All Along The Watchtower - Part 29A
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.
Oh, my goodness, a two week turnaround on a 14.5k word chapter. I almost don't know what to do with myself!!! I looked at my outline after I told you guys I was going to work on some one shots, and I realized... holy crap. I'm getting really close to finishing this monstrosity. I think seeing the light at the end of the tunnel really gave my muse a kick in the ass. For those who are wondering, I said at the beginning of this story that I had 35 chapters planned, and that's still true, so, only 6 chapters to go after this :)
Remember how I said I might skip 28.5? I skipped it. I was going to put flashbacks to 28.5 into this chapter, but after some careful consideration, I decided none of it would fit, thematically. In exchange, I'm giving you a whole bunch of new flashbacks that I hadn't planned to write, before. I'll still see if I can work in some of the 28.5 stuff in a future chapter, but if that doesn't work out, I hope you consider this a worthy exchange.
This is a spin-the-running-plotlines chapter. Most of the stuff still dangling right now comes up again, and a lot of characters get a chance to say, "Hello! Remember me?" Also, I know it's a total shock, but I actually managed to wrap up a plot line. You'll see more and more of that as I continue from here, since I'm winding things down. Part B is not work safe -- you can thank the show for the last flashback in the chapter, because I was not happy with the five seconds of screen time MerDer got for it on the show.
Please, leave some feedback -- I'd really love to hear from you :) Thanks to my super duper betas, and my loyal readers who've stayed with me these three fracking years (3! Can you believe it?), and thanks to everybody who takes the time to let me know you're out there!
One last thing -- please consider donating to the 2013 Dempsey Challenge. Proceeds go to the Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing, and are tax deductible in the US. The Dempsey Challenge has made a huge difference in my life, and I will continue to support it and participate as long as I'm able to make the trip. Thank you so much in advance!
All Along The Watchtower - Part 29A
8:27 AM
One of the disadvantages of being a surgeon who'd been married to an OB-GYN in an earlier life was that he knew full well how to read an ultrasound. Worse, Meredith, relatively fresh from her intern year, knew full well, too, because she'd had so much recent practice. And they were both relying solely on personal willpower not to interpret the easily knowable.
“We could figure it out so easily,” Meredith said as if she'd read his mind, leaning against him, fingers clutching the manila envelope. The black-and-white photo of their baby, taken at twenty weeks, sat on top of the yellow paper, but there was a tiny neon Post-it note stuck over a revealing area of the photograph. The ultrasound tech hadn't even batted an eyelash when they'd asked for it. Meredith flicked it with her finger. “We just have to lift this up...”
Samantha barked in the distance and trotted back to them with her favorite, chewed-up, dirt-ridden tennis ball. She dropped it by the bench in front of Derek's feet. Derek reached down. The ball was soggy with drool and mud, but it didn't faze him. He threw the ball as far as he could muster, and Samantha bounded away, her feet churning up bits of grass and mud as she flew. He wiped his hand on his coat.
“Meredith,” he said. He kissed her temple. Pressed his nose against her skin. Her wool coat mushed up against his duster as she shifted in his arms. “If you want to peek, you can. It's okay. I understand. But I really want it to be a surprise for me.”
They sat in the dog park on a bench in the chill, warming each other while their dog had some fun with Queen Anne Hill's other canine residents. Meredith shook her head. “I'm not gonna peek, if you're not gonna peek. I'd feel like I was cheating or something. Besides...”
A cold winter breeze bit at his skin. “What?” he said.
She shrugged, shivering against him, and then she looked up. Met his eyes. “I kind of like the idea of a good surprise, too.”
He laughed. “Maybe, we should give all the pictures to Lexie for safe-keeping until Baby is born. Having them out of our possession might shore up our willpower.”
Meredith snorted. “Asking Lexie to keep a secret like that is like asking Samantha not to eat bacon.”
“Point,” he said, nodding. “Mark?”
Meredith rolled her eyes. “Mark's even worse. The man sucks at lying. All of our friends suck at it, actually. Can you imagine if we gave these to Richard?”
Derek couldn't help but chuckle. “Bailey?” he said. “We could give them to her.”
Meredith snickered. “After she's done gutting you for reminding her we have sex, it might work. Maybe, Alex? He knows already.”
“He knows about the sex?”
Meredith laughed. “Well, he knows about our sex. But he doesn't know about the baby's.”
Samantha barked as she brought back the ball. Derek threw it against the back chain-link fence, where it fell to the wet grass with a metal clink. His chest didn't hurt at all anymore. Not even from the whipping motion of his arm. He had to do several pushups to elicit a reminder that he'd been seriously injured. The increasing freedom from painful rebukes for exertion had helped him feel better. A lot better.
“We could have Dr. Charlton keep them on file for us,” he said.
“But then we can't take them home,” Meredith said. She placed her palm against her belly. “And I still want to be able to look at them whenever I want.”
He nodded. “Alex works, then.”
Meredith slipped the ultrasound photograph back into the manila envelope and stuck it beside her hip on the bench. She leaned against him and pressed her lips against his throat. “So,” she murmured against his skin. “Are you ready to go back tomorrow?”
He swallowed, staring across the dog park. Over three years later, he still hadn't quite gotten used to how green things stayed, even in the winter. In New York, the grass died cyclically. Here, it was still vibrant. Some of the trees had lost their leaves, but there were a lot of evergreens that kept their verdant coloring.
“I don't know,” he said, staring vacantly. All he knew was that he was out in the wide, wide open, cuddling with his wife, playing fetch with his dog. He didn't hurt, and he wasn't scared, and the days when he'd been so upset he hadn't wanted to get out of bed felt... very far away. He might not be ready, for sure, but he wasn't not ready. “I can't not try.”
She kissed him again. “Mmm, Chief Shepherd.”
He nuzzled her. “It might be worth it just for the title.”
“And free use of the conference rooms,” she said.
He laughed. Nodded. “I will admit, there are a few perks.”
“Chief?” said a deep, low voice, and Derek snapped out of his musing to find Stan, one of their orderlies, staring back at him in the bright hallway. Derek's heart throbbed at the unexpected intrusion, once, twice, and a quick pinch of adrenaline hit him like a boxer, but then he relaxed without any extra work. Stan stood with one hand clasped around the handle of a shoulder-high meal cart full of empty meal trays. He wore a festive Santa hat, which made it hard not to smile at him.
“I'm sorry?” Derek said, already recovered. Morning sunlight slanted through the windows, making passing nurses and doctors shield their eyes with clipboards, papers, anything available. Tinsel garlands strung the hallways under the windows, and he thought he smelled a hint of evergreen.
Stan frowned and swept his long black hair back behind his ear with his hand. His gold wristwatch glittered in the light as it shifted, and his Santa hat tipped perilously to the side. “Waterworks,” Stan said. “Storage room at six. Thought you'd want to know.”
Derek sighed. “Stan, I'm not a counselor,” he said. He glanced down the hallway to the storage closet across from nursing station six. “If somebody has a problem, they're welcome to come to me, but I'm not going to intrude on--”
Stan shrugged. “You might want to for this one.”
Derek swallowed. His heart squeezed. Meredith cried a lot, lately. Over the most random things. Stupid freaking hormones, she'd said belligerently more than once. But that excuse didn't make Derek hate the crying any less, or want to fix it any less. “Is it my wife?”
“Half right,” was all Stan said before he turned, which made no sense to Derek. How could somebody be half his wife? “Sorry,” Stan said, gesturing to the meal cart, “these trays need to be washed.” And then he left, the cart squeaking as he wheeled it toward the cafeteria.
Derek turned on his heels and walked down the hall. Deirdre, a nurse in her late fifties, sat at the nursing station desk, a station that should have boasted at least two nurses, but there was only Deirdre. She typed charts into the Seattle Grace computer system, frown lines tightening her gaze. An old radio played a tinny, quiet rendition of Jingle Bell Rock from one of the local stations, but that didn't stop Derek from hearing the sniffles on the other side of the door on the opposite wall.
“She's in there,” Deirdre said, tipping her shoulder toward the door without lifting her hands off the keyboard. Her typing clacked percussively in the air.
“She...” Derek began. He sighed. “Is this really something that needs my intervention?”
Deirdre shrugged. “I doubt we'll know until you find out.”
“Why didn't you find out?” he said.
She rolled her eyes and looked at him. “Sir, it's eight-thirty in the morning. My shift ends in thirty minutes. I've been up all night. I've already dealt with two different patients and a fellow nurse who had their own catastrophes.” She pointed at the doorway. “That's a surgeon. You're Chief of Surgery. You deal with it.”
Derek sighed. “All right, all right. I'll handle it.”
“Thanks, sir,” Deirdre said, her tone absent as she stared back at the computer screen. “You're a peach.”
Derek knocked softly at first. There was no response. He hated this. When he'd first come back after his stress leave, he'd spent a lot of time in storage closets, curled up in the corner in the dark with his back to the door, mostly recuperating from too many stimuli, but sometimes breaking down in a blubbery pile. He never would have wanted people to walk in on him. He was half tempted to walk away. No matter that Deirdre wanted him to deal with this. Or Stan. Or anybody.
But the staff was miserable. Seattle Grace was in trouble it wasn't bouncing back from. Your fault. Your fault, your fault. “Your fault,” whispered Gary Clark. Guilt slithered in Derek's stomach before he could push it away with a firm hand and a deep breath.
He took a deep breath, and he turned the knob, and into the dark closet he went. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust. Somebody, a woman, sat in the corner on an overturned mop bucket. She wiped her eyes and looked up at him, eyes glistening. He squinted in the darkness.
“I'm sorry,” she said, and he recognized Lexie's distinctive voice, thick with grief though it was, before he could make out her face. “Do you need to get something in here?”
“No, no,” he said. He swept his hands through his hair and shifted from foot to foot. “Are you okay?” Which was a moronic question he could have kicked himself for. Asking a woman in tears if she was okay.
Lexie wiped her eyes and sniffed. “Yes,” she said, a little too quickly. “I'm fine.”
