Standing on Solid Ground - Part 24
Title: Standing on Solid Ground (24/27)
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Rating: M
Summary: Post Some Kind of Miracle, Mer/Der.
~~~~~
He watched, leaning against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over his chest as Meredith, George, Izzie, Cristina, and Alex hurried to get ready for the day. Meredith slammed her locker door shut and sighed. "T.G.I.F. is all I have to say," she said. "This has been a long, long week."
"You actually got Saturday off? Lucky bitch, I'm jealous," Alex said as he yanked his stethoscope out of his locker and placed it around his neck. "I've had to work the last two, and I have to work this one."
Cristina clucked her tongue as she fiddled with her watch. "She's flown solo for three surgeries this week. I'm the one who's jealous."
"They weren't solo. There was some extreme coaching involved," Meredith protested. She started jerking her lab coat down, as if she didn't think it was straight enough or something. To him, she looked perfect, though.
Derek couldn't help but smile. Those surgeries had definitely been solo. Dr. Weller, encouraged by that first craniotomy on Monday, had been giving her a little more room to spread her wings that week. And Meredith, well, she was just one of those people who was far too modest for her own good sometimes.
"How's Dr. Shepherd?" George interjected.
"He's fine. I think," Derek said as he shifted, finally making his presence known. He'd slowly gotten used to people asking, over and over, enough that when he said, "Thank you for asking," it was almost a reflexive thing, though it didn't mean he liked the question.
All five interns glanced up at him, betraying varying degrees of surprise. George and Alex appeared neutral beyond a general layer of curiosity. And Cristina, well, who knew what she was thinking. Her face was the usual stone mask. Izzie kind of darted her gaze away within moments of registering the sight of him, as she'd been doing all week in his presence since Meredith had yelled at her. He was going to have to talk to her at some point, tell her he wasn't going to bite or break apart on her. At least she'd been taking the rules to heart, though. The bedroom had remained solidly in his and Meredith's possession for the whole week. Only once had Izzie even approached, and that had been after much apologizing and a very quiet, very hesitant knock.
Meredith, who'd looked positively exhausted before as she'd pulled on her lab coat, turned in the direction of his voice, and lit up with a gorgeous smile when he met eyes with her. "Hey," she said, her face glowing. "What brings you down here to our internly Hell?"
He grinned. "Well, I'd love to score some points and say it was you... but-"
Someone behind him cleared her throat. He darted into the room and stepped to the side as Dr. Bailey sauntered into the room, tapping her pen on her clipboard as she grinned, sort of like how he pictured a maniacal drill sergeant might grin before sending his troops to do latrine duty with toothbrushes. Dr. Bailey really got far too much enjoyment out of her reputation for being a hard ass.
"Excuse me," she said, clearing her throat as she looked pointedly at him. He shuffled over to stand next to Meredith, not really sure what exactly was expected of him. When he'd been an intern, his resident had been much, much more... buddy-buddy. And he'd followed the same model when he'd had his own interns to boss around. Somehow, he couldn't really picture Dr. Bailey knocking back beers after hours with this crew, though. Or any crew, really.
"Yang," Dr. Bailey said. "You're with Dr. Burke. Karev, clinic. O'Malley, Dr. Montgomery. Stevens, Dr. Sloane. Shepherd, Grey, pit."
Everyone stopped to look at Derek as perplexed, amused gazes plastered across their faces when it sunk in that an extra name had been included in the usual spiel over who went where. He shrugged. "The paperwork excuse finally wore thin," Derek said.
"Good luck, dude. You'll need it." Alex said and clapped him on the shoulder before he sauntered out and disappeared into the hallway. Izzie, Cristina, and George followed him out, all chuckling.
Dr. Bailey cleared her throat again. "Grey, you go ahead. Shepherd, sit."
He sat on the narrow bench, watching Meredith go with a mournful stare. This couldn't be good. "You're enjoying this far too much, Miranda," he said.
She raised an eyebrow. "I'm still evaluating you."
He smirked. "Nazi."
"Arrogant fool," she shot back.
"Touché," he said with a flourish and a nod.
"Well?" she prompted. She sat down on the bench next to him after glancing around to make sure the locker room had cleared out.
He looked at his hands. "I'm..." He swallowed. "Doing better."
