Replaced By Everyday - Part 7
Title: Replaced By Everyday (7/?)
Author: scatteroflight
Rating: M (for later chapters)
Summary: Meredith and Derek cope with the challenges of marriage and family. Season 4 future fic.
Derek spent the first night alone in the trailer getting drunk. He couldn’t stay at the house to get shitfaced, but alone, he was free to drown his sorrows without feeling like he was letting Meredith down somehow.
There was a half bottle of scotch at the back of the cupboard above the stove, behind a box of baking soda and a can of cooking spray. He took it down, and considered drinking straight from the bottle, but in the end, even in his grief, a sense of propriety overwhelmed him and he pulled out a heavy crystal tumbler - a wedding gift from the Chief and Adele - from the opposite cupboard and sat down at the table to pour himself drink after drink.
When he was good and drunk, he stumbled over to the bathroom, his pants falling around his ankles as he relieved himself and then hung over the small pedestal sink, heaving over and over again, without the benefit of emptying his stomach. When the heaving stopped, he pulled himself up to his full height, but turned away from the mirror, knowing without looking that his eyes were bloodshot, with heavy black circles beneath. His skin was pale and unshaven and his hair stuck out at odd angles from his head. In short: he looked like death.
Which was appropriate, under the circumstances, he mused morbidly, managing to pull his pants back up and fasten them before he stumbled back to the table for more scotch. A drop clung to the bottom of the bottle and he frowned at it, wondering how he’d managed to drain the bottle without noticing. He got up and searched haphazardly through the cabinets for more alcohol, but came up empty-handed. And he wasn’t drunk enough. Not nearly.
Growling in frustration, Derek considered his options. He wasn’t in the state of inebriation that he’d like, but he was still far too drunk to get behind the wheel, so leaving the property in search of more scotch wasn’t an option. Walking anywhere from here was impossible, and he couldn’t ask Meredith to pick up another bottle on her way home. As far as he knew, she wasn’t coming home; at least not in the foreseeable future.
That left one option: if Mohammed couldn’t go to the mountain…
Derek staggered over to the nightstand where he’d dropped his cell phone, Sidekick, and pager when he’d come in. He picked up the cell phone and stared bleary-eyed at the screen, fumbling with the impossibly tiny keys, scrolling through the phone book until he reached a number that Meredith had entered in it, despite his argument that he’d never call it. She’d had faith, telling him that if he could get over her giving up and ceasing to swim, he could get over anything; he could get past any other betrayal.
Without giving himself a chance to talk himself out of it, Derek punched the number into the keys, and held the tiny phone up to his ear. A moment later, he was greeted by Mark’s rich timbre.
“Yeah?” Mark said, obviously not bothering to check the call display.
“You owe me,” Derek said.
“Derek?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, slurring the words together.
“I owe you,” Mark repeated.
“Yes. I need a drink.”
“It sounds like you’ve already had a few,” Mark remarked.
“So? Shouldn’t I have a drink?”
In the background, somebody asked Mark a question and Derek could hear him reply in a short, clipped tone before he returned his attention to the phone call.
“Where are you?” Mark asked.
“Home.” Derek laughed hysterically at this. Home.
Home is where the heart is. His heart was broken. His heart had a broken brain. His heart was getting reacquainted with Jose Cuervo on the living room floor of her mother’s house surrounded by people she thought were better equipped to handle her grief than the one person in the world who felt it as strongly as she did.
There was a lasting silence, and then:
“Stay there.”
Derek laughed again. “Bring scotch,” he said, flipping his phone closed before he got a reply.
It took some time for Mark to get out to Derek and Meredith’s property, and he parked haphazardly behind Derek’s BMW, pointed his key chain at his car to lock and set the alarm even though he was in the middle of nowhere, and took the steps up to the trailer two at a time.
Mark didn’t bother knocking on the trailer door, letting himself in to find Derek sprawled out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. At the sound of his entrance, Derek lifted his head.
“Scotch?” he asked.
Mark frowned. “You look like shit,” he said bluntly.
“Yeah,” Derek agreed. “Scotch?” he said again.
Mark lifted his left hand, revealing a paper bag clutched in it.
Derek struggled to his feet and took it from Mark. “Thanks,” he muttered, crossing the room to where his glass sat, waiting.
“What, I drive all the way out here and you’re not even going to offer me a drink?” Mark asks, turning to watch Derek pry the lid off the bottle and slosh some into the glass.
Derek frowned.
“You can’t sit here and drink alone,” Mark told him. “That’s just fucking pathetic, man.”
“Yeah, well,” Derek said. “I’m pathetic.”
Mark shook his head and started opening cabinets. He finally located the one that held the glasses and pulled his own down, then sat across from Derek and poured his own drink.
Derek raised his glass in a salute. “To dead babies.”
Mark shook his head again. “Jesus, Derek.”
“What, didn’t you hear?” Derek snarled. It was easy to take it out on Mark. Mark, who had turned his world upside down and who’d never once expressed regret about decimating his lifelong friendship. Mark. His former best friend.
