All Along The Watchtower - Part 03
Title: All Along The Watchtower
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
Okay. It's after midnight. I'm exhausted, but I can't collapse without posting this or I'll never sleep. I'll reply to part 2 feedback tomorrow, but thank you so, so much for leaving it. Honestly, every bit of it makes my day. I really appreciate all the support for this fic thus far, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get this part up.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 03
“Okay. They're going to find Teddy,” Meredith said as she raced back to the gurney where Derek lay. “It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay.”
“Kiss me,” he said, and so she did.
Touching him this way was the first kind thing she'd done to him in what seemed like years, and it made her want to sob, but she refused herself the luxury and pushed the feeling back down where he wouldn't have to see it or hear it. Not after what he'd just been through.
She'd had to hit him more than once. Stay awake, she'd said. Over and over. Yelling. And then she'd had to watch him moan when she and Cristina and April had forced him to get up. Forced him to climb into the wheelchair that Cristina had managed to scrounge from a nearby hallway. Forced him to stay awake and talking. Forced him onto the gurney in the operating room. Forced him over and over to make his body do things he had no reserves or fortitude left to do.
All that movement had been nerve-wracking and horrible on so many levels, because he'd been in agony and making noise, and they hadn't known where the bullet was, but circumstances meant either risking a spinal injury and moving him, or killing him by leaving him on the floor.
The torturous test of endurance hadn't ended with getting him to the operating room, either. After they'd gotten him settled and still on the gurney, they'd had to touch him. Not like a wife touches a husband. Like a doctor touches a victim. Getting things fixed was paramount, and a patient's comfort sometimes took a backseat to that.
Watching him bear all that had been heart wrenching for her because it had left her wondering if those would be his last memories of her.
Memories of her hurting him.
They'd stopped the bleeding, at least, and he'd reached a certain level of stability. He had his eyes open to bare slits, but they were open, and she wasn't forcing him anymore.
She could be kind again, and it made her entire body wilt with relief.
“I'm not gonna die,” he said. “I promise.”
“Good, because that would be the worst breakup ever.” He tried to chuckle, but the results were an explosion of pain across his features, and his shallow breathing sharpened into something frantic. “Sorry, sorry,” she babbled as she reached for his hand. “Sorry!”
She leaned over the table and watched, silent, as he tried to breathe. His lips, pale like chalk, parted. He wasn't breathing through his nose anymore, like he just couldn't get enough air that way. His chest rose and fell as though he were recovering from running up an endless flight of steps. The effort...
Her throat ached.
“It's gonna be okay,” she whispered as he labored. She squeezed his shoulder with her left palm and stroked with her thumb along his deltoid. His skin was cold. Cold, and clammy. Even through her gloves, he felt shivery. And his breathing was getting worse.
Splinters of dread jabbed her soul. His lungs had seemed all right based on her initial triage, but it'd been many minutes since then. Many minutes with a bullet sitting in his chest cavity. Bullets, which traveled in a parabolic path to begin with, did odd things when they hit bones and organs. They ricocheted. They bounced around. She rarely saw victims where a bullet had simply taken a straight line to its resting place. Even if his lungs weren't damaged, there was a bullet stuck behind his breastbone, and it had torn who knew what sort of jagged path through his body once there. Even if the wound wasn't bleeding onto the gurney, he was still bleeding. Inside. The blood didn't have anywhere to go. It would sit there in his chest cavity until he filled up, and then he would die.
“Tell me something,” he said.
She blinked. “Like what?”
“Anything,” he said as he pushed up his eyelids and gifted her with stark blue irises, watery and lit up with agony. “Tell me anything.”
Distract me, he meant. Distract me so I don't have to think about the fact that breathing is like trying to stuff an elephant into the back seat of a Prius.
I'm pregnant was the first pair of words that came to her mind. That would be a pretty big distraction. A coherent sentence formed. I'm pregnant, and we're going to have a baby, Derek. But her brain skidded to a halt just as the syllables reached her lips, ready for launch. I don't want you to be alone if anything should happen to me, he'd said. I don't want it to just be you, he'd said. I'm pregnant was basically giving him permission to kick the bucket, she realized. I'm pregnant was bad. Very bad.
Her fingers clenched, and she couldn't breathe. For just a moment, she couldn't breathe, until she heard him fighting so hard through another inhalation it snapped her out of it. Not breathing when he was trying so hard seemed like waving her house key at a homeless person or something. She couldn't just not breathe.
“Derek,” she said, and then her throat seized, and the world turned blurry. The shiny silver and dull green surfaces of the operating room melded, until she blinked. Wet slivers tore down her cheeks.
She tried to think of something else to say. Anything. All manner of subjects flitted through her head, from the obscure to the inane, but they all seemed like ridiculous things to be discussing with him if this was going to be the last discussion they ever had, and despite his promise, that worry remained behind her heart, clenching harder with every heartbeat as she thought of his chest cavity. Filling with blood.
Her mind churned. He wanted to be distracted. He was maybe dying, he wanted to be distracted, and she had nothing. Nothing except a positive pregnancy test death warrant, and she couldn't get her brain off of it.
“I'm...” she wheezed. The mere thought of speaking was like a mule had kicked her in the gut. She couldn't and wouldn't say the words, but all she could think about was drooling babies and diapers and bottles and sleepless nights and him and her taking turns answering a wailing little person's demands at all hours of the night until both of them were so tired they couldn't think straight but it was wonderful and she couldn't-- “God, you'd make such a perfect dad,” she blurted, and the screaming in her head faded to a whisper.
She stroked his bicep as he stared at her, perplexed behind the hazy wall of trauma in his gaze, as if to say, where on earth did that come from? He lay quiet, gasping softly. He blinked, and his mouth opened and shut and opened again, like he had a million things to say but couldn't think of which one to try first. He settled on, “You think so?”
He peered at her, panting, and she couldn't keep her hands off. She yanked off her gloves with a loud snap and touched him, skin to skin. She wanted him to remember nice things. Nice things that weren't painful or scary or bad. She touched his face and pulled her fingers through his hair. He leaned into her caress, and his breathing slowed, a drop in a massive ocean, but it slowed.
“I know so,” she said as she kissed him again. “I know. I... It's why you can't die. Okay? Besides the fact that I love you, and you just can't, you'd make a perfect dad, and you're not one yet.”
She kissed him, and she tried not to think about how weird it felt, to be kissing him and not have him kiss her in return. She was used to his hands, running through her hair or racing along her spine, cupping her hips or petting her underneath the waistband of her pants, touching her until she felt raw and shivery with love. But Derek's hands lay by his sides, unmoving, his muscles spent. She was used to laughs, and the softness of his breaths hitting her face. But laughing hurt him. She was used to banter and wit, sparkling eyes, and soft moans. Derek Shepherd made the most beautiful moans when he was aroused, low and gritty, deep within his chest.
She cupped his face, and gave as much of that to him as she could. “I love you, Derek,” she whispered. “I love you.”
A soft, exhausted sound rumbled in his throat, and she pulled back, gazing at him. “We should practice more,” he said, wistful.
She grinned. “Maybe in a few hours?”
“I'm game,” he said, his voice weak. “Unless you expect me on top.”
Her laugh faltered when his body hitched. He didn't make any noise, didn't say a word about his suffering, but she heard it all the same. She felt broken on the inside, but she smiled. Made herself smile.
“Teddy will be here soon,” she said. “She will, Derek. It's going to be okay.”
When he picked up his spears for the battle to breathe, she went with him. She laid her hands on him wherever she could that wouldn't hurt him to remind him of her touch, her warmth, hoping it would help somehow, hoping to give him... Something. Only minutes had passed on the clock since Cristina and April had left, but it felt like forever had pulled out a freaking tent and made camp while he struggled.
Where the hell was the cavalry?
His body started to shake, and his head tilted to the side.
“Are you cold?” she said, but he didn't answer. “Derek?” His eyelids drooped, and he still didn't answer. She shook him, and he blinked, dazed. “Derek!” she said. She pulled his hand into hers and squeezed. Hard. She didn't want to hurt him anymore. She didn't. “Okay, Derek. Now, it's your turn. Come on. Tell me something. Anything.”
“I can't breathe.”
“No,” she said. No. Not yet. “No, Derek. Yes, you can. You can breathe.” She tried to show him even breathing, to give him something to match up with, but he couldn't. He stared at her like he was drowning, saw the shore, and knew he couldn't get there before the waves pulled him under.
“Tell me about. The dirty sex. Tonight,” he said.
“The what?” she said, startled by the subject change. She wondered who was attempting to distract whom. She didn't know anymore. Nothing seemed real or right.
He watched her. “The dirty sex. You promised. Before.”
She gripped his hand, her muscles so stiff with tension they throbbed with a deep, unrelenting ache. “Well, it's going to be downright skanky,” she assured him. “I bought some really fun underwear last weekend.”
“What kind?”
“Itty bitty lace ones,” she purred, even though her stomach was churning because he was maybe-dying, and they were talking about sex they might not have. “I got whipped cream, too.”
“Pretty skanky,” he agreed. “Where are. We going. To have it?”
“The dirty sex?” she said. His head shook a little as he nodded, breathing, breathing. God, it was so hard to watch him struggling. Stress burbled off her lips in a tight, twisty laugh. She forced herself to smile. “Well, I was thinking we should be creative,” she said. “So, then we can have a kinky, skanky story to tell our horribly embarrassed child one day when we're discussing the glorious days of yore or whatever.”
“Kitchen?” he said.
She shook her head. “That's hardly original, Derek.”
“But it's dirty,” he said on the coattails of an exhale. “Elevator?”
Her jaw dropped. “At the hospital?”
“Where else?”
Thoughts of the elevator, their elevator, made her eyes blur with tears. “I'd really like that,” she said. She leaned forward, breathing in his space as he struggled. She brought her forehead to his and stared him in the eye. Fathomless, suffering blue stared back. “We have a date, Derek Shepherd. I expect you to keep it.”
