Chapter Text
Forty-eight hours later, Meredith’s stages of grief shift into something new. Gone is the despair and sorrow and depression, which had her fingernails cutting the sensitive skin of her palms. Gone is… No, the love is not gone. She thinks she’s going to die sooner than stop loving Addison, even if all she does now is hurt her, lie to her while looking into her eyes.
The love is still here, but so is a new phenomenon - anger.
Overbearing rage that has her riled up in the worst way possible. She’s pissed off at everyone, at the entire world, at her friends and her enemies, and her boss, and her dead mother and drunk abusive father, at her sister- Well, Lexie might be forgiven here. But everyone else might just fuck off and leave her alone.
Even when one of her interns asks where they can find gloves, Meredith shouts at them so loudly it stops everyone in the emergency room for a second; her voice ringing off the walls between the moans of pain. She tells the intern she’ll do the goddamn thing herself since they’re so horrible at their job.
She marches out of the emergency room—plenty of doctors are handling everything there, so it doesn’t matter if she disappears for a moment.
The goddamn gloves.
Meredith walks to the closest storage room, ignoring when she bumps into a nurse, hitting her shoulder painfully. She doesn’t even feel it, the anger and irritation bubbling up inside her like lava, about to pour down from the mountain, burning down an entire village, leaving no survivors.
She shouldn’t have come to work today, because she can swear to God or whoever is steering this rotten world, that there’s going to be a new corpse in Seattle Grace. A person murdered by her if anyone else tells her they don’t know where the gloves are.
Her hand catches the handle and pulls it strongly - still on fire with her wrath - and swings the door open, not caring if she hits someone with it. She doesn’t, but even if she did, she wouldn’t notice.
She wouldn’t notice because Cristina Yang is pressing her little sister against the wall, with her hand in her scrub pants.
Cristina. Lexie. Cristina. Lexie. Cristina. Lexie.
Her eyes hop from head to head, brain lagged in a pointless circulation.
Cristina and Lexie.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
They jump apart like someone poured scalding water over their heads. Flushed, Lexie’s pink cheeks match the redness on Cristina’s neck where she’s got a violet bruise that’s blooming. Messed up hair, Cristina’s shirt hiked up over her chest, where Lexie was just holding her and touching, pulling her closer. Sweat on their temples, panting, chests heaving. Caught in the act, nothing to defend them whatsoever.
“I can’t believe this!” Meredith shouts, watching Cristina’s hand slip out of Lexie’s pants, then fixing her shirt back onto her stomach. “You’re fucking my sister?”
Lexie clears her throat, “Meredith, this is not what it looks like…”
Her eyes are widened in fear, almost horror. These doe brown eyes now seem to be inflating, and her bottom lip is wobbling as she stares at Meredith, looking like she wants the ground to swallow her whole.
“It’s not?” Meredith chuckles, shaking her head before raising her voice again. “I walk in on you with her hands down your pants and you have the audacity to tell me it’s not what it looks like?”
The commotion draws in a crowd. Nurses, doctors, and interns gather around the open door, including Bailey who’s barely hiding her shocked gasp beneath a stern look. People are staring at the three of them, and it’s the worst day to make Meredith Grey angry. But she’s already fuming, and nothing can stop her now - even unwanted spectators.
No. Not in this case.
“Let me handle this, Alexandra,” Cristina steps forward and raises her hand as if to protect Lexie.
Meredith’s jaw drops and she clasps her hands together - her laughter becoming manic, “Alexandra? You call her that? Is that some sort of kink between you? She can handle her own shit if she has the nerve to go behind my back.” She pauses for a moment, watching her person and her little sister, the air between them thick with something else. It takes one second more to realise what’s wrong. “Oh- It’s not the first time, is it?”
The silence from both women gives a definitive answer to her question.
