Chapter One
One thing common to all humans, or most at any rate, is that at some point in their lives they get sick. How they deal with it is another thing. For Meredith Grey it was simply something that happened to hinder her already complicated existence. As a child there were few times when she was nursed through illness as some children were. She had brief memories of her father tending to her, and once when her mother had been home to care for her when she had pneumonia, but she remembered being disappointed that day so perhaps it was a day when her mother had been planning to take off to spend time with her. There weren't many of those.
Illness often came to her whenever millions of other things in her life were going wrong, so it was no surprise to her that she awoke in the middle of the night three weeks after the doomed prom feeling as if she had been run over by a truck and eaten something poisoned.
"Welcome to my life," she said bitterly to Izzie when she was found, shaking and sweaty, in the bathroom at some point just before dawn. Izzie smiled slightly, which she was not doing often, and guided Meredith back to bed.
"No," Meredith protested, "I'm okay. I'm going to work."
"Shut up," Izzie deposited her on the bed and Meredith tried to get back up, but Izzie was already out the door calling to George that Meredith wasn't going to the hospital. Meredith rolled over and pulled a pillow over her head. She had sick days, and she could afford to stay home for one day, so she did not try that hard to get up. A day without the stress, the people... the problems…. Well she wouldn't mind. What she had not counted on was that Izzie was not about to leave her alone with her misery.
Izzie had not gone back on her resignation which she had delivered to the chief on the night that Denny died, but she had listened when George and Meredith told her that she did not need to let her medical knowledge go to waste. She was thinking about doing something with her time spent working with Addison, being an OB-GYN, but she had not applied for anything yet. The wounds were still fresh. She had enough put by that it was not necessary for her to worry yet. Most days she stayed at home being Izzie. The house was always impeccably cleaned, and Meredith had caught her one day attempting to go through the attic, but Meredith had forbidden it. She didn't want to see what was up there.
Meredith had not thought about what it would be like to be stuck at home with the desperate housewife in the flesh. An hour after George left Izzie bounced into the room with a tray complete with a flower in a small vase.
"How're you feeling?" she asked, setting the tray on the bed.
"Like you are completely insane." She caught a wiff of the smell of the bacon on the tray and her stomach turned over. "Seriously Izzie, take it out of here. Now!"
Izzie grabbed the tray and took it out into the hall, before coming back into the room and sitting in the chair by Meredith's bed.
"Surely you have something better to do than watch me be miserable?" Meredith asked. "You've seen plenty of it lately."
"Actually, no I don't."
An awkward moment passed in which Izzie looked out the window blinking fiercely and Meredith trying to think of something to say to distract her. She did not have to, because a second later Izzie turned back to her and smiled. There was still a hint of sadness in her eyes that had not gone away yet.
"Addison's back in her salmon colored scrubs," she ventured, but talking of Addison was difficult because it made her think of him. Suddenly, she felt sick again and burrowed down in her blankets and pulling the pillow over her face.
Izzie stood and announced, "I'll be right back." Meredith did not have the heart to tell her that she didn't have to come back. This was the most involved in anything Izzie had been in weeks and she was not about to quash her. Still, it reminded her of the Izzie she had seen during Christmas and she was worried that she was masking her pain with happiness again. Except that this time Alex was the only one who she would really talk to, instead of the only one she would not talk to.
When she returned she had a deck of cards in her hand and Meredith wanted to throw something at her. Instead she forced a smile and allowed herself to be subjected to ten games of War. After the tenth, however, she convinced Izzie that she was tired and was left alone to sleep, but she did not sleep. She sat up in bed and looked around the room, feeling suddenly very alone.
She wanted…. Something. She did not know what. Finn, maybe, but he was not hers any more. She hated to hurt him, but he deserved so much more than a confused girl who spent all her time slaving away at the hospital. Derek, definitely, but she could not bring herself to become his mistress and he was so indecisive about leaving Addison. Then of course there was the fact that she liked Addison and was not fond of the idea of hurting her. Instead she hurt herself. It had always been that way. Whenever, as a teenager, she thought she was hurting her mother by rebelling she was instead hurting her own chances. When she did not want to hurt Derek, and she tried to separate herself from him that had hurt her more than anything.
Maybe having time alone to think was not such a good idea. She got up and dressed, still feeling slightly queasy, and decided that the best place for her to be was at the hospital, where she could dive into work and forget her problems. The only kink in this plan was getting past the gatekeeper.
She managed to get to the door, but Izzie, standing in the kitchen baking (something else she had done a lot of in recent times) called out, "Freeze. Just where do you think you are going?"
