This was not how her day was supposed to go. She was all relaxed, happy and bouncy. She had slept for an entire night and did wifely things around the trailer. She had come in early and was still in her street clothes to watch her husband work in the OR. Like she did for years while she was just a regular high school girl, then college girl, then med-school girl.
Coming face to face with her mother the ice-queen was not on her list of things to do today. Groceries, surgery, post-op notes, snack, tell Derek they need another car. Those were things on her list, not her mother. Not her mother running into her while she was late, still dressed in her street clothes and just coming from watching her husband in surgery.
She loved her mother, she did. However, she loved her mother from afar on the other side of the country and not standing in front of her or anywhere near her. When ever her mother would come into New York to visit, they would have the obligatory dinner and that would be it. Like acquaintances who loved each other, but can't really exist around each other without snapping and fighting.
Derek's mom was her "mom." She made her chicken soup when she was sick, she called a couple times a week, she came over to drop off food during stressful exam times, she took Meredith's blouses home to fix the buttons. She was there loving and supporting her since Derek first brought her home. Never once judging the young underage teenage girl her med-school son had brought home.
Ellis was her mother, she provided Meredith with an education, all the money and credit cards she could ever want, a roof over her head. Only it was an empty roof. One void of that love Derek had growing up, but Meredith had it now and it made her feel sorry for her mother that she never will experience love like that.
Meredith's eyes glanced around still facing her mother, neither of them moving or going past their strained introductions. Meredith noticed that they had an audience, and of course it had to be Meredith's fellow interns who are currently gawking speechless at the scene unfolding in front of them as they have now realized that she is the Ellis Grey spawn intern of Seattle Grace.
"I hope your current attire doesn't mean your marital status is giving you perks compared to the other interns." Ellis coolly asked as she glanced at her daughters' sweater and too tight looking jeans while noticing all the other interns dressed in standard intern scrubs.
"Nice to see you too mother." Meredith responded in a similar cool tone.
"Don't be like that Meredith."
"We haven't seen you in three years. Since the last time you came to New York gracing us with your presence by ordering Derek and I to have dinner with you. Yet you waltz down the hall and choose not to say 'Hi Meredith, how have you been?' Instead you chastise me over my clothing?" Meredith hushly responded so the others couldn't hear her but Ellis could.
"I've been busy." Ellis noted while trying to stay stoic and professional in the public atmosphere they were in. Meredith knew what she was doing and just rolled her eyes.
Before their tense reunion could continue the Chief descended towards them seeing them face off by the nurses desk while Bailey and the other interns observed with interest.
"Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Grey." The Chief acknowledged them as he walked to stand next to them. Looking at Meredith with an apologetic glance that he was sorry he didn't get to talk to her before she came face to face unprepared with her mother.
"Chief, if you'd excuse me. I need to change for my shift. Nice seeing you, Dr. Grey" she nodded to her mother in a professional maner as she walked to the elevator doors. With her husband's office as her automatic destination she had in mind. She was not going to risk the intern locker room right now. She needed a minute to collect herself, and she needed her husband's office to do that.
Hopefully with her husband in it.