love in the time of science - chapter seventeen
So, I know I haven't updated LitToS in forever. And I'm sorry. I really, really am. Life's been keeping me very busy these days and probably will through the end of July. But...I'm updating now. And I'll update again as soon as I possibly can. Many, many thanks for being patient and awesome and putting up with my snail-esque writing speed. I hope everyone's having a great summer!
Title: Love in the Time of Science
Author: Morgen
Summary: Love. Tragedy. The things we’ve left unsaid. This is their story. Set after episode 5.05.
Disclaimer: I am not famous. I do not own TV shows. I am a poor college student with a laptop and a serious procrastination habit.
Rating: Written for grownups.
Meredith stood with her palm pressed flat against the glass, peering through the slats in the blinds. The room inside was dark, but she could make out the form of a woman slumped on the couch against the far wall, curled into the cushions and fast asleep. A man sat in a chair - the husband, she guessed - with his head bowed forward as if exhaustion had stolen him off to sleep while he sat vigil at his daughter’s bedside. She could see Sarah too; just a tiny body dwarfed by its bed and lost beneath a sea of tubes and wires. It wasn’t all that different from how Derek looked now, but thinking of him made her eyes prick with a fresh round of tears. She took a deep breath and tried to push it away. He was asleep. He was alive. Everything was okay. It was a tired mantra she’d worn into her mind over and over again throughout the long, sleepless night.
“Dr. Grey?”
She jumped, whirling around to find Hess standing beside her in a pair of wrinkled scrubs. His eyes were shadowed with sweeps of blue, the bags beneath them heavy.
“Dr. Hess…hi.” Meredith looked down at her feet and then back up at the man. She felt as tired as he looked, her mind too sluggish to come up with anything else to say.
“How’s Dr. Shepherd doing?” he asked.
“Sleeping,” she said. At least she hoped he still was. The night nurse had been coming by on the hour to check his vitals, and he’d woken up a little each time, groggy and grumbling as fingers sought out his pulse. She wanted to be there every time he so much as stirred in his sleep, but when he’d asked her about Sarah earlier, she hadn’t even known if the child was dead or alive. Sarah had vanished off her radar the moment Derek collapsed, and yet she’d gone ahead and promised him that she was okay anyway.
The guilt had hit her around midnight, forcing her to wander the PICU in search of genuine good news. Instead, she’d pressed her face to the window and found Sarah still intubated.
“Shouldn’t you be doing the same?” said Hess.
She stared at him blankly. “Doing what?”
“Sleeping.”
“On, no. No. I’m good,” she stammered, shoving her hands deep into the back pockets of her jeans. But the lack of sleep was already getting to her. Her head was throbbing in three places and her eyes felt dried out like she’d gone too long without blinking. She frowned and glanced back at the window, adding, “I just wanted to check on Sarah. See how she’s doing.” It was none of his business, really, if she felt dead on her feet.
Hess took a step closer to the glass himself. “You did a good job.”
“She’s still intubated…”
“It’s just a precaution.”
“So she’s still breathing on her own?” asked Meredith, trying not to stare too desperately at the child.
Hess nodded. “She is.”
“But she’s not waking up.”
“She hasn’t yet,” he corrected. “It’s not unheard of for a patient to have difficulty waking up after such an invasive procedure. I wouldn’t be too concerned yet.”
“Right, right. It’s just…Beth. She was our one success, and Beth woke up that night. After her surgery, she woke up.”
“I see,” said Hess, rubbing his hands together. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since Sarah’s surgery, but I admit I know very little about the clinical trial compared to you. You could always check with Dr. Shepherd in the morning. He’d know best.”
Meredith bit her lip, saying nothing. There could be no asking Derek. Not now. Not when he’d almost died to keep Sarah alive. Besides, Hess seemed satisfied. He wasn’t racing to Derek’s hospital bed for a consult. Everything was fine. Fine, fine, fine. She told herself so again and again, ignoring the sick feeling she got in her gut every time she looked at Sarah.
“You know they were hoping to speak with you,” continued Hess.
She blinked. “Who?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Roche,” he said with a tilt of his head towards the darkened room.
“Oh. Why…?”
“You were their daughter’s surgeon,” he said as if it should be obvious.
“Right,” muttered Meredith. “Her surgeon.” She tried not to notice the panic that slipped under her skin like a splinter. They probably wanted to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing, taking over for the head of neurosurgery like she was anything close to the surgeon he was. Maybe they’d tell her that they were suing.
“They want to thank you,” added Hess. “For stepping up under the circumstances.”
“They want to thank me?” said Meredith, her voice dull with disbelief. Somehow that felt even worse than the thoughts of malpractice. She looked back into the room and shook her head. “I don’t, I can’t…Derek’s sick,” she said. “I can’t just leave him alone to talk to them!” She cringed as the words left her lips, wondering if he was going to point out how she’d already left Derek alone to head over to the PICU, that it was how she was standing there talking to him in the first place.
Hess simply gave her a warm smile that stretched up to his ears. “They’re aware your boyfriend just had major surgery,” he said gently, but even that made her flinch. Her boyfriend. It didn’t sound right anymore. She pushed at her hair and promised herself he would remember by morning. He had to. The mental fog from the anesthesia was already rolling back, and he would remember.
“They aren’t expecting anything,” continued Hess. “But I know it would mean a lot to them if you stopped by.”
“Right,” said Meredith, dragging her mind back to Sarah’s parents. They wanted to thank her. For what? Putting their daughter in a coma while letting Derek almost die on her watch? She didn’t deserve any praise.
“Think about it, Dr. Grey,” said Hess quietly. “And send my wishes for a speedy recovery to Dr. Shepherd.” And then with a nod of his head, he excused himself to check on Sarah. Meredith stayed at the window, half hoping to see her stir at the sound of footsteps. But it was her father who awoke instead, and as he shifted in his chair, she scurried away down the halls of the PICU.
She went from one intensive care unit to another, holding her breath as she eased the door to Derek’s room open just far enough to slip inside. He didn’t stir when she collapsed into the chair at his bedside and so she scooted closer, a tired smile on her face as she listened to the slow, heavy sounds of his breathing.
“I’m back,” she murmured.
She felt too tense to sleep, and so Meredith leaned over and groped along the floor, fingers searching for the clipboard a nurse had given her earlier. It was heavy with forms she couldn’t read without turning on a light or heading out into the hall, and she didn’t want to either disturb Derek or leave him again. Instead, she fished her phone out of her pocket and flipped it open, hunching over the tiny rectangle of light that illuminated the page. She angled the phone with her left hand and scribbled Derek Shepherd across the line labeled patient’s name with her right.
It was a slow process. The light from the phone was dim, and it gave out completely every few words, forcing her to stop and press a button to call it back. Eventually though she had name and number, address and date of birth filled out for him. It wasn’t all that legible, but who took the time to write tidily when they were being admitted to a hospital anyway?
Her small sense of accomplishment died as she looked at the next line, and she let her phone go dark with a defeated sigh. Insurance information seemed like the sort of thing a fiancée should know, but she wasn’t even sure where he kept his insurance card. Wallet was her first guess. But whether that was in the locker room or his office, tucked in the pocket of his jeans or stored somewhere safer while he worked, she didn’t have a clue. And she was too tired and sore to get up and hunt in all the likely places. Because she was a crappy fiancée. And a crappy emergency contact person.
She hadn’t even known that she was Derek’s emergency contact before that evening. They’d never discussed it. But then a message had shown up on her voicemail alerting her to his injuries well after the fact, the hospital system finally catching up with reality. She’d be annoyed about that he’d failed to so much as mention she was now his freaking person, which was kind of a big deal in her book, but she still had Cristina’s name penciled in on her own form. That brought another twinge of guilt and a hollow feeling she didn’t want to examine too closely. She was the one that remembered the whole engaged thing, and yet he was the one with her name on his forms. No wonder he didn’t remember proposing. She was a crappy fiancée. She’d forget being engaged to herself too if she were him.
Her eyes stung and she tried to sniffle quietly. “I’m sorry I suck at this,” she whispered, setting the neglected forms back down on the floor and sagging towards the bed. She rested her head on the very edge of the mattress and tried to sleep, but sleep still would not come. The monitors were too loud and too important to tune out; the hush of his breathing suddenly too precious to ignore. And so she lay there crunched over, growing progressively more and more awake as the seconds ticked on towards morning. She pretended to be asleep when the night nurse came in again to check Derek’s vitals, watching through narrow slits as he stirred and groaned and resettled.
