Replaced By Everyday - Part 11
Title: Replaced By Everyday (11/?)
Author: scatteroflight
Rating: M
Summary: Meredith and Derek cope with the challenges of marriage and family. Season 4 future fic.
A golden light filled the bedroom, warming it and Derek’s eyelids until he opened them and turned his head, expecting to find the space beside him empty. But Meredith lay tucked against him, snoring softly. He breathed a sigh of relief and lifted his head, bending forward to kiss her shoulder. He lay beside her for a long time, listening to the sound of the street waking up outside the window, and to Meredith’s breathing. Finally, she scrunched up her nose and blinked awake. It took her a moment to wake up and when she noticed him watching her, she smiled tentatively.
“Hi,” he whispered, leaning forward again, this time to brush her lips with his.
“Morning,” Meredith mumbled sleepily. She turned slightly and buried her face in his chest. “What time is it?”
Derek turned his head to consult the alarm clock on the nightstand. “A little past eight,” he told her.
Meredith moaned softly.
“Did I wear you out?” he asked, smirking.
Meredith’s lips twitched. “I think it was the other way around.”
“Ah,” Derek conceded. “Maybe. Can we just say that it was mutual, though?”
“Do you have a reputation to uphold or something?” Meredith laughed.
“Mmm,” he answered noncommittally.
“Oh God,” Meredith groaned suddenly.
“What?” Derek asked, alarmed.
“Your mom.”
“What about her?”
“Well, she must have come in at some point. There’s no way that she didn’t hear anything.”
“She had Julie’s iPod,” Derek admitted.
Meredith’s eyes widened. “What?” she gasped.
He sighed. “When I went downstairs, she was there.”
“She knew?” Meredith asked, sitting up in bed. The top sheet fell away from her, leaving her exposed to him. He grinned at the sight of her, naked beside him.
“Stop it,” she hissed, yanking up the covers. “You cannot ogle me when you’ve just told me that your mother heard us having sex!”
Derek shook his head. “Relax, Mer. I told you, she had Julie’s iPod. She didn’t hear anything.”
“She wouldn’t have been using Julie’s iPod if she didn’t hear anything!” Meredith protested.
“Mer, it’s fine. She doesn’t care.”
“Your poor mom. The batteries in those things don’t last all night!”
Derek smirked. “I wasn’t the one who kept wanting another go.”
Meredith snorted. “I didn’t hear you saying no.”
He sighed. “Meredith, she went to stay with Kathleen last night. We’ve been alone all night.”
He watched as Meredith frowned and then reached over to punch him in the bicep. “You could have told me that!” she fumed.
He grinned. “It was kind of fun watching you freak out.”
She glared at him, and then moved away, gathering the covers around her as she got up out of the bed.
“Where are you going?” Derek asked her, watching her pad across the bedroom. “Meredith, come on, I was just teasing you!”
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, opening the bedroom door.
“I like that idea,” he said.
She stopped in the doorway. “You,” she said. “Are staying right where you are. I mean it. I can’t believe you let me think your poor mom was forced to listen to us having sex all night.”
“Meredith!” he whined.
She shook her head. “I’ll teach you to play games with me,” she muttered.
Derek sighed and flopped back on the bed as she disappeared around the corner. A minute later, he heard the water in the shower start and he couldn’t stop his brain from loading images of Meredith under the warm spray, the bubbles from the shampoo sliding down her wet curves, coating her nipples, down her flat abdomen, between her legs…
He sprang up from the bed and decided that he’d make her forget that she’d issued him a command to stay where he was.
The bathroom was filled with steam and he crept into it as quietly as possibly, then slipped out of the boxers he’d finally pulled on at some point in the middle of the night when he’d had to venture downstairs to get more water.
“You don’t listen very well,” she said from behind the glass enclosure.
“You’re really objecting?” he asked, sliding the doors open. She was exactly as he’d imagined her a few minutes earlier, and her green eyes were wide and filled with lust.
“Derek, she might be back any minute.”
“I’ll take my chances,” he said in a low voice, and stepped into the shower with her.
