All Along The Watchtower - Part 8A
Title: All Along The Watchtower
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
All right. I'm a little behind on my feedback replies, but I decided, given how long it's been since I posted a part, you'd forgive me if I posted Chapter 8 instead, so, here we go.
I'm very sorry I took so long to get a new chapter posted after chapter 7. Unfortunately, since I have no story buffer to work with, irregularities in my schedule mean this sort of thing will happen from time to time :( That being said, I do have part 9 done now, and it is in the process of being betaed. I will post part 9 on 08/11, barring unforeseen catastrophes.
I don't claim to be a therapist in any form or fashion, but I did read to the ends of the Internet researching for this story, and I did have several people with strong psychology backgrounds look this particular part over to confirm that I'd gotten my psychology-babble correct. I also had a long chat with one of them concerning the psychological ramifications of what's going on with Derek. I dearly, dearly hope I've given this as realistic of a spin as possible (within reason, since I'm not an actual shrink or anything). I tried my very best, at least :) Added thanks to the extra people I pulled in for help with this part. This was a difficult chapter for me to write for many reasons, most of them revolving around my desire to write this without perpetrating any of the commonly committed Hollywood snafus on the matter.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 8A
“Who's got schizophrenia?” said a loud voice against her ear.
Meredith jumped and sent a stack of books tumbling to the floor. She almost fell out of her chair. Her heart thudded, and she clawed agitated hands through her tangled hair as she panted.
Cristina's thin body crashed into the chair next to Meredith's. She huffed, blowing black strands of her loose hair into the air. They sat in the back corner of the large research library. Meredith had picked the computer farthest from the door, facing all the rows of bookshelves, where nobody could look over her shoulder without some effort and some epic contortionist skills, or blatant nosiness. The sharp smell of new paper had mingled with the musty smell of old books as she'd started to pull up article after article after article.
“You shouldn't sneak up on people like that,” Meredith snapped. Breath by breath, she calmed down. She'd let herself become too engrossed.
“I didn't,” said Cristina. “I came in from the front. I said hi. I stood behind you for like three minutes. My pager even went off.”
“Oh,” said Meredith.
“So, how'd you dig up a patient with schizophrenia?” Cristina said. “The hospital is dead. I've been trolling the ER for hours. Did you get a surgery with shadow-Shepherd or something? Tell me you get to do a surgery. Something. Anything interesting.”
“Nobody's got schizophrenia,” Meredith said. Derek? Not schizophrenic. You didn't get schizophrenia from gunshot wounds. That was ridiculous. Right? Ridiculous. “That article was open already when I got here, and I didn't want to lose somebody's place. I was looking up other stuff.” She minimized the browser window that framed an article about anti-psychotic medications and their effects on patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Behind it hovered mazes of other articles. Articles she had opened.
“Why do you want to know about post-traumatic stress?” Cristina said. “Is Derek acting weird?”
Meredith had started with easy research. Post-operative care for heart surgery patients. Stretching exercises to alleviate lower back pain. But niggling suspicion had caused her to stray. She'd pulled up one article on post-traumatic stress disorder. And then she'd pulled up another. And another. Article upon terrifying article that regurgitated Derek's symptoms to the letter all over the screen. She'd gotten lost in a nightmare, clicking link after related link, until her browser had about fifty articles open, and she had no idea which article said what anymore. Derek had post-traumatic stress disorder. She knew it. She knew it, and it made her insides twist and jumble, until she felt nauseated and cold and terrified inside. She thought of Owen. And the red marks she'd seen on Cristina's neck the night he'd nearly strangled her. Derek… God.
No. Absolutely not.
She refused to let herself believe that Derek would sink that far. Hurting her or somebody else. He couldn't. Derek didn't hurt people. Not ever. She'd seen him snap and snarl and yell. If he got frustrated enough, he hit things. Inanimate things. Books. Papers. Door frames. Whatever. Not people. Never people. Well, Mark. He'd hit Mark. More than once. She wrung her hands together. No. Those times had been different. Unusual nexuses of bad, provoking events all piled onto one another. Derek did not hurt people.
But he didn't wet himself either. He didn't hide in dark bathrooms and shake like a freaking leaf with terror. He didn't startle over garbage trucks and tense when she touched him unexpectedly.
“Meredith,” Cristina said, her voice loud and piercing.
“Cristina...” Meredith said. But she couldn't find any words.
Cristina read the articles over Meredith's shoulder quietly. “Derek wasn't in combat for months,” she said. Simple. To the point. “He got shot by a maniac, and it was over in minutes. Seriously, Meredith. Think about it. Think hard. I mean, he might be a little messed up about it, but what's going on that makes you think he's actually got PTSD?”
“I...” Meredith said. She stared at the screen, and her vision blurred. White pages and black text turned mushy and spread into senseless gobs of gray. Maybe Cristina was right. But she didn't know about Derek's dad. And she didn't know the way Derek had been acting the last few days. Cristina didn't really know Derek at all, even on his normal days.
“More stuff you're not allowed to tell me?” Cristina said. She folded her arms across her chest.
“No,” Meredith said. “I just can't tell you. I won't. I won't talk about this with you. I want to. I want to gush until I'm gushed out because I think I might explode if I don't, but I can't, because he's my person, too, Cristina, and if I told you, I'd be stomping all over that.” She sighed. “I love you. You're my person. I'll always be grateful that you saved his life, and I'd do anything in my power to repay that, but I can't talk to you about this. Please, don't be mad at me. I can't take having somebody mad at me right now, especially not you.”
Cristina watched her. Seconds passed. She took a deep breath and settled her shoulders. “Do you need me to be supportive? I can be supportive. You don't have to get specific.”
“Are you still scared of Owen sometimes?” Meredith said.
“Sometimes,” Cristina said. “He's gotten a lot better since he started therapy with Dr. Wyatt. And he's never touched me again. Not once.” She frowned. “Did Derek hurt you?”