He laughed, really laughed. The warm sound of it made her entire body vibrate as stress sluiced away, until he wrung out the last syllable of it with shaky, frantic sobs. “I really can't breathe, Mere,” he said. His eyes watered, and the stress piled back into her.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, shh. Just hold on a few more minutes for me.”
She almost fainted with crushing weight of her relief when the door opened and Cristina returned, followed by April, Jackson, a nurse, and an anesthesiologist she recognized, but only by sight. “Hold on,” she said, looking back at him. “Where's Teddy, Cristina?” she asked as she stroked his sweaty hair.
“She's not here,” Cristina said.
“Well, if she's not here, who's going to--” Meredith stopped. The chaos spinning in her head splattered into a giant, gooey mess against the windshield of reality. She gripped Derek's shoulder. Maybe too hard. He didn't complain. “Oh. Oh, god.”
“Yeah,” Cristina said.
Meredith wanted to panic. She wanted to panic, but Derek was lying on a gurney, suffocating by degrees, and there wasn't time. Cristina was a capable, qualified surgeon. Cristina was her person. “I'm pretty sure he's got a hemothorax,” Meredith said. “I don't have my stethoscope, so I couldn't check.”
Derek wheezed. “I'm sure I do.”
“Then I guess we start now,” Cristina said. She clapped her hands. “Let's go, people. Let's move it.” She stared at her crew for a long moment, long enough for Meredith to see the worry in her eyes, and then she went into the scrub room to prepare.
Jackson stared, wide-eyed. “Bad. Ass,” he said.
Hours later, Derek was dead, and Meredith collapsed to the floor, screaming. Gary Clark walked past her and exited the room.
Meredith blinked awake, but memories held a noose around her neck for moment after moment. She stared at the floor for the longest time, unable to do much else. The low-backed examination chair Charlotte had given her provided very little support. She'd pushed the back of it into the stack of equipment by Derek's bed and then propped her feet against the bed railing, all so she wouldn't slip and fall if she closed her eyes for a minute.
She couldn't remember when she'd done that. Closed her eyes. But she had. And closed her eyes must have quickly devolved into sleeping, percolating over moments now past. Somewhere. Somehow.
She sighed, raising her head. Her neck hurt. Her knees screamed at her over their abuse. Her mouth felt like paste, and her eyelids wouldn't quite function. Stuck. She wiped the gum and grit away from her eyelashes and swallowed. Then her brain kicked in, and she flinched with rapid, panicky stress. Derek was--
Fine. Sleeping. Quiet. Unaware. And Meredith couldn't help the rickety laugh that wheezed from her lungs. “Getting lunch -Amy” said a scribbled yellow post-it stuck to Derek's forehead.
Meredith snatched the paper away and crumpled it. She stroked his forehead where the adhesive had been, but couldn't help wandering to his cheek and his chin and his crooked, once-broken nose. His face had gotten fuzzy and sharp over the last thirty-six hours, and she wondered if he'd had time to shave the morning before.
Yeah, I like to say hello to my wife every forty-eight hours. You didn't come home last night.
She vaguely recalled the scrape of his stubble as he'd kissed her, oblivious to the fact that he would be nearly dead in an hour. She'd been oblivious, too. She missed that.
He was more awake, now, more self-aware, and she doubted he would be much interested in being doted on or fretted over, but he was going to want to clean up soon. She didn't think he had the energy to hold a razor above his heart level for several minutes. An unsupervised shower, at this juncture, would be a pipe dream for him, and the idea of seeing if he would accept a sponge bath almost nauseated her with worry. She had no idea how she would ask him if he wanted help, he would feel emasculated when she did, and it would be bad. Deciding how to treat him in this situation was like trying to figure out rocket science on a narrow deadline. She'd been tossed into the deep wilds of uncertainty without any sort of warning or prep. She had no map, and she felt alone. Alone and lost.
His limbs twitched. Something low-pitched and odd fluttered over his lips, not a grunt or a groan, and she froze. He'd been quiet and still all morning, ever since the morphine had knocked him out again.
“Derek,” she said.
His heart rate climbed on the monitor as she watched, tripping from the slow plod of sleep into something more effort-driven. More desperate. She shook his shoulder. “Wake up, it's just a dream,” she said.
“Mmm,” he said, almost a word, stuck in the back of his throat. His hands, face, and torso jerked as he flinched from some phantom impact. His breath caught like a knife had been slipped between his ribs, and the silence of him not breathing made her heart twist.
“Wake up,” she said. “Derek!”
He came alive like a firework explosion. “No,” he blurted. He punched his hands against the mattress and sat up. His eyes flared wide, unblinking and unseeing, and he shivered with the momentum of his awakening. His breathing resumed with shuddering, sucking pants that had to be ripping his chest apart with pain.
“Derek, wake up,” she said, trying to break through sightless panic in his eyes. Her chair snapped back against her knees as she stood and pushed it away. She leaned across the bed railing and threw her one arm behind him and the other in front, high across his shoulders and neck to support him and keep him from going farther forward and hurting himself. He tilted, the bony tips of his clavicles brushing her arms, and she bit her lip. She didn't want him to hurt himself, but she didn't want to hurt him either, and if he pushed forward much more against her arm...
He stopped, arriving at the precipice, caught in the twilight between unconscious and awake. And then the solid coil of dream-born tension unraveled from his body until he was a loose, beaten rag doll in her arms. He gripped her arm like he would a pull-up bar and leaned to the side, into her embrace, against her skin.
“Ow,” he said, his voice deep and dark against her body, shivering. His face found the crook of her neck, and he breathed her in.
“It's okay,” she said. “It's okay. It was just a bad dream.”
“Yeah,” he said. “A dream.”
He wouldn't let go of her right arm as she held it in front of him. She tested her other arm instead. When she was certain he wasn't going to fall backward in half-awake confusion, she splayed her fingers against his sleek muscles and ran her palm up his spine. He shook, and he still wouldn't let her go. She stroked his hair and whispered at him.
What she wanted to do was pull him against her and never let go. Instead, his injuries made him fragile. Unfit for the crushing, desperate embrace she longed give him. And she hated it. She hated that she couldn't even hug him. Not really, anyway. Not yet.
“Do you want some water?” she asked. “Something to eat? You haven't tried to eat anything yet.” The nurses had come by with graham crackers and a glass of water more than once, and each time, he'd refused, looking pale and nauseated, and so they hadn't pressed it.
He didn't say anything. She hit the button and raised the back of his bed with her free hand. The bed hummed. His grip loosened, and his hands fell slack to his sides, but he didn't fall back to the mattress, exhausted, like she expected. He sat there, breathing, trembling, and pale.
She tried another tactic, giving him her best bright-and-shiny smile. “Hey, look at you. You're sitting up on your own, at least. Cristina wasn't going to have you do that for a while. How do you feel?”
“Disgusting,” he said, and she swallowed, torn between wanting to press him about his awful dream, trying to find some way to make him feel better, and simple elation that he sounded so much healthier than he had the day before, when he could barely speak. He wasn't wincing with his words, wasn't breathy or weak or hard to hear. The punishment he'd just given his chest had done a number on him, but he was still sitting up on his own, unprompted.
“I could help,” she ventured, praying it wasn't the wrong thing to say. “If you want to get cleaned up or something, I could help.”
She wasn't even sure he was listening to her. He stared at nothing in particular, eyes haunted and disturbed, like he couldn't wash the sight of his mind's eye from the backs of his eyelids no matter how much soap reality gave him.
“Hey,” she said. “Derek. Hey.” She touched his shoulder, her body shuddering with the sheer force of his disquiet. It radiated from him in waves, like the pounding, throbbing dissonance of a subwoofer turned up too loud. “Do you want to talk about... Are you okay?”
He blinked. “No,” he said. And then like a tree, his resolve toppled with the final ax fall of a deep breath. “Ow,” he whispered again, his voice shaking and thready. He lay back against the bed and pillow and closed his eyes, his hand wandering for the morphine dispenser.
“Do you want the bed back down?”
“No.”
A light knock at the door entered the small space, and Derek's eyes drifted open. Meredith bit her lip. There was no way this was going to go well. Visitors. Not when Derek was so disturbed he was still shaking. Not when he was in so much pain and had just taken another hit of morphine.
“Richard,” Derek said.
Richard Webber stepped over the threshold in a clean pressed suit and shiny shoes and peered around the room like he'd never seen it before, at everything but Derek. His assessment slowed on the dormant ventilator and the stack of working monitors, and then he moved to Derek. Chief's fingers twitched against the six inch stack of papers and folders in his hands, like he didn't know what to do, didn't know why he'd come. “I stopped by to see how you were doing,” he said.
“I'm okay,” Derek said. His syllables had lengthened, and his stare had a dusky, not-all-there quality to it. She hoped the morphine had helped. It certainly helped him play the white lie game, the one where somebody said hello, how are you, and you said fine, even when you wanted to keel over dead or strangle someone, because being fine was the acceptable, expected response. Nobody actually wanted a laundry list of what was wrong. Nobody.
Richard smiled. “Well, don't worry about Seattle Grace, all right? I'll keep her together until you're ready to come back. I wanted to thank you. For leaving my name in the approved contingency plan.”
“Okay,” Derek said.
The conversation halted and died an awkward, violent death as silence crushed the room. Derek closed his eyes again, and Richard cleared his throat. “Well, I'll, uh... Leave you to it. The healing.” And he left.
Meredith stared as Richard departed, unable to stop the sigh of relief that tore through her lungs. That hadn't been so terrible. That hadn't been--
“Who's dead?” Derek said.
She turned to find him staring at her, eyes red. “What?”
“He was carrying a pile of death certificates, Mere.”
“You saw--”
“Yes, I saw,” he snapped. His skin drained of color, and he fell silent, breathing.