Derek grinned ruefully. “You know, I've learned not to believe Meredith when she says that, even when she's not crying.” He turned over another bucket and sat next to her.
“You don't want to hear this,” she said. “I'm sure you have stuff. Other stuff. To, you know. Do. I mean, don't you? Have stuff?”
He shrugged as he pieced together her babble. He'd been doing his circuit. The circuit he walked when he was surveying all the goings-on at Seattle Grace, checking in on all the staff, making sure there weren't any problems. It was the circuit he did every morning after he arrived and checked his e-mail. The circuit he'd walked when he'd searched for Gary Clark.
“I'm just doing my rounds,” he said. “I've got nothing urgent. Maybe, I can help.”
Tears pulsed freshly from her eyes. She made a soft sound that wasn't a word. More a squeak. The kind Meredith made when she was really upset, and Derek's heart squeezed tighter. “I broke up,” his sister-in-law said.
He blinked. “What?”
“With Alex,” she wailed. “I broke up. He said pass the salt; I said I couldn't take it anymore. In front of everybody. I just... I exploded.”
For a moment, however inappropriate, Derek found himself wilting with relief. Not at her problem, but at the fact that he'd built this up in his head as another shooting-born catastrophe, and now he'd discovered that it wasn't one. He looked woefully at the door and then back to her. Maybe, he should get Meredith, or... Meredith would be a lot better at this. This seemed like a women-commiserate-over-rocky-road-ice-cream problem that he found happening every once in a while in Meredith's kitchen. Except, Lexie's bucket moaned as she pulled it across the floor to him, and then she leaned against his shoulder, and then he was stuck in a closet comforting his sister-in-law who'd just broken up with her boyfriend.
“I'm... sorry,” he said, rubbing her back with robotic strokes, not quite sure what to say.
“I feel like such a selfish jerk,” she said, sniffling.
He paused. “Why?”
“He was shot,” she said. She rubbed her nose on the wrist of her lab coat. “Who breaks up right after...” She glared at no one in particular. “Who does that!”
“I know what it's like to feel like you have to stay,” he said slowly.
“I broke up right after he was shot,” she wailed, not listening to him, and he winced.
He pulled her close and tried to put it another way. “Lexie, it's been months since then,” he said. “If you weren't happy, you weren't happy. And it's not like you have wedding vows with the guy.”
“Well, I still feel like a jerk,” Lexie grumbled.
Derek shook his head. “Wanting to be happy doesn't make you a jerk, and staying in a situation where you're miserable doesn't do any good. Believe me, I know.”
She pulled away from him. “You're miserable with Meredith?” she said sharply.
“What? No!” He shook his head vehemently. “I was talking about my ex-wife.”
“Oh,” Lexie said, her body deflating. “I didn't really know her.”
“I didn't sign the divorce papers the first time,” he said. “I felt like it was my duty to try again, but I just wasn't happy, and it only ended up hurting everybody involved, especially Meredith.”
“So, you think it's good that I left?” Lexie said.
“A relationship should be about more than just duty,” he said. “If the only reason you can come up with for staying was that he was shot, then yes, I do.”
“Would you want Meredith to leave you if that was the only reason she'd stuck around?” Lexie said.
He rubbed her back. Found himself nodding. I like to talk to you, Meredith had said. You can make me laugh, even when I'm freaking out. He'd come far enough, felt secure enough, to treat Lexie's hypothetical scenario as she'd meant it. You don't judge me even when I say something stupid or freaky. You make me feel loved. You get me. Purely hypothetical. “I'd never want her to stay if that was the only reason.”
Lexie sighed. Nodded. Sat quietly in his arms for a long stretch of moments. He supposed this was a shooting-born catastrophe after all, but this was... actually... a lot like helping Meredith, he decided. Which, wasn't as far out of his depth as he'd thought he would be in here.
“You know,” she mused in the dark. “We've never talked like this before.”
He cocked his head and looked down at her. “Like what?”
“Like you're my brother instead of my boss,” she said.
He smiled. “Well, we probably shouldn't make a habit of it.” He thought about it for a moment and decided to add, “At least, not at work.”
“Probably not, but... it's nice for now,” Lexie said.
They stayed for a while in the quiet.
10:43 AM
A fruit cup, a juice box, a plastic fork, and a bag of unsliced, unpeeled carrots fell onto the desk in front of him. Meredith stood over him, a pensive look on her face as she bit her lip.
“I figured you'd forget to eat, so I brought some stuff from home,” she said. And then she frowned. “I'm sorry it probably looks like it's for a five-year-old or something. I don't really cook, and the cafeteria made pizza today, which I know you won't touch with a ten-foot pole unless all the cheese is picked off, and--”
“Meredith,” he said quietly. He took the fruit cup. He gave her the best smile he could manage under the circumstances. “You haven't needed to remind me to eat in months.”
She shifted on her feet and plopped into the chair across from him. “I know, but this is your first day back, and I thought, maybe...”
“I'd get too stressed out?” he offered.
She deflated when he seemed to both get it right away and not harbor any anger about her doubts. “Yeah. Yeah, I... Yeah.”
She glanced around the room. He'd put his pictures back on the desk in what had been Richard's office, including two new photos, one from their wedding, and one of Meredith's ten week ultrasound, which he'd had framed. He'd put his old, beaten copy of The Sun Also Rises back into the top left-hand drawer. He'd put his favorite blue pen into the pencil cup by the computer monitor. She paused for a particularly long while on the ultrasound photograph. And then she cocked her head at him.
“So, how are you?” she said.
She didn't mention that she'd found him sitting in the dark. Or that he'd been rubbing his temples, trying to relieve a massive headache. Or that she'd had to call his name several times before he'd realized she was there. Or the fact that it was three already, and she was right. He hadn't eaten. Hadn't even thought about eating because he was too tense to want anything. Even the fruit cup made his stomach twist.
“I'm not hungry,” he confessed, his tone a little broken, “but thank you.”
The white light drifting into the office from the promenade gave her an otherworldly, silvery look. She wore her scrubs with a white shirt underneath. Her hair hung loose around her ears and over her shoulders. He let the world pause. Drank in the sight of her. Sighed. And then he stood.
She didn't move as he hobbled around to the other side of the desk. He hurt. From all the tension in his arms and legs and everywhere.
He pulled her into his arms. Something he'd been thinking about doing all morning, ever since they'd parted ways with a long kiss at the car in the driveway. She'd still been wearing her bathrobe, and her hair had stuck up in weird places, because her shift didn't start until after lunch, but he hadn't cared a bit.
He breathed her in. Her scent. Her heat. He pushed his fingers into her hair. He nuzzled her.
“Hi,” she said warmly.
“I really needed this, now,” he whispered.
“I had a feeling,” she said. Her hands slid along his spine as she embraced him. “How's it going?”
“Awful,” he said in a dark, thick voice.
Since he'd come back, he'd rediscovered budget reports. Job vacancies. Seattle Grace's revenues had been sinking steadily since the shooting. The Board had placed a hiring freeze on some of the more menial positions, like janitors, administrative staff, and orderlies, in order to compensate for the shrinking budget. Turnover rates in the nursing staff had skyrocketed as the nurses inevitably got pushed outside their job descriptions to make up for the lack of support staff. Too many empty nursing positions weren't being back-filled because there weren't enough applicants to meet the losses, and the problem was only deepening. A poor nursing staff was a sign of a bleeding hospital, and interns were getting harder to woo. Everybody from janitors to management seemed to be stressed out by trying to cover for all the people who weren't there anymore, either because they'd been killed, or because they'd understandably fled an environment dominated by fear, overwork, and unhappiness.
Before, Derek's focus had been inward, and he hadn't noticed the hospital dissolving around him. All he'd been worried about had been navigating each day successfully without a meltdown or five. Now that he was back in full capacity other than the cutting, which he refused to attempt, yet, his focus had turned outward, and he hated what he saw.
“Your fault,” Mr. Clark said.
No, Derek insisted. Not his fault. But he still felt the need to fix it, or help, or... something. The trouble was, he had no idea what that something was.
“I don't know if I can do this,” he said.
He appreciated it when she didn't say, “Then don't.” She hugged him tightly. “Can I help?” she said instead.
He sighed. “Not unless you know how to make a thousand employees with their own versions of PTSD happy again. I had no idea it was this bad.”
She looked at him. “You had your own stuff to worry about.”
“I did,” he agreed. “And, now I have everybody else's stuff, also.”
“I think I might know what would help immediately,” she said, her voice a husky whisper.
He grinned. “Oh, do you?”
“Yes,” she said with a cute nod. She rose onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his. He felt her fingers pulling through his hair. “This,” she murmured against his skin, and kissed him again in the dark. “And this.” Another kiss. “And... this.”
“Hey, Shepherd,” Richard said, bouncing Derek out of another daydream like a bumper car. “Thought I'd check in.”
Derek's heart thumped in his chest, and he lost his breath. Eleven days. Eleven days of this, and he couldn't focus worth a damn. Worse, it seemed like every time he drifted, someone picked that moment to sneak up on him. The startles didn't last long, and Meredith said his flinches were barely noticeable when they happened, but the constant little scares didn't help his mood or his body.
He rubbed his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. “I'm fine,” he said. He inhaled. He exhaled. “Just a headache.” When he opened his eyes, the conference room lights didn't seem so much like sharp blades anymore.
Richard nodded as he approached the big table. “It's rough coming back after such a long break.”
“I promise, it's not going to go like last time,” Derek said, thinking of before, when he'd shown up for all of a day before he'd broken and disappeared on stress leave for weeks. “I'm back for the long haul. I'm just... adjusting.”
“I know,” Richard said, looking at the budget paperwork spread in a thick, messy fan on a five-foot spread of the table.
Derek had made his way through the first few pages with a highlighter before he'd sighed and put his head down. Just looking at the pile made him want to think of other things, like Meredith. Kissing Meredith. Meredith kissing him. He wondered, sometimes, if the headaches and exhaustion he came home with in the evenings, now, had more to do with the fact that he loathed the work, and not so much that he had a mental disorder.
