51. Lucid Ellis

AN: I have been actively working on this chapter since my last update, but it was hard to get the Meredith/Ellis conversation right. It still doesn't seem like it should, but I'm getting too frustrated to keep re-writing it. I can only hope it's close enough to set the right tone for the following several chapters, which will obviously deal with the ferry arc. The next chapter is already in the works and should be up this week. Thanks for reading!

Meredith watched George re-approach his patient after she had offered him congratulations on his wedding, and although it should be a happy moment, she knew everything was about to change. A sense of foreboding swept over her, and even before the words reached her ears, Meredith knew her mother was standing behind her.

And the relatively peaceful bubble she had worked so hard to create for herself was effectively popped.

"People who hover in doorways-"

"Are coming from nowhere and are heading nowhere," Meredith finished smoothly as she turned to face her past; the past she had worked so hard to forget about in the past year. "You said that to me a lot growing up."

Ellis's expression didn't change. "You hovered in a lot of doorways."

Meredith stayed silent. She had hovered in a lot of doorways; it wasn't something she could argue. And telling her mother she had hovered in hopes of attention, comfort or contact wouldn't make a difference now.

Ellis changed her tactic, her eyebrows lifting slightly as she spoke again. "Are you planning on coming to talk to me any time soon?"

With a deep breath, Meredith nodded. "Right now, actually."

"Good." Ellis turned and headed back towards her room, fully expecting her daughter to follow.

With only a moment of hesitation, Meredith did follow, wanting for this conversation to go well, but knowing it wouldn't. Once they reached the room, Meredith sat on the chair by the bed, pulling one heel onto the seat in front of her and wrapping an arm around her leg, as if trying to shield herself from what was to come. Ellis remained standing; an allusion to their conversations when Meredith was a child. Ellis had always liked to stand and have Meredith sit. It gave the illusion of power.

"So," Ellis prompted. "Tell me about yourself."

This was not the first question Meredith had expected. Being drilled on her internship, her plans for her residency and fellowship, and her grades and standings in medical school she had expected. Not anything about her life. Ellis had never taken an interest in her life. "I..." She stammered, but trailed off when no words popped into her mind. In the hour and a half she had spent avoiding her mother this morning she had run through the questions she had expected to be asked, and she had replies for all of them. But not this.

Her mother offered her a laughing smile, showing that she understood her daughter's hesitance. "What's your life like?" She asked again. "I... I really do want to know you, Meredith."

She was a surgical intern. She didn't have much of a life outside of the hospital, other than her friends and Derek. Her mother would never understand befriending the people you were supposed to be competing with. But maybe she would understand about Derek. She really and truly seemed to want to know about her life. And Derek was a very important part of her life, so maybe... "Well, I have a boyfriend."

"I know."

"You...you know?" Meredith stammered.

"I do. Or at least I had hoped. I saw you with that man before you got in the ambulance with me."

"Oh..."

"Yes, and I'm hoping that five years has been enough time for you to grow out of the stage where men are all disposable."

Ellis's words hit home, clenching around Meredith's heart as she recalled how lonely her life had been before she had come to learn that men could be trusted...or at least that one man could be trusted. Well, three actually; Derek, Alex and George. There had been a time where she simply would have let her mother's comment go, where she would have swallowed her thoughts and her feelings, and continued to hope her mother would one day accept her. Would one day love her.

But Meredith didn't need her mother's love to prove she was loveable anymore.

"If all you want to do is insult me, I have better things to do," she snapped at her mother, momentarily surprised at the harsh tone in her own voice. She recovered quickly and forced a stoney expression to her face.

Ellis huffed. "I'm just trying to know you, Meredith."

"No. You were insulting me. I'm sorry if I'm not the perfect daughter, but you're not exactly winning any parenting awards."

"Meredith-"

"You were too busy competing for surgical awards to care about being a parent. And the way I used to be with men was a direct result of the way you raised me, of what you taught me."

"Meredith-"

"And it took a lot for me to be able to be in a relationship like this, so you don't get to go there. You don't get to touch that part of my life."

Ellis sighed and moved to sit on the edge of her hospital bed. "You've changed."

Meredith exhaled heavily, some of her anger dissipating. "I have," she agreed.

"When?"