***
He ended up spending twenty minutes mopping up all the water they’d displaced in the bathroom, but considered it time well spent. While he cleaned, Meredith dressed and ventured downstairs to make coffee. When Derek found her in the kitchen, she was sitting at the table, her hands wrapped around a coffee mug, inhaling deeply. She looked lost in thought and nearly jumped when he entered the room.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, retrieving his own mug. He was fairly certain he knew the answer, but felt some perverse need to hear it from her.
“We didn’t use anything,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Not once.”
“No,” he acknowledged. “We didn’t.”
“I could be…”
“Would that be the worst thing in the world?”
He sat across from her at the table, and tried not to cringe at how she kept her eyes fixed to the tabletop. Finally, she looked up and he tried not to cringe at the look in her eyes.
“I don’t know if I can do it again, Derek.”
He swallowed the scalding coffee that he’d just taken a sip of, amazed at how even though he’d just had liquid in it, his mouth felt dry.
“Ever?” he asked, carefully.
She squirmed beneath his gaze. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Oh.”
Meredith sighed. “I don’t know, Derek. I’m not saying that I’m going to feel this way forever, but right now… I do. I’m sorry. I know that it’s not what you want to hear.”
“You can’t help the way that you feel,” he said.
“No.”
“But Mer, I can’t imagine that we’ll never…” he stopped himself, a lump rising in his throat. He shook his head, forced it down, and continued. “You know, Addison and I never seriously considered it. We talked about it, but we had other things that we wanted to accomplish first. She wasn’t ready to become a mother, and to be honest, I wasn’t ready to be anyone’s father. I was having a good time. I was a rising star in my field, and we had a good life. We would go to fancy restaurants for dinner, have a bottle of fine wine, see a theatre show, hang out with Mark … we had the life that I wanted then. And then one day, I woke up. Mark and Addison woke me up, I suppose. And you woke me up. And the life that I wanted wasn’t the one that I was living. I want a family, Meredith. You know that. I want a family with you. I think that we have so much to offer our children. You are going to be an amazing mother. You’re compassionate and kind and generous and warm.”
“Derek,” she said, cutting him off. “That’s all wonderful, and I don’t even know what to say about the praise that you give me, but it doesn’t change the fact that losing our baby scarred me. It did something to me and I can’t just pretend that it didn’t, and that we can just go on.”
“We were going on,” he protested. “We are!”
She pursed her lips. “We’re trying, Derek. I’m happy and relieved that we’re trying, but us having so much sex in your mother’s house that it drives her out of it doesn’t mean that everything is fine. I’m not fixed, Derek. It still hurts.”
Derek pushed his coffee cup aside, and got up from his chair. He knelt beside his wife, pulling her towards him. “Meredith,” he sighed against her neck. “It still hurts me, too. It just happened. I don’t expect us to just be normal right away. I don’t know if we ever really will. But Mer, remember when we found out that you were pregnant? Do you remember how happy we were? God, you… you just lit up. And I felt like the luckiest man in the world. You and I made a child. We were going to be parents together. I know that this has been the most painful experience of your life - of mine, too - but it’s also been the most joyous.”
He pulled back and watched her carefully, hoping for a sign of agreement, but Meredith still looked crushed.
“It doesn’t have to be today,” he finally said, releasing her.
“It might be,” she said, the worried look returning.
He picked up her hand; he rubbed her knuckles with the pad of his thumb, and brought her hand to his lips.
“Then we’ll deal with it,” he said against her soft skin.
She started to say something else, but the sound of the front door opening stalled her words. They moved apart, as though they’d been caught in flagrante.
“Derek? Meredith?” came Elizabeth’s voice.
Derek cleared his throat and stood, striding into the entryway of the house.
“Hey,” he greeted his mom.
“Oh, good, you’re dressed.”
Derek chuckled. “Mom, really.”
“I’m just saying,” Elizabeth said. “I’m glad you’re both up, though. Kathleen asked if I could watch the little ones because they both have to work and Julie has practice.”
“Oh,” Derek said. His mom thrust Kathleen’s youngest, Liam, into his arms. Liam squirmed and looked up at Derek with the same dark blue eyes that was so prevalent in the Shepherd family. Liam smiled lopsidedly at Derek and reached up to pull at Derek’s dark waves of hair.