She stared at her lap. She'd seen the finalized lists posted all over the hospital, and she'd seen the in-progress lists cluttering her email in-box. For a while, they'd been sending out updates by the minute, and she'd had to turn her phone off, because she'd gotten tired of the constant dings, telling her to check for new messages. She didn't know what to say.
“None of your friends?” he prodded.
She bit her lip. “Alex isn't waking up...”
Lexie called her every few hours with tearful updates, updates that were getting more panicky the longer Alex didn't budge from his comatose state.
I don't know what to do, Mere, she'd said. I said I loved him, and now he's almost dead.
He is not almost dead. He's not. He's fine, and he just needs a little extra time to wake up. That's all. Getting shot in the chest sucks.
How's Derek?
I don't know. He's awake, but... I don't know.
“You should visit him,” Derek said.
Meredith shook her head so quick and hard the motion made her neck hurt. “I can't.”
“Why not?”
“Because I just can't do it right now, Derek. I can't.”
Derek stared at her, his eyes dark and foreign and hurting.
Her breaths quickened with the onset of sobs, but she tamped the urge so forcefully it made her face hurt. Her eyes burned. Her torso shook. Something inside her wanted to break, but she couldn't let it. The world was wrong.
When the world was right, even if he was crushed about something, she couldn't be in the same room as Derek and be almost crying like this without him wrapping around her and whispering something to make her feel better. He'd even danced once. Come on. Get up. Get your ass over here. I'm not doing this by myself. Now, he was like a stranger, and she couldn't make heads or tails of it. No map. She had no map at all. And she was alone.
“There was a stack,” he said. “Of certificates, Mere. He hurt all those people to find me. Alex is--”
“He hurt all those people because he was a freaking lunatic, Derek.”
“He thought I killed his wife,” he said. “I'm the reason he came here with a gun.”
She twisted her hands together. She'd seen this before, and she didn't want to be there, in that head space again, watching him push his own self-destruct button.
Go home, Meredith. Just go home.
“Derek,” she said.
He stared into space. His temples moved as he clenched his jaw, but he said nothing.
She stood, shaking, leaned across the railing, and reached for his face, pulled his stare to hers. “Derek,” she said, and she looked him in the eye. He took a quick breath, and another. His gaze was like a minefield of broken glass, slivers, sharp bits, and jags of his soul cracked open for her to see. “Get off this train of thought before it starts. Now. I am not in the mood to chase after you again while you play Babe Ruth with a pile of empty beer cans. I couldn't deal with that on top of everything else.” Not now.
He pulled away from her like she'd hit him, stayawakeDerek, and looked down at his hands. “I'm pretty easy to chase right now, anyway,” he snapped. “And I don't think I could lift a bat.”
“Derek...”
His lower lip trembled. His visage of fury cracked and gave way to a deluge of something else. Something worse. His fingers worked across the hem of his blanket, like he didn't know what to do with the pent up, twisting energy. He moved his head back and forth. No, no, no. As if denial would somehow change the outcome of the memories clotting his head.
“A man shot me,” he said.
She leaned forward and grabbed his hand. “I know. But it's over, Derek. It's over.”
“A man shot me, Mere, and I...” He sucked in a breath, wincing as he did so, and the semblance of calm he'd been fighting so hard to maintain stripped away, left him bare and raw for her. He moaned, soft and low, and then he was crying. Really crying. His breaths spluttered in his chest, and he fell to pieces. “Why?” he said, and she had no answer for him. She didn't know why.
“We'll get through this,” she said. “We will. We got through everything else.”
He stared at her, tears streaking down his face. “When is the memorial?”
“I don't know.”
“I should--”
“Lie back, and rest, Derek,” she said. “That's what you should do.” She hit the button on the bed and lowered him flat. It made her stomach twist to do it without asking him, to treat him like a kid, but he didn't protest or fight. He blinked, silent, as he watched the ceiling crawl above him, and cried.
“I feel dirty.”
She sighed. “I know. I know you do. Would a...” Her fingers twisted around the bed rail, squeaking. “Would it help if I brought you your razor? Please, Derek, I want to help. I don't mind helping.”
But he was already gone from that conversation, all screeching tires and burned rubber, making an illegal u-turn into the treacherous pit of badness he'd been stuck in moments before.
“I shouldn't miss the memorial,” he said.
A soft, feminine sound scuffed Meredith's ears. She turned and saw April standing at the doorway, her stupid little diary clutched against her chest like it was the only thing keeping her afloat. The woman's big doe eyes were watering and shaky.
“Excuse me,” April said in a tiny voice as she shuffle-stepped at the threshold, awkward, unsure. “I'm sorry, Dr. Shepherd, I just...”
“Dr. Kepner,” Derek said. He drew his palms across his face as if trying to remove the traces of his torment, but it didn't work. His eyes were bloodshot and scary, and his skin had a wet, shimmery quality under his lashes. His cheeks streaked with a hot flush, and he looked away.
He was crying with his wife. He was crying with his wife, not his staff. He would never want his staff to see this.
Meredith glared at the woman, tried to mouth go away, not now at her, but April acted like Meredith wasn't even in the room. The sight of Derek in the bed, weeping, had snared her, and her eyes wouldn't peel away.
“I wanted to get a card,” April said, stuttering. “Or something, but nothing seemed like it would be...”
“April,” Meredith snapped, not caring if she sounded mean. “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to say I'm sorry,” she said. “For your loss. I know this is--”
Derek blinked. “What loss?”
April's eyes widened in horror. “Oh,” she stammered. “Oh, I...”
Meredith jerked to her feet and pointed at the hallway. “April,” she said. “Outside. Now.”
They marched outside. Meredith opened her mouth, but the words stuck against the back of her throat like bitter flies to flypaper, and she couldn't find any sort of coherency. Couldn't hold any thoughts in the maelstrom of her fury. She felt the hairs on her neck crawl and glanced to the right. Derek watched them, suspicion clouding his hurt, drugged gaze, and she couldn't take his scrutiny. She clutched a tent of April's lab coat in her hands and dragged her down the hallway to the nurse's station. Out of view. Away from Derek. He didn't need this right now. Not from the woman who'd gotten him shot.
“I'm sorry, Dr. Grey,” April said, sobbing. “I'm sorry. I thought. I thought--”
Anger solidified in Meredith's chest like a coal hardening into a sharp, peerless diamond. Pressure built and built, crushing everything inside, until her vision went black with ire, and she couldn't stop the words anymore. “I don't care what you thought,” she said. “Derek is barely able to sit up on his own. You think I'm going to tell him about losing a baby he didn't even know about yet?”
“I...”
“Go away, April,” she snarled. “I'm sorry about Reed, but you have no right to be in our space right now. Our space. Me and my husband's. My husband's. He almost died, and we lost a baby, and you need to go away. We'll deal with our stuff. You deal with your stuff. Separately. See a counselor or whatever. I recommend Dr. Wyatt.”
April's face paled to an ashen, disturbed gray.
“I'm sorry,” April repeated, and then she fled.
Meredith collapsed over her knees in a furious squat, panting. Hot, snarly tears of anger had begun to seep from her eyes, and she couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe. The nurses at the station, nurses she didn't know but knew she should, since they were watching after Derek, bit their lips and made it perfectly clear they weren't staring at her. No, they shuffled through printed computer records, or checked their watches, or wrote scribble-y things with pens.
This would be all over the hospital in minutes. She knew it.
She sobbed. Just once. And then she tucked it all away and stood up, wiping at her eyes. She could do this. She could do this. She could. She didn't need a freaking map, and somehow, somehow, she would make it through this horrible. Fucking. Day.
When she re-entered the room, his eyes were closed, his breaths low and deep and even. Laying him flat had probably been the last straw on his strained body. He'd been awake, emotionally stressed, and then it'd been quiet, he'd been flat, high on painkillers, and bam.
Winner by knockout.
She let him sleep as she re-settled on top of her squeaky chair, but the quiet respite lasted only twenty minutes, a drop in the bucket of eternity. Better than nothing, but he needed so much more than that. Even breathing skipped in his chest, became something more controlled, and without looking, she knew he was awake again. She swallowed, dread coiling in her gut. She wanted to cry, almost wished they could knock him out, just to get him through the hard part of healing before he could let his brain kick in and torture him with more dark and twisty thoughts.
“What loss?” Derek said, as if their conversation had never been interrupted.
“Nothing, Derek. She just meant all the people who--”
“She said my loss,” he said. “My loss. I'm stoned, Meredith, but I'm not that stoned.” He reached for the button and raised the bed, glaring at her.
“Derek...”
His face crumpled. “Who died? Who died that you don't think I can handle hearing about? I've seen Bailey and Mark, and... Who died?”
“Nobody.”
“Dr. Hunt,” he said. “I haven't seen Dr. Hunt.”
“Owen got shot high in the shoulder, straight through the trapezius muscle, just in the meat, no nerve damage or anything. He's at home on painkillers, but he's fine. Do you really think Cristina would be here if he wasn't?”
“Yes, she would,” he said, and she realized she couldn't exactly refute him. “She's always here. She worked when Burke was shot. She's--”
“Dr. Shepherd, how are you feeling this afternoon?” Charlotte interrupted as she bustled through the door. She held a small Styrofoam plate of graham crackers in one hand, and clutched a plastic cup with a red-striped folding straw in the other.
He loosed a frustrated, shaky breath. “Charlotte.”
“You're sitting up a little. That's good!” Charlotte said, smiling and bright, as if she didn't know what sort of horrible, vicious, man-eating lion's den she'd entered, a den with snapping jaws and ugly black energy. “I brought some crackers for you. I'd like you to eat one. Just to get your stomach to start working again.”
She pulled the tray table across Derek's lap and placed her bounty front of him. Little bits and pieces of crumbs scattered across the plate, collecting at the edges. The meal was meager, but it wasn't supposed to be filling. Derek needed to eat. He needed to, and this was supposed to be easy stuff that would wake up his digestive system enough that he might want real food in a few hours when the orderlies were making rounds with dinner.
