Narrative: Meredith Who: Meredith What: Thinking in the ER Where: University Medical Center When: Recently Warnings/Rating: Nada
The phone was heavy in her hand after she finished speaking to Neil, after Cris' threat to kill her (even if Louis claimed he wouldn't follow through with it), after Louis' words that were both comforting and discomforting in the same breath. The painkillers were making her woozy, her eyes glazed and her head full of fuzz, but she was with it enough to sign herself out with the promise that someone would be there to pick her up. So they let her sit in the waiting area, a nurse keeping a careful eye on her from her desk, and she stared down into her lap.
A very large part of her simply wanted to call a cab and find her own way home. To pack, perhaps, to leave. It seemed, Meredith thought, that if she left, then so many of these problems would be solved. Maybe she did have a tendency to run when things didn't go her way, when she was scared or uncomfortable or just unhappy. It had started with Thomas, with marriage and a kid and a white picket fence that she hated, and ever since then, she had done nothing but run. Perhaps that's all she knew how to do now. Perhaps.
Yes, things had been different before the hotel, before some force they couldn't identify pulled them both here (again). Or maybe it had only seemed different for those years they had been together. It was hard to figure out what was wrong, what made being here so difficult. She still loved him, or at least she believed that she did. And he said that he loved her, so at least they had that. But everything else...
She kept saying the wrong things.
Doing the wrong things.
She ran and she hid and she drank and she hid and she just kept upsetting people and hurting them and doing the wrong thing.
Something had to change, and maybe it was her.
Meredith looked up at the desk where the nurse sat and she studied her for a long while before she got up to her feet, only the tiniest bit unsteady. Neil wasn't there, and if he was, she wasn't entirely sure she'd have the courage to go through with this. But he wasn't, and she did, so she approached the desk and laid a hand atop its surface. The nurse looked up after a moment, a tired smile on her face. "Is there something else the matter?"
It was such a simple question and it pulled at something in her chest.
There was so much the matter, wasn't there?
"Could you perhaps get me in contact with a counselor here? Someone I could talk to?" Meredith tried to give her a smile, but it wavered before it faded away completely. The nurse seemed used to such things, hardly phased by the broken smile that dropped away so quickly.
"I can page the on-call, or I can give you number to call to make an appointment, if you'd like."
For a moment, Meredith considered just asking for the number, for putting it off just a little bit longer, but instead she straightened her shoulders just a bit and stood a little straighter. "I think I'd like to talk to someone right now, if that's okay." Sure, she was still drunk, and high as hell with the painkillers coursing through her, but Meredith knew herself well enough to know that if she didn't do this now, she'd just run again.
And she had to stop running.
"Go on and have a seat. I'll call you once he answers the page."
So Meredith sat and she tried to pull herself together. She certainly looked a mess with mussed hair and her makeup (the little she wore) a smudged mess. There were already bruises blossoming at the skin around her nose, butterfly bandages over a split near her hairline. It looked worse than it actually was, something that would heal without a mark left behind other than the memories of how she had caused it.
It was her fault, wasn't it? How Sam behaved?
She was just about to fall into those thoughts when the nurse called her name. The door to the treatment area buzzed open and Meredith approached with confidence she didn't feel. The doctor on the other side, someone close to her ex-husband's age and greying at the temples, greeted her with a smile that was filled with a practiced warmth. "So. I'm told you need someone to talk to," he started, leading her down the hallway, away from the electronic beeps and hustle of the medical emergencies nearby.