All Along The Watchtower - Part 17B
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 Along The Watchtower - Part 17B
He picked up his briefcase, climbed out of the car, shut the car door behind him, and walked across the parking lot. He looked at the towering hospital as he approached the main entrance, and he felt nothing. No twinge of nerves. No fear. No apprehension. He walked across the threshold, just as he'd conditioned himself to do over the last few weeks, and he felt nothing. He walked toward the elevator where he'd proposed to Meredith. Proposing had been a good thing, a good memory, but the elevator brought him close to the catwalk, which was a bad thing. He still felt nothing, even as the elevator car ascended. Three more things to catalog in his little book of surprises.
“Good morning, Dr. Shepherd,” said Dr. Weller in a deep baritone voice as Derek stepped off the elevator. Dr. Weller smiled. He clutched a patient chart in his hand. The pages had been flipped back, as if he were examining every minute detail of the patient's history. “You're back to work today?”
Dr. Weller was a tall, thin man. Taller than Derek by at least four inches, maybe five. Taller than Mark, even. Derek looked up at the man who had replaced him as head of neurosurgery. Dr. Nelson had fought tooth and nail for the job. He'd puffed himself up and strutted about like an overbearing peacock, talking about how nobody ever remembered he existed, how he was perfectly capable and competent. How he was good at his job. Except he wasn't good. He was adequate. And while Dr. Nelson had been on his self-advertisement campaign, Dr. Weller had been in the OR, quiet, unassuming, fixing people, letting his meticulous work speak for itself. Dr. Weller possessed both better surgical skills and better people skills. The decision, for Derek, had not been a difficult one, and one of Derek's first tasks as Chief had been to calm down a hissing, spitting Dr. Nelson and congratulate Dr. Weller in two back-to-back meetings.
“Part time this week and maybe next,” Derek said. “But, yes.”
Dr. Weller nodded. His skin had a jovial, reddish tint to it, as though he were in a state of perpetual cheer. He reached out with long, lithe fingers and offered his hand. Derek swallowed as they shook hands. “I'm glad you're back,” said Dr. Weller, his voice rich with sincerity.
“Me, too,” Derek said. He flashed his best smile as a ball of ice collected in his stomach. Dr. Weller stepped onto the elevator that Derek had exited. And that was that.
Derek's smile bled away. He'd conditioned himself to go inside Seattle Grace and to act like he didn't hate being around people, but that was about all the progress he'd managed. White, sterile hallways stretched out from his feet. He followed them until white opened into empty space. Echoes bounced off the walls. Footsteps. Voices. He stared at the catwalk where he'd gotten shot, and beyond that, the Chief's office. His office. Two places he hadn't voluntarily stepped foot in since he'd nearly died.
He didn't have time to be upset.
“Derek, it's good to see you back,” Richard Webber said as he approached and put his arm over Derek's shoulder. Richard dragged Derek along as though he were tackling the ball carrier in football, and the blotched floor where Derek had bled swept under Derek's feet in a blur. The door to the Chief's office opened and shut behind them before Derek had a chance to react. Sounds from the outside hospital muted. Derek stood where Dr. Kepner had been, covered in blood and frantic.
“Richard,” Derek managed. He tried to focus on the man who had once been his friend and mentor. Richard wore his lab coat. His stethoscope poked out of the front breast pocket. He rifled through his desk for some papers and turned as he yanked a pen from the knit wire cup by the computer monitor.
“There was fourteen car pileup on the freeway,” Richard said.
Derek blinked. “I'm not cleared for cutting. I can't--”
“Multiple abdominal traumas,” Richard said. “They need another general surgeon.”
“Oh.”
“Look, I realize this is your first day back,” Richard said. “And I realize you've been having... a difficult time.” Derek pressed his lips into a flat line. A difficult time. Understatement. The ball of ice heated into something molten. Richard continued, “I'm sorry for dumping all the budget work on you before you've had a chance to set down your briefcase, but they need bodies downstairs. Now. Dr. Bailey is overrun.”
Derek glanced at his desk. Richard's desk. A sheaf of folders and paperwork sat in a fourteen inch pile on top of the desk calendar that covered the desk's surface. Derek stared at it. “Go ahead,” he said softly.
“You're okay?” Richard said.
“I'm okay.”
“There won't be any surprise welcome back parties, so you don't need to worry about that,” Richard said as he barreled toward the door, brushing past Derek, who hadn't moved. When Richard grasped the door handle, he turned. “By the way.” He pointed at the corner of the room where the coat rack stood. Colorful balloons bobbed against the ceiling. A pile of shiny wrapped gifts and cards full of what Derek could only assume were well wishes rested on the top of the file cabinet. A framed picture of Meredith that Derek had put there when he'd moved his things into the office had become buried. “Those are all for you from the staff,” Richard said.
“Thanks,” Derek said as heat flamed across his cheeks.
And then Richard left, leaving Derek in crushing silence.
Derek looked at the balloons. And then at the desk piled high with paperwork. He blinked. Something swelled in the back of his throat. His eyes stung. His lips pulled back. A soft snarl became a roar, and in a blur of motion, he launched himself across the room. His briefcase slammed into the desk and dropped by his feet. The Chief's stacked paperwork exploded in a flutter of budgetary confetti as Derek rammed into it. With a furious huff of breath that made his chest hurt, he collapsed into the executive chair that had been his for months. Paper crumpled underneath him. He wiped hurting eyes with his hands as the molten ball churned.
I grew up on a farm, so, you know blood... blood doesn't... doesn't bother me, I... Dr. Kepner had said, standing less than ten feet away, covered in another woman's blood.
He closed his eyes as papers that had been balanced precariously dominoed off the edge of the desk. How was he supposed to do this? Any of this? He inhaled. The hospital, even in the Chief's office, had a faint, antiseptic smell that tickled his nose. He leaned back in the chair. The seat rocked with his weight. He let threatening disorientation crush him, and then it swept him away.
“Would it help to show you this?” she said, disembodied.
He sat on the floor in the dreary hallway, shoulder-to-shoulder with Mark. His wet hair and his wet clothes made him shiver. He'd made a puddle on the tiles. Dripping. He shook as he looked up from his knees. Ice formed a block in his chest.
The door opened. He saw her swathed in blankets. Still and cold and blue. The people who surrounded her weren't him. Bailey. Richard. Burke. Even Addie. But Derek had been relegated to the hall to wait.
Derek stood so fast his knees popped and protested. He wiped the clawing tears from his face. “Why would it help me to show you like this?” he snapped.
She didn't answer. Mark didn't move. He stared forward, as though Derek still sat on the floor, crying into his knees.
“I don't want to see this again,” Derek said.
No answer.
“Stop it.”