She stayed the rest of the night at his side, holding his hand in her own. It was good just to feel his skin against hers. Just to be near him. Her fiancé. If she could call him that when he didn’t remember proposing, much less her saying yes. Izzie made wishes on eyelashes, and while she couldn’t bring herself to do the same, she lay in the dark and hoped with everything she had that it would come back to him. Once it was morning, once he’d slept and got a little more of his strength back, the rest of it would come back. He’d look at her with a gorgeous smile and he’d remember and kiss her, and the whole thing would be so freaking perfect it’d make her teeth ache.
At last, night gave way to day. The first hint of a sunrise began to filter in through the blinds, and she sat and watched as he stirred. His eyelids fluttered and then he was blinking at her, groggy and barely awake.
“Hey,” she said.
He frowned but mumbled back. “Hey.”
She leaned closer, brushing her lips against his in a faint kiss. She was afraid to press too hard. “Good morning,” she added, trailing her fingers through his hair. “How do you feel?”
He just let out a low groan and covered his face with his hands as if he meant to hide from something. They were trembling slightly. Meredith frowned and went back to chewing on her lip. This was wrong. This wasn’t how he was supposed to wake up at all. He was sick and grumbly and saying very little, let alone anything about proposals. He wasn’t even looking at her.
“Derek,” she tried when he’d laid there for a long time with his hands over his face, just crushed down into the mattress like something that had been stepped on. “You okay?”
“Okay?” he said. He let his hands fall from his face and stared at her with hard eyes. “Yeah. I’m fucking great, Mer,” he said, his voice a crush of bitterness.
She blinked. That was unexpected. “I’m sorry,” she added after a breath. “I know this sucks.”
Derek said nothing back. He just smoothed his hand slowly across the mattress, his face scrunched up as if even that small motion was an effort. His fingers fanned out like he was searching for something.
“What is it?” she asked cautiously, tiptoeing around his sudden foul mood. “What are you looking for?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, but he kept pushing his hand back and forth across the bed.
She got to her feet, peering down at him. “Derek, what is it?”
“The PCA,” he said at last. He let his searching hand fall still. “It was right here.”
“Um.” Meredith scanned the mattress, looking for the small control that allowed him to self-administer his morphine. Of course he needed it. He’d probably woken up because he was in pain. With how exhausted he was, there was no other reason for him to be waking up so early. No alarm clock calling him to get up for work. A nurse hadn’t even come in to disturb him and the light really wasn’t that bright. “I don’t see it,” she said. “Wait…” She walked around to the other side of the bed and found it dangling over the edge by its cord. “Here,” she said as she stooped to grab it, handing it back to him.
He nodded and took the PCA from her, his thumb going immediately to the button.
She crossed back to her chair, deflating into it like a popped balloon. “I’m sorry,” she said again, pulling her knees up to her chest. “I know this is awful for you.”
“It’s fine,” said Derek, but he was staring at the ceiling instead of her face.
“No. It’s not fine. This is a crappy way to have to wake up.”
Derek shook his head, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and she had a sudden, sinking feeling that he was trying desperately not to cry. Meredith stared down at her lap, wanting to give him a moment to collect himself if that was what he wanted. When she finally dared to look at him again, his eyes were still wet.
“What’s wrong?” she tried, her voice little more than a whisper.
He frowned and a lone tear escaped to trail down his cheek. “Nothing,” he muttered, but he followed his words with a frustrated sigh. “It’s just that I’ve only been up for how long? Five minutes tops? And I’m exhausted, Meredith,” he admitted in a small, crushed voice. His eyelids were already starting to droop again from the added morphine. “It’s all I can do to not pass out on you here.”
“That’s okay,” she said with a grin, trying to lighten his mood. “It’s ridiculously early. All the sane people are still sleeping.”
He returned her grin with a tiny smile of his own. “Then what does that make us?”
She shrugged. “A couple of crazies?” Her grin softened into a gentle smile, and she ran a hand through the tangled mess of his curls. “Go back to sleep, Derek. It’s still early.”
“What about you?” he mumbled, his eyes already half closed.
“I’m fine here.”
“In that chair?”
“Sure. I’m flexible.” Even though her innate flexibility didn’t actually make the chair any more comfortable, it had apparently been the right thing to say because Derek raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. He freaking smirked like he was thinking dirty, dirty thoughts.
“I know,” he said. “But you could still get into bed with me instead.”
Meredith bit her lip. As much as she wanted to snuggle up beside him, she didn’t dare risk it while he still had a surgical drain snaking out of his incision. He was in no condition for spooning. “Not here,” she said as she leaned in to kiss him, hoping that she wasn’t about to send him straight back to his bad mood.
But Derek just pouted at her. “Come on,” he moaned. “I’m sick and injured and you’re refusing to comfort me?”
“Sleep, Derek,” she said, laughing incredulously. “We can renegotiate ways for you to feel me up once you’re out of the ICU.”
Derek snorted. “Bossy,” he said, a happy, sleepy smile slathered across his face. She smiled back, but his eyes were already falling shut. After one final, futile blink, he slept.
But with Derek unconscious beside her, the silence turned too great. She sat and felt alone, staring at her naked left hand until her eyes burned and she had to look away. He should know by now, but the memory hadn’t come back. Something was wrong, said a tiny voice. It whispered inside her head. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When memories went missing there was always a reason, and that reason was never good.
For forty minutes she sat like a statue, trying to convince herself that next time he woke, it would all come back. Next time. She just had to wait a little bit more. A little bit longer. But when a nurse walked in with a pleasant good morning, Derek just groaned and glowered and blinked a few times. That bright, beautiful smile of remembering never came.
She watched hopefully for some sign as the nurse came forward with her stethoscope, requesting the now all too familiar cough and deep, lung-clearing breaths that had exhausted him the day before. They would be less frequent now, but she knew someone would still come back about every two hours and demand another hellish set from him. She fought off fresh tears as she watched Derek struggle through them and then slump back against the mattress, staring sullenly at the nurse as she moved about the room. He looked as if he was about to snarl at her when she went to check and empty his surgical drain, and she didn’t have to ask to know he hadn’t remembered the proposal.
When the nurse finally left, Derek stared silently straight ahead, the mattress angled so that he was half sitting. A muscle in his jaw clenched every now and then. He flinched when she reached over and took his hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said for what felt like the millionth time. She was pretty sure she was turning into a broken record. “Is everything okay?” she added when he just kept staring at the white wall across from him, all emptiness and sterility.
He turned to look at her with weary eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Just tired.”
She nodded and tried to smile. “It could be worse,” she said. “You could’ve gotten stuck with Rose as your nurse.” She’d meant it as a joke, but somehow it came out just a little too bitter to be one. The forgotten proposal was turning her into an awful, needy mess. “I mean, if she hadn’t transferred departments,” stammered Meredith. “I…you know what, forget it. It’s stupid, and just yeah. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mer,” he said with a heavy sigh. Even his voice sounded tired. “I know what you meant. And you’re right,” he groaned. “That would’ve been worse.” He offered her a halfhearted smile and the familiar sensation of wanting to weep came roaring back again. He punctuated his words by closing his eyes, and Meredith sat staring at him for a long time, wondering if he slept. Something’s wrong, said the voice inside her head again, resuming its worrying. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Derek,” she finally murmured, soft and cautious. His eyes fluttered open. “Sorry,” she added. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep.”
He shook his head. “Wasn’t sleeping,” he said. “What is it?”
“I just…” Meredith glanced away, running her tongue along her lower lip. The skin felt ragged from the constant biting. “Nothing… It’s nothing.”
Derek stared at her, a slight frown tugging on his brow and turning his eyes somber. “What?” He always knew when nothing really meant something. Apparently that held true even when he was doped up on morphine.
She shook her head again, but the questions kept creeping closer and closer to the tip of her tongue. Maybe, if she just gave him a push in the right direction, a hint… Maybe it would all come back again. “I, it’s just,” she sighed. “Do you remember now? Sarah’s surgery, I mean. Do you remember the rest of it?”
Derek groped for the bed control, slowly raising himself the rest of the way up into a sitting position. “Is this about last night? Whatever was bothering you?”
“Nothing was bothering me,” she said, but her voice felt tight in her throat. Too full of lies. “I was just wondering,” she continued, struggling to keep each word calm. Casual. “Did you remember anything else? Anything that happened?”
He shook his head. “It’s like I said, Mer. I remember everything up until you started to close. I remember being in a lot of pain. I was watching you and then…” His face clouded over. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I think I remember grass, very green grass, but it’s foggy. It’s hard to remember, not to mention it doesn’t make any sense. I think…” He trailed off, but he stared at her intently and it made her tremble.
“You think what?” she whispered.
He ran a hand back through his hair and winced a little. As if even that was pulling on muscles that couldn’t bear to be used yet. “I must have been seeing things. Hallucinating. With all the blood loss…” He shrugged his shoulders. “Did I sound delirious? What was I saying?”