“No,” Meredith said. “It's not like that. Or, I don't think it's like that. Or, I'm trying to convince myself it's not like that, and I'm failing dismally at it. Or, I'm--”
“Stop,” Cristina demanded. “PTSD develops from fear. People do one of two things when they're scared. They fight, or they run. They're aggressive, or they cower. Owen fights. Which one did Derek pick?”
Meredith shivered as her brain took out a broom and a dust pail and recollected her shattered resolve. She took a deep, cleansing breath, and she blew it out, sending wisps of hair flying. Guilt roiled in her gut as she realized where the train she'd gotten on had been heading. Derek wouldn't hurt her. He wouldn't hurt anyone. Gary Clark had set a monster free, but Derek wasn't a vehicle. He was a victim. Plain and simple.
Cristina nodded. “I thought so. I mean, people might not respond the same way every time, but if he's established a pretty good pattern of flight over fight...”
Meredith scraped tear tracks away. “I can't decide if I should be insulted or relieved that you think he's a coward.”
Cristina's lips pressed into a line. “Running away from a man with a gun doesn't make you a coward, Meredith. It makes you smart. The aggressive ones are the idiots.”
Meredith snorted. “We stayed and fought,” she said, her voice soft. “Are you saying we're idiots?”
“Yes, but I don't regret it.”
“How's Owen?”
Cristina snorted. “Macho and fine. Or he says he is. If his hands start to twitch while he's recuperating, though, I swear I'm telling the Chief with a bullhorn and a neon sign.”
“No more bank robberies?” Meredith said.
Cristina grunted and didn't answer. She glanced at her watch. “If you're done panicking,” she said, “I need to get back to the ER. It'll be just my luck if I missed something. I can't afford to miss something. I'm the most awesome resident we have. I need to maintain my hardcore rep.”
Meredith grinned. “I don't think you're in danger of losing that anytime soon. Did you take a single day off?”
“No.” Cristina shrugged. “Are you okay, now?”
Something dark and scary and shivery welled up in Meredith's chest. She swallowed against the huge, awful lump that formed in her throat. She nodded, and she closed all the browser windows. She couldn't look at this crap anymore. Reading articles about post-traumatic stress made her paranoid and upset and more worried than she'd been when she'd started, and she had no better idea how to help Derek than before. She'd wasted her time. Wasted Derek's.
She was a stupid, stupid idiot. You couldn't research this crap like some kind of paint-by-numbers surgery to perform.
“I need help,” Meredith said.
Cristina rolled her eyes. “Clearly.”
“You shut up,” Meredith said. “But thank you. I mean it.”
“As long as we don't hug.”
“Never that,” Meredith said. “I'm good, now.”
When Cristina turned to leave, Meredith called after her. Cristina turned. “What now?”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Does it involve giving you surgeries?”
“No, just--” Meredith sighed. “When you stop by the house to visit, don't barge in. Just... Knock and wait at the front door or something? Please.”
Cristina's stare peeled away layers from Meredith's body, to the point that Meredith felt like an onion, labeled and bared on a plate. Maybe she didn't have to tell Cristina anything at all. Maybe she'd figured it all out on her own.
“I can do that,” Cristina said, her voice soft, and then she left.
“I think I've got PTSD or something,” Meredith blurted. “How do I fix it?”
She gripped the doorknob so hard it made her hand ache. The fish tank at the far end of the room burbled. Silence stretched. Dr. Wyatt looked up from her book and schooled her eyes on Meredith, who hadn't knocked, scheduled an appointment, or done anything to otherwise hint to Dr. Wyatt that she might be stopping by that day. Meredith swallowed as she felt heat lick across her face.
She probably should have knocked. At least that. But she'd sort of... blanked. Just blanked. She'd let Cristina talk her off the ledge after hours in the research library, but then she'd started drifting into dark and twisty mazes of worry and fear again on the long walk to Dr. Wyatt's office. Derek wouldn't hurt anyone. But that didn't make him okay. He was far, far from okay. And she had no idea how to fix it. No idea how to help. When she'd felt lost before, that had been nothing compared to how she felt now. She wasn't even sure she was on the planet Earth anymore.
Dr. Wyatt put her book to the side by her hip, crossed her legs, and folder her hands in her lap.
“I'm sorry,” Meredith said. “I'm sorry. I should have made an appointment. You're probably busy with all the very traumatized people, and I'm not particularly traumatized. I mean, I am. I have PTSD. But it can wait. It's not like it'll just go away. And, I don't want to bother you with--”
“Meredith,” said Dr. Wyatt. “Seattle Grace is a ghost town. The only people who are overworked in this hospital right now are the specialized trauma counselors they brought in.”
“So, you're not busy.”
“Free as a bird.”
“Oh.”
“What makes you think you have post-traumatic stress disorder?”
Meredith stared, and the blankness returned. “Well, I...” This was it. “I mean...” This was where Dr. Wyatt would tell her that everything was not fine. “Since the shooting...” Not fine at all. “Since...” That Derek would need help. “It's just been wrong...” The kind of help that involved being committed in a straight jacket, or doped into catatonia, or something else awful. “I don't know myself anymore...” Or...
She snapped awake to the sound of his disturbed muttering. Nonsensical syllables that probably made words, wherever he was in his head, but they made garbage in the real world. Darkness hovered in the air, so thick and opaque she almost felt like she could reach out and touch it. She'd drawn the shades when she'd brought him home, and she'd left them down, so he could sleep in their bedroom whenever he wanted, daylight or not. The thick shades made the days dark, and the nights black as pitch. She rolled into him and splayed a hand against his twitching body. She rubbed, and she whispered. Warmth radiated from his skin, and she pressed her cheek against him.
“It's okay,” she said. “It's over. You're okay.”