Silence. Derek's lower lip quivered. He tried to approach the door that blocked him from where she lay. He couldn't pass. As though an invisible barrier had knit together and barred his way. He couldn’t pass. He could only watch as they fought to force her back to life.
For three hours, she'd been dead.
“Please, stop,” he begged.
The blackness faded. He sat in his chair, alone. His hands shook. A void had hollowed out his body that he wanted to fill. He knew he needed. Something. Slivers of ache slipped behind his eyes. He pinched his nose with his fingertips and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He placed his elbows on the desk and stared through blurry eyelashes at the pile of work Richard had left for him.
Papers spread around the desk and on the floor as though a hurricane had swept them up and displaced them. He picked up the closest paper, scanned past all the numbers and dollar signs and words, and sighed as he absorbed the page number listed at the bottom. 23 of 76. And that was only for Seattle Grace's plastic surgery department, which was smaller than their world-acclaimed neurosurgery and general surgery departments, mostly because Mark, as good as he was, didn't make a department by himself. Plastic surgeons flocked to Los Angeles. Not Seattle.
Derek spent his first hour back on the job sorting the papers he'd sent flying. His brain tripped every time he tried to shuffle things into order. Staring at text made him feel spacey and disconnected. He double and triple checked page numbers, only to forget what number had come before, and what went after. Other times, he found himself staring at nothing, or chasing a stray thought to the ends of creation, or riding the subtle buzz of elation that made his mind feel like it'd been replaced by cotton balls. He would blink, and it would take minutes to reassemble himself into sentience.
He hated budget work, but after he'd repaired the results of his tantrum and placed everything into neat stacks, he flipped on the computer, pulled up the hospital's accounting software, and he tried, but he suffered much the same problems balancing numbers as he did sorting. It seemed like he had to double check himself after every row. He lost his place over and over. He kept going until his head throbbed with the effort of concentration. Until his eyes refused to focus no matter how hard he tried to make them. He rocked in the chair, venting nervous energy. He needed something.
“You brought this on yourself,” said Gary Clark.
“Shut up,” Derek said.
“You fought for this job. You fucked Richard over. It's your fault.”
Derek loosed an agitated sigh.
“Everything is your fault, you know.”
He didn't know what he was doing until the second bitter-tasting pill was falling apart on his tongue in a mess of his own saliva. He swallowed, confused, and yet not surprised by the orange bottle in his hand. The pills slipped into his stomach. He closed his eyes, and as the minutes passed, the carousel began to spin. He sighed. The empty hole had been filled, and Gary Clark shut his fucking mouth. Finally. Derek looked at the bottle, lethargic, and put it back into his briefcase where he'd stowed it. When had he stowed it? Did it matter?
No. He swallowed, and he closed his eyes, and this time, she returned.
He found himself in a place he didn't recognize. He stood on a lush, green hillside with grass that came up to his knees, a rolling hill in the middle of hundreds. A weeping willow draped the crest of the hill. Crows circled, gliding up and down in the gray air currents as they mourned with woeful caws. He swallowed when he turned and saw Meredith standing by a chipped marble headstone. The dirt on the plot lay fresh at her feet, churned and black and rich with nutrients.
Derek C. Shepherd, said the elaborate headstone. April 7, 1968 - September 9, 2010. Beloved son and husband.
Meredith looked up as he approached. The long grass caught his ankles. He slogged through it, his eyes riveted by the sight before him. The breeze ruffled his hair and made the willow sway. Leaves rustled.
He came to an unsteady stop two feet from the stone, panting. His feet sank into the loose earth. He stared at the dates sprawled across the headstone. September 9th was less than a month away. “What is this?” he said.
She shrugged. “Isn't it obvious?”
He couldn't look at her. “But it's safe here,” he said.
She pointed at the headstone. “It's not safe. Think like a doctor.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“You do, Derek. You do know,” she said. “You're just ignoring it because you want something easy.”
“I don't,” he said. “I'm not.”
Meredith stared at him. “Percocet has acetaminophen in it,” she said, speaking low and soft as though she were teaching a kindergartener. “Do you remember that?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What does acetaminophen do in large doses?”
His lip trembled. “It's a painkiller.”
“But what does it do, Derek?” she said. She bumped him with her hip, prodded him. “When you take too much, what does it do? Think.”
“I don't remember.”
“You do,” she insisted. “You do remember. It's basic medicine.”
“Please, don't.”
She wrapped her arms around him. The soft scent of lavender made his muscles loosen. He breathed against her hair, and he couldn't stop himself as frustration tumbled out of him. He sobbed. Once. And then he rested his nose against the warm skin of her neck, breathing, existing. The rush of blood under her skin heated him, reminded him he lived. Her grip tightened. She kissed his ear, and she ran her skillful hands along the trembling sinews of his back. He closed his eyes, and the crows and the weeping willow and the gravestone disappeared behind his eyelids. This was what he needed today.
“You can't be here anymore,” she said. “If you keep coming here, you can never go back there.”
He took a shaky, deep breath. “I don't care about there. I hate it there.”
“That's bullshit.”
He shook his head. “It's not. It's not. I want to be here.”
She tugged on his sleeve, and they sat, shoulder-to-shoulder, their backs against the cold stone that marked his plot. For an eternity, she said nothing and stared at her knees instead. He watched the black birds flying in the distance, and he let the gray clouds and the crows' black, feathery bodies blur into a bleak, impressionistic painting.
“You want to be with Meredith, right?” she said, her voice soft. Gentle.
“I do.”
“And you want to have a baby?”
“I do,” he said. “I want that so much.”
She swallowed. Her fingers touched his face. She pulled his gaze toward her, until their eyes met. He lost himself in deep, sad gray. She blinked, and when she blinked, wet tears popped loose. Her distress crushed him.
“I'm not her, Derek,” she said. “And you can't be a father if you stay in here.”
“But you have her face.”
She shook her head. “I showed you what happened while Meredith was dead,” she said. “Would Meredith remember that?”
Derek swallowed. “But--”
“You needed me to be her before,” notMeredith said. “You don't need it, now. Now, you need to listen to me, Derek.”
“I don't know what that means.”
Her body shimmered as though she'd been strung with a thousand Christmas tree lights. The flash made his eyes hurt. He blinked and turned his head away until the bright white faded from view.
When he looked back, he saw himself like a twin in the mirror. The other Derek wore the same blue shirt and black pants that Derek had dressed in that morning. Except this Derek hadn't lost weight. He didn't look tired or stressed or scared. Derek II stared. Their eyes met.
“Are you listening, now?” Derek II said.
Derek could only nod.
“When you have too much acetaminophen, what does it do?” Derek II said, his voice soft.
“It causes liver damage.”
Derek II nodded. “It does,” he said. “And what does too much oxycodone do?” When Derek didn't answer, Derek II kept prodding. “What does it do, Derek? Think.”
“It causes depressed respiration.” Derek swallowed. “Hypotension. Bradycardia...”
