onto the table and he lapped it up with a finger. More life in five minutes than the table had seen for the twenty years before she took the house over. “That’s a baby, right?”
“That is what they call a person under the age of two,” a fourth voice snapped.
Meredith raised her eyes to Cristina who stood in the doorway of the kitchen. People who linger in doorways are coming from nowhere and going nowhere, her mother’s voice said in her head. God, Ellis Grey could be so wrong sometimes. Cristina had come so far, and had so far to go. “Mer, do you have any olives?”
“Yeah. Derek…” She swallowed, wishing that saying his name didn’t make her eyes sting. “We had something with olives the other night.” To cover the awkward silence, she shifted Zola to her shoulder and began patting her back steadily. After Cristina sat down, Meredith surveyed the table. So many different people had sat here since the day she first allowed George and Izzie to move in. Always collecting strays, her mother had said the millions of times she let friends having a tough time crash in their guest room.
It’d served her pretty well in the end she figured, right before Zola let out a burp that shouldn’t have come from someone so tiny. Jackson guffawed, Lexie grinned widely and Meredith even saw a tiny smile emerge on Cristina’s lips before she popped an olive between them.
The warm light of the kitchen seemed to negate the cold darkness outside, took them away from the devastation of the day to the safety of the room where Izzie had once baked endless cakes to soothe their feelings after awful shifts, and George had fixed coffee for Meredith on mornings when she could barely lift her head up to thank him.
How weird that these memories felt safer to her than the ones of being protected from thunderstorms by her father.
A few minutes later, Zola’s eyes began to close. Meredith hoped this meant she felt safe in the kitchen too.
“Can I put her down?” Lexie cut her eyes pointedly at Cristina. She must have been able to sense something was wrong.
She nodded. Lexie clapped her hand twice in front of Zola. “Let’s go sleepy, baby girl,” she cooed.
Zola’s grip on Meredith’s finger took a moment to break, and Meredith’s heart warmed even as her arms grew cold and empty.
“This is really bad timing,” she said to Cristina once Lexie had gone upstairs, trailed by Jackson. “I’m sorry.”
Cristina balled her hands in front of her and spoke to them instead of Meredith. The hunch of her spine reminded Meredith of the defeat she’d seen in her after the shooting. How much changed in a year. How much didn’t. “Please. Don’t. It’s not your fault. It’s…” She pressed her hands firmly against her forehead, but Meredith saw the single tear drop falling down her cheek. The rain she’d wished for earlier in the night.
Meredith reached up and gripped Cristina’s hand, tightly with her own. Cristina’s eyes were full of pain, and a tinge of self-loathing. Meredith only recognized it because she’d seen it in her own eyes.
“I made him tell me he loved me first. He says he loves me. But if he loved me, wouldn’t he get me? It’s just like Burke.”
The name made Meredith flash back to the day, almost exactly three years ago, when she’d held Cristina-held her together-after the failed wedding.
“It’s not like Burke,” she said now. “It can’t be like Burke, because not getting us… it can’t mean they don’t love us.” Not after the look Derek had given her, like he just didn’t comprehend her and he never would. That couldn’t just be it. “And he does get you…mostly. This…about this…”
Her tongue stuck to her dry lips as she faltered. She didn’t know about this. She didn’t know what it would have been like if she hadn’t wanted kids and Derek had. She’d wanted kids with him-specifically with him-from the start, and he’d felt the same.
Until now.
So, she didn’t know.
“Doesn’t that make it worse?” Cristina said.
“I don’t know. But I know we’ll get through this.” She forced a smile. “After all, I made it through my first night with a baby. Meredith Grey, with a baby. Who’d have thought?” Not Derek, apparently.
“Me,” two voices said at once. Cristina to her left, and in the doorway Lexie. “Meredith,” Lexie added, holding something out on her palm. At first Meredith thought it was a baby monitor, until she remembered she didn’t have one of those.
Then she saw it was her Blackberry.
One missed call: Derek Shepherd (Cell).
***
“Do you want me to take Zola upstairs so you guys can fight?” Lexie asked, watching her sister pace the living room with Zola in her arms. It was after three in the morning. Zola had slept for about fifteen minutes, but her hatred of the port-a-crib had shown through again. A few minutes earlier, Meredith had directed Cristina to Alex’s empty room. Lexie heard the linen closet open and shut. (Would her first resident now be her roommate? Stranger things had happened in the world of Seattle Grace.)
Meredith shook her head. The pallor of her face reminded Lexie of the time Derek’s mom had visited. (Of course, now the baby she clutched could have been her life vest, rather than a bottle of tequila). Ever since Lexie had met Meredith, she’d wanted to show her family didn’t have to be a scary thing. At the moment, Shepherd wasn’t helping her with this goal.
The slam of a car door made Meredith jump. Zola made a tiny chirping noise, and Lexie wondered if Meredith knew her shoulders relaxed at the sound.
Lexie started to stand up when she heard keys in the doorknob, but Meredith shot her hand out. “Stay there. I don’t want… I can’t fight with him right now.”
She sounded so tired. Lexie remembered the exhaustion that had overcome her after the shooting. This was, in a way, Meredith needing her to sit by her bedside.