“I heard,” Mark said quietly. He took a sip of his scotch and regarded Derek from across the table.
“So, the whole hospital knows now?” Derek asked bitterly.
“No. Meredith’s friends know.”
“You’re not Meredith’s friend.”
Mark sighed. “Derek, I’m sorry. I know how much the two of you wanted this baby.”
“Do you?” Derek snapped. “How in the hell would you know that?”
“I know you,” Mark said, his eyes burning into Derek’s. “I’ve known you since you were six years old. I saw how differently you were carrying yourself, how you looked at Meredith, how fucking proud you were. I know you.”
Derek stared at Mark. Stared.
And then his shoulders hunched forward and he grasped at the tabletop. He trembled as though he were possessed, as though there was a fault-line running through him, breaking him in two. Suddenly, he was sobbing; he cried so hard that his entire body ached with it, his vision went blurry and then non-existent; he gulped large mouthfuls of air into his lungs and they burned with the effort of respiration. He cried so hard that he was choking on his tears and they fell onto the smooth surface of the table.
Mark sat across from him without comment, not a sound emerging from his mouth. When Derek finally composed himself, Mark reached for Derek’s empty glass, refilling it and pushing it towards him without a word. Derek wrapped his hands around the tumbler and brought it to his lips, gulping it gratefully.
“What in the hell are you doing, Derek?” Mark asked him after several minutes of silence.
Derek blinked, his eyelids feeling like sandpaper scratching the surface of his eyeballs. Blink, scratch, blink, scratch.
“What?” he rasped.
“Where’s your wife?”
Derek shook his head. “She doesn’t want me.”
Mark rolled his eyes. “You didn’t learn a damn thing, did you?”
Derek’s mouth fell open, but he didn’t speak. He barely reacted at all, the alcohol numbing him.
“She wants you,” Mark told him. “And more than that, she needs you. Just like Addison needed you, until she gave up and started just needing someone.”
Derek twitched. “Mer wouldn’t do that.”
“Neither would have Addison,” Mark said. He shrugged. “Look, Derek. I’m sorry that the two of you are going through this. Despite what you might think, you’re still my brother. You’re my family. And Meredith is a hell of a woman. She was my first friend here, and she might still be my only real friend here.”
“Stay away from her,” Derek warned his former best friend.
Mark shook his head. “You’re drunk, so I’ll give you a pass on the fact that you’re not listening to a word that I’m saying.”
“I’m listening!” Derek protested.
“Okay, then. If you remember nothing else tomorrow morning, remember this: she needs you. And you sure as hell need her.”
Derek didn’t respond. He just slumped forward on the table again, and closed his eyes.
Mark waited for a few minutes, then got up and poured the rest of the bottle down the drain, put the glasses in the sink, and managed to move Derek over to the bed, where he collapsed in a heap. Mark turned out the lights, picked up his car keys and left Derek to an almost comatose sleep, fuelled by scotch and misery.
***
Meredith woke in her old bed and stared up at the ceiling, watching a housefly crawl across the stipple. Her mouth was dry and her tongue coated, and she groaned as her pounding head reminded her of how she’d spent the previous evening. Of course, remembering that brought everything else back as well, and she turned her head to bury her face in her pillow. The slight motion unsettled her enough that a second later, she was pushing off the covers and stumbling towards the adjoining bathroom, falling to her knees in front of the toilet and retching uncomfortably.
A few minutes later, spent, she laid her head against the cool porcelain of the toilet and closed her eyes. Her forehead was damp, strands of hair clinging to it, but Meredith didn’t brush them away. Instead, she lay perfectly still, and listened to the house come to life. From across the hall, she could hear Izzie’s bedroom door open, followed by shuffling footsteps as her former roommate made her way across the hall to the main bathroom. The door closed with a dull thud, and there was the faint sound of Izzie doing her own retching. Somehow, Meredith was comforted in the knowledge that she wasn’t the only one in poor condition this morning.
This thought led her to another: Derek’s condition. Meredith breathed shallowly, trying not to think about the condition she’d left her husband in when she’d all but exiled him from her mother’s house. She tried not to think of how he was dealing with any of it, knowing that he was hurting just as much as she was. She felt completely incapable of comforting him, being that she was floundering herself. It would take a gargantuan effort just to lift herself off the floor.
Eventually, she did just that, standing and swaying for a moment before she felt settled enough to consider going back to bed. But the nasty feeling in her mouth bothered her enough that she found herself opening the medicine cabinet, trying to ignore her reflection - pasty, pale, with dark circles beneath her pale green eyes. Meredith squeezed some toothpaste onto an extra toothbrush she found in the cabinet drawer and brushed her teeth methodically, spitting the excess paste into the basin, and then rinsing her mouth with water. The cleanliness of her mouth prompted her to notice that her hair felt heavy with accumulated product and oiliness. It was bad enough that she found herself turning on the shower and stripping out of the clothes that she’d been wearing for too many days, leaving them in a soiled heap in the middle of the floor. She stepped beneath the spray, letting it rain down on her: tiny, relentless drops of water that beat against her skin and wash away the grime. She stayed in the shower until the water started to run cold and then twisted the hot and cold water taps off simultaneously and stepped out of the shower. There were no towels in the bathroom; nobody expected an overnight guest, so Meredith shuffled into the bedroom naked and found in the closet a ratty old bathrobe Derek had left behind when she’d moved out. Derek’s cologne still clung to the fabric and she inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, all of a sudden missing her husband desperately. Still, stubborn and unprepared to deal with his grief on top of her own, she ignored the pangs and instead climbed back into bed, burying herself in the bedding. Her wet hair soaked the pillow under her head, but she ignored this too, telling herself to sleep. Sleep would obliterate all the thoughts that she had to work at to keep at bay.