“I'm not hungry,” Derek said.
“I know, but you need to eat,” Charlotte replied, her voice even and patient, and Meredith wondered how she did it. Remained patient with patients who belied their nomenclature and made you want to hit and rip things until they were broken. “I'll leave you alone for a little while after you finish one square and drink some water. I promise.”
Derek stared at the contents of the plate like the crackers were some sort of foreign, two-ply cardboard. Charlotte frowned, and Meredith thought she saw something snap behind the woman's eyes. Charlotte's lip twitched, and she sighed.
“Eat or cough, Dr. Shepherd,” the nurse warned. “Which would you prefer?”
Meredith sighed with relief when Derek picked up the cracker in crushing defeat. She stared at Nurse Charlotte. Thank you, she mouthed. Thank you so much. Charlotte caught the motion and winked, but didn't take her eyes from Derek, watching him, ready to catch any attempt by him to bamboozle her and make her think he'd done something he really hadn't.
He chewed the cracker as he glowered. He polished away one square and left the rest, looking pale and upset, but Charlotte ignored him. “That's great, Dr. Shepherd. Now, take a sip. The water will feel good. I promise. I have yet to receive a complaint from anybody else on this hall.”
He blinked. A loose tear slipped down his cheek. He picked up the cup and sipped. Once. Twice. His Adam's apple bobbled along his throat. Even in the dim light, she saw the water line in the cup descend to the bottom and disappear. He slurped once and then stopped. Meredith touched his hand when he set the cup back down, but he didn't look at her. Wouldn't look.
“Charlotte, can you get me a list of the people who died?” he said.
Meredith frowned. He thought she'd lied. He thought... “Derek...”
“They sent out lots of e-mails over the hospital listserv, Dr. Shepherd,” the nurse said. “You should be able to see them on your phone, but I can get you a printout--”
“Is my phone still under the bed?”
The nurse glanced at the storage compartment under the bed and made a small step toward it, but Meredith shooed her away. Tears of anger returned in force, backed by platoons of more tears, all with sharp knives and armor, just waiting for the opportunity to charge down Meredith's face. “I've got it,” Meredith muttered as she bent over, and her hair fell into her face. She clawed it back behind her ears.
Nurse Charlotte whispered something soft at them, encouraged Derek to finish his stupid crackers, and then she left while Meredith was stuck under the bed. Stuck. Her hands found the smooth plastic bin, felt at the rough label made with masking tape and black marker. “Dr. Shepherd,” said the label in a messy doctor's scrawl. Jackson's, maybe. Or April's. Or...
She pulled the box into her lap and scrabbled for her chair, off balance and trying to ignore the watery glaze that covered the world, trying to stop the army revolting in her tear ducts. She fingered his bloodstained leather belt and the black watch he always wore. The glass panel over the digital readout had a crusty red splotch on it. She shoved aside his cell phone clip and his shiny, pointy black boots, the ones she'd always thought he looked sexy in, and had told him so, long ago. They'd thrown out his shirt and his pants and his underwear, thrown them into the bio-hazard bin. They'd been damaged beyond repair. Too drenched with blood and sweat, too soiled with dirt from the floor and with gunpowder.
She remembered fingering the hole in his shirt after they'd removed it. The perforation had been the size of her pinky finger, or maybe a pencil eraser, torn and jagged, wet with his body fluids and bits of obliterated flesh. Little loose threads had snarled in the empty space where solid shirt should have been, and they had caught against her nail as she'd slipped her finger through to the other side. She hadn't been able to believe something so small could cause so much damage. But it had.
“Here,” she growled, jabbing the phone at him like a weapon to ward away the memories of him lying on the floor. Dying.
The phone beeped as he turned it on and navigated to his email. The screen glowed against his face, haunting and pale, and he stared. His lungs hitched when he found the bulletin he wanted, the long list divided by fatalities and injuries in crisp, clear type, alphabetical and neat. Clinical and cold. He scrolled down as he read the names. Beep. Another page. Beep. Another, another. Beep, beep.
Dr. Shepherd, Derek C. was listed under injured but stable, one of the last names in the long crawl of death and pain. She knew. She knew because she'd received the same email on her own phone. The injuries list was much shorter than the fatalities list. Gary Clark had wanted to kill, not maim, and he'd been successful. Chillingly so. But at least he'd failed where it mattered to him the most.
She shuddered.
“I told you, Derek, nobody--”
“Seventeen,” he whispered. “Seventeen people died.”
Her throat constricted. “I know.”
He hit the scroll button again and paused. “That security guard. Paul Wandell. I said hello to him in the morning. His kids had a dance recital, and he was... He had kids, Mere, and now they're alone.”
“Derek, please,” she said. “Please, stop.”
He stared, shell-shocked and lost in the faded edges of his memories. “I wonder how old they are. God, seventeen people, Mere.”
One person.
The air in the room hazed away from her, and she stood on the promenade all over again, watching him fall to the ground, hearing the crack as it buffeted her ears. Cristina had pulled at Meredith's arms so hard her shoulder sockets had ached for hours after that moment. Meredith screamed and screamed and screamed, and she couldn't stop. She hadn't in the memory, and so she was stuck, yelling her throat raw, watching Derek over and over again. He tumbled to the floor and smacked the back of his head into the hard tiles, stunned with the impact of the bullet as it ripped through his sternum.
She remembered the way he'd looked at her as they'd covered him with the mask that would bring him anesthesia. Breathe deeply, Dr. Shepherd, Jackson had said, which, at the time, she'd thought had been ludicrous, since Derek clearly couldn't do more than gasp. She'd stroked his sweaty hair, said she loved him, and before he could reply, his eyes had closed. Slowly. She'd seen one last flash of his pupils before he went still and silent. She'd kissed his forehead, given the deep, beautiful lines around his eyes a last, loving appraisal with the pads of her thumbs, and then the nursing staff had pushed her away so they could intubate him. She'd gone to find Cristina in the scrub room with that picture in her head. Her husband. Intubated.
She realized she was a selfish person, then. A selfish, horrible person. Because all she could think about was that Derek wasn't one of the seventeen. The rest was just superficial details that she couldn't bring herself to worry about.
In that moment, Meredith Grey snapped.
“I'm thirty-two,” she said.
He blinked. “What?”
“When I saw you get shot right in front of me,” she said. “I was thirty-two, and I'm going to be seeing it in my head for the rest of my life. But you're still here. You're breathing, and you're not to blame for the ones who aren't. Please, would you just...” Her voice faded, spent and wasted. Destroyed. She had more syllables to say, but she couldn't say them, because she had no idea what they were. Her lip quivered. “Please.”
“I wish you hadn't seen it,” he said.
“But I did, Derek. You would have died if I hadn't. And now we're here.”
They sat in silence, seconds slogging by like ants caught in molasses, stuck, stuck and drowning in mire and thick tar. He stared at his phone, stared, like he couldn't bring himself to look at her, couldn't bring himself to face her as she fell apart. A low, throaty, choking sound gripped him, and his tears resumed, spattering down his face like loose raindrops in an endless storm. He looked at her then, raw upset in his gaze, his face marred with red streaks of irritation and embarrassment. Of deep, harrowing sadness.
“I want the drainage tubes and the catheter out,” he said, his voice broken. “I want to get up.”
She took his hand and squeezed, forcing her legs straight as she stood. “I'll tell Cristina right now.”
She pulled away, but he didn't release her. “No,” he said. “Stay. Come here. That can wait a minute.”
He pushed the tray table with the stale crackers away.
“But...” She stared at him. He still had the drainage tubes. The EKG lines. The intravenous line. Everything. She couldn't imagine fighting against that whole maze of medical keep away signs. She'd barely been able to get into the bed with him after ten minutes of wiggle-shifting between him and the railing when he'd been thrashed and broken with pain. She couldn't just--
“You won't hurt me, Mere,” he said as if she'd spoken her concerns aloud. “Come here. I'm not glass.”
He gestured with his arm, and she imagined herself, nestled against his frame. Whenever she was upset, he would hold her on the couch, body to body, breath to breath, and he would whisper at her and rub her back and make her feel better. In that moment, she couldn't imagine herself anywhere else. She needed it.
She needed.
She wiped her tear-stained face and collapsed against him. His body felt warm and soft, and in all the near death and dying of the last two days, she'd forgotten how reassuring his shoulder felt against her ear, how good his arm felt wrapped around her torso, and how strong his heartbeat sounded through his skin. Her map filled in with details, and she could almost find herself again. He made shushing noises at her and held her and did all the things that made her forget he wasn't healthy, until she looked and saw how uncomfortable he was. She was lying against him, putting pressure on his chest, however little, however light and tiny she was, and he was hurting.
“You're such a liar,” she sobbed.
“Shut up, Mere,” he said, his voice quivering but sure. “Let me do this. I need to. If it really starts to hurt, I'll tell you.”
She didn't have the energy to fight him. Tiredness clawed her into little wasted bits. “Okay,” she said, and she couldn't hold it in anymore. She was dizzy with exhaustion. Her brain hurt. Shards of upset tore gashes into her soul.
She cried.
“I love you, too,” he said. “I'm here. I'm sorry.”
She lost herself in his velvety, rumbling reassurances, lost herself in the quiet waves of his breathing against her ear. For a perfect, endless minute, she wrapped herself in his words and his softness and his strength, and she knew where she was again. There. In Seattle Grace. Next to her husband. The man she'd sworn her life to on a post-it note.
Her eyelids drooped, and she rested. Her breathing slowed, and she heard herself start to snore, but she was too far gone to care. Too far into a full mental collapse. Wishes and sighs whirled around her head and sucked her under.
She heard his soft, choked, “Hi, Mom.”
She even heard the soft, earthy reply. “Oh, Derek...”