“Oh. My. Fucking. God,” Meredith’s fists tighten, but even the comforting feeling of cutting into the skin, almost drawing blood doesn’t make this better; doesn’t calm her down; doesn’t stop her from almost murdering them. “You’ve been screwing all this time? Are you being fucking for real? My best friend and my younger sister,” She laughs again, and this time mania turns into something deeper and darker as she takes a step closer. “You’re my person, Cristina!” She points her fingers at Yang who bravely keeps eye contact. “My person! And you- You weren’t talking about Owen. You weren’t screwing Owen. It was Lexie all along. You lied to me! You lied looking into my eyes!”
“I didn’t,” Cristina finds her voice but it’s far from a shout. “I slept with him, too. I didn’t lie.”
Whispers and gasps can be heard from the crowd. Murmuring rustle becomes a melody as people stare in interest, and even Miranda Bailey can’t do anything other than watch. Because she knows Grey - she knows what Grey can do if she walks out there and tries to pull her out.
It would become a complete madhouse.
Lexie hides her face in her hands, mumbling, “Cristina…”
It takes just her name for Yang to realise she picked the wrong route for how this conversation could go.
“Fuck.”
“No. You didn’t just say that. You…” Meredith takes a step back, trying to put distance between her and Cristina Yang. Between her person, the woman who was on her side ever since the day they met and the night when Cristina listed her as her person in the papers. She reels back a bit, suddenly having this out-of-body experience, like she’s watching herself from above, seeing how she stumbles over her own feet - her sight is hazy and she can’t tell if it’s the fury or disbelief clouding her mind. “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to her? Play her like this? Her heart lives in her fucking vagina!” She looks at Lexie and grasps her wrist to expose her face, so that goddamn coward can look her in the eyes. It makes the younger Grey flinch at the touch and Meredith realises a second too late of what she’s done, letting go of her delicate skin, where Thatcher used to grab her. “Lexie, where was your brain? I- I regret giving you a chance. I regret loving you like family. The same goes for you, Cristina. Screw you both!”
Her rage shows no signs of abating, and the entire hospital is watching the dramatics unfold, her pain pouring out on everyone. The spectators keep gathering when someone catches her elbow.
“Enough, Meredith,” Mark says sternly.
She snaps at him, trying to free herself from his hold, “Stay out of this!”
Meredith can scramble as much as she wants but he is over a head taller and stronger five times, and her struggling doesn’t make a big impression on him.
“This isn’t helping, Meredith,” Derek says on her other side. “We need to talk about it somewhere private. You don’t need people to watch this.”
“I don’t need to talk!” Grey screams right into his face before snapping her head at the people she thought were her closest friends and becoming louder if that’s even humanly possible. “I need people to stop betraying me!”
Mark’s gentle when he pulls her back, “C’mon, Mer. Let’s go.”
She takes one last glance at the people… at the women she gave her entire heart to and cannot believe it’s the third person who let her down in such a short time. Her gaze hangs over them when Mark and Derek lead her through the crowd.
Tears are streaming down Lexie’s face, corners of her lips curved downwards, while Cristina’s face is blank. Empty. Flat.
Before she might see what happens next, she is on the other side of the corridor. All she hopes is that it hurts them like it hurts her.
She doesn’t ask where they’re leading her until they stop in front of Doctor Wyatt’s office. So tired and broken with ire, she asks no questions. She just walks inside.
“You mentioned the word ‘betrayal’ several times throughout our session.”
Twenty minutes later, Meredith is almost out of breath after spitting out every little detail of the past two weeks without giving herself a second to let the air into her lungs. She had no idea how much it weighed her down until it was out in the air, hanging over her in strained memory and tension; she never talked as much in therapy before as she does now. Turns out, even Meredith Grey sometimes has enough and just needs to vomit confessions as if she has just drunk a bottle of tequila.
“I guess I did,” She shrugs. Acting nonchalantly is not working here, not after oversharing things she feels ill about.
Why can’t she just shut up?
“Do you really feel betrayed?” Doctor Wyatt asks, but it’s bearing no passive aggression. More like she’s making sure of something she has just written down in the documents in her lap.