Meredith sighed and blew a piece of her hair out of her eyes. "I'm going to work, Izzie, I'm fine, and I cannot afford not to. I can't stay here…. It gives me too much time to think. I need to be working."
Izzie studied her for a moment. "Fine, but I'm coming with you."
Meredith's jaw dropped. "Izzie, you haven't been to the hospital in weeks! Not since—" she stopped herself quickly but Izzie crossed her arms.
"You are not driving yourself, and when you realize you cannot work today someone will have to drag your sick ass home." Izzie sighed. "Besides, if you think you have too much time to think being home for two hours…." She trailed off and Meredith nodded.
"Okay. I understand."
Meredith was shaking as she put on her scrubs. She had managed not to get sick again and she thought she was over it. If she wasn't perfectly okay, she would be as soon as she got moving, she reasoned. She dashed out of the locker room and onto the surgical floor to track down Bailey. Her resident was with Cristina. They were looking at a patient's chart by the nurses' station, and Cristina sighted her first.
"Meredith what are you doing here?"
Bailey whirled around, her glare piercing Meredith. "Grey, what are you doing here? O'Malley said you were sick, so you damn well better have been sick."
"I was sick," Meredith acknowledged, "But I'm better now. Much better. Being stuck in a house with Izzie all morning does that to a person."
Cristina snickered and Bailey shot her a look. "Yang, go tell Mr. Peterson that he can go home today and get those labs for Dr. Shepard."
Cristina rushed off obviously scowling at the thought of informing a family of news that might make them inclined to hug, and leaving Meredith with Bailey.
"Did you have a fever?" Bailey demanded as she began to walk. Meredith followed her.
"No."
"Come here." Bailey stopped and reached up to feel Meredith's forehead, Meredith had to bend slightly.
"You don't believe me?"
"You're an intern, Grey, you're all piranhas who'd lie about their eye color if it meant they got to cut. All right, go, you're doing sutures in the pit until I'm sure your not about to give the patients some disease stranger than what they already have."
Meredith rolled her eyes as Bailey walked off; heading towards the ER, then saw Addison Shepard walking down the same hallway. She ducked into an on call room until she heard the high-heeled footsteps pass her, and then walked on. Coward, she chastised herself, throwing a cautionary glance over her shoulder.
When she pushed the button for the elevator she had a momentary thought that he would be on it, but the doors opened to reveal only Callie.
"Meredith!" she said in surprise, "George said you were sick." Meredith sighed and began to go into the explanation, but Callie kept going. "Do you have a patient? I'm about to scrub in on a transtibial amputation and I could use an intern."
"I'm on sutures…." Meredith trailed off, wondering why Callie was being so nice to her. Sure, Callie and George were doing okay and they'd spent more time at Meredith's lately, but it was still slightly odd.
"Oh, come on. I'll tell Bailey you're with me."
"All right," Meredith said, not about to give up a chance at surgery, particularly a surgery she had never done before. She'd seen plenty from the galleries, but hadn't scrubbed in.
Callie went off in search of Bailey and Meredith headed to the OR. She felt better already. It had always been that way. She was much more likely to shake something if she was moving instead of just lying about. As she was scrubbing in she had a brief moment of dizziness, but she shook it off. She was probably just tired.
The surgery was not a terribly long one. Callie was good at what she did, that was for sure, and the leg was cleanly removed. It had been skewered by a rusty nail and the owner, a construction worker, had pulled it out and gone on with work. A stupid move. The infection spread quickly and when his wife finally dragged him into the ER it was too late for the leg. As Callie lowered the bone saw, she nodded to Meredith and guided her as it sawed the leg.
Meredith watched as Callie deftly closed the flap of skin over the place where the leg had been. "Will he be able to use a prosthetic leg?" she asked, as Callie disposed of her gloves.
"Most likely. The nerves were not as badly damaged as they could have been. He was lucky though."
"You're good at this."
Callie shrugged. "I've done a lot of amputations. I'm an orthopedic surgeon, Grey."
"How did you know? What you wanted to specialize in?" They were in the hallway by then.
"It just hit me one day. I was assisting on a hemispherectomy, and realized that I hate Neurosurgery. I wished that I was doing something orthopedic and I knew, that was what I wanted to specialize in." Meredith nodded. "You've got a while yet, anyway."
"Yeah. Yeah I do." Callie walked off to go and speak to the patient's family. Meredith went through the double doors to the main surgical floor and was face to face with Izzie, who was standing just beyond the red line.
"You scrubbed in?" She said incredulously.
"Yes, Izzie. I'm fine."
"Have you eaten?" Izzie put her hands on her hips and Meredith thought for a moment that she fancied herself her mother.
"No, Izzie, I was in surgery."
"You need to eat."
