( It's not until we get older that we find that the known can be just as terrifying. That, sometimes, what's behind us haunts us worse than any imagined ghosts. )

It's not until Lexie leaves that everything she's said starts to coalesce in Meredith's head. In her half-sister's presence, she only has the energy required to keep up the conversation and to fight off thoughts of some off-shoot future and of her - their - father. It takes a lot out of her to bear Lexie, more than she thought not to snap at her ( Read more... )

Meredith just stands where they leave her for a few moments after Sean and Lexie go, willing herself to be a little calmer. Under her cold exterior, she's frazzled, and now that she's on her own, it's hard to keep that under the surface. She heads outside to check on the dog, which turns into playing with Doc, and somehow, throwing his stupid toy ( Read more... )

( September 2010. )

It's the story of Meredith's life, really. Every time she starts to get back on her feet, something new comes along to bowl her over, and it's all the more frustrating for the fact it forces on her, the realization that she's grown soft here. Things were so good for a while, so peaceful, at least compared to the lives she and Sean had led before; ( Read more... )

It'll feel good later, having been in surgery again. When the gloves come off and scalpels are set down, everything sterilized and put away, when she's home again, Meredith will be at peace with this, but here in the O.R., there's no room for her to do anything but focus. She doesn't think about the relief of getting to work again or how she needs ( Read more... )

It was really only a matter of time, Meredith finds herself thinking, before she wound up here as a patient instead of a doctor. She hadn't thought about it before, hadn't expected it, but now she feels she should have. Check up over, painkillers taken, ice applied, she lies stretched out in a clinic bed and hopes they don't have enough room to ( Read more... )

As things start to quiet down again in the days following Doc's arrival, Meredith's routine changes, accommodating itself to taking care of the dog. She's intent on training him to be better behaved like she promised she would, a pursuit that, theoretically, helps fill in some of the gaps in her day, but which tends to get left by the wayside in ( Read more... )

Though Meredith neither expects nor needs to fill the empty clinic shifts herself, having more than enough volunteers in need of something to keep them busy, she's still fallen into a habit of taking them on when she's around, and that's more often than not. The schedule's in constant flux, one month nearly full, the next slowly emptying out, and ( Read more... )