That week, he'd slowly been building back up to Meredith's schedule, though he'd been cheating and taking a lot of naps in the on-call rooms. Since Monday, things had slowly gotten easier. Easier, now that people had stopped quizzing him all the time about his state of mind, about whether he was okay or not. On Tuesday, he'd barely felt safe outside of his office, and even when he'd sat hidden behind stacks of paper, trying to look dreadfully busy and unapproachable, people had still knocked and come in to ask how he was. On Wednesday, he'd made his first trip for coffee without getting intercepted by well-wishers. On Thursday, he'd made an entire round of the hospital before somebody asked how he was doing. It was good for his peace of mind that he was finally becoming a routine sight again, one that didn't warrant more than a friendly hello or perhaps a pertinent medical question. He just wanted people to stop staring at him like he was a ticking time bomb, which honestly, he didn't know whether he believed was true or not.
Dr. Bailey put a hand on his knee, light, just enough to show she was there, just enough to breach the borders of the professional and into the territory of friendship. "How much better?"
"What you told me before..." Derek said. "It's helped. We talked."
"So, I don't have to worry about Dr. Grey?"
"She's happy. I intend to help her stay that way."
"Do you think you're ready to cut again?" she asked.
That was a loaded question. He stared down at his hands, surgeon's hands. Just one week ago, he'd watched them, unable to control them as the shakes had overwhelmed him. These were hands that had thrown a crash cart to the ground, hands that had flattened another doctor against the wall, both motions that were far from precise, far from surgical. They were motions that were violent. Exhaustion and stress and fear drove him to make his hands do violent things. He clenched his fingers into fists and stared with an oddly morbid fascination as they did exactly what he told them to do.
He sighed as he let them drop back to his lap. "I don't know. I--"
Dr. Bailey cut him off and moved the hand that rested on his knee up to his shoulder. "Then you're not ready," she said, and squeezed her fingers over his scrubs. "Go join Grey in the pit, but I'd better not hear complaints about my two favorite interns snogging over sutures."
He scoffed. "I haven't been an intern in nearly a decade, Miranda."
"Well, you're an intern now until I say you're not."
"Fine, fine," he muttered as he stood up. "I'm going to have fun torturing you when I'm reinstated though."
She snorted. "You won't torture me."
"Why not?" he asked. "You don't think I'd make a good Nazi-in-training? You're my idol, you know." He winked at her, but she was immune.
She glared and raised her index finger. "A, it would ruin your dreamy image. Only so much spin doctoring will keep that around after you start yelling at poor, defenseless residents like myself. And B," she said as she raised her middle finger, "You're too scared of me to torture me."
"Well," he said with a smirk. "I suppose there is that."
He stood there for a moment, watching her, until she glared at him and snapped, "So. Does my time seem like it needs to be wasted?"
"Um..." he stuttered under the weight of her gaze. "No."
She brushed her hands out in front of her as though she were shaking water off them. "So, scoot. Get lost. Goodbye."
"Yes, Ma'am," he said with a mock salute. She glared some more, and he laughed as he left, laughed when he heard her muttering about stubborn, arrogant fools, laughed when she shouted something down the hall after him, something about him being an overgrown, haughty man-child who thought he was sex on a stick. A few people looked up as he fled, laughing and chortling all the while, but he didn't care. He just grinned at them, and they went back to whatever their business was. He broke into a jog after he rounded the hallway corner, and moments later, he caught up with Meredith, who stood waiting at the elevator, hands clasped at her elbows, looking beautiful and determined to stare at the lighted floor numbers as they counted down with painful slowness.
She raised an eyebrow and glanced sidelong at him as he sauntered up and playfully imitated her stance. "Sutures, Derek?" she asked.
Derek frowned. "It's better than doing labs, I guess. Are sutures punishment? I couldn't tell."
The elevator dinged, the doors trundled open, and they wandered in to the cavernous space. People crowded around, bumping into them, crushing around them in a bustle, pushing them into each other. He swallowed and wrapped his arms around her, not sure whether he was steadying her as she wobbled, or if he was steadying himself to withstand the pulse of the crowd.
"Nah," she grinned, looking up at him. "Usually one of us gets stuck on it. We tend to rotate. I was long overdue."
"Oh, good," he said, forcing himself to live with the crush for just a moment longer. "I'd hate to think I've angered the Nazi."
The elevator dinged again, announcing their floor. They both stepped out. Derek sighed, relieved to be away from the veritable clog of people. He took a moment to close his eyes and breathe. Meredith waited, not saying anything.
"So," Meredith asked after he'd re-gathered himself and they started walking to the pit. "Who's dealing with the neurology department right now?"