“How else can I call it? I fell for Addison and the signs she was sending were telling me she must feel the same. Then, she says she met someone new. Kaboom. I’m out of the picture, and she didn’t even tell it to my face. I found out by an accident. Then, Cristina and Lexie. They have been hooking up, probably while I was in the same building. Made me look like an idiot.”
“Alright. Let’s stop right here, focus on Addison,” Wyatt puts down her pen and looks at Meredith, and suddenly the blonde feels naked under that stare. “Did it ever cross your mind this might have been a misunderstanding?”
Meredith’s brows furrow, “A misunderstanding?”
“Yes. We shouldn’t cross that option off. You see, you haven’t confronted Addison with facts, with your version of the story. You did share your feelings with her - which is fair, you have that right - but you didn’t explain why are you pushing her away.”
“But she told Torres-”
“Okay, I got several fundamental crucial questions,” Her therapist seems to weigh her words. The waiting kills Meredith because if her overthinking can get worse, it does now. Because… a misunderstanding? How could this be a misunderstanding? It’s all plain as day. “We’ll return to your thoughts once you answer them. Is that okay with you?”
She doesn’t have any other option, does she?
She can spend the second half of the therapy session ranting and venting which can go nowhere because confessing your and other people’s sins isn’t enough here. She can pour her heart out - which feels odd to be so open and talkative - but it won’t get her too far.
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Do you believe Addison is a cruel person?”
God.
After the longest ten seconds of Meredith’s life, she finds her voice.
“No.”
“Do you think Addison would be able to go behind your back after all these times she helped you and saved your life?”
“No.”
“Do you think she would care so much about you after finding someone new?”
“No.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Doctor Wyatt falls silent, giving her the space to take it in. Three simple questions, and yet they’re able to change someone’s worldview on a whim. Just a breath of breeze, heartbeat echoing in Mer’s ears. She stares at the door, her heart hoping to see Addison come in and have a chance to ask about the truth.
But she can’t go back in time and fix her mistakes, she can’t appear back in the restroom and stay instead of leaving Addison behind. She can’t, she can’t, she can’t, but she’s here and she’s no time traveller, and all the energy and anger after catching her person and her sister together evaporates.
“But…” She looks up at Wyatt as if hoping for disaffirmance in her gaze, hoping for absolution. “But if I misunderstood…” Her heart drops in her stomach. “Then that means I’m the one who destroyed us. I’m the one behind a dickhead, I’m the one who broke the other’s heart. I’m in the wrong.”
“I can’t promise you what’s the truth. I don’t know that. But you know how you can get your answers? Talking. Honestly. Not crying, not yelling, not arguing. You’ll get the deepest truth through a conversation.”
“If I misunderstood Addie and Callie’s conversation, I can’t look in her eyes ever again.”
“You don’t have to run to her straight after our session to face her. Take your time. Only you can change your prophecy, no one else,” Wyatt picks up her pen but writes without glancing down. “I don’t think it’s worth losing a great love like this over shame and embarrassment of past mistakes. If you ever make it official, if you make things right, you have to be prepared for harder times in a romantic relationship. Sometimes you’ll make a mistake and there won’t be space to hide and escape, there will be space only for communication. You have to start somewhere. And this is a good place to start.”
Meredith doesn’t feel brave enough today to think about Wyatt’s words. She grows sadder with each passing second, with the new light that has fallen over the situation; it’s enlightening but breaking her at the same time. Nobody likes to make mistakes, but this is something utterly different, something that has crossed the line of a superficial argument - she hurt Addison over and over again, and she feels sick to her stomach when she thinks about these jaded green eyes overflowing with tears and trembling bottom lip and Addison’s hand reaching out as if to stop her from leaving.
But then, new wave emotions wash over her - we’re back to bitterness when she thinks about this morning.
“Putting Addison aside, I’m pretty damn sure I’m not misunderstood about Lexie and Cristina.”
