What Do You Hear in These Sounds? 13/?
Author: Carsonfiles
Timeline: This chapter takes place roughly just after the episode with the not-a-spinoff. I have a mental block against the name and number. Later chapters continue to end of Season 3 and beyond. Then A/U (or I'll be really freaked out next fall)
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, but if Shonda doesn't quit bending them in ways they weren't meant to bend, I might have to confiscate them.
Summary: Meredith's session after the slap and the standing up ("The Other Side of This Life").
Rating: PG-13
Grace
There's the moon asking to stay
Long enough for the clouds to fly me away
Though it's my time coming, I'm not afraid, afraid to die
My fading voice sings of love,
But she cries to the clicking of time,
Of time
Wait in the fire...
Meredith watched as Derek slammed the door to Dr. Burson’s office. She slowly walked down the hall, her hand trailing along the wall. She shook her head at Margaret when she tried to talk. Alex came out of Susan’s office and ran down the hall, barely nodding her way. Susan poked her head out the door.
"Mer? Come on in. I’m a little disoriented. Back to backs do that do me, climbing out of one person’s life and into another’s."
Meredith came in, still stunned by Derek's rejection. Which rejection? She laughed to herself. So many over the past day, who could count?
When both women were seated, Meredith reached over to the box of tissues. She didn’t want to cry, would probably only cry if she got angry. But her nose might run, and that would require tissues. She sat with one foot tucked underneath her, and her other foot stretched out on the couch. She held onto a pillow as if it were the giraffe Thatcher had given her for a birthday she could no longer remember. Time to begin.
"My Fake Mommy died." The fringe on the pillow was long enough for her to separate out three strands and begin to braid. "She came to the clinic yesterday with hiccups. And. . .she wasn’t my case at first, but I did scrub in on her surgery. But she had a bacterium that took over her organs. And she died."
"And how was that for you?" Susan’s voice was encouraging. But before Meredith could answer, there was a tap at the door. Jack poked his head in.
"Susan, can I go ahead and do this before you get started?" His wife nodded, and Jack came in and sat down.
"Meredith, you know that Susan and I are treating the attendings as well as you interns as a team. We’re consulting with each other." Meredith nodded, wondering where Jack was going with this. "And I’m assuming you know who is in my office next door?" She nodded again.
"I’ve already reviewed Susan’s notes, and I believe that if I’m able to talk about the events of the past year with Derek, from the position of knowing what happened, I can encourage him to talk about how he is doing. I don’t mean to manipulate you over this. But he can’t seem to get to the point of talking about himself. And that’s why he’s here."
Meredith cleared her throat. "Um. . .Derek isn’t acting, that is, like himself. He’s not being. . .I think he’s hurting. You can read him my chart if it helps. It’s not like he wasn’t here for the whole year. I don’t think there are any surprises."
Jack nodded. "I’m going with that, then. Could you sign a release for that when you leave?"
"Sure." And Meredith’s mouth twitched. Something was so wrong with Derek that even Dr. Burson had noticed.
"Thanks." He smiled at his wife, touched her shoulder, and left.
"All day long, I’d been having hope. Derek and I had talked in the morning, and it seemed like we were doing more than just giving the news. He was going to come over with dinner. I had been hanging out with Thatcher-my dad-getting to know him. I was hopeful. But then she died.
"For some reason I thought I should tell him, told the chief and Bailey I wanted to. Because I owed him. If I owed him, if there were ever anything I ever owed him, it’s done. I’m done. Tab cleared." Meredith looked upward to the ceiling. Runny nose. Damn allergies.
"He blamed me, of course. He was so completely shaken and he. . ." Meredith’s cheeks and lips were no longer under her control. Fighting to force her mouth to shape the sounds, she chuffed out the words. "He slapped me across the face, in the surgery waiting room. And I was so. . ." What is wrong with my face? Her lips twitched, almost as if she were fighting laughter instead of hysteria. "I’ve been the subject of so much looking and talking and judging around here. And I’m. . ."
She closed her eyes, breathing through her nose, fighting for control. And lost. She began to keen in loud breaths, coming deep from within her, forcing them out through her gritted teeth.