“And?”
“Coma...”
“And?”
“Cardiac arrest,” Derek admitted. “It causes heart failure.”
Derek II nodded. “Do you remember how you felt when Meredith died?”
Derek thought of gray, cold hall where he'd sat, sobbing. “Yes,” said Derek. “I remember.”
“Do you want to put her through the same thing?”
Derek swallowed. He stared at the churned soil over his grave. The gravestone at his back chilled him to the marrow of his bones. His eyes watered. “No, I don't,” he said, his voice breaking. “I don't ever want to do that.”
“If you don't want Meredith to have to go through that, then what are you doing?” Derek II said.
Derek blinked. Tears wobbled in the nets cast by his eyelashes, spilled over, and chased down his face. He swiped at his eyes with his knuckles. “I don't know.”
“If you seriously don't want to die, Derek, then what the fuck are you doing?” Derek II prodded.
“I don't know,” Derek said.
Derek II laughed, but the bitter sound cut like sharp glass, and Derek flinched. “I guess that's the crux of it.”
Derek looked away, and then in a blur, the odd landscape disappeared.
Derek blinked and swallowed. His head felt clogged and full. Like his mental capacity had shrunk. He put his head down on the desk, and he rested for what seemed like eons. The clock on the wall ticked. Probably anybody walking down the catwalk would see him through the glass windows. Sleeping on the job, or at least giving the appearance of it. He peered at the clock. Lunch hour had crept up on stealthy feet. He should at least get a bagel. Or something. He wasn't hungry, but visiting the coffee cart would give him something to do, at least, that might make him appear productive and participatory in the hospital at large.
He squinted as sat up. The paper he'd been resting on stuck to his face, and he pulled it away as he grimaced and stretched. His eye caught mention of her name before any context arrived in his brain, and he pulled the paper back into his field of view. Meredith Grey. Pay scales. Nothing exciting. He shook his head, almost ready to dismiss the paper, when something in the financial blur made him read the spreadsheet more closely.
Meredith Grey. The sheet was alphabetized, which meant Lexie Grey's name was just above Meredith's and served as an easy comparison. His gaze followed the columns left to right. At first, he didn't know why what he was seeing caused niggling doubt. His head felt cloudy, and comprehending through the thick cotton took considerable work. Numbers. Dollar signs. Pay scales. He focused on the text and tried to understand it. This was silly. But then he realized what he was looking at, and in his laggard shift from not knowing to knowing, he tightened his grip on the paper and fought to keep his breathing steady. Both Meredith and Lexie were making the same pay. Both Meredith and Lexie were listed as third year residents. Both of them. He scanned down the page to Karev. Fourth year. Higher salary than Meredith. He would have checked Yang, too, but the page ended on the letter M.
Why hadn't Meredith said anything to him?
Can I wake you up tonight when I get home?
I want to talk to you about something.
“God, damn it,” he said as he slapped the paper back onto the pile. He pushed back his chair and stood. The room swayed like it had that morning. He counted to three before he left the safe island of space where he could still reach out and grab something if he fell. The disorientation settled. Slowly. All while the office space around him seemed to be closing in.
He glanced at the doorway.
A shadow crossed his view, and then she was there, babbling, covered in blood. I grew up on a farm, so, you know blood... blood doesn't... doesn't bother me, I...
“Fuck!” he yelled. “Stop hounding me, you fucking, heartless bitch!”
“You brought her back to work,” Mr. Clark said. “It's your fault she was there that day.”
Derek walked toward her. She was a hallucination. Just like Gary Clark. It didn't matter. They didn't matter. He was fucking hallucinating. Like people with PTSD did. They hallucinated. Her body separated like mist as he exited his office. Outside, he could breathe. The air felt cooler.
“You can't outrun me,” Mr. Clark said. “I'm in your head.”
“Leave me alone,” Derek said.
“Your little solution isn't working so well anymore, is it?” said Mr. Clark. “I think you need to take more.”
Derek needed a walk, and so he took one. A slow one. People said hello. They smiled. They well-wished him. But he couldn't help but notice the stares. Couldn't help but notice the eggshells cracking as people metaphorically tiptoed around him, as though the entire hospital expected him to fall apart in the hallway or have some sort of psychotic break, which he supposed wasn't exactly unjustified. When he found Mark chatting up a voluptuous, blonde nurse in the corner by the oncology ward, Derek felt stress unwinding from his body.
At last, something normal.
Mark smiled as Derek approached. He rested against the lip of the nurses' station desk with his body at a slant and his elbow propping up his torso. A chart lay by his hand. Derek didn't read the whole thing; the mere thought of trying to decipher Mark's usual chicken scratch made his head spin, but he did catch one word in the mess. Rhinoplasty. In an oncology ward? It took Derek a minute to add two plus two. He blinked dumbly at the pair.
“Hey, man,” Mark said. “First day back.”
“Yeah.”
“Hi, Dr. Shepherd,” said Mark's nurse 'friend'. She smiled, showing pearly, bleached teeth. She brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face, smiled shyly behind a waterfall of platinum bangs, and leaned into Mark. “Call me later,” she said, her voice throaty and sultry and sexy, as she slid past Mark's broad shoulder. Her hip brushed Mark's as she went. Derek watched her depart.
Derek raised his eyebrows. If it had been a normal day, and he had never been shot, Derek would have smirked. Teased. Instead, he felt nothing but irritated. He sighed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Seriously, Mark? You used a rhinoplasty chart as an excuse to talk to an oncology nurse?”
“It's not like she could read my writing,” Mark said. “I told her it was for a mastectomy.”
“That's mature of you.”
Mark shrugged. “Lexie's not interested.”
“Oh,” said Derek. Lexie had been spending an inordinate amount of time with Karev. Derek didn't mention it. Silence stretched. He grasped at straws. “Did Meredith talk to you recently?”
Mark cleared his throat as though something had gotten stuck in it. “About what?”
“She's upset about something, but she won't talk to me.”
“Hmm,” Mark said. He fidgeted. Since when did Mark fidget? “No idea, man.”
“She hasn't talked to you?”
“Why would she talk to me?” Mark said.
Derek ground his teeth. “Since I got shot, she's been talking to you. Or hadn't you noticed that?”
“Oh,” Mark said.
“So, has she?”
“Has she what?”
“Talked to you, Mark,” Derek said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh,” Mark said. He jumped and fished his pager out of his pocket. The pager hadn't beeped. He squinted at the screen. “I have to go.”
“Mark, come on,” Derek said. “You didn't get paged. I'm not an idiot.”
“I had it on vibrate,” Mark said. “I gotta go.”