"And you need to go home," Meredith said, surprised that Izzie would set foot on
this floor in the first place.
"Grey, Dr. Torres finished?" Bailey had just come out from the doors behind Meredith. "Stevens. What are you doing here?"
"Trying to be my nanny," Meredith said through gritted teeth.
Bailey looked first at Izzie then Meredith then turned back to Izzie, "Just don't follow her into surgery. Grey, neuro needs an intern to monitor a kid with seizure activity, they need a doctor who can inject him to stop them, you up to it?"
"Neuro?" she asked, quietly and Bailey sighed.
"Not Shepard, Dr. Weir. There are other neurologists in this hospital, Grey. Now move!"
Meredith obeyed, shooting a look at Izzie. She caught Alex, who was still Addison's slave, on her way to the nurses' station to get the child's chart. "Alex, go take care of Izzie, she's here attempting to take care of me."
"She's here?" Alex said, raising an eyebrow.
"Why does that surprise you so much. Alex?" Izzie said, coming up behind them. Meredith dashed away, leaving Alex to contend with Izzie.
The little boy was six years old, and the hospital bed looked much too big for him. There were no parents in sight, but a McDonald's cup on his bedside made Meredith assume they had been there recently. She opened the chart to read his name: Timothy Paige.
"Hi there, Timothy. I'm Dr. Grey, Dr. Weir asked me to come hang out with you, is that okay?"
He nodded silently, his fingers rubbing the fur of an old teddy bear, rhythmically. He had curly black hair which was mostly covered by the monitoring device. She smiled at him and pulled up a chair next to his bed side.
"What's your bear's name?" she asked, kindly. He tugged his covers up, and she reached over to help him, gently moving toy cars off of the bedspread.
"Robear," he answered, after sizing her up for a moment.
"That's a nice name. Have you had Robear for a long time?" Meredith liked this child. She was not Cristina, she did not mind spending time with patients. Still, she did not have the over-attachment problems that Izzie had either, somehow she managed to balance the two.
"Since I was a baby. My first foster family gave him to me."
'Your first-?"
He nodded, reaching for a car and rolling it up and down the bed rail. "I've been in seven foster homes. The one I'm in now, they're nice, but they've got other kids so I'm by myself here lots. The nurses are nice though. Nurse Debby brings me chocolate."
Meredith smiled as she realized the reason for the uncommonly wise look in his big brown eyes. "How old are you, Timothy?"
"Six and a half. I'll be seven on Thanksgiving this year."
"Does that make you a turkey?" she asked, tickling him slightly.
"No! You're silly." He grinned, revealing places where two teeth had fallen out. "I like turkey though. Not on sandwiches. I saw a real one at the zoo once, and a real tiger too. My baseball team is called the tigers. Well, my old baseball team. I didn't get to join one again before I got seizures."
It seemed like a big word coming out of such a little mouth and Meredith sighed to herself. It wasn't fair that kids could get adult problems.
Suddenly the door to Timothy's room opened and Derek stood there. He did not see her at first, he just came in as chipper as he always was with children. "Hi there, Timothy, how are you today? I'm Dr. Shepard. Dr. Weir had to go home for the day."
"I'm fine," the boy said.
Derek washed his hands in the sink and then turned fully around to see Meredith sitting there. He seemed startled, and Meredith looked away to the get well card on Timothy's bedside table.
"You're watching him?" Derek asked as he shone a penlight into the child's eyes.
"Yes."
"Good. Okay. Timothy, Dr. Grey is going to stay with you for a while and when you have a seizure she'll tell me so that we can operate. Okay?"
He nodded, but Meredith saw his small face turn pale. When Derek left she took his hand. "Does the surgery scare you?" she asked.
"A little," he said, trying to be brave.
"Well, you have got some great doctors. I think that you will be just fine. And you can take Robear with you, if you want." He smiled and squeezed her hand.
She stayed with him for a while longer and talked to him about his foster family, his friends at school, books he had read. He was a very talkative child once he got over his shyness and he was in the middle of a very active description of the curse in Pirates of the Caribbean when he stopped talking and began to seize. She jumped up and grabbed a shot of Phenobarbital, which kept in an empty emesis basin above the sink. His thrashing stopped almost as soon as she pushed the drug into his IV and he opened his eyes.
She put a hand on his forehead and leaned down. "I'm going to go get Doctor Shepard, okay Timothy? I will be back in just a minute." He nodded and she ran to the nurses' station to have them page Derek.
He arrived within moments. It took him a little while to examine the test results. Meredith stood with Timothy, and the little boy grasped her hand tightly. When Derek came back in he was smiling but she could tell there was a hint of worry in his eyes.