Susan asked quietly, "Meredith, can you tell me?"
"I’M A PRIVATE PERSON TOO!" she screamed. "Why does everything that happens to me happen in public? I mean, seriously, I can’t have anything that is just mine, that I can choose to share. . .I am used to being alone, I need to be alone, but I don’t want to be lonely either. I just don’t want every little bit of my life to be played out as a drama for the people at this hospital!" She swallowed and then swallowed again, wondering if drowning in your own spit was even possible.
"So I went home after my shift, and Alex and Izzie and I had some drinks, and I kept waiting. And he never showed up. Just never came around. And now he’s on the other side of a canyon and I can’t talk to him." Not. Now. The words pinballed through her head, racking up points as they rolled from one side to the other. "He walks so fast through the halls and he takes bigger steps because he’s taller, and I have to run just to not be left behind, and so I run to keep up with him and I am tired of running. And I am so far behind and I just want to catch up."
And she weeps on my arm
Walking to the bright lights in sorrow
Oh drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow, oh my love
And the rain is falling and I believe
My time has come
It reminds me of the pain I might leave
Leave behind
Wait in the fire...
Her hands were fists now, the pillow (giraffe) forgotten on the floor, and she was drumming them at the tops of her own legs, drumming in frustration with her (tiny ineffectual) fists.
"It’s like I have some kind of thing living inside me, my own special bacteria, that poisons anything that happens to me. I can’t have anything good happen to me, because anything that happens turns to shit and toxic megacolon. I have my very own C. Diff. But no one blames SUSAN when her own fucking bacteria kills her, but here I am, I am drowning in the crap that keeps happening, and I am doing my very absolute best to breathe on my own GOD DAMN IT! All I can do, all I want to do is forget the pain. Forget the problems. Forget the hidden wife and the choosing her and the telling me I get around and I want to figure out how to live because I don’t know how, I’ve never done this before."
In the middle of this Meredith could hear all of the word vomit and only marvel, because it was her voice and her words and her pain and she was telling someone which she never did, she never opened up and shared for godssake. Sure, it was a paid someone, someone that had a chart on her with notes about just how crazy she was and probably a diagnosis or seven from the wrong side of the DSM4, but seriously, she was talking, hemmoraging words about feelings that didn’t make sense but that was the deal with feelings, you couldn’t go after them with a scalpel, you had to get some kind of emetic to vomit them out with words. It felt so good in an embarrassing sort of way, just like vomiting a bit too much tequila feels so good when it’s finally out and gone and you get to brush your teeth (and then want to throw the toothbrush away) because once something is out there, like when she finally finally got to talk to George about the sex they shouldn’t have had, even though they were in time out when it happened, it got better. And now maybe she could get better, maybe she was vomiting enough to get the parasite or whatever was causing her emotional multi-system organ failure out get it diagnosed and get it gone and maybe she could be ok.
And then the torrent of words tapered off. She was whispering now.
"Maybe I do, maybe something about who I am and the life I’ve led up to now is poisoning everything new I touch, maybe it is me, maybe I’m the problem, but I can change it, it can change. Because even if the poison is from inside me right now, that’s not a life-sentence. Because if I know, if I can figure out why, things can change. If we’d known about the C. Diff, we’d have taken steps ahead of time. And I have warning, I don’t have to be this poisoned person forever."
And as Meredith gradually relaxed, releasing the tension in her fingers and hands and arms and face, she realized that she actually felt better. No, not so much better, but maybe. . .able to consider feeling better a possibility. Huh. Who knew? She opened her eyes and looked blearily over at Susan.
"This sucks, did you know that?"
Susan laughed. "Yeah, I knew that. It’s part of the graduate course-how to get your patients to hate you."
"You aced it, didn’t you."
"Get out of here, and make another appointment. Go get something to eat." And, scrubbing her face with her hands (stupid allergies even made her eyes water) Meredith stretched off of the couch, smiled at Susan, and went.
And I feel them drown my name
So easy to know and forget with this kiss
But I'm not afraid to go but it goes so slow
Wait in the fire...