Eventually, she did drift off, only to be woken minutes later by the ringing of her cell phone, which lay on the nightstand even though she didn’t remember placing it there. She tried to ignore it, but it rang insistently and she fumbled for it, her eyes straining to make sense of the numbers. It was a number that she didn’t recognize, but the area code told her that it was from out of state. New York, somewhere, she thought, and realized with sudden terror that it was Derek’s mom.
She couldn’t talk to Elizabeth, she thought, nearly dropping the phone as though it was going to explode in her hand. It stopped ringing and the screen showed that she had a message waiting. Meredith dropped the phone back on to the nightstand after turning the ringer off, and closed her eyes again.
***
In the last year, Meredith has survived the death of her mother and her stepmother, the estrangement of her father, her own brush with death, and too much relationship drama to list. None of it was a bigger test of her strength than Thursday morning, when she declined each of her friends’ offers in turn to accompany her to her appointment, if only to drive her there and wait until Derek arrived at her side. She ended up driving herself, something she wasn’t sure she’d be capable of. But the task required her attention and momentarily kept her mind off of why she was headed to this particular destination in the first place. She parked in the lot and spotted Derek’s BMW already parked and abandoned. Pushing down the sick feeling in her stomach, the panic that makes her feel light-headed, Meredith entered the lobby and pushed the elevator button. She stood waiting for it, and when it arrived, she couldn’t push herself forward to get onto it, knowing that within minutes, her pregnancy would be over, her child gone.
The elevator doors closed without her on board and after a minute of standing there, staring blankly at the closed doors, she was startled when someone reached around her to push the button again.
Meredith turned and found herself looking at a girl of no more than nineteen, her abdomen heavily swollen. She was carrying another child and she smiled at Meredith.
“Sorry,” she said apologetically. “They made me drink all this water, and I’m kind of anxious to get up there and get the test done so that I can pee.” She laughed self-consciously and tugged at her t-shirt, pulling it down over her straining belly.
Meredith nodded without comment, feeling anxious and annoyed that this girl who was barely out of high school was already pregnant with her second child while Meredith was losing her first. The elevator arrived again, and the girl stepped on to it, while Meredith hesitated once again on the other side. The girl tilted her head and smiled, looking inquisitively at Meredith.
“Are you going up?” she asked after a moment.
“Oh,” Meredith said. “Yeah, yes.” She stepped on board, and swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat.
“What floor?” The girl asked.
“Three,” Meredith said, even though she’d rather go to any other floor, or back home to pull the covers over her head and shut the world out.
The girl gave her a smile. “Me too.”
They rode in silence and when the elevator stopped on three, they got off and Meredith followed the girl down the hall to the reception area. Once inside, she spotted Derek. He sat with his head in his hands and when he looked up, she noted his unkempt appearance, so out of character for her husband. He got to his feet and made his way over to her, but she shrunk away from him, shaking her head almost imperceptibly as she walked over to the reception desk just in time to hear the girl from the elevator announce herself as Jamie. The nurse behind the desk smiled and asked Jamie to have a seat, and then turned to Meredith.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” Meredith said. “I’m, uh, Meredith Grey… Shepherd. It’s under Shepherd.”
The nurse nodded, and then consulted the doctor’s list. “Right,” she said. “Go ahead and take a seat.
Meredith turned and looked around, knowing that she should go sit next to her husband. Instead, she turned back and asked where the washroom was. “Right down the hall, first door on your left,” the nurse replied.
Meredith thanked her and then mouthed “bathroom” at Derek before she fled. Alone in the bathroom, she shut herself in a stall and sat there for as long as she could before she knew that time had run out. She returned to the waiting area moments before her name was called. When Derek got up to follow her, she turned to him, her eyes pleading, but he would not be swayed. He took her hand and did not let her pull it away as they walked together down the hall toward the room at the end.
***
They left her car in the lot afterwards, Meredith reluctantly admitting that she was in no shape to drive herself home. But she insisted that he take her back to the house, and not out to the trailer. He didn’t argue and she was grateful to him for it. Nobody was home when they arrived, and Meredith was just as grateful for that. He helped her upstairs to bed, and then went back down to the kitchen to make her some tea even though she didn’t want any. When he returned, she laid facing away from him and he sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her back through the thin cotton of her t-shirt.
“Mer,” he whispered. “Do you want me to stay?”
Yes, she thought. I want you, but I need ...