Had he felt that bad in the evenings before he'd been shot? He couldn't remember. The things from before seemed so much more distant, like memories of a book he'd read a long time ago. He did remember in upsetting detail the number of times he'd been frustrated to the point of wanting to hit things. And he did remember the unsettling rift the position had punched through his marriage - something he vowed not to let happen again. Regardless, waiting for an epiphany to figure out exactly what he needed to feel “done” didn't seem to be doing much except piling on more slices of stress to his mental sandwich.
Richard pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table. “A support system really helps you get through rough spots. I hope you realize you have a big one, now.”
Derek frowned. “A big rough spot?”
“A big support system,” Richard clarified.
“Um, thanks,” Derek said. The tips of his ears heated. “I do know.”
He looked down, and he pulled his hands through his hair. He pushed the piles of paperwork back into a foot high, neat, but now unsorted stack. He couldn't work on them right now. He just couldn't. Not when his head was splitting.
Richard leaned forward in his seat, which creaked with the weight redistribution. His gaze bored into Derek. “And I'm here if you need to talk about... anything,” Richard said.
Derek's eyes narrowed. “Anything.”
“Yes,” Richard said with a nod. “Anything.”
“I get the feeling we're talking about something specific,” Derek said.
Richard shrugged. “It's just that I'm in a unique position to know exactly what you've been going through, and I can help.”
The furrow in Derek's brow deepened. “You've had post-traumatic stress?”
“No,” Richard said.
Which made no sense. What was Richard getting at? What was there in common about this situation and Richard's, except...
Fuck.
“He knows,” Mr. Clark said, a sinister whisper.
A blade of ice slipped between Derek's ribs. His heart inflated by two sizes. It thumped against his chest wall like it was trying to break free. He couldn't swallow. His breath slipped away in a short puff that he couldn't recuperate. His limbs shook. The room blotted.
“Derek?” Richard said, worry dropping his tone into something... almost fatherly.
How could the man be comforting when he knew what a hypocrite Derek had been? About everything? The whole fucking thing had been a replay of what had happened with Amelia from start to finish, but on fast forward, because Derek had already been through it once, and he'd been certain of how it would go again. He'd stomped in on his high horse, and he'd judged faster than a whip cracked, and, now...
“Richard, I'm...” Derek began, breathless, but he couldn't finish. His elbows thumped as he jammed them onto the table and put his face against his palms. He breathed in. He breathed out. This wasn't a panic attack. It wasn't bad enough. But it was, by far, one of the most unpleasant buckets of adrenaline he'd had dumped on his face in weeks.
Richard said something soothing. Derek didn't hear the words. Just the tone.
A minute passed before Derek didn't feel like he would fall to pieces in the chair. Beyond that, he didn't say anything because he didn't know what to say. An apology for being a self-righteous asshole felt woefully inadequate, just like it had when he'd finally said he was sorry to Amelia. An apology for keeping his addiction a secret felt pointless and fake, because Derek hadn't intended to tell anybody else. His wife knew. His family knew. His best friend and his wife's best friends knew. His therapist knew. In his mind, nobody else needed to know.
“I'm sorry,” he said anyway, if only to force his vocal cords to do something other than fill up with an unbearable, aching lump.
“You don't need to be sorry about before,” Richard said, misunderstanding. “You took me out of the equation when I didn't have the good sense to do it myself.”
I'm an alcoholic, Richard had said. People got hurt. I took advantage of Meredith. Thank you for stepping in.
Derek stared at his lap as his face blazed red. “No, I mean...” He swallowed. It hurt. “I'm sorry I didn't... understand.”
“A lot of people don't,” Richard said, no hurt in his tone, but that didn't make Derek feel much better.
Heat crept down Derek's throat from his face. “When did you...? How...?”
“You go to Joe's with Sloan, and you've never once gotten scotch or beer since the shooting. It's always club soda or ice water.”
Derek opened his mouth, but no words came out. Richard had joined him and Mark and Owen last week for darts. Only Mark and Owen had gotten booze.
“Also,” Richard continued, “I know the look.”
Derek blinked. “What look?”
“The look you get when you're upset, and you're thinking, however briefly, about the easy fix. I see it in the mirror, a lot. I know.”
Derek's fingers clenched. His heart thumped. “I'm not going to take--”
“I know,” Richard said before Derek could finish. “I believe you. But anybody who's been where we've been gets that look occasionally. Which is why I wanted you to know I'm around. If you ever need to talk.”
Derek forced himself to keep breathing at a steady rhythm despite the fact that his head was spinning. “Does anybody else... know?” he managed.
Richard shrugged. “It wasn't my business to ask or tell.”
“Nobody's said anything,” Derek said, more blind hope than any solid certainty.
“What would you like them to say?” Richard said, raising an eyebrow.
Nothing, really. Derek had fucked up. He'd let people down. He'd hurt his wife. And Mark. He knew it. He was coming to terms with it. He didn't need the world to rub it in anymore. “I don't know,” Derek said, the words quiet. He picked at his cuticles, unwilling to look up at the man who had been his mentor for years.
An awkward silence filled the room. Richard coughed conspicuously. “Well, I just wanted to... to stop by,” he said. “See how you were holding up. And to tell you I'm here if you need an ear.”
Derek swallowed. “Thanks,” he said, though he felt more sick than thankful.
He heard Richard getting up from the chair.
“Oh, admit it,” Gary Clark said. “You know you should have told him, but you didn't, because you're a coward, and now you're going to sulk about it.”
Derek clenched his fingers. He wasn't sure if he could dismantle that criticism, even with Dr. Wyatt's exercise of trying out how scenarios felt in his head when they involved other people. He wasn't sure if he'd agree with Meredith or his mom or Mark if they'd done the same thing. Worse, a sinking feeling in his gut told him he should have told Richard, and not only because he owed the man some karma points. In the years since Derek had been in Seattle, rebuilding himself, Richard had been there. As a friend, yes. But more as a father figure. The relationship had cooled to arctic levels when Richard had fallen off the wagon, but...
This was not one of the many times where Gary Clark had lied.
Derek's lower lip quivered, but he pushed the black, awful feeling of self-loathing away. It's okay to be afraid, Derek, Dr. Wyatt had said. Work with it, or push through it. It's only bad when you let it bowl you over.
Derek took a breath. This wasn't going to happen today. He'd been afraid. He'd screwed up. He was embarrassed. That didn't mean the world had to end, or that he was unworthy of living in it. There would be no sulking.
“Richard?” he called softly before Richard could leave.
Richard put a hand on the doorway and turned. “Yes?”
He stared back at Derek silently, eyebrows raised in askance. He really wanted to help. The desire was written all over his face. He'd been offering the same thing for months, now, almost from the moment Derek had woken up in the ICU, and Derek hadn't taken him up on it except under duress. In hindsight, he decided he'd been really fucking stupid.
There was an easy way Richard could help, too. Over the months, Derek had gotten more inquisitive in his attempts to forge some peace for himself. He'd asked Meredith for her version of the shooting. He'd talked to Mark. To Bailey. Tried to sort out the fact and fiction in his head. Dr. Wyatt had gone over each minute with him again and again until he was okay saying things like, “I was shot six months ago,” or, “I'm afraid of being shot again.” He'd gotten the beginning and the middle of the shooting mostly sorted. But he'd never talked to Richard about the end.
“What happened the day I was shot?” Derek said, taking the plunge. “With Gary Clark?”
Richard frowned. “What do you mean?”
“All I ever heard was that he was dead,” Derek said to his lap. “That he died... with you there.”
Richard walked back into the room, but this time he sat in the chair next to Derek's. Derek didn't look up. He saw Richard's pant leg. His lab coat. “I talked to him,” Richard said. “He only had one bullet left. We talked about his choices, facing punishment, or finishing his revenge and killing me. He decided to shoot himself.”
“I tried,” Derek said. He stared down the barrel of his memory. “I tried to talk to him, but...”
No talking!
“Some people don't want to listen,” Richard said, pulling Derek back into the room.
Derek clenched his jaw. “But he listened to you, and not to me.”
“He thought you were dead, and he only had one bullet left,” Richard countered. “He knew law enforcement was coming. He had more reasons to listen than not by the time I ran into him.”
Derek swallowed. “I almost got him to put his gun down, but... it wasn't enough.” His chest tightened when he thought of Dr. Kepner rushing in behind him, foolish and negligent, and then nothing Derek had done to diffuse the situation had been worth a flying fuck in the end. “I wasn't enough.”
“I don't think anybody would have been enough at that point. He'd already killed people, and he had no pressing reason to stop, yet.”
“No, I...” Derek sighed and looked up. “You're a better chief than I am. You're better at dealing with... people.”
“There's a learning curve to being Chief,” Richard said. “I've just had more experience.”
“No, you're better at it,” Derek said, shaking his head. “You were meant for this job. Take the compliment, Richard.”
“Administration does take a certain kind of person,” Richard admitted.
“I'm going to step down,” Derek said. Agitated, he pulled his fingers through his hair. “I just... I need to do some things, first. For my own peace of mind. And then I'll be out of your way for good. I'm sure the Board will rehire you in a heartbeat.”
Richard leaned closer. “What things do you need to do?” he said curiously.
“I don't know what they are, yet,” Derek said with a huff of frustration. “I just know that if I walk away, now, I'll spend the rest of my life feeling like a coward and a quitter. I need... closure.”
“Hmm,” Richard said, the word a low, noncommittal thrum of bass. His fingers brushed his beard.
“I want you to have this back,” Derek said. “I do.”
Richard regarded him. For a tense moment, Derek thought Richard might be angry, might call Derek selfish, but instead, Richard nodded, his expression thoughtful more than anything else. “I'm an old man,” Richard said. “I've met my goals. I've had a good life.” And then he stood. His chair creaked. “You'll let me know if I can help?”
Derek nodded. “I will.”
Before Richard left, he put a hand on Derek's shoulder. Squeezed. “You're a better surgeon than me.”
