Mr. and Mrs. Impossible tumors

Fresh air

"That is a big tumor! Are you sure you can tackle it?"

Things had gone smoothly in the Grey-Shepherd household, since Meredith and Amy had made up. Meredith was carrying on her clinical trial with promising results. Amelia was dating Owen Hunt and growing more and more confident at work. Derek was making progressing with his brain mapping research and still going back and forth from Seattle to D.C. every week. Zola was turning out to be the most responsible big sister ever and Bailey couldn't stop talking since he'd leant how to.

One night Amy brought home some scans from work, because she wanted to peacefully analyze them. They belonged to a patient that had been told by many other surgeons that he had an inoperable tumor. She couldn't but look at those scans, fascinated. 

And then Derek asked the question. And it all began.

"You know you can't do it, don't you?" Derek looked genuinely worried.

"Would you try?" Amelia was not sure if he meant that no one could pull off such a surgery or she couldn't. 

Her brother took the scans to examine them better: "It's beautiful. Yeah, I'd try... I can try, if the patient agrees!"

Here, once again, her brother showed her one more proof that he thought she was less capable. Amelia was enraged and started yelling at Derek, who started yelling back, because he thought his sister was over reacting.

"I'm a great surgeon, I've published, i've had successes, but you never see them."

"You're not strong enough for this!"

"You've always had a too big of an ego! You think you're the best, I'm as good as you!"

"I work for the President of the United States!"

Words, sharper than knives, were still flying through the living room, when Meredith, who had just got back from work with Bailey and Zola, interrupted them. Amelia locked herself into her room and Derek stormed out, both leaving Meredith with no explanation.

After the fight, the Shepherd siblings stopped talking to each other. Amelia was obsessively thinking about the tumor, so much that she refused to go out of her room to keep examining the scans, leaving the once-again Shadow-Shepherd in charge. Derek, on the other hand, was resenting Amy for the hurtful words she'd had for him and spent as much time outside the house as possible, working and taking the kids on long walks. Meredith, on the other hand, still had no idea what was going on.

One night, when Amelia's hermitage could not be overlooked anymore, Meredith burst with Derek: "Enough!" And she demanded to know what had happened.

After Derek told her his version of the fight, Meredith had a clearer picture of the situation than Derek himself. She knew Derek trusted Amy and believed in her, but he could never unsee his sister as the unstable teenager, who then had become an alcolist and a drug addict.

"She's strong, stronger than you think. Look, I'm not a family expert by any means, but in your family everyone has always looked down on her, everyone's always thought she couldn't do well and she felt doomed. I'm not justifying what she's done in the past, I'm just saying that her being, here after all she's been through, makes her pretty damn strong."

"I've always tried to protect her!"

Meredith knew that he was sincere, that his intentions were good. "But she needs you to be supportive-protective, not patronizing-protective. You're always so angry, whenever she messes up, even if it's a small mistake!"