Shepherd’s voice (she was reluctant to admit) sounded equally as tired. “Meredith?”
The space between the foyer and the door of the living room seemed to have had all the air sucked out of it by a powerful vacuum. The expression on his face when he saw his wife holding Zola belonged to a private world Lexie didn’t belong in. She wasn’t sure what it meant that she’d been invited to join.
“Do you want to take her, Derek?” Meredith held the baby out. “In case my horrible mother vibes are contaminating her already?”
Shepherd’s eyes widened, and then settled into a saddened squint. Lexie wasn’t sure this matched the pain she heard underneath Meredith’s words. “No… I want to see you holding her. I… God, Mer. This is why you were calling?”
“I heard you say you needed space. I wasn’t so needy that I couldn’t give you that. I just thought you’d have wanted to be here when I brought her home.”
“I do. I would have. I can’t believe I missed it.” He stepped further into the room, and Meredith took a tiny step backward. Lexie reached out to pull a shopping bag full of baby things out of her way.
“Well. You did. You ran Derek. You told me I’d be a bad mother, and you ran. After we promised we wouldn’t. Like you did the night you called me a lemon and hit your mother’s wedding rings into the forest. Like-Derek?”
Lexie had been watching the intent expression on Meredith’s face, the way she kept her hand firmly planted on Zola’s back and jiggled the baby as she talked to keep her from fussing. At the concerned last word, Lexie turned to her brother-in-law (no longer just post-it-in-law). Tears streamed down his face.
“Der?” Meredith’s voice had softened so much it could have belonged to someone else, and Lexie saw the definitive difference between herself and her sister. She thought he deserved to cry. She’d seen the heartbroken look on Meredith’s face when his name was mentioned at the table. But Meredith went over to him, and put a gentle hand on his cheek. If her ability to put her own pain aside to heal someone else’s wasn’t the definition of a good mother, Lexie wasn’t sure what was.
“What is it?” Meredith asked, so, so gently.
“My mother. She had a heart attack. Kath called me an hour ago.” The right before I called you, was silent but Lexie saw Meredith’s hand tense.
“Oh my God. Is she…will she be…?”
“She’s in the hospital right now, in critical condition. I’m going to fly out as soon as I can.”
“You mean we are. Derek… I’ll go with you…that is…unless you don’t want me to?”
Derek exhaled, a sharp sound like the way Lexie remembered him breathing after the bullet was removed from his chest. “I do. Of course I do. But Zola… I don’t want her flying yet. It’s confusing enough for an infant, but it’s too soon after her surgery and she doesn’t need another new location.”
Meredith stepped away from him again, folding her hand into a fist. Lexie imagined her smacking it right into Derek’s face, but she didn’t. She never would. “Right. I guess a good mother would have thought of all that.”
“Meredith…”
“Here. Take her. I’ll go book a flight. You need one right?”
Derek nodded and sank into a nearby armchair. Meredith deposited Zola in his arms, but it took an additional second for the baby to let go of her finger. “Stay with Derek, Zola,” Meredith said. “He’s got you.”
Lexie watched Derek’s expression while this exchange went on, but she didn’t have the training at reading his expressions the way Meredith did. “Does Mark know?” she asked.
Derek’s eyes didn’t leave Zola’s face. “I left him a message. He’ll probably want to go out there. She-.”
“I know. She was a mother to him too; a good mother, one who took in people who needed to be taken care of… not unlike Meredith.”
Lexie left the room without waiting for a response, and knocked gently on the door of the study. Meredith didn’t respond. Lexie pushed it open to find her sister staring intently at the rotating hourglass on her computer screen. “Is William Shatner finding you the best deal for your travel needs?” Meredith barely moved at the noise. Lexie sighed and came all the way into the room. “Your husband is an ass.”
“Yeah. But he might be right. What if being a bad mother is genetic? Hell, Zola’s up at three-thirty in the morning. That’s strike one. Derek will come back from bonding with his happy, functioning family and realize again what a horrible person he married. I sympathize with serial killers. I put my hand in body cavity with a bomb. I ruined his trial. Clearly, there is something pathologically wrong with my brain, and I’ll pass it on to Zola.”
“Stop it!” Lexie exclaimed, louder than she’d intended.
Meredith paused midway through entering a credit card number. “What?”
Lexie came over and put her hand on Meredith’s wrist. “You’re listing off all the things I admire about you. You’re brave, you care about people and you see other perspectives. The fact that you’re so worried about not being your mother means you won’t be. Ellis Grey wouldn’t have sat by me for fifty hours while I slept. Ellis Grey wouldn’t have given my dad her liver. She wouldn’t even give him his daughter.”
Meredith’s mouth relaxed a little, and she exhaled shakily. “I can’t imagine that. Every time I see him with her it takes my breath away.”
“I don’t think your mother ever stopped long enough for her breath to be taken away.”
“Not by me, anyway,” Meredith said, and then pressed the mouse again. The mechanical noise of the printer spitting out Derek’s travel itinerary cut into Lexie’s thoughts, and Meredith had slipped out the door before she could come up with a response.
Prologue|| Table of Contents|| Part Two