Derek watched his supposed friend depart down the long hall, dodging between moving bodies and crash carts and stretchers. Mark had lied. He'd fucking lied to Derek's face. Derek had seen that type of lie many times before, enough to recognize it without any effort. Mark screwed a lot of women. Inevitably, one would try to continue a relationship past Mark's arbitrarily chosen expiration date. Derek had watched over and over again as Mark had told his latest in a long line of victims that he had other plans without having any other plans except a new lay.
“And yet you missed it entirely when he was fucking your wife,” Mr. Clark said.
Derek stilled.
“Nobody wants to stay with you,” Mr. Clark said.
Derek closed his eyes, drew in a shaky breath and let it out, and he forced himself to focus. Mark had lied. Which meant Meredith had talked to Mark about the thing from this morning. Apprehension gripped Derek. What could Meredith possibly be so afraid to talk to him about that she would be okay talking to Mark about? What could Meredith want to discuss that had nothing to do with her being pregnant, but she thought it would be a long, scary conversation? Unless the thing from this morning was her working up the nerve to mention she'd been bumped back a year in her residency, he had no idea. None.
“Whatever it is, I'm sure it's your fault,” said Mr. Clark. “That's the theme of the day, isn't it?”
Derek needed to find her. Meredith. He needed to know what was going on. He moved downstairs to the pit, first, where he knew she'd been paged when they'd arrived. Chaos spread before him, and trying to separate that chaos into individuals and unrelated events made him lean on the wall and stop to stare for a long, long time. The shrieks of somebody's baby broke the air into pieces, and he winced as he stared out over the bay. Doctors he knew fixed bloody noses, stubbed toes, stitched wounds, and diagnosed. He caught a glimpse of Dr. Hunt as he moved at a jog beside a stretcher with a moaning, bloody woman on it. A whiff of perforated bowel as they passed made Derek grimace. Dr. Bailey and Richard were absent. Derek didn't see Meredith.
As a nurse trotted past, Derek touched her sleeve. The motion felt clunky and imprecise, but she stopped, smiled. “Dr. Shepherd,” she said.
“Have you seen Dr. Grey?” he asked.
“Sure,” said the nurse, and she pointed with a gloved hand to the small room less than twenty feet away. “She's in trauma room two.”
“Thanks,” Derek said. He strode to the door, knocked once, and entered.
Lexie looked up as she palpated an overweight, hairy man's abdomen. The man moaned, and his jowls seemed to shudder with suffering. Lexie's eyebrows raised as she caught sight of Derek. “Dr. Shepherd,” she said.
“Dr. Grey,” Derek said. “Sorry. Wrong room.” His heart sank as he closed the door behind him.
When his pager beeped, he almost didn't recognize the sound, a single thread in a tapestry of bedlam. His pocket vibrated. He blinked, and he looked down. Who would page him on his first day back? He was useless. He hadn't been cleared to do anything but desk jockey. He stared at the display, and nerves clenched. OR 2. Who would page him to OR 2? And why? He stared. And stared, and stared, until a loud crash startled him into looking up. Paramedics had brought in another stretcher, and they'd transferred a cyanotic, seizing patient onto a gurney fifteen feet away. A free ER doctor rushed over. Derek shook his head. The pager in his hand didn't display a number anymore. It'd gone dark. How long had he been staring?
The thought that the page might have been from Meredith got his feet moving. When he arrived at OR 2, he grabbed a sterile mask from the dispenser, and he poked his head in to see what was going on, he didn't see Meredith.
Dr. Weller and two newer residents Derek didn't recognize stood over an open skull flap. The body and face of the patient had been obscured by flowing curtains of blue sterile drapes. The ventilator hissed, and the EKG monitor bleeped with a steady, stable rhythm. Dr. Weller looked up. The skin around his eyes creased, and he gestured with the pneumatic drill in his hands. His white gloves shined with a red sheen.
“Dr. Shepherd,” he said.
“Dr. Weller,” said Derek, his voice muffled behind the mask he held. He didn't move from the door. He tried to ignore the heat of everyone staring at him. Doctors. The scrub nurses. All on eggshells. All waiting for him to choke.
“I have a bit of an unusual aneurysm, here,” Dr. Weller said. “It's a lot more complicated to clip off than the scans indicated it would be. Dr. Langly, Dr. Fisk, and I were discussing how to proceed, and we were wondering if you could take a look.”
Derek tried to dip into his mental well for information about aneurysms, but he received only cobwebs and dust bunnies for his trouble. He should know things like this. Instead, his head had been stuffed with cotton.
“I'm not cleared to cut,” Derek said.
“We just want you to take a look,” Dr. Weller said.
Derek gripped the doorframe. The bright OR lights disoriented him, and the sea of eyes disappeared behind the nuclear flare. He swallowed. “I'm...” he began. He took a step toward the body on the table without thinking about the sterile environment, and then he stopped. Scrub in. He should scrub in if he was going to contribute to...
He stared at the table. The lights ran into him like a train, and then all he could hear was the beep, beep, beep of the EKG. His heart pounded.
It'll be over soon, Meredith had whispered as he struggled to breathe. I love you.
The room became a kaleidoscope of color and light, and the beeps and whirs and voices mushed together.
“Dr. Shepherd?” Dr. Weller said.
I know this is very scary, Dr. Shepherd.
“Dr. Shepherd?”
Derek blinked, and the room tightened into focus like a screw. Where had he gone? He... “I'm sorry,” he said. And he fled before they could say a word. He tossed the used mask in a trash bin as he passed it.
Do you want to see Dr. Grey? Meredith Grey. Do you want to see Meredith, Dr. Shepherd?
He went to the nearest nurses' station and paged Meredith once. Twice. He waited twenty minutes, but she never showed. He checked her favorite coffee cart, which was covered with scones and chocolate croissants and smelled like some sort of mocha blend. He checked the cafeteria to see if she was eating with her friends. He checked the residents' locker room, and every other place he could think of. He became so determined that he didn't feel dizzy or strange or nauseous or scared. He just kept moving. Place to place. He checked x-ray. He checked all the MRI machines and CT rooms. He checked the lab, and the pharmacy, and every nurses' station in sequential order.
As his last stab in the dark, he went to the hallway where the hospital kept decommissioned gurneys and other equipment because it had nowhere better to put them all. The long hallway with a snack machine where he knew Meredith and her friends liked to hang out. He didn't find Meredith. It was as though she'd been stamped out of existence. Or she was intentionally keeping her eye out for him and hiding. His page would have alerted her to keep her eye out for him, whether she'd answered it or not. But he did find Cristina, who sat on the empty bed with her legs crossed.
She didn't look up as he pushed through the doorway. Sunlight framed her dark hair with a bright halo. She'd drawn her hair into a thick ponytail with a white band, and she wore a yellow undershirt beneath her blue scrubs. She read a thick medical text with keen focus. Her highlighter squeaked as she drew it across the page. He came to a stop in front of her and cleared his throat. He watched her highlighter drag across another line. She read an article on angina. Her gold bracelet sparkled as she flipped the page.