She repeated herself until the muscles in his body tightened all at once, and then relaxed. A soft, sighing breath filled the space between them. He lay still. With the pillows propped under his side the way they were, he had next to zero ability to move on his own, not without clawing at the mattress for leverage and pulling with his arms, something he wasn't allowed to do, and probably had no desire to do either, given how painful it would be trying to drag his body weight across a resisting surface.
“Derek?” she whispered.
Silence stretched. She wondered if he'd fallen asleep, or if he'd never woken up. She pressed her nose into his shoulder and curled up, careful to avoid jarring him. He said it didn't hurt. He'd said so multiple times, but...
He kissed her forehead.
“Hey,” she said.
He didn't speak. She found his hand in the darkness and gripped it. He squeezed her palm. A rumbling breath hit her skin. The sheets rustled. With effort, he shifted. She helped, wincing when she heard his breaths tighten. Pain. His hand gripped her hip, like he wished he could pull her against him and spoon with her. He liked to do that, but he couldn't sleep on his side anymore, couldn't tip his larger frame over her smaller body. She settled against him as close as she could manage. She ran her foot down his leg in a long, reassuring stroke. His skin twitched. Her big toe brushed the ball of his ankle. She squiggled her toes against the soft hairs on his skin.
His breaths stretched as he made precarious inroads back to sleep.
“Meredith? Hello?”
“I have nightmares,” Meredith said, and then her brain kicked into gear and examples and purpose plowed over her rambling. “And I space out. I mean, I know I'm on lots of painkillers, but I've seen tons of people on painkillers, and they don't usually make people act like reality sieves. My temper is on a really short fuse. And I'm scared. All the time. Noises make me jumpy. Strangers and unexpected guests terrify me to the point that I can't function. I'm not eating. I cry all the time, too.”
“Derek doesn't have PTSD,” Dr. Wyatt said.
“How did you--”
“Maybe have a seat?” Dr. Wyatt said. “Close the door?”
Meredith shook her head. “Right. Right, sorry.” The door whispered closed. She skittered across the room, and collapsed into Dr. Wyatt's squishy, comfy, overly-relaxing couch, but she sat like a steel rod, straight and tense.
“We all saw the casualty lists,” Dr. Wyatt said. “I know he was seriously hurt. And most people suffering after a trauma aren't able to give me handy laundry lists of symptoms like that.”
“Well, if it's not PTSD...” Meredith clenched her fingers. “Are you sure it's not PTSD? I mean really, really sure?”
“100% certain.”
“How?” Meredith asked. “You haven't even seen him. He matches all the articles. All of them. And I read bunches and bunches.”
Dr. Wyatt nodded. “Post-traumatic stress disorder is a condition that appears well after a traumatic episode. Months. Sometimes even years. Have you heard of acute stress disorder?”
Meredith frowned. “No, but it sounds just as bad.”
“Well, it's acute, which is somewhat better. It's very common for people who have experienced a serious traumatic event to exhibit PTSD-like symptoms in the days and weeks following the event. Everyone copes differently and at different paces. I would be more concerned if he wasn't upset at all. Dissociation can be a dangerous animal.”
Meredith stared. Her jaw clenched to the point that her teeth hurt. Overwhelming, gut-wrenching hope tore her innards to shreds. She grabbed at the hemline of her scrubs and scrunched and wrinkled and fiddled because her hands needed something to do, and she didn't think Dr. Wyatt would like it much if she grabbed one of the periodicals lying on the coffee table and started ripping it to shreds. Her scrubs didn't fare so well. A thread at the hem worked loose. She--
Dr. Wyatt cleared her throat. Meredith followed her pointed glance. With a blush, Meredith dropped her abused hemline and grabbed one of the squishy stress balls from the pile in the wicker basket by the couch on the floor.
“So, it's actually good that he's a freaking basket case with anger management issues?” Meredith said as she mashed the stress ball into more of a stress pancake, or a stress jellybean, or a stress... something not round.
“It's not good, Meredith,” Dr. Wyatt said. “But it's perfectly normal. Really, it is.”
“Acute means it will be over soon?” Meredith said.
“That's entirely dependent on him,” Dr. Wyatt said.
Meredith bit her lip. She felt a little bad, heaping his short temper into the long list of symptoms she'd spouted. He hurt. All the time. He got very little sound sleep. Whether pain or nightmares woke him up, he didn't get much more than two or three hours of rest at a time. He couldn't sleep on his stomach, which she knew bothered him, not only because of the painful stress it put on his abused back, but because he liked sleeping on his stomach. He was one of those people who started on his back, usually, but in the course of the night, moved onto his side or his stomach, often waking up that way in the morning, buried under blankets, flat, warm, and eye-level with the mattress or stuck with his nose in the crook of her neck. But that had been taken from him. He couldn't even roll without being shocked awake with a flare of agony. Even without Gary Clark in the mix, if she'd been working under the same weeks-long list of annoyances, she would be spitting and snarling over every little thing as well.
But she didn't count simple instances of exhaustion. She didn't count the snapping because he couldn't make it up the steps without breaking a sweat, or because he couldn't carry milk to the table for his breakfast and had to ask her, or because he couldn't get into the shower by himself, or because he hurt and needed to shift to his other side in the middle of the night. Well, she tried not to, though they didn't help skew her perception in a positive direction.
No. He had a dark, dangerous quality to him at times, unrelated to simple negativity. The day Amelia had arrived, he'd been a seething, coiled mess of unexpressed fury. After he'd heard the answering machine messages, he'd been ready to explode into a thousand Derek pieces. In those moments, something twisty and bad said quite clearly that something was not right with him. Not right at all.
“How do I help him?” Meredith said. “Please, I want to help him.”
“Offer him love and support,” Dr. Wyatt said.
Meredith tossed her stress ball back into the basket. “That's it? That's your freaking expert advice?” The aquarium burbled. She watched two thumb-sized, shiny cylinders swim back and forth near the floor, ignored by the larger colorful fish. Guppies? Who knew? I feel like an amnesiac guppy or something. The colors in the room seemed too loud. Too bright and falsely cheery.