That makes Doctor Wyatt chuckle; which is brand new for the serious poker-faced woman, “To be quite frank, there’s no way to be misunderstood about something so graphic.”
“You can’t tell me that wasn’t betrayal,” Meredith crosses her arms on her chest.
“It wasn’t considerate of them to hide their relationship from you. We don’t know if it’s romantic or just sexual, but still, it was not fair towards you. Both of them are the closest people to you. I can’t neglect the way you feel, in any situation, and I understand wholly your perspective.”
“I just… All that anger,” Meredith closes her eyes for a moment and just feels. She still sees red when her memory takes her back, but her heart does break when she remembers the terrified emptiness in Cristina’s eyes at her rough cruel words, the flinching from Lexie after she grabbed her. When has she stopped controlling herself so badly? “I said things I didn’t mean.”
“We all do that under pressure, in the hot moment of emotions. There’s been a lot of weight on your shoulder.” Wyatt says, her pen lightly tapping on the paper; it’s a calming sound to which Meredith matches her breathing, slowing it down. “A lot happening, especially with Addison. The stress of her pregnancy, your fight. Today was the final hit and you blew up. It happens when that tension becomes too much. It’s the human condition. You would be a robot if you didn’t break.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Meredith, you also have to remember you’re still chronically ill. Even if you’ve been in remission lately, even if the medication is working, it can bounce back. Your bipolar disorder hasn’t just vanished in the air, just because you’re not suicidal anymore. Bipolar disorder shows through many different symptoms. I read recently ‘People with BPD are like people with third-degree burns over ninety per cent of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement’ and having talked with my patients with that illness, it seems to be true. That’s why you reacted the way you did. You feel ten times deeper, and you get ten times more hurt at things other people would not mind. So, in an event as shaking as this, where even a healthy person would be devastated, it naturally hit you so badly.”
“I don’t wanna be like this,” Meredith murmurs. “I didn’t ask to be like this… I didn’t want this agony and freaking third-degree burns. I don’t wanna be fucked up and unable to process my feelings like a normal person.”
Doctor Wyatt sighs, “No. You’re not fucked up, that’s not what I was saying at all. Not at all. You can still have a beautiful life, even with a chronic illness of any type. But, allow me to return to the topic. I think Lexie and Cristina have their version of the story. You can still be angry at them, and maybe you’ll get furious once they explain. But I think it’s worth a try to talk and listen. No burning bridges, no shutting people out. Who knows? Maybe they’ll piss you off even worse, maybe they’ll give you a reason to forgive them.”
“I’m so tired,” Meredith sinks back into her seat and blinks away the tears. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“We can just sit in silence if that’s what you would like.”
Just like their first sessions, where Meredith would curl up inside her, putting walls up all around and not letting her therapist see anything.
It’s not like that anymore, but she nods and falls into the quiet, staring at the floor.
The crowd is dispersing, and shrinking in size once the main part of the show is over. People talk and whisper as Derek and Mark are making their way through them towards the storage room.
“I’ll take Lexie. Are you fine dealing with Yang?”
“Yeah, take the Disney princess all for yourself and leave me with the beast,” Mark snorts.
“You’ll get more experience!” Derek smirks at him, his tone borderline at amused when Mark stabs him in the ribs with his elbow. “She’s not as scary as she seems to be.”
Just like that, Derek heads for Lexie, leaving Mark staring at Cristina. He doesn’t quite know where to go from there because what the hell are you supposed to say?
She catches his stare, raising an eyebrow; a bit provocatively if you ask Mark Sloan. He makes a signal with his hand to follow him and she sighs but complies civilly but he guesses she is still in deep shock at what went down to end up so obedient.
Just around the corner, Mark finds an open door leading to an empty patient room - the bed is freshly made and everything is cleaned, ready for another hurting person who just wants to get better. He pushes the door open and waits until she’s inside before closing it softly. The blinds are rolled down, which is fitting for a conversation absurd and oddly sad like this.
