Where You Belong

51

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.