“Cristina,” he said when she didn't look up.
She still didn't look up. “Is there a particular reason you're hovering?”
He folded his arms over his chest. “What's wrong with Meredith?”
“I don't know,” Cristina said. He watched the highlighter brighten another line with neon pink. “What's wrong with Meredith?”
“You don't know?” he prodded.
Cristina shrugged.
“So, she hasn't talked to you?”
“Nope,” Cristina said.
“Great,” he said with a sigh. He sat beside her on the gurney. His head had started to pound again, and the hallway lights seemed impossibly bright. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Perfect.”
Cristina glanced at him once out of the corner of her eye. Her head flicked to the side as she did it. She capped her highlighter, slammed shut her book, and stood. She went to the snack machine and dumped a pile of quarters from her pocket into the change slot. She hit buttons and waited with her hands on her hips. When she returned to her seat, she tossed her bounty at him. It landed in his lap.
The sudden movement and unexpected contact made him flinch. His heart throbbed. He took a shaky, slow breath, trying to calm himself down, trying not to show visible panic. He wouldn't let Cristina scare him with a fucking bag of Doritos or whatever she'd bought. He swallowed, and he stared at his lap. She pulled out her book again and didn't watch him. Her highlighter squeaked.
“What's this?” he said.
“It's a sandwich.”
“I know it's a sandwich,” he said. “I meant why.”
She glanced at him with a withering look that told him he should ask what he meant, then, if he expected a certain answer. Her lips pursed. She pointed at the clock over the door with her marker. “It's lunch time. If you're going to hover and annoy me, you can eat.”
He frowned. “I'm not hovering.”
“You're hovering.”
“Why does everybody think I hover?” he said.
She shook her head. “Because you do. It's your thing,” she said. “You lean, you have perfect hair, and you hover.” She pointed at the sandwich with her highlighter, her expression imperious. “Eat.”
He stared at the sandwich wedge encased in saran wrap. Two stale slices of bread hugged a sliver of dark yellow cheese, pale pinkish meat, old lettuce, and a lackluster tomato that seemed a bit greenish. He fingered the package. The saran wrap crinkled. He peered at the expiration date. Tomorrow. It looked like it had expired last week. The mere sight of it made his stomach turn.
A brunette nurse guiding an emaciated man in a wheelchair pushed through the doors by the snack machine. She smiled at them and waved, but didn't say hello. The man didn't seem coherent. He stared ahead, his gaze blank. An IV pole dripped fluids into the back of his boney hand. “You're doing great, Mr. Finch,” the nurse said, her saccharine voice too sweet to be comforting. Derek glanced at the telltale Foley bag hooked on the back of the chair, and he closed his eyes as the nurse and her ward departed.
That'd been him. In the chair. When he'd had pneumonia, and they'd transferred him out of ICU. Meredith and Mark together had helped him move into the wheelchair to be taken downstairs while the nurse had supervised. His first time out of bed in days, and he'd barely been able to stay upright. His chest had squeezed with the agony of gravity, and he hadn't been able to breathe without wheezing. He'd still been attached to everything. Mark, of all people, had moved the Foley bag from the bed to the back of Derek's wheelchair. That's good, Dr. Shepherd, the nurse had exclaimed as Derek had collapsed into the chair, breaths whistling in his chest. You're doing great.
Derek shook his head, and the memory faded. “She really hasn't talked to you about anything?” he said.
“Nope,” Cristina said. “She really hasn't.”
“And you're not worried.”
“I'm still not even clear why I should be worried,” Cristina said.
“Because she was upset this morning, and I can't figure out why.”
Cristina shrugged. “A man can't figure out his post-it wife. Like that's news.”
“She has a lot to deal with,” he said. “I just want--”
“You just want to stroke your wounded hero complex and save something,” Cristina said.
“That's not what this is about.”
“That's so what this is about,” she said. “McDreamy's coming back.”
He glared. “Don't call me that.”
“Well, what do you want me to call you, then?” she countered.
“Derek would be fine. It is my name.”
“Fine,” she said. She pointed at the sandwich. “Derek, take a bite.”
“Why are you--”
“Because this is your first day back,” she said. “Cardio patients typically don't know what the hell hit them on their first day back, and if you relapse before dinner, Meredith will get all sad and pout-y-faced.”
He pulled the sandwich to his mouth and took a bite. The stale bread made him want to choke. The soggy tomato burst under the pressure of his teeth. He had no idea what kind of meat this was. Turkey or chicken. He could only identify that it was cold and tasteless. The lettuce didn't crunch. The mayonnaise made everything slimy. He chewed once, and he swallowed.
“It won't kill you before the expiration date,” she said.
He glared at her, and he bit off another chunk. He swallowed with a grimace. “I'm touched that you care,” he said.
“I care,” she responded.
He raised his eyebrows. “You care?”
“I do care.” She shrugged. “I just don't 'care'.”
He scoffed. “Because that makes sense.”
They sat in silence for several moments.
“Meredith didn't tell me you're food challenged,” Cristina said.
“Right,” he said. “You figured it out in five minutes of talking to me.”
“I pay attention.”
He crossed his arms. “So, you have me all figured out.”
“Yes.”
“Really.”
“Yes,” she said. Silence stretched. “How's your pain?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
Her lip twitched. “Why wouldn't you answer?”
They stared at each other. Her deep brown eyes pierced him, and he couldn't help the feeling that he'd been laid bare. She knows, said a small voice. She knows, and Mark knows, and Meredith knows. They all know. He closed his eyes, and he took a breath.
“Meredith would talk to you,” he said. “If there was a problem. Right?”
“If there was a problem, yes.”
“So, you don't think there's a problem.”
“At this point in time, I'm reading this book about angina,” she said. “I'm not thinking about problems.”
“You really frustrate me.”
She snorted. “The feeling's mutual. Take a bite.”
He stared at the partially eaten sandwich. His stomach roiled. He couldn't do it. “I'm not hungry,” he said. He stood and stretched.
The room blacked out, and the floor dropped away in a sickening twist. Just for a moment. He put his hand on the gurney behind him to steady himself. He inhaled as he waited for the fuzzy blackness to recede. As colors replaced the black dots, he found her staring at him, eyes narrowed. Face heating, he turned away. When he reached the trash bin by the snack machine, he tossed the gloppy remnants of his sandwich into it. Relief flooded him when his poor coordination didn't cause him to miss his shot while she watched. He felt her gaze on his back, peeling away layers of his skin.
“She wouldn't talk to me if it was about you,” Cristina said as he grabbed the door handle.
He stopped and turned. He couldn't withhold a burble of bitter laughter. “She talks to you about me all the time.”
“Something she thinks you'd want kept private,” Cristina clarified.