Cristina sits down at the edge of the bed, and he can see when the same realisation comes across her.
“First time alone, right?” She muses like she’s doing everything just to not think about what went down ten minutes earlier.
“Right,” Mark nods, leaning against the wall, the way he tends to do all the time, whenever he is. He just leans on things, a natural feeling to gravitate towards surfaces. It calms him, to feel something against him, something steady. “Quite a plot twist. And I’m not talking only about this moment.”
“Are you going to lecture me?”
“No. I’m not here to lecture you, Yang,” He says honestly. “I’m here to understand the gravity of the situation. Meredith is your best friend. She trusts you most in this world.”
“You think I do not know that?” Cristina’s voice shows an edge as she glares at him. “I wanted to tell her eventually, but what was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Mer, I’m sleeping with your sister’?”
“There’s no easy way to say that. But she deserved the truth. I know it wasn’t personal, but Meredith feels betrayed right now, so she might take it personally.”
“Of course, she takes it personally! She’s Meredith! I know her. And I didn’t want to lie, it’s just… if I told her, it would end things with Lexie and… I’m- I wasn’t ready for that.”
Mark takes in her words, surprise washing over him. He expected many things but not this. He didn’t think he would find Cristina conflicted not only about what she did to Meredith but about what it meant for her and Little Grey. He thought it was just sex because the idea of the two of them together is a concept hard to comprehend at a long shot. But he’s looking at Yang right now and no one without feelings would say the words that fell from her mouth.
There’s one crucial question he can’t help but ask.
“Are you in love with her?”
Cristina scoffs and stands up, beginning to pace around the room - doing anything but looking into his eyes, “I’m not. I can’t be. I’m not. She’s in love with Derek’s sister and I’m in… There’s someone else.”
“You sure?”
Where do they go from here? It’s hard to tell if she’s thoroughly sincere; her movements are frantic and her pacing becomes quicker. Not like a person who is not in love with Lexie Grey. But to be frank, Mark doesn’t know Yang that well. Yeah, they’re both close friends with Meredith, but that’s it in the end. Just loving the same person to the moon and back, and meeting at the group assembling, talking at the cafeteria by the same table, sometimes working together.
He can’t just make up a conspiracy theory based on one sentence. He’s not that type of guy.
“Yeah,” Cristina finally looks at him, frustrated and stops at once. “Even if I were - and I’m not - it wouldn’t change anything. This is about Meredith. I know I fucked up big time.”
“Let her cool off. Then, talk to her. She needs to hear your side of the story,” Mark advises. “She might be thinking you're using Lexie.”
“I’m not!” Cristina says, so loudly she surprises herself. It… hurts her chest to be even perceived this way. It hurts her heart to think someone would think she’s using her. It’s not… right. Not when it comes to Alexandra.” I might be many things, but I wouldn’t even go that far.”
“I get it. You get it. But Mer might not get it now in the heat of the moment.”
“I’ll talk to her. Eventually. When she’s not in the phase of ripping me apart.”
“Sounds fair,” Mark nods. “All you need is honesty.”
“Yep.”
“It’ll be fine.”
He feels sorry for Cristina. In the end, she meant no harm; he knows because he knows how it is to fall into bed with your friend and find the compatibility between the two of you it’s impossible to stop from repeating it, over and over again until becomes a habit, a pattern. It’s not meant to be about anyone else, not to hurt somebody. It’s just… sometimes two platonic friends can bring each other pleasure, and it’s just an intimate and safe experience that it’s one of the rules of human behaviour, Mark believes.
Because Callie. Oh, Callie.
How he loves the woman. They have never romantically seen each other, but there’s something about her that makes her perfect for him. In another life, she’s the love of his life. But not this one, and he doesn’t even feel bitter over it. He likes her by his side, the two of them ranting about their love lives with such trust it overwhelms him.
So if anyone would understand Cristina, it would be him.