Derek blinked. “I am not--”
“You're the top neurosurgeon in the country,” Richard said before Derek could finish his protest. “You do some impossible stuff. General surgeons at my skill level are a dime a dozen. I'm good, but I'm not the best.” His eyes twinkled. “Just take the compliment, Derek.”
Derek grunted, a begrudging, quiet laugh. “Touché,” he said, and Richard left the conference room.
1:07 PM
He found Meredith in the skills lab, lobotomizing one of the neurosurgical dummies. She cursed a blue streak, filling the air with guttural, nasty words that belied her dainty frame. He grinned like a fool when he wondered how such a tiny woman could sound so much like a pissed off lion.
“Freaking piece of crap!” she said, almost a growl, as he set the plate down beside her. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and dropped her dummy scalpel on the tray. “I just can't get this!” And then her expression abruptly pinched with desperation when she turned toward him. Her gaze dropped. She ignored the pizza and fixated on his coffee mug. “Oh, god, give me that.”
Before he could stutter a protest, she'd snatched his steaming latte from his hand. She tipped back the bright blue “#1 Dad” mug she'd bought him as a gag gift in New York. Her throat bobbled as she chugged.
“Meredith, that's--”
“Hot!” she snapped, pulling it away from her lips. She put the cup on the table next to her mutilated fake brain. “Ish hot. Ow.” She shook her hands and panted. “Damn it. Thish ish jusht pufect.”
He gave her a wry grin. “If I say good afternoon, will you hit me?”
She glared at him and pulled the plate he'd put down for her into her lap without speaking. He'd grabbed her a piece of cheese pizza from the cafeteria line. She picked at it halfheartedly, probably because she'd just blown out all her taste buds with scalding coffee.
She sighed. “You're not gonna yell at me fuh duh cawffee?” She licked her lips and made a face, giving up on the pizza. She put the plate back on the table.
He pulled up a stool, sat down beside her, and kissed her. “Why would I yell at you for the coffee?”
“Caffeine ish bad fuh Baby.”
He laughed. “Mere, a single scalding cup of latte isn't going to hurt anything. You, on the other hand--”
“Whud about me?” she snapped.
He snickered. “Well, it seems you might kill me without it.”
She sighed, the fight bleeding out of her, and she leaned against him. He pulled her close.
“I'm sho tired,” she said. “I really tried not to have any.” Still, she took his cup and blew on the surface. The brown liquid fluttered. She sipped more cautiously.
Despite her misery, he grinned. Eating or drinking something on the “no no” list was kind of huge for her. Though it was widely accepted that a cup of coffee a day wouldn't hurt anything, she'd religiously been staying away from any quantity of anything on the list Dr. Charlton had given her. She'd gotten considerably less morbid about Baby since their first ultrasound, and now that it was kicking with regularity, she seemed to have stopped fixating on awful possibilities and started fantasizing about all the good ones.
He gestured at her neurosurgical dummy. Simply eyeballing it, he couldn't figure out what procedure she was practicing for, which... was a bad sign. Either he was getting too rusty, or she was in dire need of instruction. “Can I help?” he said.
She put the coffee mug on the table, slumped against him, and let her eyes drift closed. “Don't you have Chief-y shtuff to do?”
Yes. But he'd rather be helping her. “I have a few minutes,” he said honestly. His stared at the brain on the table.
“Shut up,” she snapped before he could open his mouth about the brain. “I know ish mangled. I'm jusht tired.”
He tried to keep the smirk off his face. “Um...” He poked the brain. “What is it? Exactly?”
But she didn't answer. Her breaths evened. She'd fallen asleep in his arms. He kissed the top of her head. He would need to move in a few minutes, but those few minutes? She could have those all to herself.
“--Shepherd,” a woman said. Dr. Shepherd! Thank god; you're back. “Dr. Shepherd!”
Something flesh-colored and mushy waved in front of his face, not close enough to make him feel threatened, but close enough to make him jump reflexively as his thoughts came back into the room. He managed to hide his flinch by turning down his head and looking through his desk drawer, letting the jitters slide out through his fingertips into his pen tray. He made an intentional racket as he routed through the pens. He breathed in. Out. In. Out. He grabbed a random ballpoint pen, a red one, like he'd meant to grab a pen all long, and of course he hadn't flinched. He clicked the cap and looked at the woman standing across from him.
“Dr. Kepner,” he said flatly as his chest tightened, not from fear or nerves, but the slow boil of tension.
She still hadn't reported him, and he thought, maybe, at this point, her inaction meant she wasn't ever going to do so. The uncertainty still ate at him, though. He gestured at the empty rolling chair across from him. She slid awkwardly into it, dropping the last few inches with a jounce, and the leather squeaked as she settled. She clutched a clipboard and a little book to her chest like she thought he might try to rip them from her grasp, which told him he was coming off too intense.
He leaned back in his chair. He tried to relax, tried to unclench all the muscles that had tightened in her presence, but being around her set his teeth on edge, and being around her when she seemed nervous only fueled his own nervous fire. They didn't play off each other well. She seemed to know it, too. She'd either been avoiding him, or they'd somehow not run into each other more than twice since Thanksgiving due to happenstance. He was inclined to believe the former more than the latter. He couldn't think of any other staff member he'd seen less than her.
He cleared his throat. “Well, what can I do for you?” he prodded, and then he winced when her already unsure expression faltered further. He'd snapped. And he'd sounded impatient. Even to his own ears. He hadn't meant to snap or sound impatient.
Her mouth opened. Closed. “I'm...” She inhaled shortly and let it out. A loose bang fluttered as she pushed air over her lips. She reached a shaky hand to her clipboard and pulled out an envelope. “I wanted to give this to you.”
“What is it?” he said, reaching across the desk for it.
“My two-week notice.”
He blinked as his fingers closed around the envelope. The paper felt cool to the touch. Relief pinched his thoughts before anything else, and, weeks before, he would have rode it like a wave. Would have told her, So long, and thanks for all the fish. Except he couldn't, now, in good conscience, do that.
“Dr. Kepner--” he began.
“April,” she insisted, interrupting him.
He breathed in. He breathed out. Why did she have to act so familiar with him? “Dr. Kepner, you don't need to leave.”
She shook her head. “I do need to leave. I really, really do.”
He sat back in his chair and sighed. You did this to me, he'd nearly growled at her. You got me shot. Some of the tension bled away, leaving only tiredness. He swallowed, and he took another deep breath. “Dr. Kepner, I hope I've shown you that I can remain professional despite our personal differences,” he said, forcing cool when he couldn't manage warm. “Please, don't feel like you need to leave because of me. What happened before won't happen again. I promise.”
“My best friend died here,” she responded, her voice cracking on the last syllable. Her eyes reddened. Her clipboard and her little book fell to her lap as she reached up to wipe her face. “I found her body. Her head was blown to bits. I saw you get shot. I was threatened with a gun. You threatened me. I can't sleep at night. I have panic attacks. I just don't want to work here anymore. I swore to myself I'd try until the end of the year to see if it would get better. In two weeks, it will be January first, and it hasn't gotten any better. I can't do it anymore.”
He stared at her, not sure of what to say.
“You don't want me here, and I feel guilty whenever I'm in the room with you. It's just not a good environment for me. You might be able to force yourself to work with me, but I can't work with you.” Tears escaped her eyes, and sharp, wet slivers lashed her cheeks. His gut tightened as she added in a twisted whisper, “I just want to go home.”
He swallowed. Before, in the supply closet when she'd caught him falling apart, he'd gone on the offensive, and he'd been thrilled. Thrilled that he'd upset her. That he'd made her cry. He'd reveled in her tears. Reveled that he'd made her pay. That he'd gotten some justice. But watching her cry, now... There wasn't any justice. Her tears just made him feel sick, and he couldn't imagine why he'd ever wanted them.
His throat tightened. Silence in the office stretched. Sounds from the outside, footsteps, voices, and distant Christmas carols, filtered softly through the big glass window behind him, through the closed door.
“I didn't know you were having trouble,” he said, the words quiet.
“Nobody knew I've been having trouble,” she snapped. “My friends are all dead except for Jackson, and he's... got his own problems.”
Derek sighed. This was such a fucking mess. For weeks, for months, he'd felt like an emotional dunce because everybody was okay except for him, except he'd been finding out again and again since then that nobody was okay. Cristina had enough problems that she'd forced him onto a motorcycle in hopes of getting back her person. Owen was having problems, if Cristina's vague hints meant anything. Meredith had burst apart at the seams when he'd tried to thank her for saving his life. And now he'd come back to a hospital that was the equivalent of an emotional landfill. Everybody had problems.
Derek regarded Dr. Kepner for a long moment. He didn't like her. Thinking about when he'd been shot, thinking about her role in it, still coiled something awful inside of him like a snake. He blamed her. Her and Gary Clark. He couldn't say he wanted her to stay, because he didn't.
But he didn't want her to suffer, either. He didn't wish her any ill.
And he could help her.
“I want to write you a recommendation letter,” he said. “To take with you.”
“You don't have to do that,” she said.
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “And I'm sorry, Dr. Kepner. About the thing before. I wasn't... really in my right mind. At the time. What I did to you was very wrong.”
“It was,” she said. She paused, and she considered him. Her gaze softened, and for a moment, her expression seemed too tender. Too familiar. He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she didn't. She gave her head a little shake. She stood, and her chair creaked. She clutched her clipboard and her book against her chest, and she brushed her lab coat with her free hand. “I appreciate the letter.”
“You can add me as a reference, too,” he offered.
“Thank you, Dr. Shepherd,” she said with a cold formality that seemed forced to his ears.
“Good luck,” he said, and he thought that was that, because she turned to leave.
She paused at the doorway, though, and she turned. Her sudden coldness turned warm again. “Hey, have you...?” She shifted on her feet. “You've gotten help. Right?”
He nodded. “I've gotten lots of help.”
“Good,” she said. “I hope...” Her head tilted as she considered him again. The warmth in her eyes was unmistakable. She cared about him. More than she should. “I hope things get better for you,” she blurted. And then she was gone.