"Okay, Timothy, we're going to do your surgery today, okay? And then your seizures will stop." The child looked up at Meredith who smiled at him and then nodded. "Call his parents, and you can scrub in if you want" he said to Meredith as he was leaving, without actually looking at her. She asked a nurse to make that call and stayed with the boy.
His foster parents looked like a nice couple and she left them alone with Timothy when they arrived and she saw Derek coming down the hall with the consent form. She was about to talk to him, but she felt suddenly sick again and ducked into the women's room just in time. She could hear him calling to her from the hallway, but she slid down the tiled wall of the bathroom and sat there until she heard him walk away. She was not about to let illness stop her; however, she simply splashed water over her face and kept going.
The surgery would not be immediate, Derek had two others scheduled, and so Meredith went down to the pit to do sutures so that she would not be put on some other case and miss the neuro. Derek or no, she was an intern. As Bailey said, they would do anything to scrub in.
Eight hours before morning, when the surgery was scheduled, she found an empty on-call room and attempted to sleep, but it was impossible. Instead she went to go check on Timothy. He was sitting up in bed, his foster mother sleeping in the chair beside him. Meredith was not surprised to find that he was still awake, and she pulled another chair over to his bedside and grasped his hands.
"You are a very brave boy," she said. "You know that?"
He shrugged.
"Trust me, you are. I'm a doctor. I know." He smiled a little. "Don't be afraid. Dr. Shepard's the best that there is and I'll be with you, okay?"
His lips moved in a silent okay, and he drifted to sleep. Meredith stayed in the chair by him until his foster mother began to stir. She was leaving, but the woman's voice stopped her at the door.
"Is it time?" she asked, her voice thick with sleep or tears, Meredith couldn't tell.
"Almost."
The woman nodded. She was young, with brown hair in a ponytail and jeans, her eyes were a bright blue and they glistened as she looked at the little boy. "We're going to adopt him, you know. As soon as he's out of the hospital; we've done all the paperwork. He will be okay, won't he? He's my son."
Her voice cracked and Meredith went back to the boy's bedside. "We will do everything we can for him. Der- Dr. Shepard is the best in the business."
The mother nodded. "Are you Dr. Grey? He likes you. You'll be in there with him?'
"Yes."
"Okay, good."
At that moment the nurse came in. "Dr. Grey? Dr. Shepard said to prepare him for surgery."
Meredith took Timothy's hand as it released his mother's when they crossed the red line. Derek's eyes met hers when they entered the OR, but she looked away, focusing on helping the scrub nurses transfer the small boy to the operating table. The bear was still tucked in his arm, and she gently removed it, placing it on a table in the far corner of the room.
She was surprised when Derek held the scalpel out to her to make the first cut, she did, nervously, and her mind automatically shifted to surgery and away from who was on the table. It stayed there as she watched Derek's precise work, as he removed the benign tumor that was causing the seizures. As he cut he allowed her to look in the scope, much as she had during her first surgery, the one on Katie Bryce.
It was only as Derek sewed the wound shut that she allowed herself to think of the wide eyes of the little boy who she had sat vigil by. She went over to the table where the bear lay and took a roll of gauze. Carefully she wrapped it around the bear's head, using scissors to cut two small holes for the ears. After the child was transferred back to a bed she tucked the toy under his arm. Derek smiled at her, but she looked away.
"He's s sweet boy," was all that she said.
"Do you want to go with me to tell the family?" he asked. She wanted to say no to going anywhere with him, but the fear in the face of Timothy's foster mother made her change her mind. She followed Derek to the waiting room where both foster parents sat, a baby in the arms of the father and two older children asleep in chairs.
The woman jumped up and looked at Meredith, who smiled.
"The surgery was successful," Derek informed them, "His seizures should be gone." Tears coursed down the woman's face as she threw her arms around Derek and then Meredith. The little children awoke and clapped their hands when they found out that Timmy was okay.
"Can I see him?" she asked.
"Yes, since he is so young you can go up to recovery. The rest of you can see him once he is brought back to his room. Nurse Debby will take you to the recovery wing, Mrs. Gregory."
Derek nodded to the nurse who took the woman's arm. Meredith smiled once more at the family and turned around. Derek stayed by her side, although she did not speak to him. As they were about to exit the room Meredith stumbled over nothing and felt suddenly weak. Derek grabbed her arm.
"Are you okay?" he asked, in that gentle voice that made her love him and hate him at the same time. "God, Meredith, you don't look well."
"Thanks. I just need to sit down," she murmured, sliding into a chair. "I'm okay, I-" she did not get to finish her sentence. Blackness was flitting on the edge of her vision and suddenly took it over. She slumped down in the chair, her head falling onto Derek's chest.