But the words had no meaning to her. Then she slipped into dreaming.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
Okay. It's after midnight. I'm exhausted, but I can't collapse without posting this or I'll never sleep. I'll reply to part 2 feedback tomorrow, but thank you so, so much for leaving it. Honestly, every bit of it makes my day. I really appreciate all the support for this fic thus far, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get this part up.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 03
“Okay. They're going to find Teddy,” Meredith said as she raced back to the gurney where Derek lay. “It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay.”
“Kiss me,” he said, and so she did.
Touching him this way was the first kind thing she'd done to him in what seemed like years, and it made her want to sob, but she refused herself the luxury and pushed the feeling back down where he wouldn't have to see it or hear it. Not after what he'd just been through.
She'd had to hit him more than once. Stay awake, she'd said. Over and over. Yelling. And then she'd had to watch him moan when she and Cristina and April had forced him to get up. Forced him to climb into the wheelchair that Cristina had managed to scrounge from a nearby hallway. Forced him to stay awake and talking. Forced him onto the gurney in the operating room. Forced him over and over to make his body do things he had no reserves or fortitude left to do.
All that movement had been nerve-wracking and horrible on so many levels, because he'd been in agony and making noise, and they hadn't known where the bullet was, but circumstances meant either risking a spinal injury and moving him, or killing him by leaving him on the floor.
The torturous test of endurance hadn't ended with getting him to the operating room, either. After they'd gotten him settled and still on the gurney, they'd had to touch him. Not like a wife touches a husband. Like a doctor touches a victim. Getting things fixed was paramount, and a patient's comfort sometimes took a backseat to that.
Watching him bear all that had been heart wrenching for her because it had left her wondering if those would be his last memories of her.
Memories of her hurting him.
They'd stopped the bleeding, at least, and he'd reached a certain level of stability. He had his eyes open to bare slits, but they were open, and she wasn't forcing him anymore.
She could be kind again, and it made her entire body wilt with relief.
“I'm not gonna die,” he said. “I promise.”
“Good, because that would be the worst breakup ever.” He tried to chuckle, but the results were an explosion of pain across his features, and his shallow breathing sharpened into something frantic. “Sorry, sorry,” she babbled as she reached for his hand. “Sorry!”
She leaned over the table and watched, silent, as he tried to breathe. His lips, pale like chalk, parted. He wasn't breathing through his nose anymore, like he just couldn't get enough air that way. His chest rose and fell as though he were recovering from running up an endless flight of steps. The effort...
Her throat ached.
“It's gonna be okay,” she whispered as he labored. She squeezed his shoulder with her left palm and stroked with her thumb along his deltoid. His skin was cold. Cold, and clammy. Even through her gloves, he felt shivery. And his breathing was getting worse.
Splinters of dread jabbed her soul. His lungs had seemed all right based on her initial triage, but it'd been many minutes since then. Many minutes with a bullet sitting in his chest cavity. Bullets, which traveled in a parabolic path to begin with, did odd things when they hit bones and organs. They ricocheted. They bounced around. She rarely saw victims where a bullet had simply taken a straight line to its resting place. Even if his lungs weren't damaged, there was a bullet stuck behind his breastbone, and it had torn who knew what sort of jagged path through his body once there. Even if the wound wasn't bleeding onto the gurney, he was still bleeding. Inside. The blood didn't have anywhere to go. It would sit there in his chest cavity until he filled up, and then he would die.
“Tell me something,” he said.
She blinked. “Like what?”
“Anything,” he said as he pushed up his eyelids and gifted her with stark blue irises, watery and lit up with agony. “Tell me anything.”
Distract me, he meant. Distract me so I don't have to think about the fact that breathing is like trying to stuff an elephant into the back seat of a Prius.
I'm pregnant was the first pair of words that came to her mind. That would be a pretty big distraction. A coherent sentence formed. I'm pregnant, and we're going to have a baby, Derek. But her brain skidded to a halt just as the syllables reached her lips, ready for launch. I don't want you to be alone if anything should happen to me, he'd said. I don't want it to just be you, he'd said. I'm pregnant was basically giving him permission to kick the bucket, she realized. I'm pregnant was bad. Very bad.
Her fingers clenched, and she couldn't breathe. For just a moment, she couldn't breathe, until she heard him fighting so hard through another inhalation it snapped her out of it. Not breathing when he was trying so hard seemed like waving her house key at a homeless person or something. She couldn't just not breathe.
“Derek,” she said, and then her throat seized, and the world turned blurry. The shiny silver and dull green surfaces of the operating room melded, until she blinked. Wet slivers tore down her cheeks.
She tried to think of something else to say. Anything. All manner of subjects flitted through her head, from the obscure to the inane, but they all seemed like ridiculous things to be discussing with him if this was going to be the last discussion they ever had, and despite his promise, that worry remained behind her heart, clenching harder with every heartbeat as she thought of his chest cavity. Filling with blood.
Her mind churned. He wanted to be distracted. He was maybe dying, he wanted to be distracted, and she had nothing. Nothing except a positive pregnancy test death warrant, and she couldn't get her brain off of it.
“I'm...” she wheezed. The mere thought of speaking was like a mule had kicked her in the gut. She couldn't and wouldn't say the words, but all she could think about was drooling babies and diapers and bottles and sleepless nights and him and her taking turns answering a wailing little person's demands at all hours of the night until both of them were so tired they couldn't think straight but it was wonderful and she couldn't-- “God, you'd make such a perfect dad,” she blurted, and the screaming in her head faded to a whisper.
She stroked his bicep as he stared at her, perplexed behind the hazy wall of trauma in his gaze, as if to say, where on earth did that come from? He lay quiet, gasping softly. He blinked, and his mouth opened and shut and opened again, like he had a million things to say but couldn't think of which one to try first. He settled on, “You think so?”
He peered at her, panting, and she couldn't keep her hands off. She yanked off her gloves with a loud snap and touched him, skin to skin. She wanted him to remember nice things. Nice things that weren't painful or scary or bad. She touched his face and pulled her fingers through his hair. He leaned into her caress, and his breathing slowed, a drop in a massive ocean, but it slowed.
“I know so,” she said as she kissed him again. “I know. I... It's why you can't die. Okay? Besides the fact that I love you, and you just can't, you'd make a perfect dad, and you're not one yet.”
She kissed him, and she tried not to think about how weird it felt, to be kissing him and not have him kiss her in return. She was used to his hands, running through her hair or racing along her spine, cupping her hips or petting her underneath the waistband of her pants, touching her until she felt raw and shivery with love. But Derek's hands lay by his sides, unmoving, his muscles spent. She was used to laughs, and the softness of his breaths hitting her face. But laughing hurt him. She was used to banter and wit, sparkling eyes, and soft moans. Derek Shepherd made the most beautiful moans when he was aroused, low and gritty, deep within his chest.
She cupped his face, and gave as much of that to him as she could. “I love you, Derek,” she whispered. “I love you.”
A soft, exhausted sound rumbled in his throat, and she pulled back, gazing at him. “We should practice more,” he said, wistful.
She grinned. “Maybe in a few hours?”
“I'm game,” he said, his voice weak. “Unless you expect me on top.”
Her laugh faltered when his body hitched. He didn't make any noise, didn't say a word about his suffering, but she heard it all the same. She felt broken on the inside, but she smiled. Made herself smile.
“Teddy will be here soon,” she said. “She will, Derek. It's going to be okay.”
When he picked up his spears for the battle to breathe, she went with him. She laid her hands on him wherever she could that wouldn't hurt him to remind him of her touch, her warmth, hoping it would help somehow, hoping to give him... Something. Only minutes had passed on the clock since Cristina and April had left, but it felt like forever had pulled out a freaking tent and made camp while he struggled.
Where the hell was the cavalry?
His body started to shake, and his head tilted to the side.
“Are you cold?” she said, but he didn't answer. “Derek?” His eyelids drooped, and he still didn't answer. She shook him, and he blinked, dazed. “Derek!” she said. She pulled his hand into hers and squeezed. Hard. She didn't want to hurt him anymore. She didn't. “Okay, Derek. Now, it's your turn. Come on. Tell me something. Anything.”
“I can't breathe.”
“No,” she said. No. Not yet. “No, Derek. Yes, you can. You can breathe.” She tried to show him even breathing, to give him something to match up with, but he couldn't. He stared at her like he was drowning, saw the shore, and knew he couldn't get there before the waves pulled him under.
“Tell me about. The dirty sex. Tonight,” he said.
“The what?” she said, startled by the subject change. She wondered who was attempting to distract whom. She didn't know anymore. Nothing seemed real or right.
He watched her. “The dirty sex. You promised. Before.”
She gripped his hand, her muscles so stiff with tension they throbbed with a deep, unrelenting ache. “Well, it's going to be downright skanky,” she assured him. “I bought some really fun underwear last weekend.”
“What kind?”
“Itty bitty lace ones,” she purred, even though her stomach was churning because he was maybe-dying, and they were talking about sex they might not have. “I got whipped cream, too.”
“Pretty skanky,” he agreed. “Where are. We going. To have it?”
“The dirty sex?” she said. His head shook a little as he nodded, breathing, breathing. God, it was so hard to watch him struggling. Stress burbled off her lips in a tight, twisty laugh. She forced herself to smile. “Well, I was thinking we should be creative,” she said. “So, then we can have a kinky, skanky story to tell our horribly embarrassed child one day when we're discussing the glorious days of yore or whatever.”
“Kitchen?” he said.
She shook her head. “That's hardly original, Derek.”
“But it's dirty,” he said on the coattails of an exhale. “Elevator?”
Her jaw dropped. “At the hospital?”
“Where else?”
Thoughts of the elevator, their elevator, made her eyes blur with tears. “I'd really like that,” she said. She leaned forward, breathing in his space as he struggled. She brought her forehead to his and stared him in the eye. Fathomless, suffering blue stared back. “We have a date, Derek Shepherd. I expect you to keep it.”