His tension eased, leaving ache and fatigue behind. He clutched the envelope containing her notice letter, and only then, did he let the relief sweep him away.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
Oh, my goodness, a two week turnaround on a 14.5k word chapter. I almost don't know what to do with myself!!! I looked at my outline after I told you guys I was going to work on some one shots, and I realized... holy crap. I'm getting really close to finishing this monstrosity. I think seeing the light at the end of the tunnel really gave my muse a kick in the ass. For those who are wondering, I said at the beginning of this story that I had 35 chapters planned, and that's still true, so, only 6 chapters to go after this :)
Remember how I said I might skip 28.5? I skipped it. I was going to put flashbacks to 28.5 into this chapter, but after some careful consideration, I decided none of it would fit, thematically. In exchange, I'm giving you a whole bunch of new flashbacks that I hadn't planned to write, before. I'll still see if I can work in some of the 28.5 stuff in a future chapter, but if that doesn't work out, I hope you consider this a worthy exchange.
This is a spin-the-running-plotlines chapter. Most of the stuff still dangling right now comes up again, and a lot of characters get a chance to say, "Hello! Remember me?" Also, I know it's a total shock, but I actually managed to wrap up a plot line. You'll see more and more of that as I continue from here, since I'm winding things down. Part B is not work safe -- you can thank the show for the last flashback in the chapter, because I was not happy with the five seconds of screen time MerDer got for it on the show.
Please, leave some feedback -- I'd really love to hear from you :) Thanks to my super duper betas, and my loyal readers who've stayed with me these three fracking years (3! Can you believe it?), and thanks to everybody who takes the time to let me know you're out there!
One last thing -- please consider donating to the 2013 Dempsey Challenge. Proceeds go to the Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing, and are tax deductible in the US. The Dempsey Challenge has made a huge difference in my life, and I will continue to support it and participate as long as I'm able to make the trip. Thank you so much in advance!
All Along The Watchtower - Part 29A
8:27 AM
One of the disadvantages of being a surgeon who'd been married to an OB-GYN in an earlier life was that he knew full well how to read an ultrasound. Worse, Meredith, relatively fresh from her intern year, knew full well, too, because she'd had so much recent practice. And they were both relying solely on personal willpower not to interpret the easily knowable.
“We could figure it out so easily,” Meredith said as if she'd read his mind, leaning against him, fingers clutching the manila envelope. The black-and-white photo of their baby, taken at twenty weeks, sat on top of the yellow paper, but there was a tiny neon Post-it note stuck over a revealing area of the photograph. The ultrasound tech hadn't even batted an eyelash when they'd asked for it. Meredith flicked it with her finger. “We just have to lift this up...”
Samantha barked in the distance and trotted back to them with her favorite, chewed-up, dirt-ridden tennis ball. She dropped it by the bench in front of Derek's feet. Derek reached down. The ball was soggy with drool and mud, but it didn't faze him. He threw the ball as far as he could muster, and Samantha bounded away, her feet churning up bits of grass and mud as she flew. He wiped his hand on his coat.
“Meredith,” he said. He kissed her temple. Pressed his nose against her skin. Her wool coat mushed up against his duster as she shifted in his arms. “If you want to peek, you can. It's okay. I understand. But I really want it to be a surprise for me.”
They sat in the dog park on a bench in the chill, warming each other while their dog had some fun with Queen Anne Hill's other canine residents. Meredith shook her head. “I'm not gonna peek, if you're not gonna peek. I'd feel like I was cheating or something. Besides...”
A cold winter breeze bit at his skin. “What?” he said.
She shrugged, shivering against him, and then she looked up. Met his eyes. “I kind of like the idea of a good surprise, too.”
He laughed. “Maybe, we should give all the pictures to Lexie for safe-keeping until Baby is born. Having them out of our possession might shore up our willpower.”
Meredith snorted. “Asking Lexie to keep a secret like that is like asking Samantha not to eat bacon.”
“Point,” he said, nodding. “Mark?”
Meredith rolled her eyes. “Mark's even worse. The man sucks at lying. All of our friends suck at it, actually. Can you imagine if we gave these to Richard?”
Derek couldn't help but chuckle. “Bailey?” he said. “We could give them to her.”
Meredith snickered. “After she's done gutting you for reminding her we have sex, it might work. Maybe, Alex? He knows already.”
“He knows about the sex?”
Meredith laughed. “Well, he knows about our sex. But he doesn't know about the baby's.”
Samantha barked as she brought back the ball. Derek threw it against the back chain-link fence, where it fell to the wet grass with a metal clink. His chest didn't hurt at all anymore. Not even from the whipping motion of his arm. He had to do several pushups to elicit a reminder that he'd been seriously injured. The increasing freedom from painful rebukes for exertion had helped him feel better. A lot better.
“We could have Dr. Charlton keep them on file for us,” he said.
“But then we can't take them home,” Meredith said. She placed her palm against her belly. “And I still want to be able to look at them whenever I want.”
He nodded. “Alex works, then.”
Meredith slipped the ultrasound photograph back into the manila envelope and stuck it beside her hip on the bench. She leaned against him and pressed her lips against his throat. “So,” she murmured against his skin. “Are you ready to go back tomorrow?”
He swallowed, staring across the dog park. Over three years later, he still hadn't quite gotten used to how green things stayed, even in the winter. In New York, the grass died cyclically. Here, it was still vibrant. Some of the trees had lost their leaves, but there were a lot of evergreens that kept their verdant coloring.
“I don't know,” he said, staring vacantly. All he knew was that he was out in the wide, wide open, cuddling with his wife, playing fetch with his dog. He didn't hurt, and he wasn't scared, and the days when he'd been so upset he hadn't wanted to get out of bed felt... very far away. He might not be ready, for sure, but he wasn't not ready. “I can't not try.”
She kissed him again. “Mmm, Chief Shepherd.”
He nuzzled her. “It might be worth it just for the title.”
“And free use of the conference rooms,” she said.
He laughed. Nodded. “I will admit, there are a few perks.”
“Chief?” said a deep, low voice, and Derek snapped out of his musing to find Stan, one of their orderlies, staring back at him in the bright hallway. Derek's heart throbbed at the unexpected intrusion, once, twice, and a quick pinch of adrenaline hit him like a boxer, but then he relaxed without any extra work. Stan stood with one hand clasped around the handle of a shoulder-high meal cart full of empty meal trays. He wore a festive Santa hat, which made it hard not to smile at him.
“I'm sorry?” Derek said, already recovered. Morning sunlight slanted through the windows, making passing nurses and doctors shield their eyes with clipboards, papers, anything available. Tinsel garlands strung the hallways under the windows, and he thought he smelled a hint of evergreen.
Stan frowned and swept his long black hair back behind his ear with his hand. His gold wristwatch glittered in the light as it shifted, and his Santa hat tipped perilously to the side. “Waterworks,” Stan said. “Storage room at six. Thought you'd want to know.”
Derek sighed. “Stan, I'm not a counselor,” he said. He glanced down the hallway to the storage closet across from nursing station six. “If somebody has a problem, they're welcome to come to me, but I'm not going to intrude on--”
Stan shrugged. “You might want to for this one.”
Derek swallowed. His heart squeezed. Meredith cried a lot, lately. Over the most random things. Stupid freaking hormones, she'd said belligerently more than once. But that excuse didn't make Derek hate the crying any less, or want to fix it any less. “Is it my wife?”
“Half right,” was all Stan said before he turned, which made no sense to Derek. How could somebody be half his wife? “Sorry,” Stan said, gesturing to the meal cart, “these trays need to be washed.” And then he left, the cart squeaking as he wheeled it toward the cafeteria.
Derek turned on his heels and walked down the hall. Deirdre, a nurse in her late fifties, sat at the nursing station desk, a station that should have boasted at least two nurses, but there was only Deirdre. She typed charts into the Seattle Grace computer system, frown lines tightening her gaze. An old radio played a tinny, quiet rendition of Jingle Bell Rock from one of the local stations, but that didn't stop Derek from hearing the sniffles on the other side of the door on the opposite wall.
“She's in there,” Deirdre said, tipping her shoulder toward the door without lifting her hands off the keyboard. Her typing clacked percussively in the air.
“She...” Derek began. He sighed. “Is this really something that needs my intervention?”
Deirdre shrugged. “I doubt we'll know until you find out.”
“Why didn't you find out?” he said.
She rolled her eyes and looked at him. “Sir, it's eight-thirty in the morning. My shift ends in thirty minutes. I've been up all night. I've already dealt with two different patients and a fellow nurse who had their own catastrophes.” She pointed at the doorway. “That's a surgeon. You're Chief of Surgery. You deal with it.”
Derek sighed. “All right, all right. I'll handle it.”
“Thanks, sir,” Deirdre said, her tone absent as she stared back at the computer screen. “You're a peach.”
Derek knocked softly at first. There was no response. He hated this. When he'd first come back after his stress leave, he'd spent a lot of time in storage closets, curled up in the corner in the dark with his back to the door, mostly recuperating from too many stimuli, but sometimes breaking down in a blubbery pile. He never would have wanted people to walk in on him. He was half tempted to walk away. No matter that Deirdre wanted him to deal with this. Or Stan. Or anybody.
But the staff was miserable. Seattle Grace was in trouble it wasn't bouncing back from. Your fault. Your fault, your fault. “Your fault,” whispered Gary Clark. Guilt slithered in Derek's stomach before he could push it away with a firm hand and a deep breath.
He took a deep breath, and he turned the knob, and into the dark closet he went. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust. Somebody, a woman, sat in the corner on an overturned mop bucket. She wiped her eyes and looked up at him, eyes glistening. He squinted in the darkness.
“I'm sorry,” she said, and he recognized Lexie's distinctive voice, thick with grief though it was, before he could make out her face. “Do you need to get something in here?”
“No, no,” he said. He swept his hands through his hair and shifted from foot to foot. “Are you okay?” Which was a moronic question he could have kicked himself for. Asking a woman in tears if she was okay.
Lexie wiped her eyes and sniffed. “Yes,” she said, a little too quickly. “I'm fine.”