“Oh, Mom,” Derek started to protest. Nevertheless, he was enthralled by the boy’s slight weight in his arms, at his powdery smell and the way that his little face was lit up.
“Oh, relax, Derek,” Elizabeth chuckled. “He’s just a little boy.”
“I haven’t even met this one!” Derek protested.
“What, do you need a formal introduction?” Elizabeth asked. “Derek, this is your nephew, Liam. Liam, this big fool is your uncle Derek.”
Derek sighed. “No, Mom. It’s just… Mer’s in the kitchen and I don’t know if she’s up for babysitting today.”
“I didn’t ask her to babysit,” Elizabeth retorted. She knelt to help Liam’s sister, five-year-old Katie, out of her rubber boots. “Now, can you please set up the playpen for Liam? I’m going to get Katie settled with her colouring books in the kitchen.”
She started towards the other room and Derek was left with no choice but to do as he was asked.
Once Derek had settled Liam into his playpen, he knelt beside it and spoke to the nephew he’d never met. It was a little unnerving at first to speak to someone who had no ability to reply, but he found that the responses that Liam did give him were more rewarding. The little boy smiled and giggled when Derek played peek-a-boo with him and gurgled happily when Derek handed him one of the soft books he found in Liam’s diaper bag. He was so engaged with his sister’s youngest child that he didn’t notice Meredith enter the living room and stand watching him in silence for several minutes.
“He likes you,” she observed quietly. Derek looked up in surprise.
“Oh,” he said.
“You’re good with him,” Meredith said. She sat down next to Derek and watched Liam try to eat the corner of his book. She shivered and Derek tore his eyes away from Liam to look at his wife.
“Do you all have those eyes?” she wondered.
“Nancy doesn’t,” he winked.
Meredith shook her head. “It’s a little unnerving,” she admitted. “I wonder…”
“I always thought she’d have your eyes,” Derek said quietly, correctly guessing her thought.
Meredith bit her lip and nodded. “Maybe,” she agreed. “But yours do seem to be dominant in this family.”
Derek shook his head. “Your eyes,” he insisted.
“Your smile,” she told him.
“Your laugh.”
“Your hair,” Meredith said. She reached up and ran her fingers through it, and then sighed. “I feel like I’m denying you something. I don’t want to do that, Derek. I want you to have whatever you want. But I don’t know if I can give it to you.”
“You’re what I want.”
She smiled softly. “I know. But you also want this. You want a child.”
He couldn’t deny it. They’d established as much earlier, but he hated the look in her eyes, as though she’d disappointed him, and expected him to walk away.
“Meredith…” he started.
“I’m going to take a walk,” Meredith said. She started for the door.
“Mer,” he protested.
“Derek, please. I won’t go far, okay? I just need some fresh air.”
He nodded reluctantly. “Okay, Mer.”
***
The cool air whipped against Meredith’s face as she neared the bottom of the sidewalk in front of Elizabeth’s home, and turned left to walk down the street. She had grabbed Derek’s jacket - the most easily accessible one -- when she was heading out the door and she was drowning in the extra fabric, but thankful for it. Now, she stuck her hands into the pockets for warmth and was surprised when her fingers closed around his cell phone. She frowned and then without giving herself time to talk herself out of it, she dialled Cristina’s number, praying that her friend would be around to answer the call.
Cristina’s voice came on the line, groggy and disoriented.
“Crap,” Meredith said. “You were sleeping.”
“I was,” Cristina confirmed. “And now I’m not. Thanks.”
“Sorry,” Meredith apologized.
“Whatever,” Cristina said. “Just tell me what you want so that I can go back to sleep.”
“Derek and I had sex,” Meredith blurted out.
“Okay,” Cristina said. “Thanks for sharing.”
“No,” Meredith said with a heavy sigh. “Cristina, Derek and I had sex.”
“I’m not following you, Mer. You guys have a lot of sex. More sex than I’m currently having, at least,” she grumbled.
“The kind of sex where I think I could be pregnant,” Meredith moaned. “And that? Is not a good thing. It’s very much a not good thing, actually. Pretty much a bad thing. A very bad thing. A horrible, terrifyingly bad thing. A --.”
