Where You Belong

52

"Meredith!"

Meredith turned at the sound of her name to see her best friend hurrying down the hall towards her.

"Seriously, Meredith, you're not easy to find today," Cristina complained.

Meredith shrugged. "You could have paged me."

"Well, I assumed you'd stick close to your mother's room, and..." She trailed off as she noticed Meredith's attire. "I thought the Chief gave you the day off?"

Meredith ran her hands self-consciously over her scrubs. "Yeah, well, that was before he and an entire surgical team passed out from a toxic patient."

"What?"

She sighed and quickly explained the situation to her friend.

"Cool. And you get to help?"

Meredith sighed again. Only Cristina would think this whole thing was cool. "Well, I'm trying to help. By the time I got there everyone was being taken care of. So there's not much to do now..."

"Good."

"Good?" She raised an eyebrow.

Cristina nodded. "You need to go talk to your mother."

And exasperated noise escaped Meredith's lips. "Why does everyone think I need to talk to her?"

"Because she wants to kill herself."

Normally Meredith would overlook Cristina's crude comment. Normally she would be able to read between the lines and understand what was really being said. Normally Cristina could say anything without Meredith blinking an eye.

But this was not normal. "She what?" She asked, her heart clenching as she flashed back to being five years old. The pain, the confusion, the fear. The blood.

Suddenly she felt like she couldn't breathe.

Cristina shrugged, not noticing Meredith's reaction. "She needs a radio-ablation, but she wants to turn it down. I told her it was your decision, but she wants to talk to you about it."

"She doesn't want it," Meredith whispered.

"Nope. And I guess I can see where she's coming from. I probably wouldn't want to live either if I couldn't be a surgeon anymore. But you'd think someone like Ellis Grey would have a little more faith in the medical community. Hell, she wouldn't even notice if twenty years went by. There's really no downside for her..."

Meredith stopped listening to her best friend as the words became harder and harder to hear. Her mother didn't want to live. Her mother wanted to actively stop something that would save her life.

Her mother wanted to die.

Again.

And she thought Meredith was ordinary.

"Meredith? Are you even listening to me?"

She nodded numbly. "Yeah."

Cristina huffed. "It doesn't seem like it."

"Whatever. Just tell her..." She trailed off as she realized she had no idea what to say.

"No, I'm not telling her anything. You need to talk to her."

"Why?"

"Because she's your mother," Cristina said simply. It was odd to Meredith, to hear such a simple statement regarding family come out of her best friend's mouth. Cristina didn't tolerate her own mother.

She sighed heavily. "Fine."

"Good. Just page me after. I'm going to go see what's going on."

Meredith nodded absently as Cristina hurried to find out more about the situation in OR2. The last thing she wanted to do was confront her mother and discuss reasons to live.