Dr. Wyatt shrugged. “He'll talk if he wants to, but don't pressure him if he doesn't. He experienced something he found terrifying, something that engendered feelings of helplessness and horror. His mind is trying to figure out how to cope with that. You have to let him heal at his own pace, but you can't let him wallow, either.”
“That's seriously it? Love and support? That's it?” Meredith said. “I worried all day to the point of possibly vomiting. He's sick and stressed and it scares the hell out of me because it scares the hell out of him. You haven't seen him. He--” I thought I was going to die. I don't want to die. “You don't think he should be in therapy or something? Dr. Hunt is in therapy for his stress stuff.”
Dr. Wyatt stared at her for a long time, and Meredith wondered, for a moment, if she'd said something wrong, but she couldn't tell for sure. If there's one thing Meredith had learned over the weeks she'd come here, it's that Dr. Wyatt had a freaking excellent poker face. Royal flush, full house, a pair of twos, or diddly squat, the face Dr. Wyatt showed was always the same. Calm. Receptive.
“I'm happy to book an appointment for Derek if he wants one,” Dr. Wyatt said, “But it's not something I'd say is absolutely necessary at this juncture, as long as he's talking to someone, unless you think he's a danger to himself or to others. Do you think he might intentionally inflict harm on himself or on somebody else?”
Cold spears slipped down her throat. She clenched the arm of the chair. “You think Derek would hurt himself? Like secret cutting or...”
“That's what I'm asking you, Meredith. I don't think anything about this.”
“But that's the sort of question you have to ask for this. That's how freaking bad this is. I knew it.” Meredith stood, and she paced. She paced until the cheerful, bright, bubbly colors made her dizzy and ready to hurl. Her vision blurred. “Derek wouldn't...”
“Meredith,” said Dr. Wyatt, her voice soft and low. “What you and Derek are going through can be something very scary at times. But it's a normal process after a traumatic event like a shooting. I'm asking these questions because I want to make sure what you're going through isn't abnormal. That's all.”
“He wouldn't hurt anyone. And he wouldn't hurt himself. Not on purpose. Never.”
“If you're so sure,” Dr. Wyatt said, “Then why are you getting upset?”
“I'm not upset,” Meredith said.
“The trough in my carpet indicates otherwise.”
Meredith halted by the fish tank. Bright blue and orange fish fluttered by in the water, and then the guppy things came out from behind the fake weeds. She took a deep breath and forced herself back onto the ugly orange couch. She petted the edge of the upholstery.
“Derek is the sweetest man I've ever met,” Meredith said. Go home, Meredith. “Usually. Usually, he's the sweetest man I've ever met. But he has a really nasty mean streak that pops out when he's stressed or hurting, and he does stupid, hateful stuff he doesn't mean like batting beer cans and engagement rings into the woods, or almost calling me a whore, or making stupid threats about never wanting to see me again. I don't want him to be like Owen. I don't. And I keep convincing myself he wouldn't be, but then I remember the way the baseball bat cracked when he beat my ring into the woods. He called me a lemon, and he yelled. He yelled really loud, and he--”
“So, when he's under stress, you're saying Derek tends to vent in a manner that seems atypical to his usual demeanor?”
“Yes,” Meredith said, and then she fell apart. Her breaths became chaotic and painful as she sobbed, and tears blurred everything away into a mess of bright and fun colors that mocked her with cheer she couldn't feel. “Gary Clark nearly killed my husband, and we lost a baby, and Alex is in the ICU still eating almost exclusively Jell-O. Isn't that enough? Isn't it enough that Mr. Clark did all that? He can't take what makes Derek Derek. He can't do that. It isn't fair. It isn't freaking fair.”
Exhaustion made her flop flat onto the couch, panting, and she cried. “Derek needs to be Derek. I need it. He nearly died, and I need him to be him. I can deal with him needing help and being tired and in pain, but what if he--”
“All right,” said Dr. Wyatt. “All right. Let's stop and assess for a minute.”
“Assess?” Meredith growled, sitting up. She wiped tears away, but unruly tear ducts replaced them in seconds. “Assess what? What's there to assess about me not wanting my husband to strangle me?”
Dr. Wyatt leaned forward on her knees. “Meredith, I know that you've been through something horrifying, something that I wouldn't ever wish on another human being. I know how difficult and exhausting it is at home when you're trying to take care of a loved one who's been physically disabled in some way. I know that you love Cristina like a sister, and I also know that it's very tempting to use her life as a frame of reference for your own. But let's take a step back and calm down for a moment. Can you breathe for me?”
“I'm not making this about Cristina,” Meredith said. “This is about Derek being sick. He's sick, and I need to know how to fix it so this crap doesn't happen!”
Dr. Wyatt glanced at her watch. “I know. I know you want to help him. So, why don't you just relax. Five minutes. Just sit and breathe.”
“How is that helping Derek?”
“Meredith...”
Meredith nodded, though it felt more like a shiver, or a muscle spasm. “Sorry,” she said. “I'm sorry. I was fine until--”
“Meredith,” said Dr. Wyatt. She held her hand in the air, fingers splayed. “Five minutes.”
In other words, shut the hell up.
Meredith grabbed another stress ball and squeezed until her knuckles hurt. She breathed, deep and long, forcing her lungs to empty to the point of ache. Her diaphragm clenched. The seconds crept past. She kneaded the stress ball. Don't die. Please, you don't get to die. She closed her eyes and tried not to see him there, lying on the floor in a spreading puddle of his own blood. She'd been fine. He'd been getting better, and she'd been fine. Except the way she made herself feel better, by looking at him, wasn't going to work when he was stuck at home, injured, and she was at the hospital. She forced herself to think of something else. Something Derek, but not Derek on the ground in an expanding lake of blood.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
All right. I'm a little behind on my feedback replies, but I decided, given how long it's been since I posted a part, you'd forgive me if I posted Chapter 8 instead, so, here we go.