Derek grinned ruefully. “You know, I've learned not to believe Meredith when she says that, even when she's not crying.” He turned over another bucket and sat next to her.
“You don't want to hear this,” she said. “I'm sure you have stuff. Other stuff. To, you know. Do. I mean, don't you? Have stuff?”
He shrugged as he pieced together her babble. He'd been doing his circuit. The circuit he walked when he was surveying all the goings-on at Seattle Grace, checking in on all the staff, making sure there weren't any problems. It was the circuit he did every morning after he arrived and checked his e-mail. The circuit he'd walked when he'd searched for Gary Clark.
“I'm just doing my rounds,” he said. “I've got nothing urgent. Maybe, I can help.”
Tears pulsed freshly from her eyes. She made a soft sound that wasn't a word. More a squeak. The kind Meredith made when she was really upset, and Derek's heart squeezed tighter. “I broke up,” his sister-in-law said.
He blinked. “What?”
“With Alex,” she wailed. “I broke up. He said pass the salt; I said I couldn't take it anymore. In front of everybody. I just... I exploded.”
For a moment, however inappropriate, Derek found himself wilting with relief. Not at her problem, but at the fact that he'd built this up in his head as another shooting-born catastrophe, and now he'd discovered that it wasn't one. He looked woefully at the door and then back to her. Maybe, he should get Meredith, or... Meredith would be a lot better at this. This seemed like a women-commiserate-over-rocky-road-ice-cream problem that he found happening every once in a while in Meredith's kitchen. Except, Lexie's bucket moaned as she pulled it across the floor to him, and then she leaned against his shoulder, and then he was stuck in a closet comforting his sister-in-law who'd just broken up with her boyfriend.
“I'm... sorry,” he said, rubbing her back with robotic strokes, not quite sure what to say.
“I feel like such a selfish jerk,” she said, sniffling.
He paused. “Why?”
“He was shot,” she said. She rubbed her nose on the wrist of her lab coat. “Who breaks up right after...” She glared at no one in particular. “Who does that!”
“I know what it's like to feel like you have to stay,” he said slowly.
“I broke up right after he was shot,” she wailed, not listening to him, and he winced.
He pulled her close and tried to put it another way. “Lexie, it's been months since then,” he said. “If you weren't happy, you weren't happy. And it's not like you have wedding vows with the guy.”
“Well, I still feel like a jerk,” Lexie grumbled.
Derek shook his head. “Wanting to be happy doesn't make you a jerk, and staying in a situation where you're miserable doesn't do any good. Believe me, I know.”
She pulled away from him. “You're miserable with Meredith?” she said sharply.
“What? No!” He shook his head vehemently. “I was talking about my ex-wife.”
“Oh,” Lexie said, her body deflating. “I didn't really know her.”
“I didn't sign the divorce papers the first time,” he said. “I felt like it was my duty to try again, but I just wasn't happy, and it only ended up hurting everybody involved, especially Meredith.”
“So, you think it's good that I left?” Lexie said.
“A relationship should be about more than just duty,” he said. “If the only reason you can come up with for staying was that he was shot, then yes, I do.”
“Would you want Meredith to leave you if that was the only reason she'd stuck around?” Lexie said.
He rubbed her back. Found himself nodding. I like to talk to you, Meredith had said. You can make me laugh, even when I'm freaking out. He'd come far enough, felt secure enough, to treat Lexie's hypothetical scenario as she'd meant it. You don't judge me even when I say something stupid or freaky. You make me feel loved. You get me. Purely hypothetical. “I'd never want her to stay if that was the only reason.”
Lexie sighed. Nodded. Sat quietly in his arms for a long stretch of moments. He supposed this was a shooting-born catastrophe after all, but this was... actually... a lot like helping Meredith, he decided. Which, wasn't as far out of his depth as he'd thought he would be in here.
“You know,” she mused in the dark. “We've never talked like this before.”
He cocked his head and looked down at her. “Like what?”
“Like you're my brother instead of my boss,” she said.
He smiled. “Well, we probably shouldn't make a habit of it.” He thought about it for a moment and decided to add, “At least, not at work.”
“Probably not, but... it's nice for now,” Lexie said.
They stayed for a while in the quiet.
10:43 AM
A fruit cup, a juice box, a plastic fork, and a bag of unsliced, unpeeled carrots fell onto the desk in front of him. Meredith stood over him, a pensive look on her face as she bit her lip.
“I figured you'd forget to eat, so I brought some stuff from home,” she said. And then she frowned. “I'm sorry it probably looks like it's for a five-year-old or something. I don't really cook, and the cafeteria made pizza today, which I know you won't touch with a ten-foot pole unless all the cheese is picked off, and--”
“Meredith,” he said quietly. He took the fruit cup. He gave her the best smile he could manage under the circumstances. “You haven't needed to remind me to eat in months.”
She shifted on her feet and plopped into the chair across from him. “I know, but this is your first day back, and I thought, maybe...”
“I'd get too stressed out?” he offered.
She deflated when he seemed to both get it right away and not harbor any anger about her doubts. “Yeah. Yeah, I... Yeah.”
She glanced around the room. He'd put his pictures back on the desk in what had been Richard's office, including two new photos, one from their wedding, and one of Meredith's ten week ultrasound, which he'd had framed. He'd put his old, beaten copy of The Sun Also Rises back into the top left-hand drawer. He'd put his favorite blue pen into the pencil cup by the computer monitor. She paused for a particularly long while on the ultrasound photograph. And then she cocked her head at him.
“So, how are you?” she said.
She didn't mention that she'd found him sitting in the dark. Or that he'd been rubbing his temples, trying to relieve a massive headache. Or that she'd had to call his name several times before he'd realized she was there. Or the fact that it was three already, and she was right. He hadn't eaten. Hadn't even thought about eating because he was too tense to want anything. Even the fruit cup made his stomach twist.
“I'm not hungry,” he confessed, his tone a little broken, “but thank you.”
The white light drifting into the office from the promenade gave her an otherworldly, silvery look. She wore her scrubs with a white shirt underneath. Her hair hung loose around her ears and over her shoulders. He let the world pause. Drank in the sight of her. Sighed. And then he stood.
She didn't move as he hobbled around to the other side of the desk. He hurt. From all the tension in his arms and legs and everywhere.
He pulled her into his arms. Something he'd been thinking about doing all morning, ever since they'd parted ways with a long kiss at the car in the driveway. She'd still been wearing her bathrobe, and her hair had stuck up in weird places, because her shift didn't start until after lunch, but he hadn't cared a bit.
He breathed her in. Her scent. Her heat. He pushed his fingers into her hair. He nuzzled her.
“Hi,” she said warmly.
“I really needed this, now,” he whispered.
“I had a feeling,” she said. Her hands slid along his spine as she embraced him. “How's it going?”
“Awful,” he said in a dark, thick voice.
Since he'd come back, he'd rediscovered budget reports. Job vacancies. Seattle Grace's revenues had been sinking steadily since the shooting. The Board had placed a hiring freeze on some of the more menial positions, like janitors, administrative staff, and orderlies, in order to compensate for the shrinking budget. Turnover rates in the nursing staff had skyrocketed as the nurses inevitably got pushed outside their job descriptions to make up for the lack of support staff. Too many empty nursing positions weren't being back-filled because there weren't enough applicants to meet the losses, and the problem was only deepening. A poor nursing staff was a sign of a bleeding hospital, and interns were getting harder to woo. Everybody from janitors to management seemed to be stressed out by trying to cover for all the people who weren't there anymore, either because they'd been killed, or because they'd understandably fled an environment dominated by fear, overwork, and unhappiness.
Before, Derek's focus had been inward, and he hadn't noticed the hospital dissolving around him. All he'd been worried about had been navigating each day successfully without a meltdown or five. Now that he was back in full capacity other than the cutting, which he refused to attempt, yet, his focus had turned outward, and he hated what he saw.
“Your fault,” Mr. Clark said.
No, Derek insisted. Not his fault. But he still felt the need to fix it, or help, or... something. The trouble was, he had no idea what that something was.
“I don't know if I can do this,” he said.
He appreciated it when she didn't say, “Then don't.” She hugged him tightly. “Can I help?” she said instead.
He sighed. “Not unless you know how to make a thousand employees with their own versions of PTSD happy again. I had no idea it was this bad.”
She looked at him. “You had your own stuff to worry about.”
“I did,” he agreed. “And, now I have everybody else's stuff, also.”
“I think I might know what would help immediately,” she said, her voice a husky whisper.
He grinned. “Oh, do you?”
“Yes,” she said with a cute nod. She rose onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his. He felt her fingers pulling through his hair. “This,” she murmured against his skin, and kissed him again in the dark. “And this.” Another kiss. “And... this.”
“Hey, Shepherd,” Richard said, bouncing Derek out of another daydream like a bumper car. “Thought I'd check in.”
Derek's heart thumped in his chest, and he lost his breath. Eleven days. Eleven days of this, and he couldn't focus worth a damn. Worse, it seemed like every time he drifted, someone picked that moment to sneak up on him. The startles didn't last long, and Meredith said his flinches were barely noticeable when they happened, but the constant little scares didn't help his mood or his body.
He rubbed his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. “I'm fine,” he said. He inhaled. He exhaled. “Just a headache.” When he opened his eyes, the conference room lights didn't seem so much like sharp blades anymore.
Richard nodded as he approached the big table. “It's rough coming back after such a long break.”
“I promise, it's not going to go like last time,” Derek said, thinking of before, when he'd shown up for all of a day before he'd broken and disappeared on stress leave for weeks. “I'm back for the long haul. I'm just... adjusting.”
“I know,” Richard said, looking at the budget paperwork spread in a thick, messy fan on a five-foot spread of the table.
Derek had made his way through the first few pages with a highlighter before he'd sighed and put his head down. Just looking at the pile made him want to think of other things, like Meredith. Kissing Meredith. Meredith kissing him. He wondered, sometimes, if the headaches and exhaustion he came home with in the evenings, now, had more to do with the fact that he loathed the work, and not so much that he had a mental disorder.
