Unarmed {part two}
Disclaimer: It belongs to Shonda, who actually gave me some McBaby hope for season seven. (If you haven’t read her interview with Ausiello, do it!) Kudos, Shonda.
Part Two
It’s been seven days since it happened. Since it all happened. The images haunt them all. The hospital is back to normal, at least in the sense that everything looks the same. But for those that were trapped inside that day, everything is different. The bodies and the blood are long gone, but the reality is ever-present.
Meredith stands at the nurses’ station and scribbles her name on another of Derek’s discharge papers, effectively signing him out of this place indefinitely. Teddy told them that recovery could take weeks, months. And even when he did return, he’d have to take it easy. Which was fine by Meredith. She was half tempted to walk out the doors with him and never look back. But life has to go on, no matter how hard it was to actually make it happen.
She glances back to his hospital room-he was downgraded from the ICU to a patient room a few days go-and sees him smile at her. He’s wearing his Bowdoin tee shirt, his hair is perfectly coiffed, and he looks happy. If it weren’t for the gauze taped to his chest, and the healing scar underneath it, no one would suspect that seven days ago, he was lying on an OR table, fighting for his life. Guilt washes over her; it’s been seven days, and she still hasn’t been able to tell him.
She’s been by his side the entire time, except for the occasional food run to the cafeteria, or when she drove home a few days back to gather clothes and toiletries for them, and her appointment this morning that she didn’t tell him about. Literally camped out in his room, sleeping in the small bed with him every night, eating together, watching endless daytime television. Like a backwards honeymoon spurred on by a gunshot.
But now it’s time to leave. To go back home and sleep in their own bed together, something they haven’t done since… she can’t even remember the last time. Too long. She turns back to the last of the paperwork and sighs. It’s really no wonder Derek hated being Chief. Paperwork sucks.
“Hey, are you leaving?” Cristina asks, depositing a chart in the bin.
Meredith nods. “Yeah. As soon as I’m finished here, I’m taking him home.”
Cristina is silent for a minute before she speaks. “So, have you, uh… have you told him yet?” she asks quietly.
Meredith puts her pen down, runs a hand through her hair. “No. I haven’t,” she confesses. “And I know I have to. I want to; but I just… this is something I have to tell him when we’re at home, not here.”
“Okay,” Cristina says, patting Meredith’s shoulder comfortingly. “Just, uh, call me later on-if you want,” she offers. Just as she’s walking away, she turns on her heel. “By the way, what did your doctor say when you went this morning?”
“Oh, she said I’m fine. I haven’t had any spotting or anything for days. We could even start trying again in a few weeks if we wanted to,” Meredith says.
“Good,” Cristina nods. “That’s good.”
“It is,” Meredith agrees, letting a small smile come over her face.
Cristina’s pager goes off and she quickly pulls it from her hip. “It’s Teddy. I have to go. You sure you’re okay getting home?”
“Oh. Yeah. We’re fine. I’ll call you later, okay?” Meredith says, stacking her small pile of paperwork on the counter. She gathers them in her arms and smiles at her friend. “Thank you, Cristina.”
Cristina smiles back in acknowledgement as she grabs another chart. “Yeah,” she replies, which is really all she needs to say.
Meredith hands the paperwork to a nearby nurse, then turns back to Derek’s room, smiling when she enters. “Hey. Ready to go?” she says happily, walking over to his bed where he’s sitting with his legs draped over the side.
“Yeah. All set,” he says. She takes his hand and grabs their various bags from the nearby chair, slinging them over her shoulder.
“Let me hold something,” Derek insists.
She shakes her head. “You just had surgery a few days ago. You don’t need to be chivalrous for a while,” Meredith teases him. Being able to laugh with him is nice; despite what’s happened, the past seven days-the seven days she was instructed to take off by her doctor, anyway-have been oddly relaxing, healing.
Within a half hour, they’re back at the house. After eating and doing some laundry, Meredith helps him upstairs so he can rest, doing her best not to make him feel ineffectual. She knows he can take care of himself; but there’s still a part of her that wants to take care of him. Apparently, witnessing your husband get shot has that affect.
“I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be quick,” Meredith tells him as she hands him the remote, glad she decided to recruit Mark into coming over, lugging it up the steps for her, and hooking it up.
Her mind wanders to Alex, who would be coming home later on tonight. Another wave of sadness rolls through her and she swallows hard. Alex, the closest person she’d ever have to a brother, almost died too. She needs him just as much as she needs Derek and Cristina.
“Take your time,” Derek says, kissing her cheek. When she pulls back, he’s smirking at her and she smiles.
“What?”
“Am I getting a sponge bath later?” he jokes with her.
He takes a bullet to the chest, and still, Derek is an eternal optimist, able to find humor in every situation. Meredith really loves that about him.
“Hmm, we’ll see,” she says playfully. Although, honestly, if he wanted a sponge bath, she wouldn’t deny him one.
Once she’s safely under the water spray in the shower, she cries. It’s where she’s been doing her crying for the past seven days. Not because she’s embarrassed to cry in front of Derek; because she couldn’t tell him why she wept. She watches with tearful eyes as the soap suds wash down the drain.
Like the blood that washed down the drain that day. Meredith crouches down and leans her head on the glass door, trying to catch her breath. She lets herself grieve. Grieve for the lost life again. The unplanned baby that she never planned on losing.