She shook her head no and he pulled his hand away from her, stung by her rejection.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Okay.”
She twisted towards him but kept her eyes at a point over his shoulder.
“Derek…”
“I’ll wait downstairs until somebody comes home.”
“I’m... I...”
Just for a little while.
“I know,” he said. A part of him wanted to tell her that he didn’t really care if she needed to be alone; this was his child, too. Not only that, but he loved her. He wanted to be there for her as much as he needed to be there for himself. But he was afraid to push her; she looked like she was barely hanging on and he didn’t want to push her over the edge. So he backed off, even though every fibre of his being told him to stay.
He leaned over the bed and brushed her forehead with his lips, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath them, the only thing that reassured him that she was still alive beneath the weight of her grief.
He left the room quietly, went downstairs, and sat on the living room couch, facing the black television screen. He wasn’t sure how long he sat like that before the front door opened and Alex walked through.
“Oh,” he said in surprise, dropping his keys on the table.
Derek scrubbed at his face with the palms of his hands. “She’s upstairs,” he said to Alex. He got to his feet and pried his car keys out of the pocket of his jeans.
“You’re going?” Alex asked in confusion.
“Dr. Briscombe wrote her a script for some sedatives, if she needs them,” Derek told Alex. “If she can’t sleep.”
Alex nodded. “Okay.” He shifted awkwardly on his feet. “Are you…?”
“Fine,” Derek said. “I’m fine.”
***
“Mer?” came Izzie’s whispered voice some time that evening. She’d come into the bedroom uninvited and was hovering over Meredith, trying to determine if she was asleep.
Meredith sighed and Izzie extended her hand forward, putting the cordless into Meredith’s hand. “You have a call. I tried telling her that you’re not feeling well, but she said that if you don’t take it, she’ll come here herself and talk to you.”
Meredith frowned, and reluctantly put the receiver to her ear, expecting Cristina’s voice on the other end of the line.
“It’s over,” she said into the phone. “It’s done.”
“Oh, Meredith,” came Elizabeth’s voice, tinged with sorrow.
Meredith inhaled sharply. “Oh,” she said. “I, uh, I have to…Izzie!” she whispered pleadingly, thrusting the phone towards her. Izzie stepped back, shaking her blonde head, her eyes wide.
Meredith sighed and brought the phone back to her ear.
“Meredith,” Elizabeth was saying. “I know that you don’t want to talk to me right now. I know, dear. So you don’t have to talk. You don’t need to say anything, or tell me how you’re coping. But I do need you to listen. Can you do that?”
Meredith didn’t reply, so Elizabeth took that as a yes and continued speaking.
“I think you need to get out of Seattle for a while. I’m worried about both of you. Derek is devastated. He has no family there, aside from you and the two of you need to be together, not running off to lick your wounds in private. I know that you’re in unimaginable pain right now. There’s nothing in the world that anyone can say or do that will relieve the pain of your loss. But Meredith, you stand to lose more than your child. I know that you don’t want to hear this right now, but please know that I’m not saying this to make things more difficult. You and Derek will lose each other if you aren’t able to find a way to grieve together.”
Meredith’s eyes darted over to Izzie, who still hovered in the doorway. She cleared her throat and placed her hand over the receiver.
“Iz,” she said. “It’s okay.”
Izzie frowned and nodded, then stepped out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Meredith took her hand away from the phone.
“It’s too much,” she admitted to Elizabeth, her voice come out strangled after days of minimal use. “I can’t… he’s… I can barely…”
“I know, dear,” Elizabeth said gently. “You don’t have to. Not alone. Come out here,” she invited her daughter-in-law. “Both of you. Come stay with me.”
“Oh,” Meredith said. “I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t think…”
“It’ll just be the three of us,” Elizabeth assured her. “I won’t let any of my daughters know that you’re coming. Nancy and her husband are away in Nantucket anyway, and Kathleen will be off at a conference. All of Derek’s sisters are busy at this time of year, with their children and their jobs. You won’t be bothered.”
“I don’t know,” Meredith said again.
“You’ll have peace and quiet,” Elizabeth promised her. “A change of scenery will do you good. You need time to heal, Meredith. Both of you do.”
“I’ll think about it,” Meredith finally said, if only for the sake of placating Elizabeth and giving herself a reprieve from the prodding.
“Nonsense,” Elizabeth said decisively. “You’ll come.”
“Have you talked to Derek about this?” Meredith asked, sitting up in bed and pinching the bridge of her nose to keep herself from bursting into tears yet again.
“I haven’t been able to get a hold of him,” Elizabeth admitted. “I’m worried about him. I’m worried about both of you.”
“Even if I agree, that doesn’t mean that he will,” Meredith told her. “That doesn’t mean that I’m saying yes,” she added.
“Meredith,” Elizabeth said calmly. “Don’t you know by now that Derek would follow you to the ends of the earth?”
Meredith didn’t speak for several moments. Then she exhaled and blinked away the tears that had come without warning.
“Maybe,” she said, in response to the invitation.
“I’ll book your flight,” Elizabeth said. She quickly said goodbye and hung up before Meredith had a chance to argue.