"The Chief pawned everything off on Dr. Weller while I recuperate." He put the word recuperate in air quotes. He shook his head. That made it sound like a disease, or some sort of thing that would have a definitive end. What he'd told Miranda had been the truth. He didn't know when he would be ready again, didn't know if he was ready now, to start taking people's lives into his own hands again. Not after everything that'd happened.
"Hence the sudden shortage of paperwork?" Meredith asked.
"Yep," he said. "And I finished up writing the two pending research papers that I had in the queue on Thursday."
"That's great."
"Yeah. So, how do you usually do this?" he asked as he looked around. Curtains four, five, and six looked occupied. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done this, couldn't remember the last time he'd been down to the ER area without a list of consults waiting to be dealt with, a list that said move here, do that next, go to this place. Now, his only goal was the location itself. His workday was defined as the pit. It felt... oddly scary.
"Well, usually, we interns fight tooth and claw for the good, bloody ones. But I'll let you take first pick. What with your decade of seniority and all, I figure you've earned a perk or two."
He snorted. "I can think of much better perks. Do you have your pager on you?"
"That's not a perk today, smartass," she said with a grin. "So? Go to it, boss." She pulled up a chart from the pile and lightly thwacked him with it.
He only managed half a dodge, and he turned to grin at her sudden boldness. She looked back at him, an innocent, twinkling gaze plastered across her face. "You're just making me want to beep you," he said with a sly smile as he picked up his own chart from the stack.
She chuckled and settled back on her elbows against the countertop, waiting for him to pick something. She held her chart out for him to see, but he stuck with his own. Curtain four. Hmmm.
A wail pealed out from curtain four, followed by frantic, whispered shushing noises. "Welcome to the pit," Meredith said with a grin.
"Yeah, yeah. Hopefully I remember this stuff," he muttered. He skimmed the chart, and then walked over to the curtain, taking a deep breath. Here went nothing... He willed the tension down into the pit of his stomach and let it sit there, coiling.
"Hello, I'm Dr. Shepherd," he said over the piercing noise of sobbing as he pulled the curtain back. "Kelly and Richard Donnelly?" He asked as he pulled up a stool. A young blonde woman stood with a small boy, probably around six, clutched in her arms. She had a bloody rag jammed up against the little boy's temple. Said little boy was in the process of crying enough to fill a small ocean.
"It's Richie," the woman corrected as she rocked the boy in her arms. "You'll be fine, sweetie. The nice doctor is here." Richie sniffled and quieted a little.
"Can you lie him back on the table, Mrs. Donnelly?" Derek said as he snapped his gloves on.
"Hi, Richie, it looks like you've been having an active morning," he said as the mother put the kid on the table and laid him down. Derek reached out gently and tilted Richie's face toward him so he could see the damage.
Richie nodded, silent, tears leaking from his wide, fear-filled, brown eyes.
Derek glanced up, noticing Meredith dealing with an elderly woman in the next area over, what had been curtain number five. She gave him a smile, and he looked back at the kid.
"So, what kind of fun were you getting into?" Derek asked as he assessed the amount of blood on the rag. Whatever was under the towel was a bleeder, all right, but it didn't seem too bad, not for the location of the cut.
A smile curled across Richie's lips. "Riding my bike!"
"I had a bike once," Derek said, grinning back. "It's where I got this awesome scar. It makes the girls go wild, you know." He pointed to the faded line that ran along his forehead. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Meredith suppressing laughter as she taped up a cut on the old woman's arm.
"Girls..." Richie made a scrunched up, disgusted face, and he stuck out his tongue. "Ew."
"Yeah, well, I'm sure you'll appreciate it later," Derek said. "Girls like the whole rugged thing. Keep that in mind for the future."
He peeled back the rag. A jagged wound about two inches long clawed its way down the boy's left temple. It started to gush a little as he watched, but overall, it was extremely shallow, there was no swelling at all, and, so far, the boy seemed perfectly coherent. He took out his penlight and flashed it in Richie's eyes. The pupils reacted normally.
"Can you follow the light?" he asked.
Richie looked to the left and the right, following the pen as Derek moved it back and forth.
"How long ago did he do this?" he asked Mrs. Donnelly.
She shrugged. "Three hours? We've been waiting forever, and it took about a half hour just to drive here."
"Has he shown any signs of dizziness? Confusion?"
"No."
He nodded. No concussion symptoms after three hours was a very good sign.