“I get it,” Cristina interrupted. “It’s a bad thing.”
Meredith moaned. “A very bad thing.”
Cristina was silent.
“What?” Meredith snapped.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking something.”
Cristina sighed. “I think you want one.”
“No,” Meredith objected immediately. “I don’t think I do. I can’t. I can’t do it again, Cristina. I can’t.”
She sighed again. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘No glove, no love’?”
“Cristina…”
“I’m just saying, Mer. I think you want to get pregnant again. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have let him within five hundred feet of you without his raincoat on.”
“No, it’s not that. We just missed each other.”
There was a long silence.
“Cristina?” Meredith checked.
“So, you haven’t had sex?”
“No,” Meredith confirmed with a sigh. “Not since before we found out.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” Cristina reasoned.
“It feels like it was a lifetime ago,” Meredith said with a sigh. “I feel so tired and like I’ve aged so much in the last couple of weeks. And then, it seems like it was yesterday, too. Like I can close my eyes and I’m back there, and Dr. Briscombe is telling us that there’s no chance; there’s nothing they can do, and we just have to accept that our daughter is going to die.”
“Mer,” Cristina said with an uncharacteristic softness to her tone. “Have you talked to Derek about this?”
Meredith wiped her hand across her eyes, brushing away fresh tears. In the last day, she’d finally started to hope that the tears were a thing of the past; she’d begun to hope that she’d be able to get through at least one day without them. She sniffled pitifully. “He knows that I’m not doing so well.”
“Have you told him that you’re afraid to have another child?” Cristina clarified.
“Yes. He knows.”
“And he’s pushing you?” Cristina’s voice took on a different tone now; she was ready to do battle on Meredith’s behalf.
Meredith sighed. “It’s not that. It’s just… I love him so much, Cristina. How can I deny him the one thing he wants more than anything else? How do we get past this? He wants something that I’m not sure that I do any more. And even if I do, I’m not sure that I can give it to him. Maybe losing her was a sign that this isn’t meant to happen for us.”
“That’s crap,” Cristina said bluntly. “And you know it. Be afraid if you’re afraid, Meredith, but don’t start spouting that crap about how it’s not meant to be. It was a freak thing. You know as well as I do, and as well as Derek does that the chances of it happening again are next to non-existent. I get that you’re afraid, but it’s not a goddamn sign.”
“I dream about her,” Meredith said softly. “I dream about holding her and how Derek’s face lights up when he sees her. She has his eyes. All the time, in my dreams. We talked about that today, about whose eyes she would have had. He thinks mine, but in my dreams, they’re always his.”
“You know that I’m a surgeon, right?” Cristina asked. “I’m not a shrink, Mer.”
“You’re my person.”
“Yes, I am,” Cristina agreed. “So as your person, I reserve the right to tell you things that you don’t want to hear. I think you need to talk to somebody about this.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“Okay, you did not just say that to me,” Cristina sighed. “You know what I meant, Meredith.”
“Yeah,” Meredith admitted.
“And you need to be talking to your husband right now. Where are you, anyway?”
“Walking.”
“Where’s Derek?”
“Babysitting.” Meredith almost laughed bitterly. “His sister’s kids. He and his mom are babysitting, and I’m walking.”
“You’re running away.”
“I am not. I’m walking. Quickly.”
“Turn around and walk back.”
“Seriously?” Meredith asked skeptically. “You’re not telling me to keep walking? You?”
“You’re my person, too,” Cristina said. “And unless you turn around and deal with this, I’m not going to get my person back. Maybe I’m selfish, I don’t know. But you need to turn around and walk back, Meredith. If you don’t, you’re going to be running away forever.”
There was a beep and Meredith frowned, pulling the phone away from her ear to glance at the screen.
“There’s another call,” Meredith told Cristina.
“Did you really think he’d let you get too far?” Cristina asked.
“No,” Meredith admitted after a second of silence.
“Exactly,” Cristina said. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Sorry.”
“You’ll make it up to me.”
Meredith switched lines and closed her eyes briefly.
“Derek?” she said into the receiver.
