TRIAGE | grey's anatomy (ON HOLD INDEFINITELY)

015: "to be so lonely"

"WHAT IS THAT GOD AWFUL SMELL, CLEMENTINE?" CRISTINA HISSED, SWIVELING FROM HER POSITION OUTSIDE OF THE BATHROOM DOOR. In fact, almost all of Clem's closest friends, save the girl in the poofy dress who'd taken refuge next to the bath mat, were looking at her in various degrees of confusion and distaste. They were clumped together, holding coffee mugs and dressed for the day, debating on whether or not they were going to hold an intervention. Clem, too, had gotten ready-- changed into a pair of baggy jeans and white t-shirt with a faded blue argyle sweatervest that had been her dad's-- but she hadn't slept, and the purpling of her eyes behind her glasses showed it. Clementine ignored them, shoving her way past so she could canvas the hall, and stealing George's cup of coffee before he could protest it.

"It's white sage," Clem said matter-of-factly, grimacing at the amount of creamer George liked in his dark roast. "And, I'm telling you, you need to leave her be."

The smudge-stick that Clem habitually kept in her nightstand dresser smoldered a bit, so Clem blew on it lightly, setting her stolen mug on a windowsill and waving the small smoke around with the back of her hand. Alex coughed, over-exaggerating, and she sent him a withering glare.

"You look like a psychopath," he told her, and Cristina snickered, dodging the swat that Clem aimed at both of her friends.

"Don't be rude," she pouted back, swirling the bundle over his head on purpose. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm doing more for her healing process than any of you. It's been less than twenty-four hours. Let her sit on the bathroom floor if she wants to. It feels nice."

Clem stalked down the hall, leaving them staring after her in wonder, feeling like a fraud. She was putting on a sleepy front, unequivocally unsure of how to help someone cope with grief like a normal person would. Grasping at straws like the rest of them. Clementine notoriously didn't do well with mourning; her parents had died within three months of each other when she was a first grader more concerned with who was going to make her oatmeal in the morning and unable to comprehend the finality of a thing called death. And with Beck? Her grief had been an untamable force, wrecking everything in its path with no efforts to thwart it. Clementine wasn't necessarily the poster child for moving on.

So maybe she did look like a psychopath, at least to her friends, who floundered with their family's religions as they clung to science more and more. But all Clementine knew about the way to handle a day after a death, of embracing its pain and working to expel it, came from a long-lost but intensely vivid memory of her mother. Of sitting on the floor, feeling the swirl of a rough blanket's pattern, watching her mother flit about the house with careful intention and a blank face. Tallulah Santos had worn the same green headscarf tangled in Clementine's hair now, had held a similarly entwined bundle of sage clenched in her daughter's hand a little less than twenty years later. And she'd shown her daughter the exact steps of how to gently care for a home in misery.

It was something to do, at least. Something to feel helpful and to stave off sleep, with its probable haunting reminders of so many things-- the cold steps of the courthouse, the look on Mark Sloan's face when she abruptly left, and the three gloomiest days in her life when she'd been in Izzie's place.

Clementine noticed, as she entered the kitchen, that she wasn't the only one needing to feel busy. She'd brought her draw-string bag of crystals, placing clear quartz or amethyst stones around the house like breadcrumbs, when she noticed Meredith making sandwiches.

"Why are we making sandwiches again?" Cristina asked, scooting over so Clem could hop up on the counter next to her.

Meredith hardly looked up from her task of spreading mayo on what looked to be the contents of an entire loaf. "It's what you do when someone dies. You cook."