Had he felt that bad in the evenings before he'd been shot? He couldn't remember. The things from before seemed so much more distant, like memories of a book he'd read a long time ago. He did remember in upsetting detail the number of times he'd been frustrated to the point of wanting to hit things. And he did remember the unsettling rift the position had punched through his marriage - something he vowed not to let happen again. Regardless, waiting for an epiphany to figure out exactly what he needed to feel “done” didn't seem to be doing much except piling on more slices of stress to his mental sandwich.
Richard pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table. “A support system really helps you get through rough spots. I hope you realize you have a big one, now.”
Derek frowned. “A big rough spot?”
“A big support system,” Richard clarified.
“Um, thanks,” Derek said. The tips of his ears heated. “I do know.”
He looked down, and he pulled his hands through his hair. He pushed the piles of paperwork back into a foot high, neat, but now unsorted stack. He couldn't work on them right now. He just couldn't. Not when his head was splitting.
Richard leaned forward in his seat, which creaked with the weight redistribution. His gaze bored into Derek. “And I'm here if you need to talk about... anything,” Richard said.
Derek's eyes narrowed. “Anything.”
“Yes,” Richard said with a nod. “Anything.”
“I get the feeling we're talking about something specific,” Derek said.
Richard shrugged. “It's just that I'm in a unique position to know exactly what you've been going through, and I can help.”
The furrow in Derek's brow deepened. “You've had post-traumatic stress?”
“No,” Richard said.
Which made no sense. What was Richard getting at? What was there in common about this situation and Richard's, except...
Fuck.
“He knows,” Mr. Clark said, a sinister whisper.
A blade of ice slipped between Derek's ribs. His heart inflated by two sizes. It thumped against his chest wall like it was trying to break free. He couldn't swallow. His breath slipped away in a short puff that he couldn't recuperate. His limbs shook. The room blotted.
“Derek?” Richard said, worry dropping his tone into something... almost fatherly.
How could the man be comforting when he knew what a hypocrite Derek had been? About everything? The whole fucking thing had been a replay of what had happened with Amelia from start to finish, but on fast forward, because Derek had already been through it once, and he'd been certain of how it would go again. He'd stomped in on his high horse, and he'd judged faster than a whip cracked, and, now...
“Richard, I'm...” Derek began, breathless, but he couldn't finish. His elbows thumped as he jammed them onto the table and put his face against his palms. He breathed in. He breathed out. This wasn't a panic attack. It wasn't bad enough. But it was, by far, one of the most unpleasant buckets of adrenaline he'd had dumped on his face in weeks.
Richard said something soothing. Derek didn't hear the words. Just the tone.
A minute passed before Derek didn't feel like he would fall to pieces in the chair. Beyond that, he didn't say anything because he didn't know what to say. An apology for being a self-righteous asshole felt woefully inadequate, just like it had when he'd finally said he was sorry to Amelia. An apology for keeping his addiction a secret felt pointless and fake, because Derek hadn't intended to tell anybody else. His wife knew. His family knew. His best friend and his wife's best friends knew. His therapist knew. In his mind, nobody else needed to know.
“I'm sorry,” he said anyway, if only to force his vocal cords to do something other than fill up with an unbearable, aching lump.
“You don't need to be sorry about before,” Richard said, misunderstanding. “You took me out of the equation when I didn't have the good sense to do it myself.”
I'm an alcoholic, Richard had said. People got hurt. I took advantage of Meredith. Thank you for stepping in.
Derek stared at his lap as his face blazed red. “No, I mean...” He swallowed. It hurt. “I'm sorry I didn't... understand.”
“A lot of people don't,” Richard said, no hurt in his tone, but that didn't make Derek feel much better.
Heat crept down Derek's throat from his face. “When did you...? How...?”
“You go to Joe's with Sloan, and you've never once gotten scotch or beer since the shooting. It's always club soda or ice water.”
Derek opened his mouth, but no words came out. Richard had joined him and Mark and Owen last week for darts. Only Mark and Owen had gotten booze.
“Also,” Richard continued, “I know the look.”
Derek blinked. “What look?”
“The look you get when you're upset, and you're thinking, however briefly, about the easy fix. I see it in the mirror, a lot. I know.”
Derek's fingers clenched. His heart thumped. “I'm not going to take--”
“I know,” Richard said before Derek could finish. “I believe you. But anybody who's been where we've been gets that look occasionally. Which is why I wanted you to know I'm around. If you ever need to talk.”
Derek forced himself to keep breathing at a steady rhythm despite the fact that his head was spinning. “Does anybody else... know?” he managed.
Richard shrugged. “It wasn't my business to ask or tell.”
“Nobody's said anything,” Derek said, more blind hope than any solid certainty.
“What would you like them to say?” Richard said, raising an eyebrow.
Nothing, really. Derek had fucked up. He'd let people down. He'd hurt his wife. And Mark. He knew it. He was coming to terms with it. He didn't need the world to rub it in anymore. “I don't know,” Derek said, the words quiet. He picked at his cuticles, unwilling to look up at the man who had been his mentor for years.
An awkward silence filled the room. Richard coughed conspicuously. “Well, I just wanted to... to stop by,” he said. “See how you were holding up. And to tell you I'm here if you need an ear.”
Derek swallowed. “Thanks,” he said, though he felt more sick than thankful.
He heard Richard getting up from the chair.
“Oh, admit it,” Gary Clark said. “You know you should have told him, but you didn't, because you're a coward, and now you're going to sulk about it.”
Derek clenched his fingers. He wasn't sure if he could dismantle that criticism, even with Dr. Wyatt's exercise of trying out how scenarios felt in his head when they involved other people. He wasn't sure if he'd agree with Meredith or his mom or Mark if they'd done the same thing. Worse, a sinking feeling in his gut told him he should have told Richard, and not only because he owed the man some karma points. In the years since Derek had been in Seattle, rebuilding himself, Richard had been there. As a friend, yes. But more as a father figure. The relationship had cooled to arctic levels when Richard had fallen off the wagon, but...
This was not one of the many times where Gary Clark had lied.
Derek's lower lip quivered, but he pushed the black, awful feeling of self-loathing away. It's okay to be afraid, Derek, Dr. Wyatt had said. Work with it, or push through it. It's only bad when you let it bowl you over.
Derek took a breath. This wasn't going to happen today. He'd been afraid. He'd screwed up. He was embarrassed. That didn't mean the world had to end, or that he was unworthy of living in it. There would be no sulking.
“Richard?” he called softly before Richard could leave.
Richard put a hand on the doorway and turned. “Yes?”
He stared back at Derek silently, eyebrows raised in askance. He really wanted to help. The desire was written all over his face. He'd been offering the same thing for months, now, almost from the moment Derek had woken up in the ICU, and Derek hadn't taken him up on it except under duress. In hindsight, he decided he'd been really fucking stupid.
There was an easy way Richard could help, too. Over the months, Derek had gotten more inquisitive in his attempts to forge some peace for himself. He'd asked Meredith for her version of the shooting. He'd talked to Mark. To Bailey. Tried to sort out the fact and fiction in his head. Dr. Wyatt had gone over each minute with him again and again until he was okay saying things like, “I was shot six months ago,” or, “I'm afraid of being shot again.” He'd gotten the beginning and the middle of the shooting mostly sorted. But he'd never talked to Richard about the end.
“What happened the day I was shot?” Derek said, taking the plunge. “With Gary Clark?”
Richard frowned. “What do you mean?”
“All I ever heard was that he was dead,” Derek said to his lap. “That he died... with you there.”
Richard walked back into the room, but this time he sat in the chair next to Derek's. Derek didn't look up. He saw Richard's pant leg. His lab coat. “I talked to him,” Richard said. “He only had one bullet left. We talked about his choices, facing punishment, or finishing his revenge and killing me. He decided to shoot himself.”
“I tried,” Derek said. He stared down the barrel of his memory. “I tried to talk to him, but...”
No talking!
“Some people don't want to listen,” Richard said, pulling Derek back into the room.
Derek clenched his jaw. “But he listened to you, and not to me.”
“He thought you were dead, and he only had one bullet left,” Richard countered. “He knew law enforcement was coming. He had more reasons to listen than not by the time I ran into him.”
Derek swallowed. “I almost got him to put his gun down, but... it wasn't enough.” His chest tightened when he thought of Dr. Kepner rushing in behind him, foolish and negligent, and then nothing Derek had done to diffuse the situation had been worth a flying fuck in the end. “I wasn't enough.”
“I don't think anybody would have been enough at that point. He'd already killed people, and he had no pressing reason to stop, yet.”
“No, I...” Derek sighed and looked up. “You're a better chief than I am. You're better at dealing with... people.”
“There's a learning curve to being Chief,” Richard said. “I've just had more experience.”
“No, you're better at it,” Derek said, shaking his head. “You were meant for this job. Take the compliment, Richard.”
“Administration does take a certain kind of person,” Richard admitted.
“I'm going to step down,” Derek said. Agitated, he pulled his fingers through his hair. “I just... I need to do some things, first. For my own peace of mind. And then I'll be out of your way for good. I'm sure the Board will rehire you in a heartbeat.”
Richard leaned closer. “What things do you need to do?” he said curiously.
“I don't know what they are, yet,” Derek said with a huff of frustration. “I just know that if I walk away, now, I'll spend the rest of my life feeling like a coward and a quitter. I need... closure.”
“Hmm,” Richard said, the word a low, noncommittal thrum of bass. His fingers brushed his beard.
“I want you to have this back,” Derek said. “I do.”
Richard regarded him. For a tense moment, Derek thought Richard might be angry, might call Derek selfish, but instead, Richard nodded, his expression thoughtful more than anything else. “I'm an old man,” Richard said. “I've met my goals. I've had a good life.” And then he stood. His chair creaked. “You'll let me know if I can help?”
Derek nodded. “I will.”
Before Richard left, he put a hand on Derek's shoulder. Squeezed. “You're a better surgeon than me.”
Derek blinked. “I am not--”
“You're the top neurosurgeon in the country,” Richard said before Derek could finish his protest. “You do some impossible stuff. General surgeons at my skill level are a dime a dozen. I'm good, but I'm not the best.” His eyes twinkled. “Just take the compliment, Derek.”