“Mer, please…”
“I’m coming back,” she said.
Author: scatteroflight
Rating: M
Summary: Meredith and Derek cope with the challenges of marriage and family. Season 4 future fic.
A golden light filled the bedroom, warming it and Derek’s eyelids until he opened them and turned his head, expecting to find the space beside him empty. But Meredith lay tucked against him, snoring softly. He breathed a sigh of relief and lifted his head, bending forward to kiss her shoulder. He lay beside her for a long time, listening to the sound of the street waking up outside the window, and to Meredith’s breathing. Finally, she scrunched up her nose and blinked awake. It took her a moment to wake up and when she noticed him watching her, she smiled tentatively.
“Hi,” he whispered, leaning forward again, this time to brush her lips with his.
“Morning,” Meredith mumbled sleepily. She turned slightly and buried her face in his chest. “What time is it?”
Derek turned his head to consult the alarm clock on the nightstand. “A little past eight,” he told her.
Meredith moaned softly.
“Did I wear you out?” he asked, smirking.
Meredith’s lips twitched. “I think it was the other way around.”
“Ah,” Derek conceded. “Maybe. Can we just say that it was mutual, though?”
“Do you have a reputation to uphold or something?” Meredith laughed.
“Mmm,” he answered noncommittally.
“Oh God,” Meredith groaned suddenly.
“What?” Derek asked, alarmed.
“Your mom.”
“What about her?”
“Well, she must have come in at some point. There’s no way that she didn’t hear anything.”
“She had Julie’s iPod,” Derek admitted.
Meredith’s eyes widened. “What?” she gasped.
He sighed. “When I went downstairs, she was there.”
“She knew?” Meredith asked, sitting up in bed. The top sheet fell away from her, leaving her exposed to him. He grinned at the sight of her, naked beside him.
“Stop it,” she hissed, yanking up the covers. “You cannot ogle me when you’ve just told me that your mother heard us having sex!”
Derek shook his head. “Relax, Mer. I told you, she had Julie’s iPod. She didn’t hear anything.”
“She wouldn’t have been using Julie’s iPod if she didn’t hear anything!” Meredith protested.
“Mer, it’s fine. She doesn’t care.”
“Your poor mom. The batteries in those things don’t last all night!”
Derek smirked. “I wasn’t the one who kept wanting another go.”
Meredith snorted. “I didn’t hear you saying no.”
He sighed. “Meredith, she went to stay with Kathleen last night. We’ve been alone all night.”
He watched as Meredith frowned and then reached over to punch him in the bicep. “You could have told me that!” she fumed.
He grinned. “It was kind of fun watching you freak out.”
She glared at him, and then moved away, gathering the covers around her as she got up out of the bed.
“Where are you going?” Derek asked her, watching her pad across the bedroom. “Meredith, come on, I was just teasing you!”
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, opening the bedroom door.
“I like that idea,” he said.
She stopped in the doorway. “You,” she said. “Are staying right where you are. I mean it. I can’t believe you let me think your poor mom was forced to listen to us having sex all night.”
“Meredith!” he whined.
She shook her head. “I’ll teach you to play games with me,” she muttered.
Derek sighed and flopped back on the bed as she disappeared around the corner. A minute later, he heard the water in the shower start and he couldn’t stop his brain from loading images of Meredith under the warm spray, the bubbles from the shampoo sliding down her wet curves, coating her nipples, down her flat abdomen, between her legs…
He sprang up from the bed and decided that he’d make her forget that she’d issued him a command to stay where he was.
The bathroom was filled with steam and he crept into it as quietly as possibly, then slipped out of the boxers he’d finally pulled on at some point in the middle of the night when he’d had to venture downstairs to get more water.
“You don’t listen very well,” she said from behind the glass enclosure.
“You’re really objecting?” he asked, sliding the doors open. She was exactly as he’d imagined her a few minutes earlier, and her green eyes were wide and filled with lust.
“Derek, she might be back any minute.”
“I’ll take my chances,” he said in a low voice, and stepped into the shower with her.