He laughed, really laughed. The warm sound of it made her entire body vibrate as stress sluiced away, until he wrung out the last syllable of it with shaky, frantic sobs. “I really can't breathe, Mere,” he said. His eyes watered, and the stress piled back into her.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, shh. Just hold on a few more minutes for me.”
She almost fainted with crushing weight of her relief when the door opened and Cristina returned, followed by April, Jackson, a nurse, and an anesthesiologist she recognized, but only by sight. “Hold on,” she said, looking back at him. “Where's Teddy, Cristina?” she asked as she stroked his sweaty hair.
“She's not here,” Cristina said.
“Well, if she's not here, who's going to--” Meredith stopped. The chaos spinning in her head splattered into a giant, gooey mess against the windshield of reality. She gripped Derek's shoulder. Maybe too hard. He didn't complain. “Oh. Oh, god.”
“Yeah,” Cristina said.
Meredith wanted to panic. She wanted to panic, but Derek was lying on a gurney, suffocating by degrees, and there wasn't time. Cristina was a capable, qualified surgeon. Cristina was her person. “I'm pretty sure he's got a hemothorax,” Meredith said. “I don't have my stethoscope, so I couldn't check.”
Derek wheezed. “I'm sure I do.”
“Then I guess we start now,” Cristina said. She clapped her hands. “Let's go, people. Let's move it.” She stared at her crew for a long moment, long enough for Meredith to see the worry in her eyes, and then she went into the scrub room to prepare.
Jackson stared, wide-eyed. “Bad. Ass,” he said.
Hours later, Derek was dead, and Meredith collapsed to the floor, screaming. Gary Clark walked past her and exited the room.
Meredith blinked awake, but memories held a noose around her neck for moment after moment. She stared at the floor for the longest time, unable to do much else. The low-backed examination chair Charlotte had given her provided very little support. She'd pushed the back of it into the stack of equipment by Derek's bed and then propped her feet against the bed railing, all so she wouldn't slip and fall if she closed her eyes for a minute.
She couldn't remember when she'd done that. Closed her eyes. But she had. And closed her eyes must have quickly devolved into sleeping, percolating over moments now past. Somewhere. Somehow.
She sighed, raising her head. Her neck hurt. Her knees screamed at her over their abuse. Her mouth felt like paste, and her eyelids wouldn't quite function. Stuck. She wiped the gum and grit away from her eyelashes and swallowed. Then her brain kicked in, and she flinched with rapid, panicky stress. Derek was--
Fine. Sleeping. Quiet. Unaware. And Meredith couldn't help the rickety laugh that wheezed from her lungs. “Getting lunch -Amy” said a scribbled yellow post-it stuck to Derek's forehead.
Meredith snatched the paper away and crumpled it. She stroked his forehead where the adhesive had been, but couldn't help wandering to his cheek and his chin and his crooked, once-broken nose. His face had gotten fuzzy and sharp over the last thirty-six hours, and she wondered if he'd had time to shave the morning before.
Yeah, I like to say hello to my wife every forty-eight hours. You didn't come home last night.
She vaguely recalled the scrape of his stubble as he'd kissed her, oblivious to the fact that he would be nearly dead in an hour. She'd been oblivious, too. She missed that.
He was more awake, now, more self-aware, and she doubted he would be much interested in being doted on or fretted over, but he was going to want to clean up soon. She didn't think he had the energy to hold a razor above his heart level for several minutes. An unsupervised shower, at this juncture, would be a pipe dream for him, and the idea of seeing if he would accept a sponge bath almost nauseated her with worry. She had no idea how she would ask him if he wanted help, he would feel emasculated when she did, and it would be bad. Deciding how to treat him in this situation was like trying to figure out rocket science on a narrow deadline. She'd been tossed into the deep wilds of uncertainty without any sort of warning or prep. She had no map, and she felt alone. Alone and lost.
His limbs twitched. Something low-pitched and odd fluttered over his lips, not a grunt or a groan, and she froze. He'd been quiet and still all morning, ever since the morphine had knocked him out again.
“Derek,” she said.
His heart rate climbed on the monitor as she watched, tripping from the slow plod of sleep into something more effort-driven. More desperate. She shook his shoulder. “Wake up, it's just a dream,” she said.
“Mmm,” he said, almost a word, stuck in the back of his throat. His hands, face, and torso jerked as he flinched from some phantom impact. His breath caught like a knife had been slipped between his ribs, and the silence of him not breathing made her heart twist.
“Wake up,” she said. “Derek!”
He came alive like a firework explosion. “No,” he blurted. He punched his hands against the mattress and sat up. His eyes flared wide, unblinking and unseeing, and he shivered with the momentum of his awakening. His breathing resumed with shuddering, sucking pants that had to be ripping his chest apart with pain.
“Derek, wake up,” she said, trying to break through sightless panic in his eyes. Her chair snapped back against her knees as she stood and pushed it away. She leaned across the bed railing and threw her one arm behind him and the other in front, high across his shoulders and neck to support him and keep him from going farther forward and hurting himself. He tilted, the bony tips of his clavicles brushing her arms, and she bit her lip. She didn't want him to hurt himself, but she didn't want to hurt him either, and if he pushed forward much more against her arm...
He stopped, arriving at the precipice, caught in the twilight between unconscious and awake. And then the solid coil of dream-born tension unraveled from his body until he was a loose, beaten rag doll in her arms. He gripped her arm like he would a pull-up bar and leaned to the side, into her embrace, against her skin.
“Ow,” he said, his voice deep and dark against her body, shivering. His face found the crook of her neck, and he breathed her in.
“It's okay,” she said. “It's okay. It was just a bad dream.”
“Yeah,” he said. “A dream.”
He wouldn't let go of her right arm as she held it in front of him. She tested her other arm instead. When she was certain he wasn't going to fall backward in half-awake confusion, she splayed her fingers against his sleek muscles and ran her palm up his spine. He shook, and he still wouldn't let her go. She stroked his hair and whispered at him.
What she wanted to do was pull him against her and never let go. Instead, his injuries made him fragile. Unfit for the crushing, desperate embrace she longed give him. And she hated it. She hated that she couldn't even hug him. Not really, anyway. Not yet.
“Do you want some water?” she asked. “Something to eat? You haven't tried to eat anything yet.” The nurses had come by with graham crackers and a glass of water more than once, and each time, he'd refused, looking pale and nauseated, and so they hadn't pressed it.
He didn't say anything. She hit the button and raised the back of his bed with her free hand. The bed hummed. His grip loosened, and his hands fell slack to his sides, but he didn't fall back to the mattress, exhausted, like she expected. He sat there, breathing, trembling, and pale.
She tried another tactic, giving him her best bright-and-shiny smile. “Hey, look at you. You're sitting up on your own, at least. Cristina wasn't going to have you do that for a while. How do you feel?”
“Disgusting,” he said, and she swallowed, torn between wanting to press him about his awful dream, trying to find some way to make him feel better, and simple elation that he sounded so much healthier than he had the day before, when he could barely speak. He wasn't wincing with his words, wasn't breathy or weak or hard to hear. The punishment he'd just given his chest had done a number on him, but he was still sitting up on his own, unprompted.
“I could help,” she ventured, praying it wasn't the wrong thing to say. “If you want to get cleaned up or something, I could help.”
She wasn't even sure he was listening to her. He stared at nothing in particular, eyes haunted and disturbed, like he couldn't wash the sight of his mind's eye from the backs of his eyelids no matter how much soap reality gave him.
“Hey,” she said. “Derek. Hey.” She touched his shoulder, her body shuddering with the sheer force of his disquiet. It radiated from him in waves, like the pounding, throbbing dissonance of a subwoofer turned up too loud. “Do you want to talk about... Are you okay?”
He blinked. “No,” he said. And then like a tree, his resolve toppled with the final ax fall of a deep breath. “Ow,” he whispered again, his voice shaking and thready. He lay back against the bed and pillow and closed his eyes, his hand wandering for the morphine dispenser.
“Do you want the bed back down?”
“No.”
A light knock at the door entered the small space, and Derek's eyes drifted open. Meredith bit her lip. There was no way this was going to go well. Visitors. Not when Derek was so disturbed he was still shaking. Not when he was in so much pain and had just taken another hit of morphine.
“Richard,” Derek said.
Richard Webber stepped over the threshold in a clean pressed suit and shiny shoes and peered around the room like he'd never seen it before, at everything but Derek. His assessment slowed on the dormant ventilator and the stack of working monitors, and then he moved to Derek. Chief's fingers twitched against the six inch stack of papers and folders in his hands, like he didn't know what to do, didn't know why he'd come. “I stopped by to see how you were doing,” he said.
“I'm okay,” Derek said. His syllables had lengthened, and his stare had a dusky, not-all-there quality to it. She hoped the morphine had helped. It certainly helped him play the white lie game, the one where somebody said hello, how are you, and you said fine, even when you wanted to keel over dead or strangle someone, because being fine was the acceptable, expected response. Nobody actually wanted a laundry list of what was wrong. Nobody.
Richard smiled. “Well, don't worry about Seattle Grace, all right? I'll keep her together until you're ready to come back. I wanted to thank you. For leaving my name in the approved contingency plan.”
“Okay,” Derek said.
The conversation halted and died an awkward, violent death as silence crushed the room. Derek closed his eyes again, and Richard cleared his throat. “Well, I'll, uh... Leave you to it. The healing.” And he left.
Meredith stared as Richard departed, unable to stop the sigh of relief that tore through her lungs. That hadn't been so terrible. That hadn't been--
“Who's dead?” Derek said.
She turned to find him staring at her, eyes red. “What?”
“He was carrying a pile of death certificates, Mere.”
“You saw--”
“Yes, I saw,” he snapped. His skin drained of color, and he fell silent, breathing.