Meredith closed her eyes as she thought back to the past five years. Her first year of medical school had been the hardest. She had struggled to balance her classes and labs with taking care of her mother. As she spent most of that year trying to keep her mother at home, she had spent almost all of her time not in class at home with Ellis. Her second year had begun with Meredith struggling to find a way into one of the many closely knit groups that had developed during the first year. However, the only people Meredith could make any ties with were the kinds of people looking for shallow friendships. And her second year had blended into her third and fourth as she had fallen back into her old ways in an attempt to maintain any form of connection with other people.

And then she had moved back to Seattle.

"In the last year," she admitted. "I moved back here. Started fresh. Made friends with a lot of great people. Met Derek."

"Derek's the boyfriend," Ellis stated.

She nodded.

"Does he understand the demands of your career? Because some men say they do at first, but-"

"He's great," she said with a smile. "He's a doctor too, so he gets it."

"That's good." Ellis hesitated. "Is he...good to you?"

"He's great," she repeated, not wanting to divulge anything more about her relationship.

"And these friends of yours...?"

"Are great, too," Meredith supplied.

"And your internship?"

Meredith paused for a moment, exhaling a small breath. This was the subject she had been expecting first. "It's going well."

"Is Grace still one of the top teaching hospitals?"

She had to smile at her mother's first real question. This was all Ellis Grey was really interested in. "It's number two."

"Good."

"Are you making sure to distinguish yourself from the other interns? Because it's a competitive program, Meredith, and not everyone is going to make it through."

"I've got less than a month and a half left," Meredith stated. "Everyone who has made it this far is going to finish the program. It hasn't been an easy year for anyone."

Ellis narrowed her eyes at her daughter. "You're not supposed to like the other interns."

"Says who?"

Ellis let out an exasperated breath. "You're not going to make it anywhere in life if all you want is for people to like you."

"I think I've made it far enough without your advice to prove you're not always right."

"Oh, is that so?"

"Yeah," Meredith shot back, matching her mother's raised volume. "You told me I would never make it through medical school. Well, here I am. And I'd bet anything that, had you been lucid at the time, you would have told me I'd never get into a surgical program. Or through it, for that matter."

"I was only trying to push you, Meredith."

Meredith scoffed and rolled her eyes, falling back into the facade she had perfected in high school. "No, you were disappointed in me. Nothing I ever did was enough for you."

"You weren't exactly a high achiever, Meredith."

"What makes you think that? You were never around to know what I was achieving or not, or...whatever."

"I was around enough to get angry messages from your teachers."

"And yet if you had ever asked to see my report cards, you would have seen I was on the honour roll every semester."

Ellis paused, surprised by Meredith's comment, and knowing her daughter's tone enough to believe her words. "You could have shown me."

Meredith took a breath, surprised to feel tears stinging the backs of her eyes. "I tried."

"No parent is perfect, Meredith."

She blinked furiously, feeling like a vice was crushing her heart. "But some parents try to be," she whispered.

"You didn't make it easy, Meredith. It's not easy to raise a child alone."

"It was your choice to raise me alone!" Meredith cried. "It wasn't my fault you kicked Thatcher out. And it sure as hell wasn't my fault that you based all your plans on a married man."

Ellis stared, shocked, at her daughter.

Meredith breathed as she recovered from her outburst, and couldn't help but feel good that she had managed to shock her mother. "Oh, I guess you didn't realize I knew about that..." She said snidely.

"How did you..."

"You have Alzheimer's," Meredith reminded. "You don't often care what you say to me. Plus your old adulterous partner is my Chief of Surgery. It wasn't hard to put things together."

"It wasn't what you think."

"Oh, so you didn't know he was married? And you forgot you were married, that you had a child?"

Ellis snapped. "I am not discussing this with you. It happened a long time ago. It doesn't matter now."

"It mattered then," Meredith stated. "Things that happened a long time ago mattered then. And you never talked to me about any of it."

The two Greys were silent as they stared at each other, challenging the other to speak first.

"It doesn't matter anymore," Ellis eventually spoke. "I don't know why you want to discuss it."

"You're the one who wanted to chat," Meredith snipped, knowing she was being immature, but unable to stop herself. She had never learned how to interact with her mother after high school – not that they had exactly communicated well during her teenage years. But she had left for college and barely returned home.

"I want to know about current things in your life, Meredith."

Meredith resisted the urge to roll her eyes, reminding herself that this could very well be the last day she ever spoke to her mother lucid. "I have a month and a half left in my internship. I'm planning on staying in Seattle for my residency, and hopefully my fellowship and onward. I'm very good friends with some of the other interns, in fact two of them are my roommates. And I have a boyfriend, who I also live with. That's about all I have to talk about," she said honestly. "It hasn't been an easy year, and I don't exactly have a life outside the hospital right now."