“Just…” Marry me. She shook her head. “Just stuff. I don’t know.” But her voice was heavy, and she couldn’t smile. He remembered grass? Something was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Derek pinched his brow between thumb and forefinger and took a heavy breath. When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “Meredith, what am I forgetting?”
“No,” she said roughly, swallowing her tears. She was a crappy fiancée, if she could even still call herself that. Derek was suffering enough from his injuries, and yet she was finding ways to make things worse for him. “It’s nothing. I just wanted you to remember the rest of my first solo surgery.” She made her voice cheerful and it cut at her like a knife. “I kicked ass, you know.”
“I know,” he said and that just drove the knife a little deeper. Sarah wasn’t even awake yet. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes dark and troubled, but he said nothing.
“It’s fine, really,” she continued. “Don’t worry, okay?”
Derek mumbled something back, but his eyelids had started drooping again, and she watched him struggle futilely against sleep and fall into a doze. She sat there fretting, lingering in sleepless exhaustion until the door creaked open again and they both stirred.
“Crap,” said Meredith as she twisted around in her seat to find Bailey standing in the doorway. She’d completely forgotten about work, but a quick glance at her watch told her she was already supposed to be busy rounding on patients and overseeing her interns. “I’ll go change,” she said. “Right away.” But she made no move to get up.
“I called Stevens in to cover for you today,” said Bailey with none of her usual severity. “I expect to see you back in scrubs tomorrow morning though.”
“Oh,” said Meredith. “Okay…thank you, Dr. Bailey.” She smiled easily for the first time that day, the perpetual tightness in her chest lessened by a sudden rush of relief. She wouldn’t have to leave him.
Bailey just gave a brief nod and turned to Derek. He’d managed to pull himself out of his doze as they spoke, and he looked distant but awake. “How are you doing this morning?” asked Bailey. “Any pain?”
“Not too bad unless I try to move,” he muttered, the exhaustion in his voice dragging her straight back into bitter reality. He was sick, and he didn’t remember proposing. That too. She wanted to pipe up with his forgotten memories, but the words wouldn’t come. She watched Derek instead. He lay there, compliant but obviously unhappy as Bailey went through a quick check of his vitals and then peeled back the bandages that covered his abdomen.
The incision ran straight down the center of his stomach, held together by a tidy row of fascial staples pushed into his flesh. A drain snaked out of the bottom of the incision, sutured in place to collect the excess blood and pus, irritating the raw skin around the tube. It was ugly and unfair, and she could barely look without starting up a familiar struggle with her tears. She’d seen plenty of midline incisions, but none of them had ever cut at her the way Derek’s did. Still, she made herself look and remember. This was all her fault.
But Bailey was nodding. “It’s healing well. We should be able to take the drain out later today and that will reduce your pain significantly. The fluid output has gone down a lot since yesterday.” She spoke as if everything was fine. As if he hadn’t been almost dead the day before. As if he hadn’t freaking forgotten proposing. Slowly, Bailey replaced the bandages, hiding the evidence of just how wrong everything really was.
“CT should be back up and running in a few hours,” added Bailey. “I’m going to have you get some scans then, check for any slow bleeds we might’ve missed during surgery.”
“Okay,” said Derek quietly. His voice was dull as if he didn’t really care one way or the other, but Meredith sat up straighter. He was getting scans because he hadn’t had time for a single one the day before. No one really knew what the falling ceiling had done to him. If there was something still wrong with him, a reason he didn’t remember. Her heart started to beat faster and she shook her head. He was fine, she’d told herself all night, but he still didn’t remember, and the panicked little voice inside her head suddenly wouldn’t let her rest.
She scrambled to her feet moments after Bailey had excused herself. “I’ll be right back, okay?” she said, already halfway to the door before Derek had time to answer. And then she was hurrying down the empty hall, disrupting the early morning quiet as she raced to catch up. “Dr. Bailey!” she called. “Dr. Bailey!”
Bailey stopped and turned around, raising an eyebrow. “Grey?”
Meredith stumbled to a halt, catching her breath after her sudden sprint. This was stupid. So, so stupid. He was fine, but if there was even the slightest possibility that he wasn’t…
“Spit it out, Grey. I don’t have all day.”
“Is Derek, is he getting a head scan when he goes to CT?”
Bailey just frowned at her. “We don’t scan body parts for fun. Why would I go wasting his time and mine like that? The bleeding was in his abdomen.”
“Right, right, I know that, just…what if he does have a head injury?”
“There are no signs of one.”
Meredith bit her lip and looked down at her feet. “He’s not remembering things,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“What is he forgetting?” said Bailey, folding her arms over her chest. “Memories from last year? Last month? Give me some specifics here.”
“He’s not, ah, he’s not remembering what he said…what happened right before he collapsed. I’ve asked him and he just…” She shrugged and trailed off, biting down on her lip again.
“And what, Grey?”
“He thinks that he remembers seeing grass!” she said, throwing her hands up in the air. “That he might have been hallucinating.”
“That’s very possible.”
“Or maybe he’s remembering grass because he hit his head when the ceiling fell!” she exclaimed, feeling vaguely ridiculous.
“He didn’t.”
“But what if he has an intracranial bleed? It could explain the memory problems too.”
Bailey sighed, her impatience growing palpable. “Have you asked him?”
“What?”
“You have the head of neurosurgery in a room right down the hall. Have you asked him his opinion on your theory?”
“No,” said Meredith incredulously, taking a step back. She felt like she was unraveling, and she could feel her cheeks flush red. “Why? Why does everyone keep telling me to ask Derek things?” First Hess, now Bailey. He was sick. She shook her head. “He’s supposed to be resting, not solving medical mysteries! He’s a patient,” she said angrily. “And if he’s bleeding into his brain and forgetting things, you need to fix him!”
“He doesn’t have a head injury,” said Bailey, laying a firm hand on her arm.
“But he doesn’t remember!”
“I know.”
“And you think that’s okay? It’s just fine that he’s forgotten a chunk of his life? People forget things because there is something wrong with them,” said Meredith vehemently. “When my mother forgot me, it was because she had Alzheimer’s. And now Derek’s forgetting this, and, and…” She shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears.
Bailey sighed again, but this time her voice grew very gentle. “It’s not uncommon for patients to be unable to remember part of their accident, especially if they lost consciousness. You know this, Meredith. He lost a lot of blood. He doesn’t remember what happened right before he collapsed because his mental state was already altered.”
“So he really was hallucinating?” said Meredith quietly. “That’s it? He was just delusional?”
“If he thinks he was hallucinating, than he most likely was.”
That’s where love exists - in delusional fantasies. Real love isn’t like that.
She’d told him so herself once, only now she’d give almost anything to have the fantasy back. It wasn’t real. He’d been delusional. She hadn’t expected it to hurt so much, but she felt like she’d been slapped across the face.
“Right, right…okay,” she whispered, summoning her voice up from what felt like very far away. “I should get back.” She pivoted on her heel and made it two steps down the hall before Bailey spoke.
“He proposed to you.”
She froze. “What?”
“You heard me, Grey.”
Meredith was silent for a long time, staring at the empty hall, the endless white walls that suddenly left her feeling very alone. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters a lot.”
“But he doesn’t remember,” she cried, turning around again. “He didn’t even know what he was saying! It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Derek almost died, and the first thing his mind went to was marrying you. You don’t thing that means something?”
She breathed in sharply, wiping at her eyes with a rough hand and saying nothing.
“Talk to him,” urged Bailey. “All this mess isn’t doing either of you any good.”
“I’m fine,” said Meredith stiffly. “And he needs to heal. He feels bad enough as it is. If you think I’m going to go tell him he forgot proposing to me and make him feel ten times worse…” She shook her head. She’d already done enough damage. “I’m fine,” she insisted.
Bailey’s eyes softened and her voice grew gentle, almost motherly. “I know you want to be strong for him, but you don’t have to be okay about all of this,” she said. “If you want someone to talk to, just let me know.”
Meredith looked away, suddenly acutely aware that Derek had told Bailey all about the day she’d drowned. She wanted to tell Bailey that she wasn’t that person anymore. That even though everything really sucked, she wasn’t going to go drown herself in a bay. She could do this. Be strong for Derek. She wasn’t even going to cry about her forgotten, delusional marriage proposal. Wasn’t going to care at all. Except her skin felt prickly and she couldn’t seem to find her voice.
“Don’t tell him,” she said at last.
Bailey nodded slowly. “It’s your news to tell, Meredith. Not mine.” And with one last, skeptical look, she turned and walked away down the hall.
Meredith reached up and ran a hand through her hair. It was tangled and greasy, and she thought vaguely of a shower. A bed. Her limbs felt leaden, her eyes like they’d been rubbed raw. Somehow, she plastered a smile onto her face and tried for normal, but Bailey’s words stuck in her mind as she stumbled down the empty hall to Derek’s room.