I'm very sorry I took so long to get a new chapter posted after chapter 7. Unfortunately, since I have no story buffer to work with, irregularities in my schedule mean this sort of thing will happen from time to time :( That being said, I do have part 9 done now, and it is in the process of being betaed. I will post part 9 on 08/11, barring unforeseen catastrophes.
I don't claim to be a therapist in any form or fashion, but I did read to the ends of the Internet researching for this story, and I did have several people with strong psychology backgrounds look this particular part over to confirm that I'd gotten my psychology-babble correct. I also had a long chat with one of them concerning the psychological ramifications of what's going on with Derek. I dearly, dearly hope I've given this as realistic of a spin as possible (within reason, since I'm not an actual shrink or anything). I tried my very best, at least :) Added thanks to the extra people I pulled in for help with this part. This was a difficult chapter for me to write for many reasons, most of them revolving around my desire to write this without perpetrating any of the commonly committed Hollywood snafus on the matter.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 8A
“Who's got schizophrenia?” said a loud voice against her ear.
Meredith jumped and sent a stack of books tumbling to the floor. She almost fell out of her chair. Her heart thudded, and she clawed agitated hands through her tangled hair as she panted.
Cristina's thin body crashed into the chair next to Meredith's. She huffed, blowing black strands of her loose hair into the air. They sat in the back corner of the large research library. Meredith had picked the computer farthest from the door, facing all the rows of bookshelves, where nobody could look over her shoulder without some effort and some epic contortionist skills, or blatant nosiness. The sharp smell of new paper had mingled with the musty smell of old books as she'd started to pull up article after article after article.
“You shouldn't sneak up on people like that,” Meredith snapped. Breath by breath, she calmed down. She'd let herself become too engrossed.
“I didn't,” said Cristina. “I came in from the front. I said hi. I stood behind you for like three minutes. My pager even went off.”
“Oh,” said Meredith.
“So, how'd you dig up a patient with schizophrenia?” Cristina said. “The hospital is dead. I've been trolling the ER for hours. Did you get a surgery with shadow-Shepherd or something? Tell me you get to do a surgery. Something. Anything interesting.”
“Nobody's got schizophrenia,” Meredith said. Derek? Not schizophrenic. You didn't get schizophrenia from gunshot wounds. That was ridiculous. Right? Ridiculous. “That article was open already when I got here, and I didn't want to lose somebody's place. I was looking up other stuff.” She minimized the browser window that framed an article about anti-psychotic medications and their effects on patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Behind it hovered mazes of other articles. Articles she had opened.
“Why do you want to know about post-traumatic stress?” Cristina said. “Is Derek acting weird?”
Meredith had started with easy research. Post-operative care for heart surgery patients. Stretching exercises to alleviate lower back pain. But niggling suspicion had caused her to stray. She'd pulled up one article on post-traumatic stress disorder. And then she'd pulled up another. And another. Article upon terrifying article that regurgitated Derek's symptoms to the letter all over the screen. She'd gotten lost in a nightmare, clicking link after related link, until her browser had about fifty articles open, and she had no idea which article said what anymore. Derek had post-traumatic stress disorder. She knew it. She knew it, and it made her insides twist and jumble, until she felt nauseated and cold and terrified inside. She thought of Owen. And the red marks she'd seen on Cristina's neck the night he'd nearly strangled her. Derek… God.
No. Absolutely not.
She refused to let herself believe that Derek would sink that far. Hurting her or somebody else. He couldn't. Derek didn't hurt people. Not ever. She'd seen him snap and snarl and yell. If he got frustrated enough, he hit things. Inanimate things. Books. Papers. Door frames. Whatever. Not people. Never people. Well, Mark. He'd hit Mark. More than once. She wrung her hands together. No. Those times had been different. Unusual nexuses of bad, provoking events all piled onto one another. Derek did not hurt people.
But he didn't wet himself either. He didn't hide in dark bathrooms and shake like a freaking leaf with terror. He didn't startle over garbage trucks and tense when she touched him unexpectedly.
“Meredith,” Cristina said, her voice loud and piercing.
“Cristina...” Meredith said. But she couldn't find any words.
Cristina read the articles over Meredith's shoulder quietly. “Derek wasn't in combat for months,” she said. Simple. To the point. “He got shot by a maniac, and it was over in minutes. Seriously, Meredith. Think about it. Think hard. I mean, he might be a little messed up about it, but what's going on that makes you think he's actually got PTSD?”
“I...” Meredith said. She stared at the screen, and her vision blurred. White pages and black text turned mushy and spread into senseless gobs of gray. Maybe Cristina was right. But she didn't know about Derek's dad. And she didn't know the way Derek had been acting the last few days. Cristina didn't really know Derek at all, even on his normal days.
“More stuff you're not allowed to tell me?” Cristina said. She folded her arms across her chest.
“No,” Meredith said. “I just can't tell you. I won't. I won't talk about this with you. I want to. I want to gush until I'm gushed out because I think I might explode if I don't, but I can't, because he's my person, too, Cristina, and if I told you, I'd be stomping all over that.” She sighed. “I love you. You're my person. I'll always be grateful that you saved his life, and I'd do anything in my power to repay that, but I can't talk to you about this. Please, don't be mad at me. I can't take having somebody mad at me right now, especially not you.”
Cristina watched her. Seconds passed. She took a deep breath and settled her shoulders. “Do you need me to be supportive? I can be supportive. You don't have to get specific.”
“Are you still scared of Owen sometimes?” Meredith said.
“Sometimes,” Cristina said. “He's gotten a lot better since he started therapy with Dr. Wyatt. And he's never touched me again. Not once.” She frowned. “Did Derek hurt you?”