“It better be,” She sits down on the bed again. Looks at him with something new in her eyes. “You’re not that bad, McSteamy.”
One of the corners of his mouth curls up, “Aren’t you the queen of compliments?”
It makes her genuinely chuckle. But deep inside she’s wondering about what’s the feeling in her chest, that seems to inflate until it’s uncomfortable, until she feels like she’s suffocating and her lungs are burning. What is it? That fire in her heart. What has changed? She looks at Mark and hopes to see an answer, but his face is blank.
The sounds of soft crying echo in the four walls of Derek’s office. Sniffling and hugging herself in the middle, Lexie sits curled up in the chair across the desk from Derek who’s watching her with sadness and empathy in his eyes.
He reaches out with a box of tissues which she accepts politely.
“You keep tissues with pink fairies in here?” She whimpers and wipes her nose, after looking closely at the pattern.
“Stole them from Peds.”
She chuckles, but tears keep flowing down her flushed cheeks. Her hair is still a mess after the encounter in the storage room, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her about it; he’s going to make sure she fixes herself before leaving his office, but this is not the time for now.
Somehow to see her this vulnerable and small, it makes him realise how much younger she is. She’s just beginning her journey in this hospital, beginning to crawl up the ladder meanwhile trying not to make mistakes. But it’s the mistakes you learn from. However…
Derek is not sure this is a mistake. Lexie and Yang.
So, let’s talk.
“Okay, Lexie. What did go down in that storage room?” Shepherd does his best to keep his voice moderate and gentle. It took a lot of violence he thrived on unhealthily to make him understand that it’s going nowhere, that it’s only the softness that can lead him anywhere.
“My stupidity happened,” Lexie sobs, throwing her hand up in the air with the snotty tissue. “I’m such an idiot, Doctor Shepherd.”
“Derek. You can call me Derek here,” He says and waits until she nods. “It wasn’t one time, was it?”
“No.”
That was to be foreseen. Somehow it crossed Derek’s mind before they even stopped Meredith from throwing her hands at the two. Perhaps it was the way Cristina stepped in front of Lexie, guarding her away from her sister, from the crashing sky, pouring out the secret of their affair. Maybe the way Lexie’s eyes landed on Cristina, and somewhere between fear of being uncovered, there was care. So much care, so much worry, not for herself but for Yang.
“Did it mean something?” He asks, tilting his head, gently rolling left to right on his swivel chair, which helps him think. “All of it?”
“Of course it meant something!” Lexie looks surprised by her own fierceness, but she doesn’t back down. “Cristina is my friend! I mean. It could never be meaningless, because… I care about her. She’s my friend.”
This might go nowhere if he doesn’t just hit her with straightforwardness.
He just has to make that hit and pay attention to each small gesture, each flicker of emotion, each wince.
“Are you in love with her?”
Her eyes widen briefly, and a flicker of something reminiscing panic flashes through her; she instantly looks away, darting her eyes onto the floor, clearly escaping whatever Derek wants to catch in her as proof. Her mouth opens but no words come out. Instead, she bites onto her lower lip.
Hesitating. Weighing her options. Conflicted with herself, in the very depth
She swallows hard, as her shoulders slump - which looks like an attempt to shrink away from the tense silence of the office. You can hear a pin drop. But she manages to shake her head before several seconds pass and she finds her voice.
“No,” Lexie looks him straight in the eyes, red and glassy, voice trembling. “No, I’m not.”
Derek looks at her piercingly, focused on putting the puzzle pieces together.
Lexie hiccups, wiping away the tears with her sleeve, forgetting about the tissues, “I didn’t mean it to happen like this. I never meant to betray Meredith. I love her so much, and she came to love me, too. Now, I’ve lost it all just because I slept around.”
“If you don’t feel anything for Cristina, then you have to end this.”
“I know. I know.”
There’s a moment of silence where her cries soothe and quiet down and he thinks they’re past it all but one glance at him, at his serious face and she bursts into tears and he knows why she’s crying right away. She’s not crying only because of what they did to Meredith. She’s crying because she can’t kiss Cristina again, can’t touch her again. She’s heartbroken.