He lay in bed staring glumly at the wall opposite him, but he looked up at the sound of the door. “Hey,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Meredith a little breathlessly. “Everything’s good.”
“You sure? You took off pretty fast.”
Meredith nodded. “I just…needed to talk to Bailey,” she said. But Derek was regarding her with raised eyebrows, and she racked her mind for some sort of suitable explanation. “Time off,” she blurted. “I wanted to see about getting more time off.” At least that wasn’t a complete lie. As soon as she’d said it, she knew it was true. She needed more time off. One day wasn’t enough. She’d chew through her entire meager supply of vacation days to be with him for this if she had to.
“And?”
“And, um, she…she doesn’t know yet. How much I can take. She doesn’t know.” And that wasn’t quite a lie either. Even if Bailey didn’t know because she hadn’t been asked.
He pursed his lips together. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re stuck in here with me,” he said. “If you want to go back to work, you should.” His voice was casual, but his eyes were pools of sadness and hope, as if he wanted her to stay but didn’t quite know how to ask.
“No,” said Meredith quickly, shaking her head. “I don’t feel stuck, Derek. Don’t worry about it, okay?” She stepped closer to him until her leg brushed against the side of the bed. “I want to be here with you. I need to be here.” It was the absolute least she could do after everything. She bent down and pressed a light kiss to his lips, and he smiled as she pulled away.
“Okay.”
Meredith nodded. “Okay.” She bit her lip and tried to smile back. “So I’m yours all day,” she added, struggling to keep even a hint of sadness out of her voice. It was okay that he didn’t remember. That it wasn’t real. She could be okay with that. She could. Meredith pressed her lips to his again, but she pulled away abruptly as she felt her eyes start to sting. Apparently being okay with it would take some getting used to. “Do you want me to get you anything?” she asked quickly. “Some books, maybe? Or, I don’t know, do you feel up for reading?”
“Um,” said Derek, his expression growing thoughtful. “My laptop, actually. If you don’t mind running home for it?”
“No, no, that’s fine. I can do that.”
“And maybe some of my pajamas,” he added, plucking at his hospital gown. “Something tells me this isn’t my best look.” He grinned at her and, for a moment, an enormous weight slid off her shoulders. She’d love him in anything at all.
“Okay. Pajamas. Laptop. Do you want anything else?”
He grinned at her. “Just you.”
“Oh…” She stood still and stared at him, blinking softly. “You…you have that,” she said. Forever. I said yes. The words lingered right there on the tip of her tongue, but they wouldn’t come. It wasn’t real. “I’m gonna run home and get your stuff, okay?” she added at last as she stumbled towards the door. It suddenly felt hard to breathe.
---
When Meredith pulled up in front of her house, there was a heavy silence in the air. The house looked fine from the outside, but the quiet stayed too close to her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. When she pushed open the front door, glass crunched beneath her feet. She shut the door behind her and found a fallen lamp, the source of the broken glass. Most off it had been swept to the side, but the sweeper had either been in a hurry (Izzie) or just not all that inclined to be thorough in the first place (Alex). She called their names, but the house felt empty and no one answered back. She remembered a few tentative steps later that Bailey had paged Izzie in to cover for her. Alex had likely been called in as well. She tried not to mind, but it felt like a lifetime since she’d last seen her friends. The house was too quiet, filled with a cold loneliness that lapped all around her. The damage wasn’t devastating. There were no collapsed walls or fallen ceilings. It was the little things -- candles and lamps and picture frames -- that were in ruins, the small touches that had helped to keep the dust of old, unloved memories at bay. They had come crashing down.
She trudged upstairs on autopilot, pulling things from drawers and dropping them on the bed, doing all she could to ignore the mess from the earthquake. She piled up old, faded tees and pairs of well worn pajama pants with drawstring waists. Loose clothes that wouldn’t irritate Derek’s incision. Meredith went from the bedroom to the bathroom, gathering his toiletries as well. As soon as he felt up for taking a shower, she had no doubt he’d want the ridiculous assembly line of products he used on his hair. At least she hoped he’d be feeling good enough to want them. The pile grew and grew on their bed until she stopped abruptly and shoved everything into an old bag of hers with a halfhearted hope that none of his toiletries would leak.
Her to-do list was short, but it kept her going like a robot. Pajamas. Laptop. She hurried back down the stairs and into Derek’s study, finding more and more of the mess. Meredith sank into his chair, coming face to face with a jumble of spilled pens, shards of a broken mug on the floor, and what looked like a child’s scribbled drawing. Slowly, she reached out and picked it up with a trembling hand. It was waxy to the touch, the entire page coated with blue crayon, and she smoothed a fingertip along the endless swirls and scribbles. The page was creased down the middle as if it had been folded once, and when she flipped it over her eyes filled with tears as she stared at the simple inscription:
Dr. Shepurd
Sarah
Of course it was hers. She should’ve known. Meredith trailed a finger along each letter in turn as tears brimmed in her eyes. When she reached the end of Sarah’s name, she hunched over and let herself cry for the first time that day. Her shoulders shuddered with every sob, her tears splattering the paper and her lap. She stopped only when her eyes ran dry, and then she just sat there, shaking slightly. The drawing was damp, but she smoothed it out and placed it back on Derek’s desk with a trembling hand. She felt dazed as she got to her feet, as if she’d left some part of herself behind in the chair, still weeping senselessly.
Her growling stomach was the only thing about her that felt concrete; it started to voice its complaints painfully as she packed up Derek’s laptop and left it waiting by the door with her other bags. She sidestepped a neglected dustpan half filled with shards of glass and made her way into the chaos of the kitchen. The earthquake had robbed the cupboard of all its plates. The floor was speckled with broken pieces of ceramic in bright blues and greens and reds. There was a ringing in her ears that she ignored as she picked her way across the floor to yank open the fridge.
Meredith ate among the broken glass, clutching a Tupperware container filled with cold pasta. She shoveled forkful after forkful into her mouth, barely taking time to chew. The meal sat like a lump in her gut, but she didn’t mind. Food felt unimportant now. Her gaze darted around the kitchen as she ate, cataloguing just how much there was to clean when her gaze landed on the answering machine beside the phone. Its little red light was blinking on and off, signaling a new message. She took another bite and shuffled forward, frowning when the display indicated six new messages. They almost never had anyone but telemarketers call them on the landline.
Nerves she didn’t understand had stolen her breath away, and she reached out and pressed play with a tentative hand. A computerized voice filled the room telling her what she already knew, that she had six new messages. And then the first message started to play, and the voice of a woman she’d never heard before swept over her.
Derek, it’s Mom. I know you’re probably in surgery because I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell phone and your office line, and I haven’t been having any luck. I thought I’d try here though just in case. I’ve been watching the news and this earthquake looks like it was pretty bad, so call me back when you get this, and let me know your safe, alright?
Meredith stood frozen as the computerized voice returned, announcing the end of the message and options to reply or continue to the second one. Numbly, she reached out and pressed continue. This time, the voice that filled the kitchen was familiar. Sharp and businesslike. Just shy of bitchy. Nancy.
Derek, I swear if you’re out at that tin can in the woods, missing all of our calls because there’s no reception in the middle of nowhere, I’m going to fly out to Seattle again and stage a wilderness intervention! Stop macking on that intern of yours and call Mom, okay? She’s not going to stop worrying until you do.
The messages kept coming one after another, all of them from Derek’s family. There was a message from a sister named Kathleen. She’d heard of that one before. The shrink. Another from a soft-spoken sister who introduced herself as Julia. And a fourth who gave no name, simply saying “Hey, it’s me” before launching into another half scolding, half pleading rant about Derek’s whereabouts. Their voices filled the room.
You’re turning Mom into a nervous wreck, you know. If she wasn’t already gray, you would’ve wrecked her hair color with this stunt, Derek. Call her already. And then call me. Actually, call me first. I’m always the last to know things. You can’t do that to your favorite sister. I mean it though. Call us. As soon as you can.
Are you okay?
Just let us know you’re safe, please.
Derek?
The final message was from his mother again, and this time the worry in her voice was undeniable.
Derek, I know I probably sound like one of those overbearing, nosey mothers, but this isn’t like you. Sweetheart, please let me know you’re okay. And Meredith, if you’re there…I know we haven’t been introduced yet, but Derek told me this is your home, so maybe there’s a chance you’re hearing this message too. If you are, please feel free to call me. Even if it’s just to let me know he’s in surgery so I can stop driving my daughters crazy with all my worrying. My name’s Carolyn and you can reach me at 516-204-1216. I’d love to hear from you, Meredith. I hope everything is alright.
The computerized voice came back again, announcing that there were no new messages.