“No,” Meredith said. “It's not like that. Or, I don't think it's like that. Or, I'm trying to convince myself it's not like that, and I'm failing dismally at it. Or, I'm--”
“Stop,” Cristina demanded. “PTSD develops from fear. People do one of two things when they're scared. They fight, or they run. They're aggressive, or they cower. Owen fights. Which one did Derek pick?”
Meredith shivered as her brain took out a broom and a dust pail and recollected her shattered resolve. She took a deep, cleansing breath, and she blew it out, sending wisps of hair flying. Guilt roiled in her gut as she realized where the train she'd gotten on had been heading. Derek wouldn't hurt her. He wouldn't hurt anyone. Gary Clark had set a monster free, but Derek wasn't a vehicle. He was a victim. Plain and simple.
Cristina nodded. “I thought so. I mean, people might not respond the same way every time, but if he's established a pretty good pattern of flight over fight...”
Meredith scraped tear tracks away. “I can't decide if I should be insulted or relieved that you think he's a coward.”
Cristina's lips pressed into a line. “Running away from a man with a gun doesn't make you a coward, Meredith. It makes you smart. The aggressive ones are the idiots.”
Meredith snorted. “We stayed and fought,” she said, her voice soft. “Are you saying we're idiots?”
“Yes, but I don't regret it.”
“How's Owen?”
Cristina snorted. “Macho and fine. Or he says he is. If his hands start to twitch while he's recuperating, though, I swear I'm telling the Chief with a bullhorn and a neon sign.”
“No more bank robberies?” Meredith said.
Cristina grunted and didn't answer. She glanced at her watch. “If you're done panicking,” she said, “I need to get back to the ER. It'll be just my luck if I missed something. I can't afford to miss something. I'm the most awesome resident we have. I need to maintain my hardcore rep.”
Meredith grinned. “I don't think you're in danger of losing that anytime soon. Did you take a single day off?”
“No.” Cristina shrugged. “Are you okay, now?”
Something dark and scary and shivery welled up in Meredith's chest. She swallowed against the huge, awful lump that formed in her throat. She nodded, and she closed all the browser windows. She couldn't look at this crap anymore. Reading articles about post-traumatic stress made her paranoid and upset and more worried than she'd been when she'd started, and she had no better idea how to help Derek than before. She'd wasted her time. Wasted Derek's.
She was a stupid, stupid idiot. You couldn't research this crap like some kind of paint-by-numbers surgery to perform.
“I need help,” Meredith said.
Cristina rolled her eyes. “Clearly.”
“You shut up,” Meredith said. “But thank you. I mean it.”
“As long as we don't hug.”
“Never that,” Meredith said. “I'm good, now.”
When Cristina turned to leave, Meredith called after her. Cristina turned. “What now?”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Does it involve giving you surgeries?”
“No, just--” Meredith sighed. “When you stop by the house to visit, don't barge in. Just... Knock and wait at the front door or something? Please.”
Cristina's stare peeled away layers from Meredith's body, to the point that Meredith felt like an onion, labeled and bared on a plate. Maybe she didn't have to tell Cristina anything at all. Maybe she'd figured it all out on her own.
“I can do that,” Cristina said, her voice soft, and then she left.
“I think I've got PTSD or something,” Meredith blurted. “How do I fix it?”
She gripped the doorknob so hard it made her hand ache. The fish tank at the far end of the room burbled. Silence stretched. Dr. Wyatt looked up from her book and schooled her eyes on Meredith, who hadn't knocked, scheduled an appointment, or done anything to otherwise hint to Dr. Wyatt that she might be stopping by that day. Meredith swallowed as she felt heat lick across her face.
She probably should have knocked. At least that. But she'd sort of... blanked. Just blanked. She'd let Cristina talk her off the ledge after hours in the research library, but then she'd started drifting into dark and twisty mazes of worry and fear again on the long walk to Dr. Wyatt's office. Derek wouldn't hurt anyone. But that didn't make him okay. He was far, far from okay. And she had no idea how to fix it. No idea how to help. When she'd felt lost before, that had been nothing compared to how she felt now. She wasn't even sure she was on the planet Earth anymore.
Dr. Wyatt put her book to the side by her hip, crossed her legs, and folder her hands in her lap.
“I'm sorry,” Meredith said. “I'm sorry. I should have made an appointment. You're probably busy with all the very traumatized people, and I'm not particularly traumatized. I mean, I am. I have PTSD. But it can wait. It's not like it'll just go away. And, I don't want to bother you with--”
“Meredith,” said Dr. Wyatt. “Seattle Grace is a ghost town. The only people who are overworked in this hospital right now are the specialized trauma counselors they brought in.”
“So, you're not busy.”
“Free as a bird.”
“Oh.”
“What makes you think you have post-traumatic stress disorder?”
Meredith stared, and the blankness returned. “Well, I...” This was it. “I mean...” This was where Dr. Wyatt would tell her that everything was not fine. “Since the shooting...” Not fine at all. “Since...” That Derek would need help. “It's just been wrong...” The kind of help that involved being committed in a straight jacket, or doped into catatonia, or something else awful. “I don't know myself anymore...” Or...
She snapped awake to the sound of his disturbed muttering. Nonsensical syllables that probably made words, wherever he was in his head, but they made garbage in the real world. Darkness hovered in the air, so thick and opaque she almost felt like she could reach out and touch it. She'd drawn the shades when she'd brought him home, and she'd left them down, so he could sleep in their bedroom whenever he wanted, daylight or not. The thick shades made the days dark, and the nights black as pitch. She rolled into him and splayed a hand against his twitching body. She rubbed, and she whispered. Warmth radiated from his skin, and she pressed her cheek against him.
“It's okay,” she said. “It's over. You're okay.”