Author: scatteroflight
Rating: M (for later chapters)
Summary: Meredith and Derek cope with the challenges of marriage and family. Season 4 future fic.
Derek spent the first night alone in the trailer getting drunk. He couldn’t stay at the house to get shitfaced, but alone, he was free to drown his sorrows without feeling like he was letting Meredith down somehow.
There was a half bottle of scotch at the back of the cupboard above the stove, behind a box of baking soda and a can of cooking spray. He took it down, and considered drinking straight from the bottle, but in the end, even in his grief, a sense of propriety overwhelmed him and he pulled out a heavy crystal tumbler - a wedding gift from the Chief and Adele - from the opposite cupboard and sat down at the table to pour himself drink after drink.
When he was good and drunk, he stumbled over to the bathroom, his pants falling around his ankles as he relieved himself and then hung over the small pedestal sink, heaving over and over again, without the benefit of emptying his stomach. When the heaving stopped, he pulled himself up to his full height, but turned away from the mirror, knowing without looking that his eyes were bloodshot, with heavy black circles beneath. His skin was pale and unshaven and his hair stuck out at odd angles from his head. In short: he looked like death.
Which was appropriate, under the circumstances, he mused morbidly, managing to pull his pants back up and fasten them before he stumbled back to the table for more scotch. A drop clung to the bottom of the bottle and he frowned at it, wondering how he’d managed to drain the bottle without noticing. He got up and searched haphazardly through the cabinets for more alcohol, but came up empty-handed. And he wasn’t drunk enough. Not nearly.
Growling in frustration, Derek considered his options. He wasn’t in the state of inebriation that he’d like, but he was still far too drunk to get behind the wheel, so leaving the property in search of more scotch wasn’t an option. Walking anywhere from here was impossible, and he couldn’t ask Meredith to pick up another bottle on her way home. As far as he knew, she wasn’t coming home; at least not in the foreseeable future.
That left one option: if Mohammed couldn’t go to the mountain…
Derek staggered over to the nightstand where he’d dropped his cell phone, Sidekick, and pager when he’d come in. He picked up the cell phone and stared bleary-eyed at the screen, fumbling with the impossibly tiny keys, scrolling through the phone book until he reached a number that Meredith had entered in it, despite his argument that he’d never call it. She’d had faith, telling him that if he could get over her giving up and ceasing to swim, he could get over anything; he could get past any other betrayal.
Without giving himself a chance to talk himself out of it, Derek punched the number into the keys, and held the tiny phone up to his ear. A moment later, he was greeted by Mark’s rich timbre.
“Yeah?” Mark said, obviously not bothering to check the call display.
“You owe me,” Derek said.
“Derek?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, slurring the words together.
“I owe you,” Mark repeated.
“Yes. I need a drink.”
“It sounds like you’ve already had a few,” Mark remarked.
“So? Shouldn’t I have a drink?”
In the background, somebody asked Mark a question and Derek could hear him reply in a short, clipped tone before he returned his attention to the phone call.
“Where are you?” Mark asked.
“Home.” Derek laughed hysterically at this. Home.
Home is where the heart is. His heart was broken. His heart had a broken brain. His heart was getting reacquainted with Jose Cuervo on the living room floor of her mother’s house surrounded by people she thought were better equipped to handle her grief than the one person in the world who felt it as strongly as she did.
There was a lasting silence, and then:
“Stay there.”
Derek laughed again. “Bring scotch,” he said, flipping his phone closed before he got a reply.
It took some time for Mark to get out to Derek and Meredith’s property, and he parked haphazardly behind Derek’s BMW, pointed his key chain at his car to lock and set the alarm even though he was in the middle of nowhere, and took the steps up to the trailer two at a time.
Mark didn’t bother knocking on the trailer door, letting himself in to find Derek sprawled out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. At the sound of his entrance, Derek lifted his head.
“Scotch?” he asked.
Mark frowned. “You look like shit,” he said bluntly.
“Yeah,” Derek agreed. “Scotch?” he said again.
Mark lifted his left hand, revealing a paper bag clutched in it.
Derek struggled to his feet and took it from Mark. “Thanks,” he muttered, crossing the room to where his glass sat, waiting.
“What, I drive all the way out here and you’re not even going to offer me a drink?” Mark asks, turning to watch Derek pry the lid off the bottle and slosh some into the glass.
Derek frowned.
“You can’t sit here and drink alone,” Mark told him. “That’s just fucking pathetic, man.”
“Yeah, well,” Derek said. “I’m pathetic.”
Mark shook his head and started opening cabinets. He finally located the one that held the glasses and pulled his own down, then sat across from Derek and poured his own drink.
Derek raised his glass in a salute. “To dead babies.”
Mark shook his head again. “Jesus, Derek.”
“What, didn’t you hear?” Derek snarled. It was easy to take it out on Mark. Mark, who had turned his world upside down and who’d never once expressed regret about decimating his lifelong friendship. Mark. His former best friend.
“I heard,” Mark said quietly. He took a sip of his scotch and regarded Derek from across the table.