“Oh,” said Meredith, staggering back a step. Her heart was hammering away in her throat and her hands were empty. She looked down, only just realizing she’d dropped her Tupperware container. Leftover pasta spilled across the floor. She left it there and stared at the waiting phone, Carolyn’s voice ringing in her ears.
Title: Love in the Time of Science
Author: Morgen
Summary: Love. Tragedy. The things we’ve left unsaid. This is their story. Set after episode 5.05.
Disclaimer: I am not famous. I do not own TV shows. I am a poor college student with a laptop and a serious procrastination habit.
Rating: Written for grownups.
Meredith stood with her palm pressed flat against the glass, peering through the slats in the blinds. The room inside was dark, but she could make out the form of a woman slumped on the couch against the far wall, curled into the cushions and fast asleep. A man sat in a chair - the husband, she guessed - with his head bowed forward as if exhaustion had stolen him off to sleep while he sat vigil at his daughter’s bedside. She could see Sarah too; just a tiny body dwarfed by its bed and lost beneath a sea of tubes and wires. It wasn’t all that different from how Derek looked now, but thinking of him made her eyes prick with a fresh round of tears. She took a deep breath and tried to push it away. He was asleep. He was alive. Everything was okay. It was a tired mantra she’d worn into her mind over and over again throughout the long, sleepless night.
“Dr. Grey?”
She jumped, whirling around to find Hess standing beside her in a pair of wrinkled scrubs. His eyes were shadowed with sweeps of blue, the bags beneath them heavy.
“Dr. Hess…hi.” Meredith looked down at her feet and then back up at the man. She felt as tired as he looked, her mind too sluggish to come up with anything else to say.
“How’s Dr. Shepherd doing?” he asked.
“Sleeping,” she said. At least she hoped he still was. The night nurse had been coming by on the hour to check his vitals, and he’d woken up a little each time, groggy and grumbling as fingers sought out his pulse. She wanted to be there every time he so much as stirred in his sleep, but when he’d asked her about Sarah earlier, she hadn’t even known if the child was dead or alive. Sarah had vanished off her radar the moment Derek collapsed, and yet she’d gone ahead and promised him that she was okay anyway.
The guilt had hit her around midnight, forcing her to wander the PICU in search of genuine good news. Instead, she’d pressed her face to the window and found Sarah still intubated.
“Shouldn’t you be doing the same?” said Hess.
She stared at him blankly. “Doing what?”
“Sleeping.”
“On, no. No. I’m good,” she stammered, shoving her hands deep into the back pockets of her jeans. But the lack of sleep was already getting to her. Her head was throbbing in three places and her eyes felt dried out like she’d gone too long without blinking. She frowned and glanced back at the window, adding, “I just wanted to check on Sarah. See how she’s doing.” It was none of his business, really, if she felt dead on her feet.
Hess took a step closer to the glass himself. “You did a good job.”
“She’s still intubated…”
“It’s just a precaution.”
“So she’s still breathing on her own?” asked Meredith, trying not to stare too desperately at the child.
Hess nodded. “She is.”
“But she’s not waking up.”
“She hasn’t yet,” he corrected. “It’s not unheard of for a patient to have difficulty waking up after such an invasive procedure. I wouldn’t be too concerned yet.”
“Right, right. It’s just…Beth. She was our one success, and Beth woke up that night. After her surgery, she woke up.”
“I see,” said Hess, rubbing his hands together. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since Sarah’s surgery, but I admit I know very little about the clinical trial compared to you. You could always check with Dr. Shepherd in the morning. He’d know best.”
Meredith bit her lip, saying nothing. There could be no asking Derek. Not now. Not when he’d almost died to keep Sarah alive. Besides, Hess seemed satisfied. He wasn’t racing to Derek’s hospital bed for a consult. Everything was fine. Fine, fine, fine. She told herself so again and again, ignoring the sick feeling she got in her gut every time she looked at Sarah.
“You know they were hoping to speak with you,” continued Hess.
She blinked. “Who?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Roche,” he said with a tilt of his head towards the darkened room.
“Oh. Why…?”
“You were their daughter’s surgeon,” he said as if it should be obvious.
“Right,” muttered Meredith. “Her surgeon.” She tried not to notice the panic that slipped under her skin like a splinter. They probably wanted to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing, taking over for the head of neurosurgery like she was anything close to the surgeon he was. Maybe they’d tell her that they were suing.
“They want to thank you,” added Hess. “For stepping up under the circumstances.”
“They want to thank me?” said Meredith, her voice dull with disbelief. Somehow that felt even worse than the thoughts of malpractice. She looked back into the room and shook her head. “I don’t, I can’t…Derek’s sick,” she said. “I can’t just leave him alone to talk to them!” She cringed as the words left her lips, wondering if he was going to point out how she’d already left Derek alone to head over to the PICU, that it was how she was standing there talking to him in the first place.
Hess simply gave her a warm smile that stretched up to his ears. “They’re aware your boyfriend just had major surgery,” he said gently, but even that made her flinch. Her boyfriend. It didn’t sound right anymore. She pushed at her hair and promised herself he would remember by morning. He had to. The mental fog from the anesthesia was already rolling back, and he would remember.
“They aren’t expecting anything,” continued Hess. “But I know it would mean a lot to them if you stopped by.”
“Right,” said Meredith, dragging her mind back to Sarah’s parents. They wanted to thank her. For what? Putting their daughter in a coma while letting Derek almost die on her watch? She didn’t deserve any praise.
“Think about it, Dr. Grey,” said Hess quietly. “And send my wishes for a speedy recovery to Dr. Shepherd.” And then with a nod of his head, he excused himself to check on Sarah. Meredith stayed at the window, half hoping to see her stir at the sound of footsteps. But it was her father who awoke instead, and as he shifted in his chair, she scurried away down the halls of the PICU.
She went from one intensive care unit to another, holding her breath as she eased the door to Derek’s room open just far enough to slip inside. He didn’t stir when she collapsed into the chair at his bedside and so she scooted closer, a tired smile on her face as she listened to the slow, heavy sounds of his breathing.
“I’m back,” she murmured.
She felt too tense to sleep, and so Meredith leaned over and groped along the floor, fingers searching for the clipboard a nurse had given her earlier. It was heavy with forms she couldn’t read without turning on a light or heading out into the hall, and she didn’t want to either disturb Derek or leave him again. Instead, she fished her phone out of her pocket and flipped it open, hunching over the tiny rectangle of light that illuminated the page. She angled the phone with her left hand and scribbled Derek Shepherd across the line labeled patient’s name with her right.
It was a slow process. The light from the phone was dim, and it gave out completely every few words, forcing her to stop and press a button to call it back. Eventually though she had name and number, address and date of birth filled out for him. It wasn’t all that legible, but who took the time to write tidily when they were being admitted to a hospital anyway?
Her small sense of accomplishment died as she looked at the next line, and she let her phone go dark with a defeated sigh. Insurance information seemed like the sort of thing a fiancée should know, but she wasn’t even sure where he kept his insurance card. Wallet was her first guess. But whether that was in the locker room or his office, tucked in the pocket of his jeans or stored somewhere safer while he worked, she didn’t have a clue. And she was too tired and sore to get up and hunt in all the likely places. Because she was a crappy fiancée. And a crappy emergency contact person.
She hadn’t even known that she was Derek’s emergency contact before that evening. They’d never discussed it. But then a message had shown up on her voicemail alerting her to his injuries well after the fact, the hospital system finally catching up with reality. She’d be annoyed about that he’d failed to so much as mention she was now his freaking person, which was kind of a big deal in her book, but she still had Cristina’s name penciled in on her own form. That brought another twinge of guilt and a hollow feeling she didn’t want to examine too closely. She was the one that remembered the whole engaged thing, and yet he was the one with her name on his forms. No wonder he didn’t remember proposing. She was a crappy fiancée. She’d forget being engaged to herself too if she were him.
Her eyes stung and she tried to sniffle quietly. “I’m sorry I suck at this,” she whispered, setting the neglected forms back down on the floor and sagging towards the bed. She rested her head on the very edge of the mattress and tried to sleep, but sleep still would not come. The monitors were too loud and too important to tune out; the hush of his breathing suddenly too precious to ignore. And so she lay there crunched over, growing progressively more and more awake as the seconds ticked on towards morning. She pretended to be asleep when the night nurse came in again to check Derek’s vitals, watching through narrow slits as he stirred and groaned and resettled.
She stayed the rest of the night at his side, holding his hand in her own. It was good just to feel his skin against hers. Just to be near him. Her fiancé. If she could call him that when he didn’t remember proposing, much less her saying yes. Izzie made wishes on eyelashes, and while she couldn’t bring herself to do the same, she lay in the dark and hoped with everything she had that it would come back to him. Once it was morning, once he’d slept and got a little more of his strength back, the rest of it would come back. He’d look at her with a gorgeous smile and he’d remember and kiss her, and the whole thing would be so freaking perfect it’d make her teeth ache.