"Is it bad?" Mrs. Donnelly asked. "It's bad isn't it? I'm so upset. I just looked away for one second, and he managed to plow into a parked car..."
Derek shook his head. "Oh, no, Mrs. Donnelly," he said. "Head wounds like this tend to bleed for much more than they're worth. This looks relatively minor. But it will need stitches. Does he have any allergies I should be aware of?"
"No," Mrs. Donnelly said. "None."
He pulled out a suture kit from the under-bed storage area and started lining everything up on the small instrument tray. He disinfected and cleaned the wound, much to Richie's dismay. "It's okay, Richie. That was the worst of it. I'm just going to put some stuff on the cut so that it won't hurt at all. Ready?"
Richie nodded, and Derek quickly swabbed the wound with topical anesthetic.
"Now, see, this is where the cool part starts. I'm going to stitch this closed, and then it won't bleed any more." He raised the needle over the kid's temple, feeling oddly nervous about it, despite the countless stitches he'd done in his lifetime. He was a surgeon, for crying out loud. He could do sutures. Richie got one look at the needle and his eyes widened, which didn't help ease Derek's mind at all.
"So, what kind of bike do you have?" Derek prodded, trying to distract him.
Richie regarded him for a moment. "A blue one," Richie said, his voice tiny and faint.
"Really?" Derek asked as he began to stitch. Richie didn't even twitch as the first stitch went in. "It just so happens that blue is my favorite color. I bet blue is your favorite color, too. You look like a blue person to me."
"I'm not blue!" Richie protested with a giggle. He jerked a little, and Derek paused for a moment, tense, his jaw clenching, until Richie resettled. Fine, it was fine.
Derek shrugged. "I don't know..." he continued after Richie went still again. "This could be your secret identity. How do I know you're not really blue?"
Richie grinned.
"Who's your favorite superhero?" Derek asked. Almost done, just another half-inch...
"Spider-Man!"
Derek frowned. "I kind of like Batman, myself."
Meredith coughed. Everyone looked up. "Sorry," she muttered. Derek thought he caught an under the breath, "Holy scalpels," but he couldn't be sure.
Derek smirked at her and looked back and Richie. He tied off the end and grinned at the kid. "There we go. All done," he said and squeezed the boy's shoulder. He looked up at Mrs. Donnelly. "Mrs. Donnelly, you'll need to bring him back in five days to get the stitches checked, but other than that, he should be good to go, on or off the bike. Just watch him carefully for the next twenty-four hours. If he shows any symptoms like dizziness, sudden drowsiness, or confusion, you need to bring him back immediately, but I really doubt that will be an issue."
"Thanks, Dr. Shepherd," she replied with a smile as he pulled off his gloves and tossed them into the biohazard bin.
After Kelly Donnelly finished filling out her paperwork and left with a rambunctious Richie in tow, he started to shake a little. He folded his hands behind his head and took deep, cleansing breaths as he bent over his knees, forcing himself to relax. He'd just dealt with his first patient since his meltdown, and it hadn't been that bad at all, despite the blood and a traumatized little six-year-old. It had been... nice, he decided. He leaned back up in his chair and let himself just sit there, paused, assessing, on the brink of something. An empty ache that he hadn't even realized was there began to fade into a warm, light undercurrent of self-satisfaction. And without even realizing it, he found himself staring at Meredith, staring and grinning like a fool. Meredith, who had also just finished with her first patient, the elderly woman, grinned back at him, but instead of looking away after a few, blushing seconds like she usually did, she just kept grinning.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said. She fidgeted with strand of her hair. "Well..." she stuttered. "Nothing."
"Seriously, what?"
"It's just... You're going to make an awesome dad, someday."
He swallowed as a flush of heat overwhelmed him. He hadn't ever asked Meredith how she felt about kids. Actually, he'd just assumed, given her mother and father and general family experience, that she flat out wouldn't even consider it, and he would never expect or want her to have one then, anyway, not while she was still an intern. And... Well, he'd just never asked her about it. She stared back at him, her eyes serious, and twinkling, and beautiful, and sexy.
"Yeah?" he asked after several false starts. He tried desperately not to let the world fall out from under him as he digested the subtle promise in her words. Somewhere along the line, he failed, and he sighed and smiled like a lovesick teenager as a lightheaded, giddy sensation overtook him.
She was still smiling when the world came back. "Yeah," she said after a long, long silence. "I think so."
He beamed all the way to curtain six, which he pulled back to reveal a rather drunk biker named Ed, who had a wicked-looking piece of glass sticking out of his cheek. The day only got more interesting from there.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Rating: M
Summary: Post Some Kind of Miracle, Mer/Der.