A/N: Grace. Because Derek is nothing without Meredith. Meredith is Grace for Derek’s Law. Meredith hopes. Meredith gives others hope. Yeah, she whines, yeah, it seems as if the writer’s room has a plot wheel they spin for ideas on how to screw with her. But she has hope, and Alex nailed it when he told Addison that Mer makes you believe that the screwed up people have a chance.
Because when you get right down to it, there isn’t anyone over the age of 30 who doesn’t have some dark & twisty, scary & damaged corners of their soul. And God blesses the ones who don’t lose hope. That’s grace.
And? That split infinitive bothers me, it really does. I know it’s there, no need to point it out. But Meredith called me anal retentive when I told her it was a split infinitive, so I left it. That should be the least of her worries tonight; she's got enough to deal with between Cristina, Izzie, Callie and McNarcissus.
The lyrics here are by Jeff Buckley. Not a Carson in his name anywhere. So I don’t own them any more than I own Grey’s and wrote the finale. Hint: I didn’t. Because you can see, I don’t blame Meredith more than 50% for the problems between her and Derek. Some of it’s timing. Some of it’s the idiocy of having a plot driven show instead of a relationship/character driven show (that’s where the writer’s room and I differ, at least since Ferryboat Arc.) But some of it is that he wants to blame all of their problems on her. And look around, McNarcissus. I see some failed relationships in your past. At least half of this pie is yours to eat. And I hope he has an appetite in season 4. Eat up, Derek.
Finally. . .Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is there an easy way to transport a document in word over to live journal? It seriously gets some whacked out html going. And that is pretty irritating.
Previous Chapters
1: I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak
2: I go and I find the one and only answer every week
3: And it's just me and all the memories to follow
4: Down any course that fits within a fifty-minute hour
5: And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
6: When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
7: And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something
8: But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself.
9: Oooooooh, aaaaaaah, what do you hear in these sounds?
10: I say I hear a doubt and a voice of true believing.
11: And the promises to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving.
12: And she says 'Oh', I say 'What?' She says 'Exactly,'
Timeline: This chapter takes place roughly just after the episode with the not-a-spinoff. I have a mental block against the name and number. Later chapters continue to end of Season 3 and beyond. Then A/U (or I'll be really freaked out next fall)
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, but if Shonda doesn't quit bending them in ways they weren't meant to bend, I might have to confiscate them.
Summary: Meredith's session after the slap and the standing up ("The Other Side of This Life").
Rating: PG-13
Grace
There's the moon asking to stay
Long enough for the clouds to fly me away
Though it's my time coming, I'm not afraid, afraid to die
My fading voice sings of love,
But she cries to the clicking of time,
Of time
Wait in the fire...
Meredith watched as Derek slammed the door to Dr. Burson’s office. She slowly walked down the hall, her hand trailing along the wall. She shook her head at Margaret when she tried to talk. Alex came out of Susan’s office and ran down the hall, barely nodding her way. Susan poked her head out the door.
"Mer? Come on in. I’m a little disoriented. Back to backs do that do me, climbing out of one person’s life and into another’s."
Meredith came in, still stunned by Derek's rejection. Which rejection? She laughed to herself. So many over the past day, who could count?
When both women were seated, Meredith reached over to the box of tissues. She didn’t want to cry, would probably only cry if she got angry. But her nose might run, and that would require tissues. She sat with one foot tucked underneath her, and her other foot stretched out on the couch. She held onto a pillow as if it were the giraffe Thatcher had given her for a birthday she could no longer remember. Time to begin.
"My Fake Mommy died." The fringe on the pillow was long enough for her to separate out three strands and begin to braid. "She came to the clinic yesterday with hiccups. And. . .she wasn’t my case at first, but I did scrub in on her surgery. But she had a bacterium that took over her organs. And she died."
"And how was that for you?" Susan’s voice was encouraging. But before Meredith could answer, there was a tap at the door. Jack poked his head in.
"Susan, can I go ahead and do this before you get started?" His wife nodded, and Jack came in and sat down.