At last, night gave way to day. The first hint of a sunrise began to filter in through the blinds, and she sat and watched as he stirred. His eyelids fluttered and then he was blinking at her, groggy and barely awake.
“Hey,” she said.
He frowned but mumbled back. “Hey.”
She leaned closer, brushing her lips against his in a faint kiss. She was afraid to press too hard. “Good morning,” she added, trailing her fingers through his hair. “How do you feel?”
He just let out a low groan and covered his face with his hands as if he meant to hide from something. They were trembling slightly. Meredith frowned and went back to chewing on her lip. This was wrong. This wasn’t how he was supposed to wake up at all. He was sick and grumbly and saying very little, let alone anything about proposals. He wasn’t even looking at her.
“Derek,” she tried when he’d laid there for a long time with his hands over his face, just crushed down into the mattress like something that had been stepped on. “You okay?”
“Okay?” he said. He let his hands fall from his face and stared at her with hard eyes. “Yeah. I’m fucking great, Mer,” he said, his voice a crush of bitterness.
She blinked. That was unexpected. “I’m sorry,” she added after a breath. “I know this sucks.”
Derek said nothing back. He just smoothed his hand slowly across the mattress, his face scrunched up as if even that small motion was an effort. His fingers fanned out like he was searching for something.
“What is it?” she asked cautiously, tiptoeing around his sudden foul mood. “What are you looking for?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, but he kept pushing his hand back and forth across the bed.
She got to her feet, peering down at him. “Derek, what is it?”
“The PCA,” he said at last. He let his searching hand fall still. “It was right here.”
“Um.” Meredith scanned the mattress, looking for the small control that allowed him to self-administer his morphine. Of course he needed it. He’d probably woken up because he was in pain. With how exhausted he was, there was no other reason for him to be waking up so early. No alarm clock calling him to get up for work. A nurse hadn’t even come in to disturb him and the light really wasn’t that bright. “I don’t see it,” she said. “Wait…” She walked around to the other side of the bed and found it dangling over the edge by its cord. “Here,” she said as she stooped to grab it, handing it back to him.
He nodded and took the PCA from her, his thumb going immediately to the button.
She crossed back to her chair, deflating into it like a popped balloon. “I’m sorry,” she said again, pulling her knees up to her chest. “I know this is awful for you.”
“It’s fine,” said Derek, but he was staring at the ceiling instead of her face.
“No. It’s not fine. This is a crappy way to have to wake up.”
Derek shook his head, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and she had a sudden, sinking feeling that he was trying desperately not to cry. Meredith stared down at her lap, wanting to give him a moment to collect himself if that was what he wanted. When she finally dared to look at him again, his eyes were still wet.
“What’s wrong?” she tried, her voice little more than a whisper.
He frowned and a lone tear escaped to trail down his cheek. “Nothing,” he muttered, but he followed his words with a frustrated sigh. “It’s just that I’ve only been up for how long? Five minutes tops? And I’m exhausted, Meredith,” he admitted in a small, crushed voice. His eyelids were already starting to droop again from the added morphine. “It’s all I can do to not pass out on you here.”
“That’s okay,” she said with a grin, trying to lighten his mood. “It’s ridiculously early. All the sane people are still sleeping.”
He returned her grin with a tiny smile of his own. “Then what does that make us?”
She shrugged. “A couple of crazies?” Her grin softened into a gentle smile, and she ran a hand through the tangled mess of his curls. “Go back to sleep, Derek. It’s still early.”
“What about you?” he mumbled, his eyes already half closed.
“I’m fine here.”
“In that chair?”
“Sure. I’m flexible.” Even though her innate flexibility didn’t actually make the chair any more comfortable, it had apparently been the right thing to say because Derek raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. He freaking smirked like he was thinking dirty, dirty thoughts.
“I know,” he said. “But you could still get into bed with me instead.”
Meredith bit her lip. As much as she wanted to snuggle up beside him, she didn’t dare risk it while he still had a surgical drain snaking out of his incision. He was in no condition for spooning. “Not here,” she said as she leaned in to kiss him, hoping that she wasn’t about to send him straight back to his bad mood.
But Derek just pouted at her. “Come on,” he moaned. “I’m sick and injured and you’re refusing to comfort me?”
“Sleep, Derek,” she said, laughing incredulously. “We can renegotiate ways for you to feel me up once you’re out of the ICU.”
Derek snorted. “Bossy,” he said, a happy, sleepy smile slathered across his face. She smiled back, but his eyes were already falling shut. After one final, futile blink, he slept.
But with Derek unconscious beside her, the silence turned too great. She sat and felt alone, staring at her naked left hand until her eyes burned and she had to look away. He should know by now, but the memory hadn’t come back. Something was wrong, said a tiny voice. It whispered inside her head. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When memories went missing there was always a reason, and that reason was never good.
For forty minutes she sat like a statue, trying to convince herself that next time he woke, it would all come back. Next time. She just had to wait a little bit more. A little bit longer. But when a nurse walked in with a pleasant good morning, Derek just groaned and glowered and blinked a few times. That bright, beautiful smile of remembering never came.
She watched hopefully for some sign as the nurse came forward with her stethoscope, requesting the now all too familiar cough and deep, lung-clearing breaths that had exhausted him the day before. They would be less frequent now, but she knew someone would still come back about every two hours and demand another hellish set from him. She fought off fresh tears as she watched Derek struggle through them and then slump back against the mattress, staring sullenly at the nurse as she moved about the room. He looked as if he was about to snarl at her when she went to check and empty his surgical drain, and she didn’t have to ask to know he hadn’t remembered the proposal.
When the nurse finally left, Derek stared silently straight ahead, the mattress angled so that he was half sitting. A muscle in his jaw clenched every now and then. He flinched when she reached over and took his hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said for what felt like the millionth time. She was pretty sure she was turning into a broken record. “Is everything okay?” she added when he just kept staring at the white wall across from him, all emptiness and sterility.
He turned to look at her with weary eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Just tired.”
She nodded and tried to smile. “It could be worse,” she said. “You could’ve gotten stuck with Rose as your nurse.” She’d meant it as a joke, but somehow it came out just a little too bitter to be one. The forgotten proposal was turning her into an awful, needy mess. “I mean, if she hadn’t transferred departments,” stammered Meredith. “I…you know what, forget it. It’s stupid, and just yeah. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mer,” he said with a heavy sigh. Even his voice sounded tired. “I know what you meant. And you’re right,” he groaned. “That would’ve been worse.” He offered her a halfhearted smile and the familiar sensation of wanting to weep came roaring back again. He punctuated his words by closing his eyes, and Meredith sat staring at him for a long time, wondering if he slept. Something’s wrong, said the voice inside her head again, resuming its worrying. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Derek,” she finally murmured, soft and cautious. His eyes fluttered open. “Sorry,” she added. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep.”
He shook his head. “Wasn’t sleeping,” he said. “What is it?”
“I just…” Meredith glanced away, running her tongue along her lower lip. The skin felt ragged from the constant biting. “Nothing… It’s nothing.”
Derek stared at her, a slight frown tugging on his brow and turning his eyes somber. “What?” He always knew when nothing really meant something. Apparently that held true even when he was doped up on morphine.
She shook her head again, but the questions kept creeping closer and closer to the tip of her tongue. Maybe, if she just gave him a push in the right direction, a hint… Maybe it would all come back again. “I, it’s just,” she sighed. “Do you remember now? Sarah’s surgery, I mean. Do you remember the rest of it?”
Derek groped for the bed control, slowly raising himself the rest of the way up into a sitting position. “Is this about last night? Whatever was bothering you?”
“Nothing was bothering me,” she said, but her voice felt tight in her throat. Too full of lies. “I was just wondering,” she continued, struggling to keep each word calm. Casual. “Did you remember anything else? Anything that happened?”
He shook his head. “It’s like I said, Mer. I remember everything up until you started to close. I remember being in a lot of pain. I was watching you and then…” His face clouded over. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I think I remember grass, very green grass, but it’s foggy. It’s hard to remember, not to mention it doesn’t make any sense. I think…” He trailed off, but he stared at her intently and it made her tremble.
“You think what?” she whispered.
He ran a hand back through his hair and winced a little. As if even that was pulling on muscles that couldn’t bear to be used yet. “I must have been seeing things. Hallucinating. With all the blood loss…” He shrugged his shoulders. “Did I sound delirious? What was I saying?”
“Just…” Marry me. She shook her head. “Just stuff. I don’t know.” But her voice was heavy, and she couldn’t smile. He remembered grass? Something was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Derek pinched his brow between thumb and forefinger and took a heavy breath. When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “Meredith, what am I forgetting?”