***
He ended up spending twenty minutes mopping up all the water they’d displaced in the bathroom, but considered it time well spent. While he cleaned, Meredith dressed and ventured downstairs to make coffee. When Derek found her in the kitchen, she was sitting at the table, her hands wrapped around a coffee mug, inhaling deeply. She looked lost in thought and nearly jumped when he entered the room.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, retrieving his own mug. He was fairly certain he knew the answer, but felt some perverse need to hear it from her.
“We didn’t use anything,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Not once.”
“No,” he acknowledged. “We didn’t.”
“I could be…”
“Would that be the worst thing in the world?”
He sat across from her at the table, and tried not to cringe at how she kept her eyes fixed to the tabletop. Finally, she looked up and he tried not to cringe at the look in her eyes.
“I don’t know if I can do it again, Derek.”
He swallowed the scalding coffee that he’d just taken a sip of, amazed at how even though he’d just had liquid in it, his mouth felt dry.
“Ever?” he asked, carefully.
She squirmed beneath his gaze. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Oh.”
Meredith sighed. “I don’t know, Derek. I’m not saying that I’m going to feel this way forever, but right now… I do. I’m sorry. I know that it’s not what you want to hear.”
“You can’t help the way that you feel,” he said.
“No.”
“But Mer, I can’t imagine that we’ll never…” he stopped himself, a lump rising in his throat. He shook his head, forced it down, and continued. “You know, Addison and I never seriously considered it. We talked about it, but we had other things that we wanted to accomplish first. She wasn’t ready to become a mother, and to be honest, I wasn’t ready to be anyone’s father. I was having a good time. I was a rising star in my field, and we had a good life. We would go to fancy restaurants for dinner, have a bottle of fine wine, see a theatre show, hang out with Mark … we had the life that I wanted then. And then one day, I woke up. Mark and Addison woke me up, I suppose. And you woke me up. And the life that I wanted wasn’t the one that I was living. I want a family, Meredith. You know that. I want a family with you. I think that we have so much to offer our children. You are going to be an amazing mother. You’re compassionate and kind and generous and warm.”
“Derek,” she said, cutting him off. “That’s all wonderful, and I don’t even know what to say about the praise that you give me, but it doesn’t change the fact that losing our baby scarred me. It did something to me and I can’t just pretend that it didn’t, and that we can just go on.”
“We were going on,” he protested. “We are!”
She pursed her lips. “We’re trying, Derek. I’m happy and relieved that we’re trying, but us having so much sex in your mother’s house that it drives her out of it doesn’t mean that everything is fine. I’m not fixed, Derek. It still hurts.”
Derek pushed his coffee cup aside, and got up from his chair. He knelt beside his wife, pulling her towards him. “Meredith,” he sighed against her neck. “It still hurts me, too. It just happened. I don’t expect us to just be normal right away. I don’t know if we ever really will. But Mer, remember when we found out that you were pregnant? Do you remember how happy we were? God, you… you just lit up. And I felt like the luckiest man in the world. You and I made a child. We were going to be parents together. I know that this has been the most painful experience of your life - of mine, too - but it’s also been the most joyous.”
He pulled back and watched her carefully, hoping for a sign of agreement, but Meredith still looked crushed.
“It doesn’t have to be today,” he finally said, releasing her.
“It might be,” she said, the worried look returning.
He picked up her hand; he rubbed her knuckles with the pad of his thumb, and brought her hand to his lips.
“Then we’ll deal with it,” he said against her soft skin.
She started to say something else, but the sound of the front door opening stalled her words. They moved apart, as though they’d been caught in flagrante.
“Derek? Meredith?” came Elizabeth’s voice.
Derek cleared his throat and stood, striding into the entryway of the house.
“Hey,” he greeted his mom.
“Oh, good, you’re dressed.”
Derek chuckled. “Mom, really.”
“I’m just saying,” Elizabeth said. “I’m glad you’re both up, though. Kathleen asked if I could watch the little ones because they both have to work and Julie has practice.”
“Oh,” Derek said. His mom thrust Kathleen’s youngest, Liam, into his arms. Liam squirmed and looked up at Derek with the same dark blue eyes that was so prevalent in the Shepherd family. Liam smiled lopsidedly at Derek and reached up to pull at Derek’s dark waves of hair.