"Well, that's how it should be," Ellis commented.

Meredith nodded warily, relatively certain her mother was glad for one thing she was doing.

"But it's not a good thing to be making friends with the other interns, Meredith. It leads to loyalties and guilt, and it will hold you back."

Meredith took a breath, forcing so many comments to the back of her mind. What would her mother say if she explained how she had risked her career when her roommate had cut a patient's L-VAD wire? Or how she had given up surgeries when her best friend had been hospitalized, when her friend had needed help studying, and when her other roommate's father had been sick? Hell, what would Ellis say if she found out Meredith's live in boyfriend was a department head?

"They're my family," Meredith found herself stating firmly. "We all started out together. We're all loyal to each other."

"Meredith-" Ellis began in an exasperated tone, but Meredith cut her off.

"It's not always about getting ahead. They're all I have; them and Derek. They're my family," she repeated.

Ellis was silent for several moments before continuing. "Have you chosen a specialty yet?"

Meredith breathed a little easier. If her mother was letting it go, then maybe she understood. Maybe she really did want to know things, and really did want her only daughter to be happy. She shook her head. "It's still early."

"Cristina's already chosen cardiothoracics," was Ellis's reply.

"Yeah," Meredith said with a slight nod. "Well, I guess I'm just waiting to be inspired." And it was the truth. There were a few specialties she had ruled out, but many left to choose from. And she was in a spot in her life where she was learning that important decisions like this didn't need to be rushed. "I'm happy now, you know? I feel like I know who I am. I have a family now, and someone in my life who I love, who I really love. And I think that's..." She trailed off for a moment, struggling for the right word. "Special. I think it's really special. And I'm really happy."

Ellis stood, pacing back and forth twice before coming to a stop before her daughter. "What the hell happened to you?"

"I...what?" Meredith stammered, taken aback by her mother's tone.

"You're happy? You're happy now? What happened to you?! I raised you to be a force of nature. I raised you to be a fighter. And here you are five years later stammering on about how I wronged you in the past, about having friends and a boyfriend, about being in love and happy." Ellis had been caught unaware by her daughter's knowledge of her affair and subsequent downfall, but she had recovered now. And she was going in for the kill. She stood, once again resuming her position of authority.

"Mom-" Meredith tried meekly, but it was pointless.

"You've gone soft," Ellis accused. "Inspiration if for the feeble minded, Meredith. It takes someone with drive and initiative to get there without it. I have a disease for which there is no cure. I'd think that would be inspiration enough!"

"Mom-" Meredith tried again.

"Listen to me, Meredith. Anyone can fall in love and be blindly happy, but not everyone can pick up a scalpel and save a life."

"I'm not doing anything blindly," Meredith argued, but Ellis was beyond listening.

"I raised you to be an extraordinary human being, so imagine my disappointment when I wake up after five years and discover that you're no more than ordinary!"

Meredith felt like her mother had slapped her with those words. Her eyes welled as a loud humming took over her auditory system. She barely even heard the rest of Ellis's rant. Of all the things Ellis could have said to her, this was by far the worst.

000

Meredith was still stewing over her mother's words an hour later, when she nearly walked right into her boyfriend.

"Whoa," Derek called as his hands went immediately to her side to steady her. "You have to watch where you're going," he mocked. "You never know who you'll run into..."

She glared at him.

He pursed his lips. "Okay, I'm sensing you're not finding this funny. Should I apologize for almost being run over? Because I will if you need me to."

This caused a hint of a smile to flutter to her lips. "See, this is why my friends say you're whipped."

Derek rolled his eyes. "I am not whipped."

"Whatever."

He narrowed his eyes at her, but changed the subject. "Anyway, I was just on my way to see a patient. It seems the mother of a certain girlfriend of mine has requested my expertise on-"

"Don't go," Meredith cut him off, surprising both herself and Derek at the vulnerability in her tone. When Cristina had mentioned that Ellis had requested a consult with 'the neurosurgeon who had put her in the clinical study,' Meredith's heart had clenched so painfully she was surprised it was still beating. She did not want her mother and her boyfriend in the same room together. It would be like her past and her future colliding, and she knew no good could come of it.

In fact, it actually terrified her.

It was just like her best friend had said. Ellis Grey had ways. And as comfortable and secure as Meredith was in her relationship, she knew her mother.

Derek tilted his head as his expression softened. "Are you okay?"