~~~~~
He watched, leaning against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over his chest as Meredith, George, Izzie, Cristina, and Alex hurried to get ready for the day. Meredith slammed her locker door shut and sighed. "T.G.I.F. is all I have to say," she said. "This has been a long, long week."
"You actually got Saturday off? Lucky bitch, I'm jealous," Alex said as he yanked his stethoscope out of his locker and placed it around his neck. "I've had to work the last two, and I have to work this one."
Cristina clucked her tongue as she fiddled with her watch. "She's flown solo for three surgeries this week. I'm the one who's jealous."
"They weren't solo. There was some extreme coaching involved," Meredith protested. She started jerking her lab coat down, as if she didn't think it was straight enough or something. To him, she looked perfect, though.
Derek couldn't help but smile. Those surgeries had definitely been solo. Dr. Weller, encouraged by that first craniotomy on Monday, had been giving her a little more room to spread her wings that week. And Meredith, well, she was just one of those people who was far too modest for her own good sometimes.
"How's Dr. Shepherd?" George interjected.
"He's fine. I think," Derek said as he shifted, finally making his presence known. He'd slowly gotten used to people asking, over and over, enough that when he said, "Thank you for asking," it was almost a reflexive thing, though it didn't mean he liked the question.
All five interns glanced up at him, betraying varying degrees of surprise. George and Alex appeared neutral beyond a general layer of curiosity. And Cristina, well, who knew what she was thinking. Her face was the usual stone mask. Izzie kind of darted her gaze away within moments of registering the sight of him, as she'd been doing all week in his presence since Meredith had yelled at her. He was going to have to talk to her at some point, tell her he wasn't going to bite or break apart on her. At least she'd been taking the rules to heart, though. The bedroom had remained solidly in his and Meredith's possession for the whole week. Only once had Izzie even approached, and that had been after much apologizing and a very quiet, very hesitant knock.
Meredith, who'd looked positively exhausted before as she'd pulled on her lab coat, turned in the direction of his voice, and lit up with a gorgeous smile when he met eyes with her. "Hey," she said, her face glowing. "What brings you down here to our internly Hell?"
He grinned. "Well, I'd love to score some points and say it was you... but-"
Someone behind him cleared her throat. He darted into the room and stepped to the side as Dr. Bailey sauntered into the room, tapping her pen on her clipboard as she grinned, sort of like how he pictured a maniacal drill sergeant might grin before sending his troops to do latrine duty with toothbrushes. Dr. Bailey really got far too much enjoyment out of her reputation for being a hard ass.
"Excuse me," she said, clearing her throat as she looked pointedly at him. He shuffled over to stand next to Meredith, not really sure what exactly was expected of him. When he'd been an intern, his resident had been much, much more... buddy-buddy. And he'd followed the same model when he'd had his own interns to boss around. Somehow, he couldn't really picture Dr. Bailey knocking back beers after hours with this crew, though. Or any crew, really.
"Yang," Dr. Bailey said. "You're with Dr. Burke. Karev, clinic. O'Malley, Dr. Montgomery. Stevens, Dr. Sloane. Shepherd, Grey, pit."
Everyone stopped to look at Derek as perplexed, amused gazes plastered across their faces when it sunk in that an extra name had been included in the usual spiel over who went where. He shrugged. "The paperwork excuse finally wore thin," Derek said.
"Good luck, dude. You'll need it." Alex said and clapped him on the shoulder before he sauntered out and disappeared into the hallway. Izzie, Cristina, and George followed him out, all chuckling.
Dr. Bailey cleared her throat again. "Grey, you go ahead. Shepherd, sit."
He sat on the narrow bench, watching Meredith go with a mournful stare. This couldn't be good. "You're enjoying this far too much, Miranda," he said.
She raised an eyebrow. "I'm still evaluating you."
He smirked. "Nazi."
"Arrogant fool," she shot back.
"Touché," he said with a flourish and a nod.
"Well?" she prompted. She sat down on the bench next to him after glancing around to make sure the locker room had cleared out.
He looked at his hands. "I'm..." He swallowed. "Doing better."