He sighed. “And she really hasn't talked to you?”
“Really hasn't.”
“Would you tell me if she had?” he asked.
Cristina drew her highlighter across the page. “If it meant I could read this book in peace, I would.”
He took the hint and left her alone. He returned to his office, past more and more people who thought it was great that he was back, and told him so in detail. When he entered, he scowled at the bobbing balloons and glittery cards in the corner on the filing cabinet and went to the desk, where he'd left a still huge stack of paperwork.
When he sat down, a profound wave of tiredness crashed into him. He sighed, and he glanced at his watch. 1:00 PM. He only had to make it to 2:00 PM, and then he could leave. He stared at the pile of paperwork. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't.
He took a breath, and he let the room tumble out of focus. If he didn't think, everything was easy. And it didn't hurt. And nothing frightened him. He let his eyelids droop. He wouldn't fall asleep. He wouldn't let himself. If he fell asleep at work after only five hours on his first day back... His head tilted, and the world panned downward, into his lap. He blinked.
Dark, choppy water splashed in his eyes and then swallowed him whole. He dipped underneath the surface, searching. Everything, black. Dark. His eyes burned. He would need air soon. Blue, in the distance. In the deep. Like a blue jay. Or a bird egg. Or...
He kicked. His body sliced the water. Bubbles sprayed in his face. His frozen fingers caught in the wet web of her tangled hair. He hooked his arm around her chest, underneath her armpits, and then he kicked harder than he'd ever kicked. Spots formed in his vision. And then dark and black and cold split apart into light and gray and colder.
Wind blustered against his face. He choked on the air. Sputtered.
“Meredith,” he gasped.
She didn't help. Or speak. He fought his freezing limbs and the heady urge to sink as he splashed and kicked them toward the dock.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 17B
He picked up his briefcase, climbed out of the car, shut the car door behind him, and walked across the parking lot. He looked at the towering hospital as he approached the main entrance, and he felt nothing. No twinge of nerves. No fear. No apprehension. He walked across the threshold, just as he'd conditioned himself to do over the last few weeks, and he felt nothing. He walked toward the elevator where he'd proposed to Meredith. Proposing had been a good thing, a good memory, but the elevator brought him close to the catwalk, which was a bad thing. He still felt nothing, even as the elevator car ascended. Three more things to catalog in his little book of surprises.
“Good morning, Dr. Shepherd,” said Dr. Weller in a deep baritone voice as Derek stepped off the elevator. Dr. Weller smiled. He clutched a patient chart in his hand. The pages had been flipped back, as if he were examining every minute detail of the patient's history. “You're back to work today?”
Dr. Weller was a tall, thin man. Taller than Derek by at least four inches, maybe five. Taller than Mark, even. Derek looked up at the man who had replaced him as head of neurosurgery. Dr. Nelson had fought tooth and nail for the job. He'd puffed himself up and strutted about like an overbearing peacock, talking about how nobody ever remembered he existed, how he was perfectly capable and competent. How he was good at his job. Except he wasn't good. He was adequate. And while Dr. Nelson had been on his self-advertisement campaign, Dr. Weller had been in the OR, quiet, unassuming, fixing people, letting his meticulous work speak for itself. Dr. Weller possessed both better surgical skills and better people skills. The decision, for Derek, had not been a difficult one, and one of Derek's first tasks as Chief had been to calm down a hissing, spitting Dr. Nelson and congratulate Dr. Weller in two back-to-back meetings.
“Part time this week and maybe next,” Derek said. “But, yes.”
Dr. Weller nodded. His skin had a jovial, reddish tint to it, as though he were in a state of perpetual cheer. He reached out with long, lithe fingers and offered his hand. Derek swallowed as they shook hands. “I'm glad you're back,” said Dr. Weller, his voice rich with sincerity.
“Me, too,” Derek said. He flashed his best smile as a ball of ice collected in his stomach. Dr. Weller stepped onto the elevator that Derek had exited. And that was that.
Derek's smile bled away. He'd conditioned himself to go inside Seattle Grace and to act like he didn't hate being around people, but that was about all the progress he'd managed. White, sterile hallways stretched out from his feet. He followed them until white opened into empty space. Echoes bounced off the walls. Footsteps. Voices. He stared at the catwalk where he'd gotten shot, and beyond that, the Chief's office. His office. Two places he hadn't voluntarily stepped foot in since he'd nearly died.
He didn't have time to be upset.
“Derek, it's good to see you back,” Richard Webber said as he approached and put his arm over Derek's shoulder. Richard dragged Derek along as though he were tackling the ball carrier in football, and the blotched floor where Derek had bled swept under Derek's feet in a blur. The door to the Chief's office opened and shut behind them before Derek had a chance to react. Sounds from the outside hospital muted. Derek stood where Dr. Kepner had been, covered in blood and frantic.
“Richard,” Derek managed. He tried to focus on the man who had once been his friend and mentor. Richard wore his lab coat. His stethoscope poked out of the front breast pocket. He rifled through his desk for some papers and turned as he yanked a pen from the knit wire cup by the computer monitor.
“There was fourteen car pileup on the freeway,” Richard said.
Derek blinked. “I'm not cleared for cutting. I can't--”
“Multiple abdominal traumas,” Richard said. “They need another general surgeon.”
“Oh.”
“Look, I realize this is your first day back,” Richard said. “And I realize you've been having... a difficult time.” Derek pressed his lips into a flat line. A difficult time. Understatement. The ball of ice heated into something molten. Richard continued, “I'm sorry for dumping all the budget work on you before you've had a chance to set down your briefcase, but they need bodies downstairs. Now. Dr. Bailey is overrun.”
Derek glanced at his desk. Richard's desk. A sheaf of folders and paperwork sat in a fourteen inch pile on top of the desk calendar that covered the desk's surface. Derek stared at it. “Go ahead,” he said softly.
“You're okay?” Richard said.
“I'm okay.”
“There won't be any surprise welcome back parties, so you don't need to worry about that,” Richard said as he barreled toward the door, brushing past Derek, who hadn't moved. When Richard grasped the door handle, he turned. “By the way.” He pointed at the corner of the room where the coat rack stood. Colorful balloons bobbed against the ceiling. A pile of shiny wrapped gifts and cards full of what Derek could only assume were well wishes rested on the top of the file cabinet. A framed picture of Meredith that Derek had put there when he'd moved his things into the office had become buried. “Those are all for you from the staff,” Richard said.
“Thanks,” Derek said as heat flamed across his cheeks.
And then Richard left, leaving Derek in crushing silence.
