Gray's anatomy reverse

Lexie’s anger flared, and before she even realized it, the words were pouring out of her, sharp and cutting. She didn’t even care how late it was, how tired they both were. The weight of years of hurt, resentment, and pain had been building up inside her, and it was all spilling out, unfiltered.

She slammed her palms onto the table, her voice rising. "You think I should give him another chance?" she spat, the bitterness clear in every syllable. "Why? So he can pull me back into his mess? So he can blame me for everything again? Everything?" She stood up, pacing as she continued to rant. "You don’t understand, Mark. You don’t get it."

Mark’s expression shifted, concern flickering across his face as he tried to reach out to her. "Lex, I know it’s hard, but you don’t have to—"

"Hard? Hard?" she cut him off, her voice thick with emotion. "You have no idea what it was like. You didn’t live with him. You didn’t have him call you a disappointment every time he was drunk. You didn’t have to live with his constant comparisons to Meredith, like I was some kind of failure because I didn’t fit into his perfect little image of what a daughter should be. He never even told me about Meredith. Not until she showed up at the hospital, acting like everything was fine. Like he didn’t abandon me, like he didn’t leave me to fend for myself all those years." Lexie’s voice broke, but she was too angry to stop.

Mark opened his mouth, but she was already on a roll, her emotions spilling out faster than she could keep up with. "Do you have any idea what it’s like to have your father blame you for your mother’s death? To have him look at you and say it was your fault, that if you’d just done something different, she’d still be here? When I was 19, Mark! Nineteen, and just starting med school, and he told me it was my fault my mom died from the hiccups!" Lexie’s breath hitched as she stood there, shaking with the force of her anger.

Mark’s eyes widened, taken aback by the revelation. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He didn’t know what to say. He just watched her, feeling helpless.

Lexie was too deep in her fury to notice. She wasn’t done. "Do you know how rare it is for someone to die from hiccups? It’s not just a funny little thing that people joke about. It’s not just a nuisance. In extreme cases, like my mom, hiccups can cause respiratory failure. They can lead to a loss of oxygen, causing the body to go into shock. If you don’t manage it right away, your diaphragm can go into spasms, and if that happens long enough, it leads to complete respiratory collapse. It’s not some little thing you can laugh off. But he couldn’t even see that, Mark. He just blamed me." She stopped pacing, her body rigid, her eyes hard with the memory of all the pain she had locked inside for so long.

Mark stayed silent, just watching her, his heart breaking as she let the floodgates open. He had no idea it had been this bad for her. He had no idea how much her father had hurt her, how deep those scars went.

Lexie’s voice dropped, but it was thick with bitterness. "He never told me anything about Meredith. Nothing. I didn’t know she existed until that day at the hospital. He kept her a secret from me, like I wasn’t even worthy of knowing the truth about my own family." She let out a bitter laugh, shaking her head. "He was so busy drowning in his own misery that he couldn’t see me. I had to pretend, Mark. I had to pretend when he needed that liver transplant. I had to pretend I didn’t hate him for everything he did to me, for everything he did to Mom, for everything."

Her words were coming faster now, almost frantic. "I couldn’t even show Meredith how angry I was because I didn’t want her to see it. I didn’t want her to think I was some kind of monster for being mad at him, but I was so angry, Mark. So angry. And now, he thinks just because he’s been to rehab for a couple months, he gets to come back and act like everything’s fine? Like everything is magically better because he’s sober now? He’s not sober. He’s just pretending. And I can’t—I can’t keep pretending with him."