"Meredith, you know that Susan and I are treating the attendings as well as you interns as a team. We’re consulting with each other." Meredith nodded, wondering where Jack was going with this. "And I’m assuming you know who is in my office next door?" She nodded again.
"I’ve already reviewed Susan’s notes, and I believe that if I’m able to talk about the events of the past year with Derek, from the position of knowing what happened, I can encourage him to talk about how he is doing. I don’t mean to manipulate you over this. But he can’t seem to get to the point of talking about himself. And that’s why he’s here."
Meredith cleared her throat. "Um. . .Derek isn’t acting, that is, like himself. He’s not being. . .I think he’s hurting. You can read him my chart if it helps. It’s not like he wasn’t here for the whole year. I don’t think there are any surprises."
Jack nodded. "I’m going with that, then. Could you sign a release for that when you leave?"
"Sure." And Meredith’s mouth twitched. Something was so wrong with Derek that even Dr. Burson had noticed.
"Thanks." He smiled at his wife, touched her shoulder, and left.
"All day long, I’d been having hope. Derek and I had talked in the morning, and it seemed like we were doing more than just giving the news. He was going to come over with dinner. I had been hanging out with Thatcher-my dad-getting to know him. I was hopeful. But then she died.
"For some reason I thought I should tell him, told the chief and Bailey I wanted to. Because I owed him. If I owed him, if there were ever anything I ever owed him, it’s done. I’m done. Tab cleared." Meredith looked upward to the ceiling. Runny nose. Damn allergies.
"He blamed me, of course. He was so completely shaken and he. . ." Meredith’s cheeks and lips were no longer under her control. Fighting to force her mouth to shape the sounds, she chuffed out the words. "He slapped me across the face, in the surgery waiting room. And I was so. . ." What is wrong with my face? Her lips twitched, almost as if she were fighting laughter instead of hysteria. "I’ve been the subject of so much looking and talking and judging around here. And I’m. . ."
She closed her eyes, breathing through her nose, fighting for control. And lost. She began to keen in loud breaths, coming deep from within her, forcing them out through her gritted teeth.
Susan asked quietly, "Meredith, can you tell me?"
"I’M A PRIVATE PERSON TOO!" she screamed. "Why does everything that happens to me happen in public? I mean, seriously, I can’t have anything that is just mine, that I can choose to share. . .I am used to being alone, I need to be alone, but I don’t want to be lonely either. I just don’t want every little bit of my life to be played out as a drama for the people at this hospital!" She swallowed and then swallowed again, wondering if drowning in your own spit was even possible.
"So I went home after my shift, and Alex and Izzie and I had some drinks, and I kept waiting. And he never showed up. Just never came around. And now he’s on the other side of a canyon and I can’t talk to him." Not. Now. The words pinballed through her head, racking up points as they rolled from one side to the other. "He walks so fast through the halls and he takes bigger steps because he’s taller, and I have to run just to not be left behind, and so I run to keep up with him and I am tired of running. And I am so far behind and I just want to catch up."
And she weeps on my arm
Walking to the bright lights in sorrow
Oh drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow, oh my love
And the rain is falling and I believe
My time has come
It reminds me of the pain I might leave
Leave behind
Wait in the fire...
Her hands were fists now, the pillow (giraffe) forgotten on the floor, and she was drumming them at the tops of her own legs, drumming in frustration with her (tiny ineffectual) fists.
"It’s like I have some kind of thing living inside me, my own special bacteria, that poisons anything that happens to me. I can’t have anything good happen to me, because anything that happens turns to shit and toxic megacolon. I have my very own C. Diff. But no one blames SUSAN when her own fucking bacteria kills her, but here I am, I am drowning in the crap that keeps happening, and I am doing my very absolute best to breathe on my own GOD DAMN IT! All I can do, all I want to do is forget the pain. Forget the problems. Forget the hidden wife and the choosing her and the telling me I get around and I want to figure out how to live because I don’t know how, I’ve never done this before."