“So, the whole hospital knows now?” Derek asked bitterly.
“No. Meredith’s friends know.”
“You’re not Meredith’s friend.”
Mark sighed. “Derek, I’m sorry. I know how much the two of you wanted this baby.”
“Do you?” Derek snapped. “How in the hell would you know that?”
“I know you,” Mark said, his eyes burning into Derek’s. “I’ve known you since you were six years old. I saw how differently you were carrying yourself, how you looked at Meredith, how fucking proud you were. I know you.”
Derek stared at Mark. Stared.
And then his shoulders hunched forward and he grasped at the tabletop. He trembled as though he were possessed, as though there was a fault-line running through him, breaking him in two. Suddenly, he was sobbing; he cried so hard that his entire body ached with it, his vision went blurry and then non-existent; he gulped large mouthfuls of air into his lungs and they burned with the effort of respiration. He cried so hard that he was choking on his tears and they fell onto the smooth surface of the table.
Mark sat across from him without comment, not a sound emerging from his mouth. When Derek finally composed himself, Mark reached for Derek’s empty glass, refilling it and pushing it towards him without a word. Derek wrapped his hands around the tumbler and brought it to his lips, gulping it gratefully.
“What in the hell are you doing, Derek?” Mark asked him after several minutes of silence.
Derek blinked, his eyelids feeling like sandpaper scratching the surface of his eyeballs. Blink, scratch, blink, scratch.
“What?” he rasped.
“Where’s your wife?”
Derek shook his head. “She doesn’t want me.”
Mark rolled his eyes. “You didn’t learn a damn thing, did you?”
Derek’s mouth fell open, but he didn’t speak. He barely reacted at all, the alcohol numbing him.
“She wants you,” Mark told him. “And more than that, she needs you. Just like Addison needed you, until she gave up and started just needing someone.”
Derek twitched. “Mer wouldn’t do that.”
“Neither would have Addison,” Mark said. He shrugged. “Look, Derek. I’m sorry that the two of you are going through this. Despite what you might think, you’re still my brother. You’re my family. And Meredith is a hell of a woman. She was my first friend here, and she might still be my only real friend here.”
“Stay away from her,” Derek warned his former best friend.
Mark shook his head. “You’re drunk, so I’ll give you a pass on the fact that you’re not listening to a word that I’m saying.”
“I’m listening!” Derek protested.
“Okay, then. If you remember nothing else tomorrow morning, remember this: she needs you. And you sure as hell need her.”
Derek didn’t respond. He just slumped forward on the table again, and closed his eyes.
Mark waited for a few minutes, then got up and poured the rest of the bottle down the drain, put the glasses in the sink, and managed to move Derek over to the bed, where he collapsed in a heap. Mark turned out the lights, picked up his car keys and left Derek to an almost comatose sleep, fuelled by scotch and misery.
***
Meredith woke in her old bed and stared up at the ceiling, watching a housefly crawl across the stipple. Her mouth was dry and her tongue coated, and she groaned as her pounding head reminded her of how she’d spent the previous evening. Of course, remembering that brought everything else back as well, and she turned her head to bury her face in her pillow. The slight motion unsettled her enough that a second later, she was pushing off the covers and stumbling towards the adjoining bathroom, falling to her knees in front of the toilet and retching uncomfortably.
A few minutes later, spent, she laid her head against the cool porcelain of the toilet and closed her eyes. Her forehead was damp, strands of hair clinging to it, but Meredith didn’t brush them away. Instead, she lay perfectly still, and listened to the house come to life. From across the hall, she could hear Izzie’s bedroom door open, followed by shuffling footsteps as her former roommate made her way across the hall to the main bathroom. The door closed with a dull thud, and there was the faint sound of Izzie doing her own retching. Somehow, Meredith was comforted in the knowledge that she wasn’t the only one in poor condition this morning.
This thought led her to another: Derek’s condition. Meredith breathed shallowly, trying not to think about the condition she’d left her husband in when she’d all but exiled him from her mother’s house. She tried not to think of how he was dealing with any of it, knowing that he was hurting just as much as she was. She felt completely incapable of comforting him, being that she was floundering herself. It would take a gargantuan effort just to lift herself off the floor.
Eventually, she did just that, standing and swaying for a moment before she felt settled enough to consider going back to bed. But the nasty feeling in her mouth bothered her enough that she found herself opening the medicine cabinet, trying to ignore her reflection - pasty, pale, with dark circles beneath her pale green eyes. Meredith squeezed some toothpaste onto an extra toothbrush she found in the cabinet drawer and brushed her teeth methodically, spitting the excess paste into the basin, and then rinsing her mouth with water. The cleanliness of her mouth prompted her to notice that her hair felt heavy with accumulated product and oiliness. It was bad enough that she found herself turning on the shower and stripping out of the clothes that she’d been wearing for too many days, leaving them in a soiled heap in the middle of the floor. She stepped beneath the spray, letting it rain down on her: tiny, relentless drops of water that beat against her skin and wash away the grime. She stayed in the shower until the water started to run cold and then twisted the hot and cold water taps off simultaneously and stepped out of the shower. There were no towels in the bathroom; nobody expected an overnight guest, so Meredith shuffled into the bedroom naked and found in the closet a ratty old bathrobe Derek had left behind when she’d moved out. Derek’s cologne still clung to the fabric and she inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, all of a sudden missing her husband desperately. Still, stubborn and unprepared to deal with his grief on top of her own, she ignored the pangs and instead climbed back into bed, burying herself in the bedding. Her wet hair soaked the pillow under her head, but she ignored this too, telling herself to sleep. Sleep would obliterate all the thoughts that she had to work at to keep at bay.