She repeated herself until the muscles in his body tightened all at once, and then relaxed. A soft, sighing breath filled the space between them. He lay still. With the pillows propped under his side the way they were, he had next to zero ability to move on his own, not without clawing at the mattress for leverage and pulling with his arms, something he wasn't allowed to do, and probably had no desire to do either, given how painful it would be trying to drag his body weight across a resisting surface.
“Derek?” she whispered.
Silence stretched. She wondered if he'd fallen asleep, or if he'd never woken up. She pressed her nose into his shoulder and curled up, careful to avoid jarring him. He said it didn't hurt. He'd said so multiple times, but...
He kissed her forehead.
“Hey,” she said.
He didn't speak. She found his hand in the darkness and gripped it. He squeezed her palm. A rumbling breath hit her skin. The sheets rustled. With effort, he shifted. She helped, wincing when she heard his breaths tighten. Pain. His hand gripped her hip, like he wished he could pull her against him and spoon with her. He liked to do that, but he couldn't sleep on his side anymore, couldn't tip his larger frame over her smaller body. She settled against him as close as she could manage. She ran her foot down his leg in a long, reassuring stroke. His skin twitched. Her big toe brushed the ball of his ankle. She squiggled her toes against the soft hairs on his skin.
His breaths stretched as he made precarious inroads back to sleep.
“Meredith? Hello?”
“I have nightmares,” Meredith said, and then her brain kicked into gear and examples and purpose plowed over her rambling. “And I space out. I mean, I know I'm on lots of painkillers, but I've seen tons of people on painkillers, and they don't usually make people act like reality sieves. My temper is on a really short fuse. And I'm scared. All the time. Noises make me jumpy. Strangers and unexpected guests terrify me to the point that I can't function. I'm not eating. I cry all the time, too.”
“Derek doesn't have PTSD,” Dr. Wyatt said.
“How did you--”
“Maybe have a seat?” Dr. Wyatt said. “Close the door?”
Meredith shook her head. “Right. Right, sorry.” The door whispered closed. She skittered across the room, and collapsed into Dr. Wyatt's squishy, comfy, overly-relaxing couch, but she sat like a steel rod, straight and tense.
“We all saw the casualty lists,” Dr. Wyatt said. “I know he was seriously hurt. And most people suffering after a trauma aren't able to give me handy laundry lists of symptoms like that.”
“Well, if it's not PTSD...” Meredith clenched her fingers. “Are you sure it's not PTSD? I mean really, really sure?”
“100% certain.”
“How?” Meredith asked. “You haven't even seen him. He matches all the articles. All of them. And I read bunches and bunches.”
Dr. Wyatt nodded. “Post-traumatic stress disorder is a condition that appears well after a traumatic episode. Months. Sometimes even years. Have you heard of acute stress disorder?”
Meredith frowned. “No, but it sounds just as bad.”
“Well, it's acute, which is somewhat better. It's very common for people who have experienced a serious traumatic event to exhibit PTSD-like symptoms in the days and weeks following the event. Everyone copes differently and at different paces. I would be more concerned if he wasn't upset at all. Dissociation can be a dangerous animal.”
Meredith stared. Her jaw clenched to the point that her teeth hurt. Overwhelming, gut-wrenching hope tore her innards to shreds. She grabbed at the hemline of her scrubs and scrunched and wrinkled and fiddled because her hands needed something to do, and she didn't think Dr. Wyatt would like it much if she grabbed one of the periodicals lying on the coffee table and started ripping it to shreds. Her scrubs didn't fare so well. A thread at the hem worked loose. She--
Dr. Wyatt cleared her throat. Meredith followed her pointed glance. With a blush, Meredith dropped her abused hemline and grabbed one of the squishy stress balls from the pile in the wicker basket by the couch on the floor.
“So, it's actually good that he's a freaking basket case with anger management issues?” Meredith said as she mashed the stress ball into more of a stress pancake, or a stress jellybean, or a stress... something not round.
“It's not good, Meredith,” Dr. Wyatt said. “But it's perfectly normal. Really, it is.”
“Acute means it will be over soon?” Meredith said.
“That's entirely dependent on him,” Dr. Wyatt said.
Meredith bit her lip. She felt a little bad, heaping his short temper into the long list of symptoms she'd spouted. He hurt. All the time. He got very little sound sleep. Whether pain or nightmares woke him up, he didn't get much more than two or three hours of rest at a time. He couldn't sleep on his stomach, which she knew bothered him, not only because of the painful stress it put on his abused back, but because he liked sleeping on his stomach. He was one of those people who started on his back, usually, but in the course of the night, moved onto his side or his stomach, often waking up that way in the morning, buried under blankets, flat, warm, and eye-level with the mattress or stuck with his nose in the crook of her neck. But that had been taken from him. He couldn't even roll without being shocked awake with a flare of agony. Even without Gary Clark in the mix, if she'd been working under the same weeks-long list of annoyances, she would be spitting and snarling over every little thing as well.
But she didn't count simple instances of exhaustion. She didn't count the snapping because he couldn't make it up the steps without breaking a sweat, or because he couldn't carry milk to the table for his breakfast and had to ask her, or because he couldn't get into the shower by himself, or because he hurt and needed to shift to his other side in the middle of the night. Well, she tried not to, though they didn't help skew her perception in a positive direction.
No. He had a dark, dangerous quality to him at times, unrelated to simple negativity. The day Amelia had arrived, he'd been a seething, coiled mess of unexpressed fury. After he'd heard the answering machine messages, he'd been ready to explode into a thousand Derek pieces. In those moments, something twisty and bad said quite clearly that something was not right with him. Not right at all.
“How do I help him?” Meredith said. “Please, I want to help him.”
“Offer him love and support,” Dr. Wyatt said.
Meredith tossed her stress ball back into the basket. “That's it? That's your freaking expert advice?” The aquarium burbled. She watched two thumb-sized, shiny cylinders swim back and forth near the floor, ignored by the larger colorful fish. Guppies? Who knew? I feel like an amnesiac guppy or something. The colors in the room seemed too loud. Too bright and falsely cheery.