Derek grunted, a begrudging, quiet laugh. “Touché,” he said, and Richard left the conference room.
1:07 PM
He found Meredith in the skills lab, lobotomizing one of the neurosurgical dummies. She cursed a blue streak, filling the air with guttural, nasty words that belied her dainty frame. He grinned like a fool when he wondered how such a tiny woman could sound so much like a pissed off lion.
“Freaking piece of crap!” she said, almost a growl, as he set the plate down beside her. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and dropped her dummy scalpel on the tray. “I just can't get this!” And then her expression abruptly pinched with desperation when she turned toward him. Her gaze dropped. She ignored the pizza and fixated on his coffee mug. “Oh, god, give me that.”
Before he could stutter a protest, she'd snatched his steaming latte from his hand. She tipped back the bright blue “#1 Dad” mug she'd bought him as a gag gift in New York. Her throat bobbled as she chugged.
“Meredith, that's--”
“Hot!” she snapped, pulling it away from her lips. She put the cup on the table next to her mutilated fake brain. “Ish hot. Ow.” She shook her hands and panted. “Damn it. Thish ish jusht pufect.”
He gave her a wry grin. “If I say good afternoon, will you hit me?”
She glared at him and pulled the plate he'd put down for her into her lap without speaking. He'd grabbed her a piece of cheese pizza from the cafeteria line. She picked at it halfheartedly, probably because she'd just blown out all her taste buds with scalding coffee.
She sighed. “You're not gonna yell at me fuh duh cawffee?” She licked her lips and made a face, giving up on the pizza. She put the plate back on the table.
He pulled up a stool, sat down beside her, and kissed her. “Why would I yell at you for the coffee?”
“Caffeine ish bad fuh Baby.”
He laughed. “Mere, a single scalding cup of latte isn't going to hurt anything. You, on the other hand--”
“Whud about me?” she snapped.
He snickered. “Well, it seems you might kill me without it.”
She sighed, the fight bleeding out of her, and she leaned against him. He pulled her close.
“I'm sho tired,” she said. “I really tried not to have any.” Still, she took his cup and blew on the surface. The brown liquid fluttered. She sipped more cautiously.
Despite her misery, he grinned. Eating or drinking something on the “no no” list was kind of huge for her. Though it was widely accepted that a cup of coffee a day wouldn't hurt anything, she'd religiously been staying away from any quantity of anything on the list Dr. Charlton had given her. She'd gotten considerably less morbid about Baby since their first ultrasound, and now that it was kicking with regularity, she seemed to have stopped fixating on awful possibilities and started fantasizing about all the good ones.
He gestured at her neurosurgical dummy. Simply eyeballing it, he couldn't figure out what procedure she was practicing for, which... was a bad sign. Either he was getting too rusty, or she was in dire need of instruction. “Can I help?” he said.
She put the coffee mug on the table, slumped against him, and let her eyes drift closed. “Don't you have Chief-y shtuff to do?”
Yes. But he'd rather be helping her. “I have a few minutes,” he said honestly. His stared at the brain on the table.
“Shut up,” she snapped before he could open his mouth about the brain. “I know ish mangled. I'm jusht tired.”
He tried to keep the smirk off his face. “Um...” He poked the brain. “What is it? Exactly?”
But she didn't answer. Her breaths evened. She'd fallen asleep in his arms. He kissed the top of her head. He would need to move in a few minutes, but those few minutes? She could have those all to herself.
“--Shepherd,” a woman said. Dr. Shepherd! Thank god; you're back. “Dr. Shepherd!”
Something flesh-colored and mushy waved in front of his face, not close enough to make him feel threatened, but close enough to make him jump reflexively as his thoughts came back into the room. He managed to hide his flinch by turning down his head and looking through his desk drawer, letting the jitters slide out through his fingertips into his pen tray. He made an intentional racket as he routed through the pens. He breathed in. Out. In. Out. He grabbed a random ballpoint pen, a red one, like he'd meant to grab a pen all long, and of course he hadn't flinched. He clicked the cap and looked at the woman standing across from him.
“Dr. Kepner,” he said flatly as his chest tightened, not from fear or nerves, but the slow boil of tension.
She still hadn't reported him, and he thought, maybe, at this point, her inaction meant she wasn't ever going to do so. The uncertainty still ate at him, though. He gestured at the empty rolling chair across from him. She slid awkwardly into it, dropping the last few inches with a jounce, and the leather squeaked as she settled. She clutched a clipboard and a little book to her chest like she thought he might try to rip them from her grasp, which told him he was coming off too intense.
He leaned back in his chair. He tried to relax, tried to unclench all the muscles that had tightened in her presence, but being around her set his teeth on edge, and being around her when she seemed nervous only fueled his own nervous fire. They didn't play off each other well. She seemed to know it, too. She'd either been avoiding him, or they'd somehow not run into each other more than twice since Thanksgiving due to happenstance. He was inclined to believe the former more than the latter. He couldn't think of any other staff member he'd seen less than her.
He cleared his throat. “Well, what can I do for you?” he prodded, and then he winced when her already unsure expression faltered further. He'd snapped. And he'd sounded impatient. Even to his own ears. He hadn't meant to snap or sound impatient.
Her mouth opened. Closed. “I'm...” She inhaled shortly and let it out. A loose bang fluttered as she pushed air over her lips. She reached a shaky hand to her clipboard and pulled out an envelope. “I wanted to give this to you.”
“What is it?” he said, reaching across the desk for it.
“My two-week notice.”
He blinked as his fingers closed around the envelope. The paper felt cool to the touch. Relief pinched his thoughts before anything else, and, weeks before, he would have rode it like a wave. Would have told her, So long, and thanks for all the fish. Except he couldn't, now, in good conscience, do that.
“Dr. Kepner--” he began.
“April,” she insisted, interrupting him.
He breathed in. He breathed out. Why did she have to act so familiar with him? “Dr. Kepner, you don't need to leave.”
She shook her head. “I do need to leave. I really, really do.”
He sat back in his chair and sighed. You did this to me, he'd nearly growled at her. You got me shot. Some of the tension bled away, leaving only tiredness. He swallowed, and he took another deep breath. “Dr. Kepner, I hope I've shown you that I can remain professional despite our personal differences,” he said, forcing cool when he couldn't manage warm. “Please, don't feel like you need to leave because of me. What happened before won't happen again. I promise.”
“My best friend died here,” she responded, her voice cracking on the last syllable. Her eyes reddened. Her clipboard and her little book fell to her lap as she reached up to wipe her face. “I found her body. Her head was blown to bits. I saw you get shot. I was threatened with a gun. You threatened me. I can't sleep at night. I have panic attacks. I just don't want to work here anymore. I swore to myself I'd try until the end of the year to see if it would get better. In two weeks, it will be January first, and it hasn't gotten any better. I can't do it anymore.”
He stared at her, not sure of what to say.
“You don't want me here, and I feel guilty whenever I'm in the room with you. It's just not a good environment for me. You might be able to force yourself to work with me, but I can't work with you.” Tears escaped her eyes, and sharp, wet slivers lashed her cheeks. His gut tightened as she added in a twisted whisper, “I just want to go home.”
He swallowed. Before, in the supply closet when she'd caught him falling apart, he'd gone on the offensive, and he'd been thrilled. Thrilled that he'd upset her. That he'd made her cry. He'd reveled in her tears. Reveled that he'd made her pay. That he'd gotten some justice. But watching her cry, now... There wasn't any justice. Her tears just made him feel sick, and he couldn't imagine why he'd ever wanted them.
His throat tightened. Silence in the office stretched. Sounds from the outside, footsteps, voices, and distant Christmas carols, filtered softly through the big glass window behind him, through the closed door.
“I didn't know you were having trouble,” he said, the words quiet.
“Nobody knew I've been having trouble,” she snapped. “My friends are all dead except for Jackson, and he's... got his own problems.”
Derek sighed. This was such a fucking mess. For weeks, for months, he'd felt like an emotional dunce because everybody was okay except for him, except he'd been finding out again and again since then that nobody was okay. Cristina had enough problems that she'd forced him onto a motorcycle in hopes of getting back her person. Owen was having problems, if Cristina's vague hints meant anything. Meredith had burst apart at the seams when he'd tried to thank her for saving his life. And now he'd come back to a hospital that was the equivalent of an emotional landfill. Everybody had problems.
Derek regarded Dr. Kepner for a long moment. He didn't like her. Thinking about when he'd been shot, thinking about her role in it, still coiled something awful inside of him like a snake. He blamed her. Her and Gary Clark. He couldn't say he wanted her to stay, because he didn't.
But he didn't want her to suffer, either. He didn't wish her any ill.
And he could help her.
“I want to write you a recommendation letter,” he said. “To take with you.”
“You don't have to do that,” she said.
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “And I'm sorry, Dr. Kepner. About the thing before. I wasn't... really in my right mind. At the time. What I did to you was very wrong.”
“It was,” she said. She paused, and she considered him. Her gaze softened, and for a moment, her expression seemed too tender. Too familiar. He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she didn't. She gave her head a little shake. She stood, and her chair creaked. She clutched her clipboard and her book against her chest, and she brushed her lab coat with her free hand. “I appreciate the letter.”
“You can add me as a reference, too,” he offered.
“Thank you, Dr. Shepherd,” she said with a cold formality that seemed forced to his ears.
“Good luck,” he said, and he thought that was that, because she turned to leave.
She paused at the doorway, though, and she turned. Her sudden coldness turned warm again. “Hey, have you...?” She shifted on her feet. “You've gotten help. Right?”
He nodded. “I've gotten lots of help.”
“Good,” she said. “I hope...” Her head tilted as she considered him again. The warmth in her eyes was unmistakable. She cared about him. More than she should. “I hope things get better for you,” she blurted. And then she was gone.
His tension eased, leaving ache and fatigue behind. He clutched the envelope containing her notice letter, and only then, did he let the relief sweep him away.