Eventually, she did drift off, only to be woken minutes later by the ringing of her cell phone, which lay on the nightstand even though she didn’t remember placing it there. She tried to ignore it, but it rang insistently and she fumbled for it, her eyes straining to make sense of the numbers. It was a number that she didn’t recognize, but the area code told her that it was from out of state. New York, somewhere, she thought, and realized with sudden terror that it was Derek’s mom.
She couldn’t talk to Elizabeth, she thought, nearly dropping the phone as though it was going to explode in her hand. It stopped ringing and the screen showed that she had a message waiting. Meredith dropped the phone back on to the nightstand after turning the ringer off, and closed her eyes again.
***
In the last year, Meredith has survived the death of her mother and her stepmother, the estrangement of her father, her own brush with death, and too much relationship drama to list. None of it was a bigger test of her strength than Thursday morning, when she declined each of her friends’ offers in turn to accompany her to her appointment, if only to drive her there and wait until Derek arrived at her side. She ended up driving herself, something she wasn’t sure she’d be capable of. But the task required her attention and momentarily kept her mind off of why she was headed to this particular destination in the first place. She parked in the lot and spotted Derek’s BMW already parked and abandoned. Pushing down the sick feeling in her stomach, the panic that makes her feel light-headed, Meredith entered the lobby and pushed the elevator button. She stood waiting for it, and when it arrived, she couldn’t push herself forward to get onto it, knowing that within minutes, her pregnancy would be over, her child gone.
The elevator doors closed without her on board and after a minute of standing there, staring blankly at the closed doors, she was startled when someone reached around her to push the button again.
Meredith turned and found herself looking at a girl of no more than nineteen, her abdomen heavily swollen. She was carrying another child and she smiled at Meredith.
“Sorry,” she said apologetically. “They made me drink all this water, and I’m kind of anxious to get up there and get the test done so that I can pee.” She laughed self-consciously and tugged at her t-shirt, pulling it down over her straining belly.
Meredith nodded without comment, feeling anxious and annoyed that this girl who was barely out of high school was already pregnant with her second child while Meredith was losing her first. The elevator arrived again, and the girl stepped on to it, while Meredith hesitated once again on the other side. The girl tilted her head and smiled, looking inquisitively at Meredith.
“Are you going up?” she asked after a moment.
“Oh,” Meredith said. “Yeah, yes.” She stepped on board, and swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat.
“What floor?” The girl asked.
“Three,” Meredith said, even though she’d rather go to any other floor, or back home to pull the covers over her head and shut the world out.
The girl gave her a smile. “Me too.”
They rode in silence and when the elevator stopped on three, they got off and Meredith followed the girl down the hall to the reception area. Once inside, she spotted Derek. He sat with his head in his hands and when he looked up, she noted his unkempt appearance, so out of character for her husband. He got to his feet and made his way over to her, but she shrunk away from him, shaking her head almost imperceptibly as she walked over to the reception desk just in time to hear the girl from the elevator announce herself as Jamie. The nurse behind the desk smiled and asked Jamie to have a seat, and then turned to Meredith.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” Meredith said. “I’m, uh, Meredith Grey… Shepherd. It’s under Shepherd.”
The nurse nodded, and then consulted the doctor’s list. “Right,” she said. “Go ahead and take a seat.
Meredith turned and looked around, knowing that she should go sit next to her husband. Instead, she turned back and asked where the washroom was. “Right down the hall, first door on your left,” the nurse replied.
Meredith thanked her and then mouthed “bathroom” at Derek before she fled. Alone in the bathroom, she shut herself in a stall and sat there for as long as she could before she knew that time had run out. She returned to the waiting area moments before her name was called. When Derek got up to follow her, she turned to him, her eyes pleading, but he would not be swayed. He took her hand and did not let her pull it away as they walked together down the hall toward the room at the end.
***
They left her car in the lot afterwards, Meredith reluctantly admitting that she was in no shape to drive herself home. But she insisted that he take her back to the house, and not out to the trailer. He didn’t argue and she was grateful to him for it. Nobody was home when they arrived, and Meredith was just as grateful for that. He helped her upstairs to bed, and then went back down to the kitchen to make her some tea even though she didn’t want any. When he returned, she laid facing away from him and he sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her back through the thin cotton of her t-shirt.
“Mer,” he whispered. “Do you want me to stay?”
Yes, she thought. I want you, but I need ...
She shook her head no and he pulled his hand away from her, stung by her rejection.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Okay.”