That week, he'd slowly been building back up to Meredith's schedule, though he'd been cheating and taking a lot of naps in the on-call rooms. Since Monday, things had slowly gotten easier. Easier, now that people had stopped quizzing him all the time about his state of mind, about whether he was okay or not. On Tuesday, he'd barely felt safe outside of his office, and even when he'd sat hidden behind stacks of paper, trying to look dreadfully busy and unapproachable, people had still knocked and come in to ask how he was. On Wednesday, he'd made his first trip for coffee without getting intercepted by well-wishers. On Thursday, he'd made an entire round of the hospital before somebody asked how he was doing. It was good for his peace of mind that he was finally becoming a routine sight again, one that didn't warrant more than a friendly hello or perhaps a pertinent medical question. He just wanted people to stop staring at him like he was a ticking time bomb, which honestly, he didn't know whether he believed was true or not.
Dr. Bailey put a hand on his knee, light, just enough to show she was there, just enough to breach the borders of the professional and into the territory of friendship. "How much better?"
"What you told me before..." Derek said. "It's helped. We talked."
"So, I don't have to worry about Dr. Grey?"
"She's happy. I intend to help her stay that way."
"Do you think you're ready to cut again?" she asked.
That was a loaded question. He stared down at his hands, surgeon's hands. Just one week ago, he'd watched them, unable to control them as the shakes had overwhelmed him. These were hands that had thrown a crash cart to the ground, hands that had flattened another doctor against the wall, both motions that were far from precise, far from surgical. They were motions that were violent. Exhaustion and stress and fear drove him to make his hands do violent things. He clenched his fingers into fists and stared with an oddly morbid fascination as they did exactly what he told them to do.
He sighed as he let them drop back to his lap. "I don't know. I--"
Dr. Bailey cut him off and moved the hand that rested on his knee up to his shoulder. "Then you're not ready," she said, and squeezed her fingers over his scrubs. "Go join Grey in the pit, but I'd better not hear complaints about my two favorite interns snogging over sutures."
He scoffed. "I haven't been an intern in nearly a decade, Miranda."
"Well, you're an intern now until I say you're not."
"Fine, fine," he muttered as he stood up. "I'm going to have fun torturing you when I'm reinstated though."
She snorted. "You won't torture me."
"Why not?" he asked. "You don't think I'd make a good Nazi-in-training? You're my idol, you know." He winked at her, but she was immune.
She glared and raised her index finger. "A, it would ruin your dreamy image. Only so much spin doctoring will keep that around after you start yelling at poor, defenseless residents like myself. And B," she said as she raised her middle finger, "You're too scared of me to torture me."
"Well," he said with a smirk. "I suppose there is that."
He stood there for a moment, watching her, until she glared at him and snapped, "So. Does my time seem like it needs to be wasted?"
"Um..." he stuttered under the weight of her gaze. "No."
She brushed her hands out in front of her as though she were shaking water off them. "So, scoot. Get lost. Goodbye."
"Yes, Ma'am," he said with a mock salute. She glared some more, and he laughed as he left, laughed when he heard her muttering about stubborn, arrogant fools, laughed when she shouted something down the hall after him, something about him being an overgrown, haughty man-child who thought he was sex on a stick. A few people looked up as he fled, laughing and chortling all the while, but he didn't care. He just grinned at them, and they went back to whatever their business was. He broke into a jog after he rounded the hallway corner, and moments later, he caught up with Meredith, who stood waiting at the elevator, hands clasped at her elbows, looking beautiful and determined to stare at the lighted floor numbers as they counted down with painful slowness.
She raised an eyebrow and glanced sidelong at him as he sauntered up and playfully imitated her stance. "Sutures, Derek?" she asked.
Derek frowned. "It's better than doing labs, I guess. Are sutures punishment? I couldn't tell."
The elevator dinged, the doors trundled open, and they wandered in to the cavernous space. People crowded around, bumping into them, crushing around them in a bustle, pushing them into each other. He swallowed and wrapped his arms around her, not sure whether he was steadying her as she wobbled, or if he was steadying himself to withstand the pulse of the crowd.
"Nah," she grinned, looking up at him. "Usually one of us gets stuck on it. We tend to rotate. I was long overdue."
"Oh, good," he said, forcing himself to live with the crush for just a moment longer. "I'd hate to think I've angered the Nazi."
The elevator dinged again, announcing their floor. They both stepped out. Derek sighed, relieved to be away from the veritable clog of people. He took a moment to close his eyes and breathe. Meredith waited, not saying anything.
"So," Meredith asked after he'd re-gathered himself and they started walking to the pit. "Who's dealing with the neurology department right now?"