“No,” she said roughly, swallowing her tears. She was a crappy fiancée, if she could even still call herself that. Derek was suffering enough from his injuries, and yet she was finding ways to make things worse for him. “It’s nothing. I just wanted you to remember the rest of my first solo surgery.” She made her voice cheerful and it cut at her like a knife. “I kicked ass, you know.”
“I know,” he said and that just drove the knife a little deeper. Sarah wasn’t even awake yet. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes dark and troubled, but he said nothing.
“It’s fine, really,” she continued. “Don’t worry, okay?”
Derek mumbled something back, but his eyelids had started drooping again, and she watched him struggle futilely against sleep and fall into a doze. She sat there fretting, lingering in sleepless exhaustion until the door creaked open again and they both stirred.
“Crap,” said Meredith as she twisted around in her seat to find Bailey standing in the doorway. She’d completely forgotten about work, but a quick glance at her watch told her she was already supposed to be busy rounding on patients and overseeing her interns. “I’ll go change,” she said. “Right away.” But she made no move to get up.
“I called Stevens in to cover for you today,” said Bailey with none of her usual severity. “I expect to see you back in scrubs tomorrow morning though.”
“Oh,” said Meredith. “Okay…thank you, Dr. Bailey.” She smiled easily for the first time that day, the perpetual tightness in her chest lessened by a sudden rush of relief. She wouldn’t have to leave him.
Bailey just gave a brief nod and turned to Derek. He’d managed to pull himself out of his doze as they spoke, and he looked distant but awake. “How are you doing this morning?” asked Bailey. “Any pain?”
“Not too bad unless I try to move,” he muttered, the exhaustion in his voice dragging her straight back into bitter reality. He was sick, and he didn’t remember proposing. That too. She wanted to pipe up with his forgotten memories, but the words wouldn’t come. She watched Derek instead. He lay there, compliant but obviously unhappy as Bailey went through a quick check of his vitals and then peeled back the bandages that covered his abdomen.
The incision ran straight down the center of his stomach, held together by a tidy row of fascial staples pushed into his flesh. A drain snaked out of the bottom of the incision, sutured in place to collect the excess blood and pus, irritating the raw skin around the tube. It was ugly and unfair, and she could barely look without starting up a familiar struggle with her tears. She’d seen plenty of midline incisions, but none of them had ever cut at her the way Derek’s did. Still, she made herself look and remember. This was all her fault.
But Bailey was nodding. “It’s healing well. We should be able to take the drain out later today and that will reduce your pain significantly. The fluid output has gone down a lot since yesterday.” She spoke as if everything was fine. As if he hadn’t been almost dead the day before. As if he hadn’t freaking forgotten proposing. Slowly, Bailey replaced the bandages, hiding the evidence of just how wrong everything really was.
“CT should be back up and running in a few hours,” added Bailey. “I’m going to have you get some scans then, check for any slow bleeds we might’ve missed during surgery.”
“Okay,” said Derek quietly. His voice was dull as if he didn’t really care one way or the other, but Meredith sat up straighter. He was getting scans because he hadn’t had time for a single one the day before. No one really knew what the falling ceiling had done to him. If there was something still wrong with him, a reason he didn’t remember. Her heart started to beat faster and she shook her head. He was fine, she’d told herself all night, but he still didn’t remember, and the panicked little voice inside her head suddenly wouldn’t let her rest.
She scrambled to her feet moments after Bailey had excused herself. “I’ll be right back, okay?” she said, already halfway to the door before Derek had time to answer. And then she was hurrying down the empty hall, disrupting the early morning quiet as she raced to catch up. “Dr. Bailey!” she called. “Dr. Bailey!”
Bailey stopped and turned around, raising an eyebrow. “Grey?”
Meredith stumbled to a halt, catching her breath after her sudden sprint. This was stupid. So, so stupid. He was fine, but if there was even the slightest possibility that he wasn’t…
“Spit it out, Grey. I don’t have all day.”
“Is Derek, is he getting a head scan when he goes to CT?”
Bailey just frowned at her. “We don’t scan body parts for fun. Why would I go wasting his time and mine like that? The bleeding was in his abdomen.”
“Right, right, I know that, just…what if he does have a head injury?”
“There are no signs of one.”
Meredith bit her lip and looked down at her feet. “He’s not remembering things,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“What is he forgetting?” said Bailey, folding her arms over her chest. “Memories from last year? Last month? Give me some specifics here.”
“He’s not, ah, he’s not remembering what he said…what happened right before he collapsed. I’ve asked him and he just…” She shrugged and trailed off, biting down on her lip again.
“And what, Grey?”
“He thinks that he remembers seeing grass!” she said, throwing her hands up in the air. “That he might have been hallucinating.”
“That’s very possible.”
“Or maybe he’s remembering grass because he hit his head when the ceiling fell!” she exclaimed, feeling vaguely ridiculous.
“He didn’t.”
“But what if he has an intracranial bleed? It could explain the memory problems too.”
Bailey sighed, her impatience growing palpable. “Have you asked him?”
“What?”
“You have the head of neurosurgery in a room right down the hall. Have you asked him his opinion on your theory?”
“No,” said Meredith incredulously, taking a step back. She felt like she was unraveling, and she could feel her cheeks flush red. “Why? Why does everyone keep telling me to ask Derek things?” First Hess, now Bailey. He was sick. She shook her head. “He’s supposed to be resting, not solving medical mysteries! He’s a patient,” she said angrily. “And if he’s bleeding into his brain and forgetting things, you need to fix him!”
“He doesn’t have a head injury,” said Bailey, laying a firm hand on her arm.
“But he doesn’t remember!”
“I know.”
“And you think that’s okay? It’s just fine that he’s forgotten a chunk of his life? People forget things because there is something wrong with them,” said Meredith vehemently. “When my mother forgot me, it was because she had Alzheimer’s. And now Derek’s forgetting this, and, and…” She shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears.
Bailey sighed again, but this time her voice grew very gentle. “It’s not uncommon for patients to be unable to remember part of their accident, especially if they lost consciousness. You know this, Meredith. He lost a lot of blood. He doesn’t remember what happened right before he collapsed because his mental state was already altered.”
“So he really was hallucinating?” said Meredith quietly. “That’s it? He was just delusional?”
“If he thinks he was hallucinating, than he most likely was.”
That’s where love exists - in delusional fantasies. Real love isn’t like that.
She’d told him so herself once, only now she’d give almost anything to have the fantasy back. It wasn’t real. He’d been delusional. She hadn’t expected it to hurt so much, but she felt like she’d been slapped across the face.
“Right, right…okay,” she whispered, summoning her voice up from what felt like very far away. “I should get back.” She pivoted on her heel and made it two steps down the hall before Bailey spoke.
“He proposed to you.”
She froze. “What?”
“You heard me, Grey.”
Meredith was silent for a long time, staring at the empty hall, the endless white walls that suddenly left her feeling very alone. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters a lot.”
“But he doesn’t remember,” she cried, turning around again. “He didn’t even know what he was saying! It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Derek almost died, and the first thing his mind went to was marrying you. You don’t thing that means something?”
She breathed in sharply, wiping at her eyes with a rough hand and saying nothing.
“Talk to him,” urged Bailey. “All this mess isn’t doing either of you any good.”
“I’m fine,” said Meredith stiffly. “And he needs to heal. He feels bad enough as it is. If you think I’m going to go tell him he forgot proposing to me and make him feel ten times worse…” She shook her head. She’d already done enough damage. “I’m fine,” she insisted.
Bailey’s eyes softened and her voice grew gentle, almost motherly. “I know you want to be strong for him, but you don’t have to be okay about all of this,” she said. “If you want someone to talk to, just let me know.”
Meredith looked away, suddenly acutely aware that Derek had told Bailey all about the day she’d drowned. She wanted to tell Bailey that she wasn’t that person anymore. That even though everything really sucked, she wasn’t going to go drown herself in a bay. She could do this. Be strong for Derek. She wasn’t even going to cry about her forgotten, delusional marriage proposal. Wasn’t going to care at all. Except her skin felt prickly and she couldn’t seem to find her voice.
“Don’t tell him,” she said at last.
Bailey nodded slowly. “It’s your news to tell, Meredith. Not mine.” And with one last, skeptical look, she turned and walked away down the hall.
Meredith reached up and ran a hand through her hair. It was tangled and greasy, and she thought vaguely of a shower. A bed. Her limbs felt leaden, her eyes like they’d been rubbed raw. Somehow, she plastered a smile onto her face and tried for normal, but Bailey’s words stuck in her mind as she stumbled down the empty hall to Derek’s room.
He lay in bed staring glumly at the wall opposite him, but he looked up at the sound of the door. “Hey,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Meredith a little breathlessly. “Everything’s good.”