She twisted towards him but kept her eyes at a point over his shoulder.
“Derek…”
“I’ll wait downstairs until somebody comes home.”
“I’m... I...”
Just for a little while.
“I know,” he said. A part of him wanted to tell her that he didn’t really care if she needed to be alone; this was his child, too. Not only that, but he loved her. He wanted to be there for her as much as he needed to be there for himself. But he was afraid to push her; she looked like she was barely hanging on and he didn’t want to push her over the edge. So he backed off, even though every fibre of his being told him to stay.
He leaned over the bed and brushed her forehead with his lips, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath them, the only thing that reassured him that she was still alive beneath the weight of her grief.
He left the room quietly, went downstairs, and sat on the living room couch, facing the black television screen. He wasn’t sure how long he sat like that before the front door opened and Alex walked through.
“Oh,” he said in surprise, dropping his keys on the table.
Derek scrubbed at his face with the palms of his hands. “She’s upstairs,” he said to Alex. He got to his feet and pried his car keys out of the pocket of his jeans.
“You’re going?” Alex asked in confusion.
“Dr. Briscombe wrote her a script for some sedatives, if she needs them,” Derek told Alex. “If she can’t sleep.”
Alex nodded. “Okay.” He shifted awkwardly on his feet. “Are you…?”
“Fine,” Derek said. “I’m fine.”
***
“Mer?” came Izzie’s whispered voice some time that evening. She’d come into the bedroom uninvited and was hovering over Meredith, trying to determine if she was asleep.
Meredith sighed and Izzie extended her hand forward, putting the cordless into Meredith’s hand. “You have a call. I tried telling her that you’re not feeling well, but she said that if you don’t take it, she’ll come here herself and talk to you.”
Meredith frowned, and reluctantly put the receiver to her ear, expecting Cristina’s voice on the other end of the line.
“It’s over,” she said into the phone. “It’s done.”
“Oh, Meredith,” came Elizabeth’s voice, tinged with sorrow.
Meredith inhaled sharply. “Oh,” she said. “I, uh, I have to…Izzie!” she whispered pleadingly, thrusting the phone towards her. Izzie stepped back, shaking her blonde head, her eyes wide.
Meredith sighed and brought the phone back to her ear.
“Meredith,” Elizabeth was saying. “I know that you don’t want to talk to me right now. I know, dear. So you don’t have to talk. You don’t need to say anything, or tell me how you’re coping. But I do need you to listen. Can you do that?”
Meredith didn’t reply, so Elizabeth took that as a yes and continued speaking.
“I think you need to get out of Seattle for a while. I’m worried about both of you. Derek is devastated. He has no family there, aside from you and the two of you need to be together, not running off to lick your wounds in private. I know that you’re in unimaginable pain right now. There’s nothing in the world that anyone can say or do that will relieve the pain of your loss. But Meredith, you stand to lose more than your child. I know that you don’t want to hear this right now, but please know that I’m not saying this to make things more difficult. You and Derek will lose each other if you aren’t able to find a way to grieve together.”
Meredith’s eyes darted over to Izzie, who still hovered in the doorway. She cleared her throat and placed her hand over the receiver.
“Iz,” she said. “It’s okay.”
Izzie frowned and nodded, then stepped out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Meredith took her hand away from the phone.
“It’s too much,” she admitted to Elizabeth, her voice come out strangled after days of minimal use. “I can’t… he’s… I can barely…”
“I know, dear,” Elizabeth said gently. “You don’t have to. Not alone. Come out here,” she invited her daughter-in-law. “Both of you. Come stay with me.”
“Oh,” Meredith said. “I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t think…”
“It’ll just be the three of us,” Elizabeth assured her. “I won’t let any of my daughters know that you’re coming. Nancy and her husband are away in Nantucket anyway, and Kathleen will be off at a conference. All of Derek’s sisters are busy at this time of year, with their children and their jobs. You won’t be bothered.”
“I don’t know,” Meredith said again.
“You’ll have peace and quiet,” Elizabeth promised her. “A change of scenery will do you good. You need time to heal, Meredith. Both of you do.”
“I’ll think about it,” Meredith finally said, if only for the sake of placating Elizabeth and giving herself a reprieve from the prodding.
“Nonsense,” Elizabeth said decisively. “You’ll come.”
“Have you talked to Derek about this?” Meredith asked, sitting up in bed and pinching the bridge of her nose to keep herself from bursting into tears yet again.
“I haven’t been able to get a hold of him,” Elizabeth admitted. “I’m worried about him. I’m worried about both of you.”
“Even if I agree, that doesn’t mean that he will,” Meredith told her. “That doesn’t mean that I’m saying yes,” she added.
“Meredith,” Elizabeth said calmly. “Don’t you know by now that Derek would follow you to the ends of the earth?”
Meredith didn’t speak for several moments. Then she exhaled and blinked away the tears that had come without warning.
“Maybe,” she said, in response to the invitation.
“I’ll book your flight,” Elizabeth said. She quickly said goodbye and hung up before Meredith had a chance to argue.