Standing up, Derek rounds the desk and slips into the other chair next to her, bringing her into a tight hug.
“It’s going to be okay,” He shushes her, with Lexie’s head pressed against his shoulder. “She’s going to forgive you. Just give her some space.”
“No,” Grey shakes her head, her sobs intensifying with each passing second. “Not everything’s going to be okay.”
Words to comfort her for this are hard to find. Nothing ever soothes the pain of love that doesn’t have a place to build a home onto, that doesn’t have a place or right to exist. Not every love story, or a story of something that blossomed between love and unsaid, has a happy ending. All you can do is either let go of it or hope until it kills you.
“The heart wants what it wants,” Derek whispers and she nods.
The buzzing of her phone makes Addison finally pull it out of her pocket just as she arrives at the attendings’ lounge to take a small break. She feels out of breath today, weirdly heavily - at least more than usual. Like something is happening, something she is not aware of, but her body somehow knows that there’s an ongoing change in her life. It haunts her, almost taunts her because the alarms go off in her head at every step and she worries it might be about Ella; she talked to Arizona this morning and got examined, finding out everything is good and the baby bee is safe.
She frowns upon the five unanswered calls from Sam and clicks on the notification. Before she may call her friend back, Miranda pops her head into the room.
“Ready, Doctor Montgomery?”
“Give me a second,” Addison says, knowing this might be serious. They haven’t talked since her last visit to Los Angeles, and it’s been years since they have been communicating regularly; you grow out your friends throughout the entire length of your life and she learned how to make peace with it years ago. The only thing she still hasn’t made peace with is Meredith growing out of her. She may never make peace with it. “Do you mind waiting?”
“Fine,” Bailey looks her up and down. “Just be quick.”
Their surgery is about to start in fifteen minutes, but Addison guesses this might be quick. Hopes so, at least, because…
The gut feeling that’s been choking her becomes stronger.
She presses the number and sits down on the chair, sighing heavily when her spine relaxes, yet her shoulders tense. The beeping of the phone makes her heart run, and with each one of them, it becomes worse. Sam almost doesn’t pick up, but then…
“Sam?”
“Addison.”
The tone of his voice makes her heart drop and she stands up like it might make her braver. Each word he spells out makes her feel faint, her head spinning as she feels utterly sick to her stomach. The ground beneath her feet feels shaky and she loses touch with the reality. Then, everything is black as the curtains go down and she can’t feel anything except an overwhelming ache spreading in her body. Black dots in front of her eyes, and she’s almost about to throw up. Nothing is clear, nothing is light.
The last thing she hears is Bailey calling out her name, but she can’t react. The world becomes blank.
She ends up on the couch in the lounge, watching Bailey apologise and leave once a group of her friends arrive, running into the room at top speed. Mark, Arizona and Derek instantly get to her; Derek crouches in front of her, Mark sits on the edge of a small coffee table while Arizona takes a seat by her side, handing her a glass of water.
“Addison?” Arizona asks gently, leaning in to catch Addison’s gaze - to check if it’s sober and she’s not slipping away again. They know the baby is okay. They know it’s alright. Then what has happened?
Memories come crashing in and the realisation hits. She feels sickened to her bones. She can’t do this. She can’t be the one to spell these words, she can’t be the one who shares the bad news.
She knows the weight of that. She knows how much responsibility it carries because once you are the one who speaks, then they will always remember you for it. They will always link the memory to you to how you expressed it, how you changed their world. She knows because she’s been there before, from both sides and it never gets easier.
“Red,” Mark takes her hand, squeezing it and grounding her. “Are you okay?”
“Naomi…” She murmurs, her mind drifting away, dissociating somewhere where this version of life isn’t real. A version of the universe, alternate and far far away, where pain does not exist.
Derek frowns up at her, “What about Naomi?”
