Echoes of Resilience

12

Cristina sighs as she reads her pager, she really doesn't want to go to Ellis' room but if she doesn't she knows Bailey will have her ass for ignoring pages. In all reality, she's gotten away with a lot today and really shouldn't push her luck, knowing that there's only so much that Arizona can get her out of. The peppy surgeon has always gotten on her nerves, but since meeting Meredith she sees things in a very different light and Arizona's peppiness no longer seems artificial to her. She finds herself almost envying the attending's ability to be happy even when surrounded by tragedy.

She takes a deep breath as she approaches the patient room. She heard about the speech Ellis gave Meredith and the effect it had on her friend, how could someone talk to their own child like that? She doesn't have the best relationship with her mother either, but if she were ever kidnapped she knows her mom would be there for her whereas Ellis blamed the entire thing on Meredith. As she opens the door she internally groans when she sees Izzie in there, the intern loves to gossip and for some reason she strongly dislikes Meredith despite never meeting her. "I was paged?" She asks as she makes eye contact with her fellow intern, rage filling her at the look in Izzie's eye.

"Yes you were, Dr. Grey noticed that you were friends with her daughter and wanted to talk to you." Izzie says as she finishes taking Ellis' vitals, making her way to the door. "I'll be back later to take you for your scans Dr. Grey, get some rest."

"Thank you dear, and remember this is your chance to explore specialties worthy of your brain. Don't let yourself get trapped in OBGYN, you are so much more than your anatomy. This attending taking up my daughter's cause may just be the best thing to happen to you." Ellis smiles timidly at Izzie, turning her gaze to Cristina as the door shuts behind the blonde. "I always knew her love of tequila would get her in trouble, but I thought she'd be smart enough not to let herself get drugged. Did you go out drinking two days before your final exams, Dr. Yang?" Ellis asks with an unreadable expression.

"I'm really not comfortable talking about Meredith with you Dr. Grey, but what I will say is despite being sick this past week she still rushed here the second she found out that you were admitted. You screwed up." Cristina then left, her body sagging as she let the door fall shut behind her. Taking her phone out of the pocket of her lab coat, she quickly texts Addison and summarizes her visit with Ellis before making her way back to the pit.

Ellis felt anger stewing inside of her, no one has ever spoken to her that way before and she certainly never let anyone have the last word. She's not the one that screwed up, was Meredith expecting her mother to coddle her? She should know better. It's a shame that she had to go through the trauma that she did, but had she acted responsibly it never would have happened and Ellis wasn't going to pretend that that wasn't the truth. She loved her daughter to the best of her ability, she knows that she is partly responsible for Meredith being the ordinary insecure person she is, but it's easier to be angry than accept her faults.

She's lost in her thoughts when there's a knock on her door, she looks up to see the one person she thought she would never see again. The person that caused her to not only leave her husband, but the state of Washington as a whole. Even twenty years later she can feel butterflies in her stomach at the sight of the one man she truly loved. Memories from a lifetime ago flashing through her head, ending with a bloody scalpel in her hand. How could the great Ellis Grey let a man have so much power over her that she slit her wrists in a desperate plea to try to get Richard to come back to her? She was ordinary back then, she had to fight to become extraordinary.

"Richard Webber. I hear you're the chief now?" Ellis asked as a small smile crept across her face. Suddenly she's a resident again, sneaking kisses in the stairwell while collecting lab results and making love in on-call rooms in between surgeries. Those moments of stolen love made her feel almost as alive as she did in the OR. She knew it wasn't right, they were both married, but she couldn't fight her heart. More importantly, she never wanted to.