She stared at her lap. She'd seen the finalized lists posted all over the hospital, and she'd seen the in-progress lists cluttering her email in-box. For a while, they'd been sending out updates by the minute, and she'd had to turn her phone off, because she'd gotten tired of the constant dings, telling her to check for new messages. She didn't know what to say.
“None of your friends?” he prodded.
She bit her lip. “Alex isn't waking up...”
Lexie called her every few hours with tearful updates, updates that were getting more panicky the longer Alex didn't budge from his comatose state.
I don't know what to do, Mere, she'd said. I said I loved him, and now he's almost dead.
He is not almost dead. He's not. He's fine, and he just needs a little extra time to wake up. That's all. Getting shot in the chest sucks.
How's Derek?
I don't know. He's awake, but... I don't know.
“You should visit him,” Derek said.
Meredith shook her head so quick and hard the motion made her neck hurt. “I can't.”
“Why not?”
“Because I just can't do it right now, Derek. I can't.”
Derek stared at her, his eyes dark and foreign and hurting.
Her breaths quickened with the onset of sobs, but she tamped the urge so forcefully it made her face hurt. Her eyes burned. Her torso shook. Something inside her wanted to break, but she couldn't let it. The world was wrong.
When the world was right, even if he was crushed about something, she couldn't be in the same room as Derek and be almost crying like this without him wrapping around her and whispering something to make her feel better. He'd even danced once. Come on. Get up. Get your ass over here. I'm not doing this by myself. Now, he was like a stranger, and she couldn't make heads or tails of it. No map. She had no map at all. And she was alone.
“There was a stack,” he said. “Of certificates, Mere. He hurt all those people to find me. Alex is--”
“He hurt all those people because he was a freaking lunatic, Derek.”
“He thought I killed his wife,” he said. “I'm the reason he came here with a gun.”
She twisted her hands together. She'd seen this before, and she didn't want to be there, in that head space again, watching him push his own self-destruct button.
Go home, Meredith. Just go home.
“Derek,” she said.
He stared into space. His temples moved as he clenched his jaw, but he said nothing.
She stood, shaking, leaned across the railing, and reached for his face, pulled his stare to hers. “Derek,” she said, and she looked him in the eye. He took a quick breath, and another. His gaze was like a minefield of broken glass, slivers, sharp bits, and jags of his soul cracked open for her to see. “Get off this train of thought before it starts. Now. I am not in the mood to chase after you again while you play Babe Ruth with a pile of empty beer cans. I couldn't deal with that on top of everything else.” Not now.
He pulled away from her like she'd hit him, stayawakeDerek, and looked down at his hands. “I'm pretty easy to chase right now, anyway,” he snapped. “And I don't think I could lift a bat.”
“Derek...”
His lower lip trembled. His visage of fury cracked and gave way to a deluge of something else. Something worse. His fingers worked across the hem of his blanket, like he didn't know what to do with the pent up, twisting energy. He moved his head back and forth. No, no, no. As if denial would somehow change the outcome of the memories clotting his head.
“A man shot me,” he said.
She leaned forward and grabbed his hand. “I know. But it's over, Derek. It's over.”
“A man shot me, Mere, and I...” He sucked in a breath, wincing as he did so, and the semblance of calm he'd been fighting so hard to maintain stripped away, left him bare and raw for her. He moaned, soft and low, and then he was crying. Really crying. His breaths spluttered in his chest, and he fell to pieces. “Why?” he said, and she had no answer for him. She didn't know why.
“We'll get through this,” she said. “We will. We got through everything else.”
He stared at her, tears streaking down his face. “When is the memorial?”
“I don't know.”
“I should--”
“Lie back, and rest, Derek,” she said. “That's what you should do.” She hit the button on the bed and lowered him flat. It made her stomach twist to do it without asking him, to treat him like a kid, but he didn't protest or fight. He blinked, silent, as he watched the ceiling crawl above him, and cried.
“I feel dirty.”
She sighed. “I know. I know you do. Would a...” Her fingers twisted around the bed rail, squeaking. “Would it help if I brought you your razor? Please, Derek, I want to help. I don't mind helping.”
But he was already gone from that conversation, all screeching tires and burned rubber, making an illegal u-turn into the treacherous pit of badness he'd been stuck in moments before.
“I shouldn't miss the memorial,” he said.
A soft, feminine sound scuffed Meredith's ears. She turned and saw April standing at the doorway, her stupid little diary clutched against her chest like it was the only thing keeping her afloat. The woman's big doe eyes were watering and shaky.
“Excuse me,” April said in a tiny voice as she shuffle-stepped at the threshold, awkward, unsure. “I'm sorry, Dr. Shepherd, I just...”
“Dr. Kepner,” Derek said. He drew his palms across his face as if trying to remove the traces of his torment, but it didn't work. His eyes were bloodshot and scary, and his skin had a wet, shimmery quality under his lashes. His cheeks streaked with a hot flush, and he looked away.
He was crying with his wife. He was crying with his wife, not his staff. He would never want his staff to see this.
Meredith glared at the woman, tried to mouth go away, not now at her, but April acted like Meredith wasn't even in the room. The sight of Derek in the bed, weeping, had snared her, and her eyes wouldn't peel away.
“I wanted to get a card,” April said, stuttering. “Or something, but nothing seemed like it would be...”
“April,” Meredith snapped, not caring if she sounded mean. “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to say I'm sorry,” she said. “For your loss. I know this is--”
Derek blinked. “What loss?”
April's eyes widened in horror. “Oh,” she stammered. “Oh, I...”
Meredith jerked to her feet and pointed at the hallway. “April,” she said. “Outside. Now.”
They marched outside. Meredith opened her mouth, but the words stuck against the back of her throat like bitter flies to flypaper, and she couldn't find any sort of coherency. Couldn't hold any thoughts in the maelstrom of her fury. She felt the hairs on her neck crawl and glanced to the right. Derek watched them, suspicion clouding his hurt, drugged gaze, and she couldn't take his scrutiny. She clutched a tent of April's lab coat in her hands and dragged her down the hallway to the nurse's station. Out of view. Away from Derek. He didn't need this right now. Not from the woman who'd gotten him shot.
“I'm sorry, Dr. Grey,” April said, sobbing. “I'm sorry. I thought. I thought--”
Anger solidified in Meredith's chest like a coal hardening into a sharp, peerless diamond. Pressure built and built, crushing everything inside, until her vision went black with ire, and she couldn't stop the words anymore. “I don't care what you thought,” she said. “Derek is barely able to sit up on his own. You think I'm going to tell him about losing a baby he didn't even know about yet?”
“I...”
“Go away, April,” she snarled. “I'm sorry about Reed, but you have no right to be in our space right now. Our space. Me and my husband's. My husband's. He almost died, and we lost a baby, and you need to go away. We'll deal with our stuff. You deal with your stuff. Separately. See a counselor or whatever. I recommend Dr. Wyatt.”
April's face paled to an ashen, disturbed gray.
“I'm sorry,” April repeated, and then she fled.
Meredith collapsed over her knees in a furious squat, panting. Hot, snarly tears of anger had begun to seep from her eyes, and she couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe. The nurses at the station, nurses she didn't know but knew she should, since they were watching after Derek, bit their lips and made it perfectly clear they weren't staring at her. No, they shuffled through printed computer records, or checked their watches, or wrote scribble-y things with pens.
This would be all over the hospital in minutes. She knew it.
She sobbed. Just once. And then she tucked it all away and stood up, wiping at her eyes. She could do this. She could do this. She could. She didn't need a freaking map, and somehow, somehow, she would make it through this horrible. Fucking. Day.
When she re-entered the room, his eyes were closed, his breaths low and deep and even. Laying him flat had probably been the last straw on his strained body. He'd been awake, emotionally stressed, and then it'd been quiet, he'd been flat, high on painkillers, and bam.
Winner by knockout.
She let him sleep as she re-settled on top of her squeaky chair, but the quiet respite lasted only twenty minutes, a drop in the bucket of eternity. Better than nothing, but he needed so much more than that. Even breathing skipped in his chest, became something more controlled, and without looking, she knew he was awake again. She swallowed, dread coiling in her gut. She wanted to cry, almost wished they could knock him out, just to get him through the hard part of healing before he could let his brain kick in and torture him with more dark and twisty thoughts.
“What loss?” Derek said, as if their conversation had never been interrupted.
“Nothing, Derek. She just meant all the people who--”
“She said my loss,” he said. “My loss. I'm stoned, Meredith, but I'm not that stoned.” He reached for the button and raised the bed, glaring at her.
“Derek...”
His face crumpled. “Who died? Who died that you don't think I can handle hearing about? I've seen Bailey and Mark, and... Who died?”
“Nobody.”
“Dr. Hunt,” he said. “I haven't seen Dr. Hunt.”
“Owen got shot high in the shoulder, straight through the trapezius muscle, just in the meat, no nerve damage or anything. He's at home on painkillers, but he's fine. Do you really think Cristina would be here if he wasn't?”
“Yes, she would,” he said, and she realized she couldn't exactly refute him. “She's always here. She worked when Burke was shot. She's--”
“Dr. Shepherd, how are you feeling this afternoon?” Charlotte interrupted as she bustled through the door. She held a small Styrofoam plate of graham crackers in one hand, and clutched a plastic cup with a red-striped folding straw in the other.
He loosed a frustrated, shaky breath. “Charlotte.”
“You're sitting up a little. That's good!” Charlotte said, smiling and bright, as if she didn't know what sort of horrible, vicious, man-eating lion's den she'd entered, a den with snapping jaws and ugly black energy. “I brought some crackers for you. I'd like you to eat one. Just to get your stomach to start working again.”
She pulled the tray table across Derek's lap and placed her bounty front of him. Little bits and pieces of crumbs scattered across the plate, collecting at the edges. The meal was meager, but it wasn't supposed to be filling. Derek needed to eat. He needed to, and this was supposed to be easy stuff that would wake up his digestive system enough that he might want real food in a few hours when the orderlies were making rounds with dinner.