"The Chief pawned everything off on Dr. Weller while I recuperate." He put the word recuperate in air quotes. He shook his head. That made it sound like a disease, or some sort of thing that would have a definitive end. What he'd told Miranda had been the truth. He didn't know when he would be ready again, didn't know if he was ready now, to start taking people's lives into his own hands again. Not after everything that'd happened.
"Hence the sudden shortage of paperwork?" Meredith asked.
"Yep," he said. "And I finished up writing the two pending research papers that I had in the queue on Thursday."
"That's great."
"Yeah. So, how do you usually do this?" he asked as he looked around. Curtains four, five, and six looked occupied. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done this, couldn't remember the last time he'd been down to the ER area without a list of consults waiting to be dealt with, a list that said move here, do that next, go to this place. Now, his only goal was the location itself. His workday was defined as the pit. It felt... oddly scary.
"Well, usually, we interns fight tooth and claw for the good, bloody ones. But I'll let you take first pick. What with your decade of seniority and all, I figure you've earned a perk or two."
He snorted. "I can think of much better perks. Do you have your pager on you?"
"That's not a perk today, smartass," she said with a grin. "So? Go to it, boss." She pulled up a chart from the pile and lightly thwacked him with it.
He only managed half a dodge, and he turned to grin at her sudden boldness. She looked back at him, an innocent, twinkling gaze plastered across her face. "You're just making me want to beep you," he said with a sly smile as he picked up his own chart from the stack.
She chuckled and settled back on her elbows against the countertop, waiting for him to pick something. She held her chart out for him to see, but he stuck with his own. Curtain four. Hmmm.
A wail pealed out from curtain four, followed by frantic, whispered shushing noises. "Welcome to the pit," Meredith said with a grin.
"Yeah, yeah. Hopefully I remember this stuff," he muttered. He skimmed the chart, and then walked over to the curtain, taking a deep breath. Here went nothing... He willed the tension down into the pit of his stomach and let it sit there, coiling.
"Hello, I'm Dr. Shepherd," he said over the piercing noise of sobbing as he pulled the curtain back. "Kelly and Richard Donnelly?" He asked as he pulled up a stool. A young blonde woman stood with a small boy, probably around six, clutched in her arms. She had a bloody rag jammed up against the little boy's temple. Said little boy was in the process of crying enough to fill a small ocean.
"It's Richie," the woman corrected as she rocked the boy in her arms. "You'll be fine, sweetie. The nice doctor is here." Richie sniffled and quieted a little.
"Can you lie him back on the table, Mrs. Donnelly?" Derek said as he snapped his gloves on.
"Hi, Richie, it looks like you've been having an active morning," he said as the mother put the kid on the table and laid him down. Derek reached out gently and tilted Richie's face toward him so he could see the damage.
Richie nodded, silent, tears leaking from his wide, fear-filled, brown eyes.
Derek glanced up, noticing Meredith dealing with an elderly woman in the next area over, what had been curtain number five. She gave him a smile, and he looked back at the kid.
"So, what kind of fun were you getting into?" Derek asked as he assessed the amount of blood on the rag. Whatever was under the towel was a bleeder, all right, but it didn't seem too bad, not for the location of the cut.
A smile curled across Richie's lips. "Riding my bike!"
"I had a bike once," Derek said, grinning back. "It's where I got this awesome scar. It makes the girls go wild, you know." He pointed to the faded line that ran along his forehead. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Meredith suppressing laughter as she taped up a cut on the old woman's arm.
"Girls..." Richie made a scrunched up, disgusted face, and he stuck out his tongue. "Ew."
"Yeah, well, I'm sure you'll appreciate it later," Derek said. "Girls like the whole rugged thing. Keep that in mind for the future."
He peeled back the rag. A jagged wound about two inches long clawed its way down the boy's left temple. It started to gush a little as he watched, but overall, it was extremely shallow, there was no swelling at all, and, so far, the boy seemed perfectly coherent. He took out his penlight and flashed it in Richie's eyes. The pupils reacted normally.
"Can you follow the light?" he asked.
Richie looked to the left and the right, following the pen as Derek moved it back and forth.
"How long ago did he do this?" he asked Mrs. Donnelly.
She shrugged. "Three hours? We've been waiting forever, and it took about a half hour just to drive here."
"Has he shown any signs of dizziness? Confusion?"
"No."
He nodded. No concussion symptoms after three hours was a very good sign.
"Is it bad?" Mrs. Donnelly asked. "It's bad isn't it? I'm so upset. I just looked away for one second, and he managed to plow into a parked car..."