“Oh, Mom,” Derek started to protest. Nevertheless, he was enthralled by the boy’s slight weight in his arms, at his powdery smell and the way that his little face was lit up.
“Oh, relax, Derek,” Elizabeth chuckled. “He’s just a little boy.”
“I haven’t even met this one!” Derek protested.
“What, do you need a formal introduction?” Elizabeth asked. “Derek, this is your nephew, Liam. Liam, this big fool is your uncle Derek.”
Derek sighed. “No, Mom. It’s just… Mer’s in the kitchen and I don’t know if she’s up for babysitting today.”
“I didn’t ask her to babysit,” Elizabeth retorted. She knelt to help Liam’s sister, five-year-old Katie, out of her rubber boots. “Now, can you please set up the playpen for Liam? I’m going to get Katie settled with her colouring books in the kitchen.”
She started towards the other room and Derek was left with no choice but to do as he was asked.
Once Derek had settled Liam into his playpen, he knelt beside it and spoke to the nephew he’d never met. It was a little unnerving at first to speak to someone who had no ability to reply, but he found that the responses that Liam did give him were more rewarding. The little boy smiled and giggled when Derek played peek-a-boo with him and gurgled happily when Derek handed him one of the soft books he found in Liam’s diaper bag. He was so engaged with his sister’s youngest child that he didn’t notice Meredith enter the living room and stand watching him in silence for several minutes.
“He likes you,” she observed quietly. Derek looked up in surprise.
“Oh,” he said.
“You’re good with him,” Meredith said. She sat down next to Derek and watched Liam try to eat the corner of his book. She shivered and Derek tore his eyes away from Liam to look at his wife.
“Do you all have those eyes?” she wondered.
“Nancy doesn’t,” he winked.
Meredith shook her head. “It’s a little unnerving,” she admitted. “I wonder…”
“I always thought she’d have your eyes,” Derek said quietly, correctly guessing her thought.
Meredith bit her lip and nodded. “Maybe,” she agreed. “But yours do seem to be dominant in this family.”
Derek shook his head. “Your eyes,” he insisted.
“Your smile,” she told him.
“Your laugh.”
“Your hair,” Meredith said. She reached up and ran her fingers through it, and then sighed. “I feel like I’m denying you something. I don’t want to do that, Derek. I want you to have whatever you want. But I don’t know if I can give it to you.”
“You’re what I want.”
She smiled softly. “I know. But you also want this. You want a child.”
He couldn’t deny it. They’d established as much earlier, but he hated the look in her eyes, as though she’d disappointed him, and expected him to walk away.
“Meredith…” he started.
“I’m going to take a walk,” Meredith said. She started for the door.
“Mer,” he protested.
“Derek, please. I won’t go far, okay? I just need some fresh air.”
He nodded reluctantly. “Okay, Mer.”
***
The cool air whipped against Meredith’s face as she neared the bottom of the sidewalk in front of Elizabeth’s home, and turned left to walk down the street. She had grabbed Derek’s jacket - the most easily accessible one -- when she was heading out the door and she was drowning in the extra fabric, but thankful for it. Now, she stuck her hands into the pockets for warmth and was surprised when her fingers closed around his cell phone. She frowned and then without giving herself time to talk herself out of it, she dialled Cristina’s number, praying that her friend would be around to answer the call.
Cristina’s voice came on the line, groggy and disoriented.
“Crap,” Meredith said. “You were sleeping.”
“I was,” Cristina confirmed. “And now I’m not. Thanks.”
“Sorry,” Meredith apologized.
“Whatever,” Cristina said. “Just tell me what you want so that I can go back to sleep.”
“Derek and I had sex,” Meredith blurted out.
“Okay,” Cristina said. “Thanks for sharing.”
“No,” Meredith said with a heavy sigh. “Cristina, Derek and I had sex.”
“I’m not following you, Mer. You guys have a lot of sex. More sex than I’m currently having, at least,” she grumbled.
“The kind of sex where I think I could be pregnant,” Meredith moaned. “And that? Is not a good thing. It’s very much a not good thing, actually. Pretty much a bad thing. A very bad thing. A horrible, terrifyingly bad thing. A --.”