Derek looked at the balloons. And then at the desk piled high with paperwork. He blinked. Something swelled in the back of his throat. His eyes stung. His lips pulled back. A soft snarl became a roar, and in a blur of motion, he launched himself across the room. His briefcase slammed into the desk and dropped by his feet. The Chief's stacked paperwork exploded in a flutter of budgetary confetti as Derek rammed into it. With a furious huff of breath that made his chest hurt, he collapsed into the executive chair that had been his for months. Paper crumpled underneath him. He wiped hurting eyes with his hands as the molten ball churned.
I grew up on a farm, so, you know blood... blood doesn't... doesn't bother me, I... Dr. Kepner had said, standing less than ten feet away, covered in another woman's blood.
He closed his eyes as papers that had been balanced precariously dominoed off the edge of the desk. How was he supposed to do this? Any of this? He inhaled. The hospital, even in the Chief's office, had a faint, antiseptic smell that tickled his nose. He leaned back in the chair. The seat rocked with his weight. He let threatening disorientation crush him, and then it swept him away.
“Would it help to show you this?” she said, disembodied.
He sat on the floor in the dreary hallway, shoulder-to-shoulder with Mark. His wet hair and his wet clothes made him shiver. He'd made a puddle on the tiles. Dripping. He shook as he looked up from his knees. Ice formed a block in his chest.
The door opened. He saw her swathed in blankets. Still and cold and blue. The people who surrounded her weren't him. Bailey. Richard. Burke. Even Addie. But Derek had been relegated to the hall to wait.
Derek stood so fast his knees popped and protested. He wiped the clawing tears from his face. “Why would it help me to show you like this?” he snapped.
She didn't answer. Mark didn't move. He stared forward, as though Derek still sat on the floor, crying into his knees.
“I don't want to see this again,” Derek said.
No answer.
“Stop it.”
Silence. Derek's lower lip quivered. He tried to approach the door that blocked him from where she lay. He couldn't pass. As though an invisible barrier had knit together and barred his way. He couldn’t pass. He could only watch as they fought to force her back to life.
For three hours, she'd been dead.
“Please, stop,” he begged.
The blackness faded. He sat in his chair, alone. His hands shook. A void had hollowed out his body that he wanted to fill. He knew he needed. Something. Slivers of ache slipped behind his eyes. He pinched his nose with his fingertips and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He placed his elbows on the desk and stared through blurry eyelashes at the pile of work Richard had left for him.
Papers spread around the desk and on the floor as though a hurricane had swept them up and displaced them. He picked up the closest paper, scanned past all the numbers and dollar signs and words, and sighed as he absorbed the page number listed at the bottom. 23 of 76. And that was only for Seattle Grace's plastic surgery department, which was smaller than their world-acclaimed neurosurgery and general surgery departments, mostly because Mark, as good as he was, didn't make a department by himself. Plastic surgeons flocked to Los Angeles. Not Seattle.
Derek spent his first hour back on the job sorting the papers he'd sent flying. His brain tripped every time he tried to shuffle things into order. Staring at text made him feel spacey and disconnected. He double and triple checked page numbers, only to forget what number had come before, and what went after. Other times, he found himself staring at nothing, or chasing a stray thought to the ends of creation, or riding the subtle buzz of elation that made his mind feel like it'd been replaced by cotton balls. He would blink, and it would take minutes to reassemble himself into sentience.
He hated budget work, but after he'd repaired the results of his tantrum and placed everything into neat stacks, he flipped on the computer, pulled up the hospital's accounting software, and he tried, but he suffered much the same problems balancing numbers as he did sorting. It seemed like he had to double check himself after every row. He lost his place over and over. He kept going until his head throbbed with the effort of concentration. Until his eyes refused to focus no matter how hard he tried to make them. He rocked in the chair, venting nervous energy. He needed something.
“You brought this on yourself,” said Gary Clark.
“Shut up,” Derek said.
“You fought for this job. You fucked Richard over. It's your fault.”
Derek loosed an agitated sigh.
“Everything is your fault, you know.”
He didn't know what he was doing until the second bitter-tasting pill was falling apart on his tongue in a mess of his own saliva. He swallowed, confused, and yet not surprised by the orange bottle in his hand. The pills slipped into his stomach. He closed his eyes, and as the minutes passed, the carousel began to spin. He sighed. The empty hole had been filled, and Gary Clark shut his fucking mouth. Finally. Derek looked at the bottle, lethargic, and put it back into his briefcase where he'd stowed it. When had he stowed it? Did it matter?
No. He swallowed, and he closed his eyes, and this time, she returned.
He found himself in a place he didn't recognize. He stood on a lush, green hillside with grass that came up to his knees, a rolling hill in the middle of hundreds. A weeping willow draped the crest of the hill. Crows circled, gliding up and down in the gray air currents as they mourned with woeful caws. He swallowed when he turned and saw Meredith standing by a chipped marble headstone. The dirt on the plot lay fresh at her feet, churned and black and rich with nutrients.
Derek C. Shepherd, said the elaborate headstone. April 7, 1968 - September 9, 2010. Beloved son and husband.
Meredith looked up as he approached. The long grass caught his ankles. He slogged through it, his eyes riveted by the sight before him. The breeze ruffled his hair and made the willow sway. Leaves rustled.
He came to an unsteady stop two feet from the stone, panting. His feet sank into the loose earth. He stared at the dates sprawled across the headstone. September 9th was less than a month away. “What is this?” he said.
She shrugged. “Isn't it obvious?”
He couldn't look at her. “But it's safe here,” he said.
She pointed at the headstone. “It's not safe. Think like a doctor.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“You do, Derek. You do know,” she said. “You're just ignoring it because you want something easy.”
“I don't,” he said. “I'm not.”
Meredith stared at him. “Percocet has acetaminophen in it,” she said, speaking low and soft as though she were teaching a kindergartener. “Do you remember that?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What does acetaminophen do in large doses?”
His lip trembled. “It's a painkiller.”
“But what does it do, Derek?” she said. She bumped him with her hip, prodded him. “When you take too much, what does it do? Think.”
“I don't remember.”
“You do,” she insisted. “You do remember. It's basic medicine.”
“Please, don't.”
She wrapped her arms around him. The soft scent of lavender made his muscles loosen. He breathed against her hair, and he couldn't stop himself as frustration tumbled out of him. He sobbed. Once. And then he rested his nose against the warm skin of her neck, breathing, existing. The rush of blood under her skin heated him, reminded him he lived. Her grip tightened. She kissed his ear, and she ran her skillful hands along the trembling sinews of his back. He closed his eyes, and the crows and the weeping willow and the gravestone disappeared behind his eyelids. This was what he needed today.
“You can't be here anymore,” she said. “If you keep coming here, you can never go back there.”
He took a shaky, deep breath. “I don't care about there. I hate it there.”
“That's bullshit.”
He shook his head. “It's not. It's not. I want to be here.”
She tugged on his sleeve, and they sat, shoulder-to-shoulder, their backs against the cold stone that marked his plot. For an eternity, she said nothing and stared at her knees instead. He watched the black birds flying in the distance, and he let the gray clouds and the crows' black, feathery bodies blur into a bleak, impressionistic painting.