“I'm not hungry,” Derek said.
“I know, but you need to eat,” Charlotte replied, her voice even and patient, and Meredith wondered how she did it. Remained patient with patients who belied their nomenclature and made you want to hit and rip things until they were broken. “I'll leave you alone for a little while after you finish one square and drink some water. I promise.”
Derek stared at the contents of the plate like the crackers were some sort of foreign, two-ply cardboard. Charlotte frowned, and Meredith thought she saw something snap behind the woman's eyes. Charlotte's lip twitched, and she sighed.
“Eat or cough, Dr. Shepherd,” the nurse warned. “Which would you prefer?”
Meredith sighed with relief when Derek picked up the cracker in crushing defeat. She stared at Nurse Charlotte. Thank you, she mouthed. Thank you so much. Charlotte caught the motion and winked, but didn't take her eyes from Derek, watching him, ready to catch any attempt by him to bamboozle her and make her think he'd done something he really hadn't.
He chewed the cracker as he glowered. He polished away one square and left the rest, looking pale and upset, but Charlotte ignored him. “That's great, Dr. Shepherd. Now, take a sip. The water will feel good. I promise. I have yet to receive a complaint from anybody else on this hall.”
He blinked. A loose tear slipped down his cheek. He picked up the cup and sipped. Once. Twice. His Adam's apple bobbled along his throat. Even in the dim light, she saw the water line in the cup descend to the bottom and disappear. He slurped once and then stopped. Meredith touched his hand when he set the cup back down, but he didn't look at her. Wouldn't look.
“Charlotte, can you get me a list of the people who died?” he said.
Meredith frowned. He thought she'd lied. He thought... “Derek...”
“They sent out lots of e-mails over the hospital listserv, Dr. Shepherd,” the nurse said. “You should be able to see them on your phone, but I can get you a printout--”
“Is my phone still under the bed?”
The nurse glanced at the storage compartment under the bed and made a small step toward it, but Meredith shooed her away. Tears of anger returned in force, backed by platoons of more tears, all with sharp knives and armor, just waiting for the opportunity to charge down Meredith's face. “I've got it,” Meredith muttered as she bent over, and her hair fell into her face. She clawed it back behind her ears.
Nurse Charlotte whispered something soft at them, encouraged Derek to finish his stupid crackers, and then she left while Meredith was stuck under the bed. Stuck. Her hands found the smooth plastic bin, felt at the rough label made with masking tape and black marker. “Dr. Shepherd,” said the label in a messy doctor's scrawl. Jackson's, maybe. Or April's. Or...
She pulled the box into her lap and scrabbled for her chair, off balance and trying to ignore the watery glaze that covered the world, trying to stop the army revolting in her tear ducts. She fingered his bloodstained leather belt and the black watch he always wore. The glass panel over the digital readout had a crusty red splotch on it. She shoved aside his cell phone clip and his shiny, pointy black boots, the ones she'd always thought he looked sexy in, and had told him so, long ago. They'd thrown out his shirt and his pants and his underwear, thrown them into the bio-hazard bin. They'd been damaged beyond repair. Too drenched with blood and sweat, too soiled with dirt from the floor and with gunpowder.
She remembered fingering the hole in his shirt after they'd removed it. The perforation had been the size of her pinky finger, or maybe a pencil eraser, torn and jagged, wet with his body fluids and bits of obliterated flesh. Little loose threads had snarled in the empty space where solid shirt should have been, and they had caught against her nail as she'd slipped her finger through to the other side. She hadn't been able to believe something so small could cause so much damage. But it had.
“Here,” she growled, jabbing the phone at him like a weapon to ward away the memories of him lying on the floor. Dying.
The phone beeped as he turned it on and navigated to his email. The screen glowed against his face, haunting and pale, and he stared. His lungs hitched when he found the bulletin he wanted, the long list divided by fatalities and injuries in crisp, clear type, alphabetical and neat. Clinical and cold. He scrolled down as he read the names. Beep. Another page. Beep. Another, another. Beep, beep.
Dr. Shepherd, Derek C. was listed under injured but stable, one of the last names in the long crawl of death and pain. She knew. She knew because she'd received the same email on her own phone. The injuries list was much shorter than the fatalities list. Gary Clark had wanted to kill, not maim, and he'd been successful. Chillingly so. But at least he'd failed where it mattered to him the most.
She shuddered.
“I told you, Derek, nobody--”
“Seventeen,” he whispered. “Seventeen people died.”
Her throat constricted. “I know.”
He hit the scroll button again and paused. “That security guard. Paul Wandell. I said hello to him in the morning. His kids had a dance recital, and he was... He had kids, Mere, and now they're alone.”
“Derek, please,” she said. “Please, stop.”
He stared, shell-shocked and lost in the faded edges of his memories. “I wonder how old they are. God, seventeen people, Mere.”
One person.
The air in the room hazed away from her, and she stood on the promenade all over again, watching him fall to the ground, hearing the crack as it buffeted her ears. Cristina had pulled at Meredith's arms so hard her shoulder sockets had ached for hours after that moment. Meredith screamed and screamed and screamed, and she couldn't stop. She hadn't in the memory, and so she was stuck, yelling her throat raw, watching Derek over and over again. He tumbled to the floor and smacked the back of his head into the hard tiles, stunned with the impact of the bullet as it ripped through his sternum.
She remembered the way he'd looked at her as they'd covered him with the mask that would bring him anesthesia. Breathe deeply, Dr. Shepherd, Jackson had said, which, at the time, she'd thought had been ludicrous, since Derek clearly couldn't do more than gasp. She'd stroked his sweaty hair, said she loved him, and before he could reply, his eyes had closed. Slowly. She'd seen one last flash of his pupils before he went still and silent. She'd kissed his forehead, given the deep, beautiful lines around his eyes a last, loving appraisal with the pads of her thumbs, and then the nursing staff had pushed her away so they could intubate him. She'd gone to find Cristina in the scrub room with that picture in her head. Her husband. Intubated.
She realized she was a selfish person, then. A selfish, horrible person. Because all she could think about was that Derek wasn't one of the seventeen. The rest was just superficial details that she couldn't bring herself to worry about.
In that moment, Meredith Grey snapped.
“I'm thirty-two,” she said.
He blinked. “What?”
“When I saw you get shot right in front of me,” she said. “I was thirty-two, and I'm going to be seeing it in my head for the rest of my life. But you're still here. You're breathing, and you're not to blame for the ones who aren't. Please, would you just...” Her voice faded, spent and wasted. Destroyed. She had more syllables to say, but she couldn't say them, because she had no idea what they were. Her lip quivered. “Please.”
“I wish you hadn't seen it,” he said.
“But I did, Derek. You would have died if I hadn't. And now we're here.”
They sat in silence, seconds slogging by like ants caught in molasses, stuck, stuck and drowning in mire and thick tar. He stared at his phone, stared, like he couldn't bring himself to look at her, couldn't bring himself to face her as she fell apart. A low, throaty, choking sound gripped him, and his tears resumed, spattering down his face like loose raindrops in an endless storm. He looked at her then, raw upset in his gaze, his face marred with red streaks of irritation and embarrassment. Of deep, harrowing sadness.
“I want the drainage tubes and the catheter out,” he said, his voice broken. “I want to get up.”
She took his hand and squeezed, forcing her legs straight as she stood. “I'll tell Cristina right now.”
She pulled away, but he didn't release her. “No,” he said. “Stay. Come here. That can wait a minute.”
He pushed the tray table with the stale crackers away.
“But...” She stared at him. He still had the drainage tubes. The EKG lines. The intravenous line. Everything. She couldn't imagine fighting against that whole maze of medical keep away signs. She'd barely been able to get into the bed with him after ten minutes of wiggle-shifting between him and the railing when he'd been thrashed and broken with pain. She couldn't just--
“You won't hurt me, Mere,” he said as if she'd spoken her concerns aloud. “Come here. I'm not glass.”
He gestured with his arm, and she imagined herself, nestled against his frame. Whenever she was upset, he would hold her on the couch, body to body, breath to breath, and he would whisper at her and rub her back and make her feel better. In that moment, she couldn't imagine herself anywhere else. She needed it.
She needed.
She wiped her tear-stained face and collapsed against him. His body felt warm and soft, and in all the near death and dying of the last two days, she'd forgotten how reassuring his shoulder felt against her ear, how good his arm felt wrapped around her torso, and how strong his heartbeat sounded through his skin. Her map filled in with details, and she could almost find herself again. He made shushing noises at her and held her and did all the things that made her forget he wasn't healthy, until she looked and saw how uncomfortable he was. She was lying against him, putting pressure on his chest, however little, however light and tiny she was, and he was hurting.
“You're such a liar,” she sobbed.
“Shut up, Mere,” he said, his voice quivering but sure. “Let me do this. I need to. If it really starts to hurt, I'll tell you.”
She didn't have the energy to fight him. Tiredness clawed her into little wasted bits. “Okay,” she said, and she couldn't hold it in anymore. She was dizzy with exhaustion. Her brain hurt. Shards of upset tore gashes into her soul.
She cried.
“I love you, too,” he said. “I'm here. I'm sorry.”
She lost herself in his velvety, rumbling reassurances, lost herself in the quiet waves of his breathing against her ear. For a perfect, endless minute, she wrapped herself in his words and his softness and his strength, and she knew where she was again. There. In Seattle Grace. Next to her husband. The man she'd sworn her life to on a post-it note.
Her eyelids drooped, and she rested. Her breathing slowed, and she heard herself start to snore, but she was too far gone to care. Too far into a full mental collapse. Wishes and sighs whirled around her head and sucked her under.
She heard his soft, choked, “Hi, Mom.”
She even heard the soft, earthy reply. “Oh, Derek...”
But the words had no meaning to her. Then she slipped into dreaming.