I'm fine, she wanted to scream. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. But she wasn't fine. Nothing about this day was fine. Why couldn't things go back to that morning when she had woken up feeling warm and safe and loved in Derek's arms? Her mother didn't make her feel any of those things. In face, Ellis instilled the opposite on her daughter, leaving her feeling cold and vulnerable and unloveable. And ordinary.

"Oh, Mer," Derek whispered, not needing her to respond as he took in her expression.

Meredith forced a deep, painful, breath into her lungs and swallowed hard. She didn't have the luxury of breaking down now. She and Derek were going to deal with this crisis together. He had promised her he was there for her, and she believed him. But that didn't mean she could avoid the person causing the crisis. "I'm fine."

He sighed. "I don't believe you for a second."

"I know. I don't believe me either. But I need to be fine right now."

"Meredith-"

"No," she cut him off. "Today, right now, I need to be fine. And later, when this is over and she's back to being...you know...then I can be not fine. And you can do the dreamy comforting thing you're so good at. But right now...fine." She really needed to be fine. She needed to get through the day and forget that her mother thought she was ordinary. But the numbness was wearing off and she was finding it more and more difficult to be fine; especially with Derek in such close proximity.

He nodded and leaned in to peck her lips. "Okay."

She gripped at his hand and couldn't help but lean close to him, inhaling his comforting scent. If she hugged him, or let him hug her, it would all be over. She would start crying. And she didn't have the luxury of crying right now. But she still needed to be close to him, even if just for a moment.

"So," he ventured when she pulled away. "Is there anything I should know about the patient?"

Meredith couldn't help but smile at his joking tone as she fell into step beside him, heading for her mother's hospital room. "Only that the patient is a bitch."

He snorted. "That's not very professional, Dr. Grey."

She giggled. "Yeah, well...it's the truth."

"What did she say to you?" He was concerned.

"Nothing." If she went into detail, she would risk crying. And if he went in there knowing how upset she was, he would be biased. And Meredith was still hoping Ellis wouldn't recognize him from the nursing home, which may be stupid and desperate but...well, she was desperate.

"Meredith..."

She shook her head. "I'm fine, remember? I can tell you things later, but not now."

He sighed, but nodded, understanding that she wasn't trying to push him away. "Okay." They were getting close to Ellis's room. "Do you...want to come in with me?"

"No," Meredith said quickly. "Then she'll know for sure."

He furrowed his brow. "You don't want her to know about me?"

"She already knows about you, although I'm hoping she doesn't realize it's you."

"Meredith-"

"Just...don't get personal, okay?"

"Meredith-"

"Please?"

He sighed. "Don't you think she'd be happy for you?"

Meredith let loose a frustrated breath. Derek loved her, of that she had no doubt. But as much as he was getting better at understanding just how much she couldn't relate to how he had grown up and his relationship with his mother, he didn't grasp that the opposite was true. He couldn't relate to her relationship with Ellis.

"She's not. She doesn't want me to be happy. She wants me to be...well, I don't really know. I would say she wants me to be better than her, but she would hate it if I or anyone was ever better than her."

"But she's your mother."

"Seriously, Derek, how many times do we need to go over this?" She snapped.

He paused, turning to face her. "I'm sorry. I know this is hard for you. I just..."

"You don't get it," she supplied. "And I understand that. So I really need for you to trust me on this. You need to go in there and be a doctor. And you need to not get personal."

000

Derek pasted his best 'doctor' expression to his face as he entered the hospital room housing his girlfriend's mother. "Hello, Dr. Grey. I'm Derek Shepherd, your neuro consult," he greeted as he closed the door behind him.

Ellis Looked up from her bed, narrowed her eyes at him, but said nothing that claimed she knew him. "Dr. Shepherd. I'm glad you could make it so quickly. I know I bring a unique...situation..."

He offered her a warm smile. She wasn't being obtrusive or confrontational at all. "We always do our best for our own," he replied. It suddenly hit him that technically he was speaking to his girlfriend's mother. And that this could quite possibly be the only real conversation he ever had with the woman who had raised the woman he loved. It wouldn't hurt to butter her up a bit. "Especially for someone of your...stature in the medical community," he added.

She smiled back at him. "That's very kind, Dr. Shepherd."

He approached her bed, lifting her chart off the hook at the end of her bed. "I trust you've already read through this?"

She nodded. "Of course."

"Do you have any questions?"