When the bathroom door opens, she isn’t sure how long she’s been in the shower. The water is still warm, so it couldn’t have been more than minutes, but when she sees Derek’s blurry form on the other side, Meredith is pulled back to reality.
“Meredith,” Derek says worriedly, sliding back the shower door and turning off the knobs.
“I’m okay,” Meredith exhales, taking his hand and standing up. He wraps the towel around her body and helps her step over the ledge. Then his arms are around her, hugging her as gently as he can because of the gauze bandages protecting the surgical scar underneath.
Derek kisses her forehead, and they stand there. He’s alive, she reminds herself. He’s alive. He’s alive.
“Meredith,” he says again.
She closes her eyes, presses her cheek to his. “Later, I promise.”
“Okay.” Derek wraps an arm around her, and leads her back to their bedroom. He grabs her robe off the back of the door and she shrugs it on, tying the knot loosely around her waist.
When they’re lying in bed together, she feels safe. They haven’t been like this, in their own bed, a place where the rest of the world wasn’t so important, in far too long. Exhaustions hits her, and she sleeps. They both do.
Hours pass before she wakes up, and those few hours spent sleeping next to Derek in their own bed were more restful than every combined night spent in the hospital. Meredith curls into him and smiles. Even in the aftermath, these moments of grief, she finds joy. There’s no baby inside her; but Derek is next to her.
She releases a breath and wraps her arm around his waist, resting her head on his pillow.
“Hmm… hey,” he hums, yawning as he wakes up, too.
“I had our whole night planned,” Meredith says softly, combing through his hair with her fingers. “We were going to order from that Italian place we like. You know, the one a few blocks from the hospital. We were going to come home and sit on the couch and eat.”
“Mer?”
“I could picture it-how it would go. I’d pull the test from my pocket and hand it to you. And you’d smile. I could picture that, too. That look on your face when you realized,” she continues, a tear racing toward the pillow as it slips from her eye.
Derek turns toward her. He realizes what she’s saying, only that look she’d imagined a week ago wasn’t at all what she sees on his face. He lets out a breath. “Meredith.”
“You would kiss me and I’d kiss you back. And then we’d have that dirty sex on the couch I promised you, then you’d carry me up to bed. And we’d both be too tired to go into work the next day, but we wouldn’t care, because we were gonna be parents and that’s all that mattered,” Meredith says quietly, her body shaking as she says everything she’s needed to say to him for the past seven days.
Derek pulls her to him and she lets him hold her. “Meredith,” he says again. There’s a sadness in his voice that she recognizes immediately, and she nods.
“I lost it,” she says weakly, letting herself break down. She didn’t have to be the hero with Derek. With him, she could let herself cry.
“How long did you know?” he asks, trailing his hand down her back, still covered with her robe.
Meredith wipes away her tears with her sleeve and sniffles. “That morning.”
“And when did you…” Derek’s voice trails off.
“While you were in surgery,” is all she says, unable to retell the tale of having a gun pointed at her as his heart monitors flat lined. How life in that moment crashed and burned and she felt like dying on that OR floor.
“My stomach cramped up, and then there was blood running down my legs,” Meredith cries softly. “It only hurt for a few minutes. Then it didn’t hurt anymore.”
Derek’s eyes fill with tears and he squeezes them shut. “Meredith.”
“I know,” Meredith whimpers, pressing her forehead against his. “I know.”
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. My doctor said I’m fine. We can even try again in a few weeks if we wanted to,” she says optimistically, hating that she’s breaking his heart, too. “Not that we were trying, but…” She wipes the tears under his eyes with her thumbs and smiles, sad and small. “For a few hours, we were parents. I wanted that baby. I still love that baby.”
Derek nods somberly and kisses her forehead. “Me, too.”
She splays her palm over his cheek and feels his stubble against her skin. “I should’ve told you, so we could’ve enjoyed it together, even if it was only for a minute. I should’ve told you.”
“No,” Derek whispers. “If you would’ve told me, both of us might be dead right now. When that gun was pointed at me, and I knew that I we were having a baby, I would’ve lost it. I would’ve panicked, and he would’ve killed me, especially if I told him,” he stresses.
He’s right, she knows. But still, guilt rips through her. “I wanted you to feel what I felt. That joy. I’m so sorry you didn’t get to,” Meredith whimpers, choking back a sob.
Derek tilts her chin up with his finger and smiles slightly. “Mer, we’ll have that again someday. We’ll have babies. And we’ll watch them grow up, and they’ll be beautiful, just like this one would’ve been,” he promises her.
This is why she loves him. He can say exactly what she needs to hear; he gives her hope. “Yeah,” Meredith says with implicit trust, leaning in and kissing her husband. Tears linger on their eyelashes, and he cradles her head with his hands.
“We’re alive,” he murmurs against her lips as he kisses his wife, vowing that he’s going to keep his promise.
Meredith closes her eyes and she can she can almost feel her heart mending itself back together, just like his was. She lets herself smile. “We are.”
What happened seven days ago will forever be what they are tomorrow. And she thinks that maybe that’s okay.
And this is the part where the curtain falls
And the daydream ends it all
Where the yellow brick road is much too far to go alone