“You sure? You took off pretty fast.”
Meredith nodded. “I just…needed to talk to Bailey,” she said. But Derek was regarding her with raised eyebrows, and she racked her mind for some sort of suitable explanation. “Time off,” she blurted. “I wanted to see about getting more time off.” At least that wasn’t a complete lie. As soon as she’d said it, she knew it was true. She needed more time off. One day wasn’t enough. She’d chew through her entire meager supply of vacation days to be with him for this if she had to.
“And?”
“And, um, she…she doesn’t know yet. How much I can take. She doesn’t know.” And that wasn’t quite a lie either. Even if Bailey didn’t know because she hadn’t been asked.
He pursed his lips together. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re stuck in here with me,” he said. “If you want to go back to work, you should.” His voice was casual, but his eyes were pools of sadness and hope, as if he wanted her to stay but didn’t quite know how to ask.
“No,” said Meredith quickly, shaking her head. “I don’t feel stuck, Derek. Don’t worry about it, okay?” She stepped closer to him until her leg brushed against the side of the bed. “I want to be here with you. I need to be here.” It was the absolute least she could do after everything. She bent down and pressed a light kiss to his lips, and he smiled as she pulled away.
“Okay.”
Meredith nodded. “Okay.” She bit her lip and tried to smile back. “So I’m yours all day,” she added, struggling to keep even a hint of sadness out of her voice. It was okay that he didn’t remember. That it wasn’t real. She could be okay with that. She could. Meredith pressed her lips to his again, but she pulled away abruptly as she felt her eyes start to sting. Apparently being okay with it would take some getting used to. “Do you want me to get you anything?” she asked quickly. “Some books, maybe? Or, I don’t know, do you feel up for reading?”
“Um,” said Derek, his expression growing thoughtful. “My laptop, actually. If you don’t mind running home for it?”
“No, no, that’s fine. I can do that.”
“And maybe some of my pajamas,” he added, plucking at his hospital gown. “Something tells me this isn’t my best look.” He grinned at her and, for a moment, an enormous weight slid off her shoulders. She’d love him in anything at all.
“Okay. Pajamas. Laptop. Do you want anything else?”
He grinned at her. “Just you.”
“Oh…” She stood still and stared at him, blinking softly. “You…you have that,” she said. Forever. I said yes. The words lingered right there on the tip of her tongue, but they wouldn’t come. It wasn’t real. “I’m gonna run home and get your stuff, okay?” she added at last as she stumbled towards the door. It suddenly felt hard to breathe.
---
When Meredith pulled up in front of her house, there was a heavy silence in the air. The house looked fine from the outside, but the quiet stayed too close to her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. When she pushed open the front door, glass crunched beneath her feet. She shut the door behind her and found a fallen lamp, the source of the broken glass. Most off it had been swept to the side, but the sweeper had either been in a hurry (Izzie) or just not all that inclined to be thorough in the first place (Alex). She called their names, but the house felt empty and no one answered back. She remembered a few tentative steps later that Bailey had paged Izzie in to cover for her. Alex had likely been called in as well. She tried not to mind, but it felt like a lifetime since she’d last seen her friends. The house was too quiet, filled with a cold loneliness that lapped all around her. The damage wasn’t devastating. There were no collapsed walls or fallen ceilings. It was the little things -- candles and lamps and picture frames -- that were in ruins, the small touches that had helped to keep the dust of old, unloved memories at bay. They had come crashing down.
She trudged upstairs on autopilot, pulling things from drawers and dropping them on the bed, doing all she could to ignore the mess from the earthquake. She piled up old, faded tees and pairs of well worn pajama pants with drawstring waists. Loose clothes that wouldn’t irritate Derek’s incision. Meredith went from the bedroom to the bathroom, gathering his toiletries as well. As soon as he felt up for taking a shower, she had no doubt he’d want the ridiculous assembly line of products he used on his hair. At least she hoped he’d be feeling good enough to want them. The pile grew and grew on their bed until she stopped abruptly and shoved everything into an old bag of hers with a halfhearted hope that none of his toiletries would leak.
Her to-do list was short, but it kept her going like a robot. Pajamas. Laptop. She hurried back down the stairs and into Derek’s study, finding more and more of the mess. Meredith sank into his chair, coming face to face with a jumble of spilled pens, shards of a broken mug on the floor, and what looked like a child’s scribbled drawing. Slowly, she reached out and picked it up with a trembling hand. It was waxy to the touch, the entire page coated with blue crayon, and she smoothed a fingertip along the endless swirls and scribbles. The page was creased down the middle as if it had been folded once, and when she flipped it over her eyes filled with tears as she stared at the simple inscription:
Dr. Shepurd
Sarah
Of course it was hers. She should’ve known. Meredith trailed a finger along each letter in turn as tears brimmed in her eyes. When she reached the end of Sarah’s name, she hunched over and let herself cry for the first time that day. Her shoulders shuddered with every sob, her tears splattering the paper and her lap. She stopped only when her eyes ran dry, and then she just sat there, shaking slightly. The drawing was damp, but she smoothed it out and placed it back on Derek’s desk with a trembling hand. She felt dazed as she got to her feet, as if she’d left some part of herself behind in the chair, still weeping senselessly.
Her growling stomach was the only thing about her that felt concrete; it started to voice its complaints painfully as she packed up Derek’s laptop and left it waiting by the door with her other bags. She sidestepped a neglected dustpan half filled with shards of glass and made her way into the chaos of the kitchen. The earthquake had robbed the cupboard of all its plates. The floor was speckled with broken pieces of ceramic in bright blues and greens and reds. There was a ringing in her ears that she ignored as she picked her way across the floor to yank open the fridge.
Meredith ate among the broken glass, clutching a Tupperware container filled with cold pasta. She shoveled forkful after forkful into her mouth, barely taking time to chew. The meal sat like a lump in her gut, but she didn’t mind. Food felt unimportant now. Her gaze darted around the kitchen as she ate, cataloguing just how much there was to clean when her gaze landed on the answering machine beside the phone. Its little red light was blinking on and off, signaling a new message. She took another bite and shuffled forward, frowning when the display indicated six new messages. They almost never had anyone but telemarketers call them on the landline.
Nerves she didn’t understand had stolen her breath away, and she reached out and pressed play with a tentative hand. A computerized voice filled the room telling her what she already knew, that she had six new messages. And then the first message started to play, and the voice of a woman she’d never heard before swept over her.
Derek, it’s Mom. I know you’re probably in surgery because I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell phone and your office line, and I haven’t been having any luck. I thought I’d try here though just in case. I’ve been watching the news and this earthquake looks like it was pretty bad, so call me back when you get this, and let me know your safe, alright?
Meredith stood frozen as the computerized voice returned, announcing the end of the message and options to reply or continue to the second one. Numbly, she reached out and pressed continue. This time, the voice that filled the kitchen was familiar. Sharp and businesslike. Just shy of bitchy. Nancy.
Derek, I swear if you’re out at that tin can in the woods, missing all of our calls because there’s no reception in the middle of nowhere, I’m going to fly out to Seattle again and stage a wilderness intervention! Stop macking on that intern of yours and call Mom, okay? She’s not going to stop worrying until you do.
The messages kept coming one after another, all of them from Derek’s family. There was a message from a sister named Kathleen. She’d heard of that one before. The shrink. Another from a soft-spoken sister who introduced herself as Julia. And a fourth who gave no name, simply saying “Hey, it’s me” before launching into another half scolding, half pleading rant about Derek’s whereabouts. Their voices filled the room.
You’re turning Mom into a nervous wreck, you know. If she wasn’t already gray, you would’ve wrecked her hair color with this stunt, Derek. Call her already. And then call me. Actually, call me first. I’m always the last to know things. You can’t do that to your favorite sister. I mean it though. Call us. As soon as you can.
Are you okay?
Just let us know you’re safe, please.
Derek?
The final message was from his mother again, and this time the worry in her voice was undeniable.
Derek, I know I probably sound like one of those overbearing, nosey mothers, but this isn’t like you. Sweetheart, please let me know you’re okay. And Meredith, if you’re there…I know we haven’t been introduced yet, but Derek told me this is your home, so maybe there’s a chance you’re hearing this message too. If you are, please feel free to call me. Even if it’s just to let me know he’s in surgery so I can stop driving my daughters crazy with all my worrying. My name’s Carolyn and you can reach me at 516-204-1216. I’d love to hear from you, Meredith. I hope everything is alright.
The computerized voice came back again, announcing that there were no new messages.
“Oh,” said Meredith, staggering back a step. Her heart was hammering away in her throat and her hands were empty. She looked down, only just realizing she’d dropped her Tupperware container. Leftover pasta spilled across the floor. She left it there and stared at the waiting phone, Carolyn’s voice ringing in her ears.