“I get it,” Cristina interrupted. “It’s a bad thing.”
Meredith moaned. “A very bad thing.”
Cristina was silent.
“What?” Meredith snapped.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking something.”
Cristina sighed. “I think you want one.”
“No,” Meredith objected immediately. “I don’t think I do. I can’t. I can’t do it again, Cristina. I can’t.”
She sighed again. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘No glove, no love’?”
“Cristina…”
“I’m just saying, Mer. I think you want to get pregnant again. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have let him within five hundred feet of you without his raincoat on.”
“No, it’s not that. We just missed each other.”
There was a long silence.
“Cristina?” Meredith checked.
“So, you haven’t had sex?”
“No,” Meredith confirmed with a sigh. “Not since before we found out.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” Cristina reasoned.
“It feels like it was a lifetime ago,” Meredith said with a sigh. “I feel so tired and like I’ve aged so much in the last couple of weeks. And then, it seems like it was yesterday, too. Like I can close my eyes and I’m back there, and Dr. Briscombe is telling us that there’s no chance; there’s nothing they can do, and we just have to accept that our daughter is going to die.”
“Mer,” Cristina said with an uncharacteristic softness to her tone. “Have you talked to Derek about this?”
Meredith wiped her hand across her eyes, brushing away fresh tears. In the last day, she’d finally started to hope that the tears were a thing of the past; she’d begun to hope that she’d be able to get through at least one day without them. She sniffled pitifully. “He knows that I’m not doing so well.”
“Have you told him that you’re afraid to have another child?” Cristina clarified.
“Yes. He knows.”
“And he’s pushing you?” Cristina’s voice took on a different tone now; she was ready to do battle on Meredith’s behalf.
Meredith sighed. “It’s not that. It’s just… I love him so much, Cristina. How can I deny him the one thing he wants more than anything else? How do we get past this? He wants something that I’m not sure that I do any more. And even if I do, I’m not sure that I can give it to him. Maybe losing her was a sign that this isn’t meant to happen for us.”
“That’s crap,” Cristina said bluntly. “And you know it. Be afraid if you’re afraid, Meredith, but don’t start spouting that crap about how it’s not meant to be. It was a freak thing. You know as well as I do, and as well as Derek does that the chances of it happening again are next to non-existent. I get that you’re afraid, but it’s not a goddamn sign.”
“I dream about her,” Meredith said softly. “I dream about holding her and how Derek’s face lights up when he sees her. She has his eyes. All the time, in my dreams. We talked about that today, about whose eyes she would have had. He thinks mine, but in my dreams, they’re always his.”
“You know that I’m a surgeon, right?” Cristina asked. “I’m not a shrink, Mer.”
“You’re my person.”
“Yes, I am,” Cristina agreed. “So as your person, I reserve the right to tell you things that you don’t want to hear. I think you need to talk to somebody about this.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“Okay, you did not just say that to me,” Cristina sighed. “You know what I meant, Meredith.”
“Yeah,” Meredith admitted.
“And you need to be talking to your husband right now. Where are you, anyway?”
“Walking.”
“Where’s Derek?”
“Babysitting.” Meredith almost laughed bitterly. “His sister’s kids. He and his mom are babysitting, and I’m walking.”
“You’re running away.”
“I am not. I’m walking. Quickly.”
“Turn around and walk back.”
“Seriously?” Meredith asked skeptically. “You’re not telling me to keep walking? You?”
“You’re my person, too,” Cristina said. “And unless you turn around and deal with this, I’m not going to get my person back. Maybe I’m selfish, I don’t know. But you need to turn around and walk back, Meredith. If you don’t, you’re going to be running away forever.”
There was a beep and Meredith frowned, pulling the phone away from her ear to glance at the screen.
“There’s another call,” Meredith told Cristina.
“Did you really think he’d let you get too far?” Cristina asked.
“No,” Meredith admitted after a second of silence.
“Exactly,” Cristina said. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Sorry.”
“You’ll make it up to me.”
Meredith switched lines and closed her eyes briefly.
“Derek?” she said into the receiver.
“Mer, please…”
“I’m coming back,” she said.