Dr. Wyatt shrugged. “He'll talk if he wants to, but don't pressure him if he doesn't. He experienced something he found terrifying, something that engendered feelings of helplessness and horror. His mind is trying to figure out how to cope with that. You have to let him heal at his own pace, but you can't let him wallow, either.”
“That's seriously it? Love and support? That's it?” Meredith said. “I worried all day to the point of possibly vomiting. He's sick and stressed and it scares the hell out of me because it scares the hell out of him. You haven't seen him. He--” I thought I was going to die. I don't want to die. “You don't think he should be in therapy or something? Dr. Hunt is in therapy for his stress stuff.”
Dr. Wyatt stared at her for a long time, and Meredith wondered, for a moment, if she'd said something wrong, but she couldn't tell for sure. If there's one thing Meredith had learned over the weeks she'd come here, it's that Dr. Wyatt had a freaking excellent poker face. Royal flush, full house, a pair of twos, or diddly squat, the face Dr. Wyatt showed was always the same. Calm. Receptive.
“I'm happy to book an appointment for Derek if he wants one,” Dr. Wyatt said, “But it's not something I'd say is absolutely necessary at this juncture, as long as he's talking to someone, unless you think he's a danger to himself or to others. Do you think he might intentionally inflict harm on himself or on somebody else?”
Cold spears slipped down her throat. She clenched the arm of the chair. “You think Derek would hurt himself? Like secret cutting or...”
“That's what I'm asking you, Meredith. I don't think anything about this.”
“But that's the sort of question you have to ask for this. That's how freaking bad this is. I knew it.” Meredith stood, and she paced. She paced until the cheerful, bright, bubbly colors made her dizzy and ready to hurl. Her vision blurred. “Derek wouldn't...”
“Meredith,” said Dr. Wyatt, her voice soft and low. “What you and Derek are going through can be something very scary at times. But it's a normal process after a traumatic event like a shooting. I'm asking these questions because I want to make sure what you're going through isn't abnormal. That's all.”
“He wouldn't hurt anyone. And he wouldn't hurt himself. Not on purpose. Never.”
“If you're so sure,” Dr. Wyatt said, “Then why are you getting upset?”
“I'm not upset,” Meredith said.
“The trough in my carpet indicates otherwise.”
Meredith halted by the fish tank. Bright blue and orange fish fluttered by in the water, and then the guppy things came out from behind the fake weeds. She took a deep breath and forced herself back onto the ugly orange couch. She petted the edge of the upholstery.
“Derek is the sweetest man I've ever met,” Meredith said. Go home, Meredith. “Usually. Usually, he's the sweetest man I've ever met. But he has a really nasty mean streak that pops out when he's stressed or hurting, and he does stupid, hateful stuff he doesn't mean like batting beer cans and engagement rings into the woods, or almost calling me a whore, or making stupid threats about never wanting to see me again. I don't want him to be like Owen. I don't. And I keep convincing myself he wouldn't be, but then I remember the way the baseball bat cracked when he beat my ring into the woods. He called me a lemon, and he yelled. He yelled really loud, and he--”
“So, when he's under stress, you're saying Derek tends to vent in a manner that seems atypical to his usual demeanor?”
“Yes,” Meredith said, and then she fell apart. Her breaths became chaotic and painful as she sobbed, and tears blurred everything away into a mess of bright and fun colors that mocked her with cheer she couldn't feel. “Gary Clark nearly killed my husband, and we lost a baby, and Alex is in the ICU still eating almost exclusively Jell-O. Isn't that enough? Isn't it enough that Mr. Clark did all that? He can't take what makes Derek Derek. He can't do that. It isn't fair. It isn't freaking fair.”
Exhaustion made her flop flat onto the couch, panting, and she cried. “Derek needs to be Derek. I need it. He nearly died, and I need him to be him. I can deal with him needing help and being tired and in pain, but what if he--”
“All right,” said Dr. Wyatt. “All right. Let's stop and assess for a minute.”
“Assess?” Meredith growled, sitting up. She wiped tears away, but unruly tear ducts replaced them in seconds. “Assess what? What's there to assess about me not wanting my husband to strangle me?”
Dr. Wyatt leaned forward on her knees. “Meredith, I know that you've been through something horrifying, something that I wouldn't ever wish on another human being. I know how difficult and exhausting it is at home when you're trying to take care of a loved one who's been physically disabled in some way. I know that you love Cristina like a sister, and I also know that it's very tempting to use her life as a frame of reference for your own. But let's take a step back and calm down for a moment. Can you breathe for me?”
“I'm not making this about Cristina,” Meredith said. “This is about Derek being sick. He's sick, and I need to know how to fix it so this crap doesn't happen!”
Dr. Wyatt glanced at her watch. “I know. I know you want to help him. So, why don't you just relax. Five minutes. Just sit and breathe.”
“How is that helping Derek?”
“Meredith...”
Meredith nodded, though it felt more like a shiver, or a muscle spasm. “Sorry,” she said. “I'm sorry. I was fine until--”
“Meredith,” said Dr. Wyatt. She held her hand in the air, fingers splayed. “Five minutes.”
In other words, shut the hell up.
Meredith grabbed another stress ball and squeezed until her knuckles hurt. She breathed, deep and long, forcing her lungs to empty to the point of ache. Her diaphragm clenched. The seconds crept past. She kneaded the stress ball. Don't die. Please, you don't get to die. She closed her eyes and tried not to see him there, lying on the floor in a spreading puddle of his own blood. She'd been fine. He'd been getting better, and she'd been fine. Except the way she made herself feel better, by looking at him, wasn't going to work when he was stuck at home, injured, and she was at the hospital. She forced herself to think of something else. Something Derek, but not Derek on the ground in an expanding lake of blood.