Derek shook his head. "Oh, no, Mrs. Donnelly," he said. "Head wounds like this tend to bleed for much more than they're worth. This looks relatively minor. But it will need stitches. Does he have any allergies I should be aware of?"
"No," Mrs. Donnelly said. "None."
He pulled out a suture kit from the under-bed storage area and started lining everything up on the small instrument tray. He disinfected and cleaned the wound, much to Richie's dismay. "It's okay, Richie. That was the worst of it. I'm just going to put some stuff on the cut so that it won't hurt at all. Ready?"
Richie nodded, and Derek quickly swabbed the wound with topical anesthetic.
"Now, see, this is where the cool part starts. I'm going to stitch this closed, and then it won't bleed any more." He raised the needle over the kid's temple, feeling oddly nervous about it, despite the countless stitches he'd done in his lifetime. He was a surgeon, for crying out loud. He could do sutures. Richie got one look at the needle and his eyes widened, which didn't help ease Derek's mind at all.
"So, what kind of bike do you have?" Derek prodded, trying to distract him.
Richie regarded him for a moment. "A blue one," Richie said, his voice tiny and faint.
"Really?" Derek asked as he began to stitch. Richie didn't even twitch as the first stitch went in. "It just so happens that blue is my favorite color. I bet blue is your favorite color, too. You look like a blue person to me."
"I'm not blue!" Richie protested with a giggle. He jerked a little, and Derek paused for a moment, tense, his jaw clenching, until Richie resettled. Fine, it was fine.
Derek shrugged. "I don't know..." he continued after Richie went still again. "This could be your secret identity. How do I know you're not really blue?"
Richie grinned.
"Who's your favorite superhero?" Derek asked. Almost done, just another half-inch...
"Spider-Man!"
Derek frowned. "I kind of like Batman, myself."
Meredith coughed. Everyone looked up. "Sorry," she muttered. Derek thought he caught an under the breath, "Holy scalpels," but he couldn't be sure.
Derek smirked at her and looked back and Richie. He tied off the end and grinned at the kid. "There we go. All done," he said and squeezed the boy's shoulder. He looked up at Mrs. Donnelly. "Mrs. Donnelly, you'll need to bring him back in five days to get the stitches checked, but other than that, he should be good to go, on or off the bike. Just watch him carefully for the next twenty-four hours. If he shows any symptoms like dizziness, sudden drowsiness, or confusion, you need to bring him back immediately, but I really doubt that will be an issue."
"Thanks, Dr. Shepherd," she replied with a smile as he pulled off his gloves and tossed them into the biohazard bin.
After Kelly Donnelly finished filling out her paperwork and left with a rambunctious Richie in tow, he started to shake a little. He folded his hands behind his head and took deep, cleansing breaths as he bent over his knees, forcing himself to relax. He'd just dealt with his first patient since his meltdown, and it hadn't been that bad at all, despite the blood and a traumatized little six-year-old. It had been... nice, he decided. He leaned back up in his chair and let himself just sit there, paused, assessing, on the brink of something. An empty ache that he hadn't even realized was there began to fade into a warm, light undercurrent of self-satisfaction. And without even realizing it, he found himself staring at Meredith, staring and grinning like a fool. Meredith, who had also just finished with her first patient, the elderly woman, grinned back at him, but instead of looking away after a few, blushing seconds like she usually did, she just kept grinning.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said. She fidgeted with strand of her hair. "Well..." she stuttered. "Nothing."
"Seriously, what?"
"It's just... You're going to make an awesome dad, someday."
He swallowed as a flush of heat overwhelmed him. He hadn't ever asked Meredith how she felt about kids. Actually, he'd just assumed, given her mother and father and general family experience, that she flat out wouldn't even consider it, and he would never expect or want her to have one then, anyway, not while she was still an intern. And... Well, he'd just never asked her about it. She stared back at him, her eyes serious, and twinkling, and beautiful, and sexy.
"Yeah?" he asked after several false starts. He tried desperately not to let the world fall out from under him as he digested the subtle promise in her words. Somewhere along the line, he failed, and he sighed and smiled like a lovesick teenager as a lightheaded, giddy sensation overtook him.
She was still smiling when the world came back. "Yeah," she said after a long, long silence. "I think so."
He beamed all the way to curtain six, which he pulled back to reveal a rather drunk biker named Ed, who had a wicked-looking piece of glass sticking out of his cheek. The day only got more interesting from there.