Ellis did, in fact, have questions. Derek felt more and more relaxed as he smoothly answered every question Ellis came up with. She sat forward in her bed, her mind, which had been mostly turned off for five years, chugging away as she went over every symptom she had ever had. Derek eventually sat at the foot of her bed, comfortable with their rapport.

"What about an fMRI now, while I'm lucid?"

He sighed. On the surface it seemed like a wonderful idea. But it was a popular idea, and he had read half a dozen case studies of this exact situation. The fMRI never came up with anything of use. "It won't be able to show us anything new. No test is going to help us understand what's going on."

Ellis shook her head. "Five years, and you haven't made a single advancement. And there is nothing else you can do for me. I don't know how you do it, work every day with this awful disease..."

Derek hesitated. Meredith had warned him not to get personal. But the woman sitting before him was calm and friendly. He was sure there wouldn't be a problem. "Oh, see, I'm not actually an Alzheimer's specialist. I just took a special interest in this case...because of Meredith."

Ellis's eyes went cold as her face tightened. "It was you."

"Excuse me?"

She glared at him. "This morning. In the nursing home. You were the man with my daughter. You're what happened to her."

"Happened to her? What?" He floundered, completely unprepared for the older woman's bitter accusal.

"You changed her. She was a force of nature, strong, a fighter. Then you came along and crushed her. And now she's unfocused and blabbering on about her boyfriend and her intern friends."

"Dr. Grey, I can assure you-"

"I've seen men like you before; threatened by a woman who's their equal. You don't care about her. You just want someone to admire you. And you don't care about the damage you do to her along the way."

Derek sat frozen for a long moment. He was so shocked by her outburst that he could barely find the brain power to realize just what Meredith had been trying to tell him for so long. Finally, he cleared his throat. Regardless of what the woman thought of him and his intentions, he had to make one thing perfectly clear. "I can assure you, Dr. Grey, that I care a great deal about your daughter."

Ellis scoffed. "You're an attending; a neurosurgeon. And you're older than her. There's only one thing you would want from my daughter."

His blood boiled at her suggestion. "Stop," he commanded.

"Excuse me-"

"No. It's my turn to talk now. I love your daughter more than anything else in the world. I love her so much that I have trouble sleeping without her, that all I want in the world is for her to be happy, and that when she's not happy, it physically hurts me. If anyone happened to someone here, she happened to me. And I'm grateful for it every day. So don't you dare imply what you were implying for even a second."

Ellis sat back, surprised by his outburst. After a moment she met his eyes harshly. "Get out of my room."

Derek let out a frustrated scoff as he stood. He made it halfway to the door before he stopped and turned back to face her. "She's amazing," he practically whispered, gaining Ellis's attention. "She's absolutely amazing, and I just don't understand how you don't see that."

"You don't need to tell me anything about my own daughter," she said coldly.

He shrugged. "Maybe not, but I feel the need to. You may not like me. And you may not approve of my relationship with your daughter, but I need you to know that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with her."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because it's something a mother should know, or at least should want to know."

Ellis sighed, and remained silent for so long that Derek was about to turn back to the door when she spoke again. "Are you a parent?"

He shook his head. "Not yet."

The implications of his words weren't lost on her, but Ellis chose not to acknowledge them. "Are you married?"

He almost laughed at the question. Ellis had been married when she had an affair with a married man. But that was something she wouldn't expect Derek to know about. "I was. We married young. I was separated before I moved here. I met Meredith, the divorce was finalized, and I moved on with my life."

"Where did you go to school?"

"NYU. Did my residency in New York, too. I went into private practice before I took the position here. Richard was doing his fellowship when I was an intern. Last year he called and offered me head of neuro."

Ellis digested the information with a nod. "Meredith's only an intern."

He nodded. "I know. And I know our relationship can be frowned upon, but we've both agreed it's worth it."

She nodded, as if only now realizing the prospect of an intern-attending relationship had negative effects for the attending as well as the intern. "And you love her."

"Very much."

"Are you planning on marrying her?"

"Absolutely."

"So...are you here for my blessing or something?"

He choked back a laugh as he shook his head. "No. Meredith would kill me if I ever looked for your permission to be with her."

For the first time since learning who he was, Ellis cracked a smile. "You do seem to know her."

He nodded. "I do," he began, only to be cut off by the sound of his pager. "Damnit," he cursed, reaching his hand to tilt his pager upwards. "I need to take this," he explained.

Ellis waved her hand. "Go. I've been there many times."

He nodded, but paused for a moment before leaving. "I know this wasn't the best of circumstances, but I am glad to have met you."

"I think I'm glad to have met you too."