In the middle of this Meredith could hear all of the word vomit and only marvel, because it was her voice and her words and her pain and she was telling someone which she never did, she never opened up and shared for godssake. Sure, it was a paid someone, someone that had a chart on her with notes about just how crazy she was and probably a diagnosis or seven from the wrong side of the DSM4, but seriously, she was talking, hemmoraging words about feelings that didn’t make sense but that was the deal with feelings, you couldn’t go after them with a scalpel, you had to get some kind of emetic to vomit them out with words. It felt so good in an embarrassing sort of way, just like vomiting a bit too much tequila feels so good when it’s finally out and gone and you get to brush your teeth (and then want to throw the toothbrush away) because once something is out there, like when she finally finally got to talk to George about the sex they shouldn’t have had, even though they were in time out when it happened, it got better. And now maybe she could get better, maybe she was vomiting enough to get the parasite or whatever was causing her emotional multi-system organ failure out get it diagnosed and get it gone and maybe she could be ok.
And then the torrent of words tapered off. She was whispering now.
"Maybe I do, maybe something about who I am and the life I’ve led up to now is poisoning everything new I touch, maybe it is me, maybe I’m the problem, but I can change it, it can change. Because even if the poison is from inside me right now, that’s not a life-sentence. Because if I know, if I can figure out why, things can change. If we’d known about the C. Diff, we’d have taken steps ahead of time. And I have warning, I don’t have to be this poisoned person forever."
And as Meredith gradually relaxed, releasing the tension in her fingers and hands and arms and face, she realized that she actually felt better. No, not so much better, but maybe. . .able to consider feeling better a possibility. Huh. Who knew? She opened her eyes and looked blearily over at Susan.
"This sucks, did you know that?"
Susan laughed. "Yeah, I knew that. It’s part of the graduate course-how to get your patients to hate you."
"You aced it, didn’t you."
"Get out of here, and make another appointment. Go get something to eat." And, scrubbing her face with her hands (stupid allergies even made her eyes water) Meredith stretched off of the couch, smiled at Susan, and went.
And I feel them drown my name
So easy to know and forget with this kiss
But I'm not afraid to go but it goes so slow
Wait in the fire...
A/N: Grace. Because Derek is nothing without Meredith. Meredith is Grace for Derek’s Law. Meredith hopes. Meredith gives others hope. Yeah, she whines, yeah, it seems as if the writer’s room has a plot wheel they spin for ideas on how to screw with her. But she has hope, and Alex nailed it when he told Addison that Mer makes you believe that the screwed up people have a chance.
Because when you get right down to it, there isn’t anyone over the age of 30 who doesn’t have some dark & twisty, scary & damaged corners of their soul. And God blesses the ones who don’t lose hope. That’s grace.
And? That split infinitive bothers me, it really does. I know it’s there, no need to point it out. But Meredith called me anal retentive when I told her it was a split infinitive, so I left it. That should be the least of her worries tonight; she's got enough to deal with between Cristina, Izzie, Callie and McNarcissus.
The lyrics here are by Jeff Buckley. Not a Carson in his name anywhere. So I don’t own them any more than I own Grey’s and wrote the finale. Hint: I didn’t. Because you can see, I don’t blame Meredith more than 50% for the problems between her and Derek. Some of it’s timing. Some of it’s the idiocy of having a plot driven show instead of a relationship/character driven show (that’s where the writer’s room and I differ, at least since Ferryboat Arc.) But some of it is that he wants to blame all of their problems on her. And look around, McNarcissus. I see some failed relationships in your past. At least half of this pie is yours to eat. And I hope he has an appetite in season 4. Eat up, Derek.
Finally. . .Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is there an easy way to transport a document in word over to live journal? It seriously gets some whacked out html going. And that is pretty irritating.
Previous Chapters
1: I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak
2: I go and I find the one and only answer every week
3: And it's just me and all the memories to follow
4: Down any course that fits within a fifty-minute hour
5: And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
6: When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
7: And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something
8: But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself.
9: Oooooooh, aaaaaaah, what do you hear in these sounds?
10: I say I hear a doubt and a voice of true believing.
11: And the promises to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving.
12: And she says 'Oh', I say 'What?' She says 'Exactly,'