IRIS | MARK SLOAN

homecoming (8.)

BEFORE:

I didn't remember much from the journey as Mark had driven me home after my breakdown. My eyes slowly opened as I felt the cold Seattle air hitting my hair my face as he carried me gently out of the car and into the house. The energy in my body to fight back or make him put me down was too low, so I laid still and helpless, letting him take me upstairs.

He laid me down on my side of the bed, and crawled in next to me. Smoothing out the duvet, he helped me get comfortable, grabbing the full water bottle from his OR backpack and making me drink some until the red flush across my cheeks cooled down a bit. I laid my head down as he wrapped his arms around me, trying to make me feel secure and seen.

We sat there in silence for a while, just holding each other. He stroked my hair, and I laid there numb.

"I'm not fine."

He lifted his head to look at me properly.

"I know how to rise, when I need to. I know how to take care of patients, but I'm not fine. I love you more than anything, and I'm sorry." I cried.

"It's alright. We'll figure it out, we'll talk to Webber. We are going to talk to Richard, we will talk to Meredith, we need to get you the right kind of help. We need to get you a proper leave of absence, so that your career is waiting for you when you come back. It is perfectly alright that you need help." He replied.

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Dear reader, I hope you feel that my decision to not describe her psych ward stay is a positive one. I have seen too many misconstrued and untruthful retellings on here, panting them as insane asylums all the way to luxury hotels. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Until you've been an inpatient, I don't believe you can make a judgment. Thank you <3
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NOW:

Eleanor wasn't healed. She knew that.

Six months in the psych ward wasn't an attempt to heal her. It was an attempt to give her a reason. To bring flesh to her bones again. Something she hadn't had, a meaning and a lust for life again.

She knew that her issues coping with loss at the hospital were just the tip of the iceberg, and though the thought of serving her childhood trauma up to a psychotherapist on a tear-stained plate was terrifying, she had to believe that it would help her.

And it did.

The original plan was three months, but after seeing how it had helped grow, Mark and her decided their best course of action was to admit for another three months. It had been hard of course, what with her job belonging to someone else, with her sister's now high-risk pregnancy, and of course, six months without her boyfriend or any of her friends.

Visiting days were far and few between, but they visited as much as they can. Mark always made sure to update on as much as he could. Callie had found a woman as passionate and loving as her, who had transferred from LA and was working at Seattle Grace as a fellow in the PEDS department. I knew I would be the one to face her when I got back, but if she was anything like Callie, she wasn't scared. Meredith and Derek had started dating, slowly and steadily. She was eight months along now, which was surprising as when Dr Slade told she was a high risk pregnancy, she had expected to go into Labour by now. The placenta was lying-low, and Mer had horrible gestational diabetes. When she was talking over the birth plan with Eleanor, she remembered her sister saying that she planned to be induced at 35 weeks, which was now only two weeks away.

It all felt crazy to Eleanor. Her world had stood still through the processing of trauma and her own slow, soft healing, but the world around her moved on. She couldn't conceive that in half a month, she'd be aunt. Her little sister was actually having a baby. Life had continued as everyone else knew it, and now it was time for her to get back out there.

The boys had picked up from the psych ward last week, and it had been a tearful reunion. Maybe there were a few kisses with Mark that lasted too long, as Derek certainly conveyed with his looks to them, as if Mark was a 10yr old again, kissing a girl with cooties, and not a guy in his early thirties kissing his very legal and very real girlfriend.

Mark, Derek, and Eleanor lived above their means by any and all points. She had been blessed that together they made surplus of a million dollars a year, and they never really had to worry about finances. A far cried world from the upbringing they had all been from. The ward she was on was private, after Mark had stayed up all night reading horror stories about state mandated inpatients ward, and the extra trauma they caused on those coming out of them. She assured him that those were simply  personal opinion, and that she was sure they were just fine, but she didn't get in the way when he got possessive or worried and sat with him the next day to find a facility that would suit her needs.

Their triple income household now, was rising to a quadruple income one. Only for now. Meredith had already moved in to Derek's, turning one of the extra old offices no used into a nursery. Eleanor and Mark knew they were being displaced, but with her head back in the game, she knew she wanted her own space again. She wanted to move on with Mark, and started settling down as it were, if it were in the cards.

She'd spent her week off before going through housing websites and property magazines trying to find the perfect place for them. At first she'd suggested a smaller bungalow sort of residency, but after a long talk about what they both wanted, and where they both say themselves within the next 10 years, they had settled with the hopes of buying a family home near the hospital, with atleast three bedrooms. For a very long time, Eleanor felt every smile she'd had in the last few days had been genuine.

This was a new start, in all senses of the word.