“She had an accident,” Addison clears her throat and straightens her back. It doesn’t make her courageous but she can’t pretend - fake it till you make it. She cuts off her emotions and tries to strengthen her voice as she speaks. “She’s in a critical state. She’s dying.”
The silence is ringing. No one speaks; just two men staring with horror at her face and Addison staring right back with the same terror flooding her weary eyes.
Today’s atmosphere in the hospital is exhausting to the point of everyone’s limits, or at least to Cristina’s limits.
Barely ever happens to have Cristina Yang wishing she was out of the cursed building, but today, even hours after the scene which happened in the morning, she’s out of any strength to go on in the ambitious motivated way she does with each case she cares about. The walls seem to laugh at her, and colleagues stare at her whispering to each other. Most of the time, she wouldn’t care but today is different. She thinks about Meredith, about the look in her piercing blue gaze, about the words she threw at them like bullets, about how they pulled her away before she would do something she couldn’t come back from. She thinks about Lexie.
A lot.
She thinks about her a lot, and one fragment repeats in her mind all of the time - when Meredith grabbed her, which was not deliberate, but rather made in the heat of the scene, and made her flinch. It almost makes her angry. That she didn’t protect Lexie enough, that she let it go that far, and…
Meredith should have known better.
That’s it.
She loves Grey more than the world itself, but she’s grown out of unhinged gestures and impulses, Meredith seems to be running back to the bad habits. One of these days, she will find her sipping tequila in the bar, rolling down the hill into relapse; something must have made her do this and Cristina missed it, right in front of her face. In the end, Meredith gave so many signs. So many signs. She can’t draw them on the map anymore because she’s missing so many clues. Her heart is heavy because that’s not the only Grey she is worried about.
They parted with Lexie immediately and each time they saw each other on the horizon, they chose different paths. Just not be seen together, caught in a situation which would dig the grave deeper - to such depth from which they could never climb their way out.
She finally decides she deserves a break and leaves through the back entrance, finding a lonely bench that’s her destination. Some fresh air will do her good, away from the suffocating of the haunted halls. In her Seattle Grace’s jacket, she settles down, thinking about the night shift she is about to start in an hour - perhaps she should be napping right now to power up, but the thoughts wouldn’t let her rest anyway.
Hugging herself in the middle, she tries to vanish into the bench. She would kill for a steaming cup of coffee, but she’s nowhere near standing up and entering the hospital again.
She hears the back door fall shut loudly but chooses to ignore it until the footsteps follow in her direction. Someone sits down next to her.
“Cristina.”
Her neck snaps when she quickly turns her head.
In flesh and blood, it’s her. It’s Izzie.
She says her name, but the confusion combines with many other mixed feelings and she has no idea what she should do right now. If Meredith sees her with Stevens on the same day she found out about having an affair with Lexie, she might actually end up in the psych ward once again for a psychotic episode.
“I need to tell you something. I don’t have anyone to tell it to anymore. And it’s important. Really important. I don’t think it can wait.”
“I don’t care,” Cristina answers coldly. But oh, she does. Her heart skips a beat, having not been in such proximity to Izzie in weeks, for so long. She misses her, and she could never admit but seems to still love her, more than can ever be said.
“Please,” Izzie’s eyes glisten, her voice trembles. “Cristina.”
“I’m not being your friend just because Bambi left.”
Her tone is mean, but it’s this way to rather protect herself from falling over again than to hurt Izzie.
Izzie stares at her for so long and waits until Cristina looks at her. She might never talk about it, but all it takes is one look at Yang, at her frozen expression to see the love in her. Yang blinks at the overflowing fear in the blonde’s eyes. She’s terrified. Panicked. It makes Yang bend under the intensity.
“No,” Stevens shakes her head. “You don’t have to be my friend. You just need to listen.”
The next three minutes of Izzie’s constant talking with a voice oddly flat makes Cristina want to kill herself. This is the worst day of this year.
No.
This is the worst day of her life.