“You want to be with Meredith, right?” she said, her voice soft. Gentle.
“I do.”
“And you want to have a baby?”
“I do,” he said. “I want that so much.”
She swallowed. Her fingers touched his face. She pulled his gaze toward her, until their eyes met. He lost himself in deep, sad gray. She blinked, and when she blinked, wet tears popped loose. Her distress crushed him.
“I'm not her, Derek,” she said. “And you can't be a father if you stay in here.”
“But you have her face.”
She shook her head. “I showed you what happened while Meredith was dead,” she said. “Would Meredith remember that?”
Derek swallowed. “But--”
“You needed me to be her before,” notMeredith said. “You don't need it, now. Now, you need to listen to me, Derek.”
“I don't know what that means.”
Her body shimmered as though she'd been strung with a thousand Christmas tree lights. The flash made his eyes hurt. He blinked and turned his head away until the bright white faded from view.
When he looked back, he saw himself like a twin in the mirror. The other Derek wore the same blue shirt and black pants that Derek had dressed in that morning. Except this Derek hadn't lost weight. He didn't look tired or stressed or scared. Derek II stared. Their eyes met.
“Are you listening, now?” Derek II said.
Derek could only nod.
“When you have too much acetaminophen, what does it do?” Derek II said, his voice soft.
“It causes liver damage.”
Derek II nodded. “It does,” he said. “And what does too much oxycodone do?” When Derek didn't answer, Derek II kept prodding. “What does it do, Derek? Think.”
“It causes depressed respiration.” Derek swallowed. “Hypotension. Bradycardia...”
“And?”
“Coma...”
“And?”
“Cardiac arrest,” Derek admitted. “It causes heart failure.”
Derek II nodded. “Do you remember how you felt when Meredith died?”
Derek thought of gray, cold hall where he'd sat, sobbing. “Yes,” said Derek. “I remember.”
“Do you want to put her through the same thing?”
Derek swallowed. He stared at the churned soil over his grave. The gravestone at his back chilled him to the marrow of his bones. His eyes watered. “No, I don't,” he said, his voice breaking. “I don't ever want to do that.”
“If you don't want Meredith to have to go through that, then what are you doing?” Derek II said.
Derek blinked. Tears wobbled in the nets cast by his eyelashes, spilled over, and chased down his face. He swiped at his eyes with his knuckles. “I don't know.”
“If you seriously don't want to die, Derek, then what the fuck are you doing?” Derek II prodded.
“I don't know,” Derek said.
Derek II laughed, but the bitter sound cut like sharp glass, and Derek flinched. “I guess that's the crux of it.”
Derek looked away, and then in a blur, the odd landscape disappeared.
Derek blinked and swallowed. His head felt clogged and full. Like his mental capacity had shrunk. He put his head down on the desk, and he rested for what seemed like eons. The clock on the wall ticked. Probably anybody walking down the catwalk would see him through the glass windows. Sleeping on the job, or at least giving the appearance of it. He peered at the clock. Lunch hour had crept up on stealthy feet. He should at least get a bagel. Or something. He wasn't hungry, but visiting the coffee cart would give him something to do, at least, that might make him appear productive and participatory in the hospital at large.
He squinted as sat up. The paper he'd been resting on stuck to his face, and he pulled it away as he grimaced and stretched. His eye caught mention of her name before any context arrived in his brain, and he pulled the paper back into his field of view. Meredith Grey. Pay scales. Nothing exciting. He shook his head, almost ready to dismiss the paper, when something in the financial blur made him read the spreadsheet more closely.
Meredith Grey. The sheet was alphabetized, which meant Lexie Grey's name was just above Meredith's and served as an easy comparison. His gaze followed the columns left to right. At first, he didn't know why what he was seeing caused niggling doubt. His head felt cloudy, and comprehending through the thick cotton took considerable work. Numbers. Dollar signs. Pay scales. He focused on the text and tried to understand it. This was silly. But then he realized what he was looking at, and in his laggard shift from not knowing to knowing, he tightened his grip on the paper and fought to keep his breathing steady. Both Meredith and Lexie were making the same pay. Both Meredith and Lexie were listed as third year residents. Both of them. He scanned down the page to Karev. Fourth year. Higher salary than Meredith. He would have checked Yang, too, but the page ended on the letter M.
Why hadn't Meredith said anything to him?
Can I wake you up tonight when I get home?
I want to talk to you about something.
“God, damn it,” he said as he slapped the paper back onto the pile. He pushed back his chair and stood. The room swayed like it had that morning. He counted to three before he left the safe island of space where he could still reach out and grab something if he fell. The disorientation settled. Slowly. All while the office space around him seemed to be closing in.
He glanced at the doorway.
A shadow crossed his view, and then she was there, babbling, covered in blood. I grew up on a farm, so, you know blood... blood doesn't... doesn't bother me, I...
“Fuck!” he yelled. “Stop hounding me, you fucking, heartless bitch!”
“You brought her back to work,” Mr. Clark said. “It's your fault she was there that day.”
Derek walked toward her. She was a hallucination. Just like Gary Clark. It didn't matter. They didn't matter. He was fucking hallucinating. Like people with PTSD did. They hallucinated. Her body separated like mist as he exited his office. Outside, he could breathe. The air felt cooler.
“You can't outrun me,” Mr. Clark said. “I'm in your head.”
“Leave me alone,” Derek said.
“Your little solution isn't working so well anymore, is it?” said Mr. Clark. “I think you need to take more.”
Derek needed a walk, and so he took one. A slow one. People said hello. They smiled. They well-wished him. But he couldn't help but notice the stares. Couldn't help but notice the eggshells cracking as people metaphorically tiptoed around him, as though the entire hospital expected him to fall apart in the hallway or have some sort of psychotic break, which he supposed wasn't exactly unjustified. When he found Mark chatting up a voluptuous, blonde nurse in the corner by the oncology ward, Derek felt stress unwinding from his body.
At last, something normal.
Mark smiled as Derek approached. He rested against the lip of the nurses' station desk with his body at a slant and his elbow propping up his torso. A chart lay by his hand. Derek didn't read the whole thing; the mere thought of trying to decipher Mark's usual chicken scratch made his head spin, but he did catch one word in the mess. Rhinoplasty. In an oncology ward? It took Derek a minute to add two plus two. He blinked dumbly at the pair.
“Hey, man,” Mark said. “First day back.”
“Yeah.”
“Hi, Dr. Shepherd,” said Mark's nurse 'friend'. She smiled, showing pearly, bleached teeth. She brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face, smiled shyly behind a waterfall of platinum bangs, and leaned into Mark. “Call me later,” she said, her voice throaty and sultry and sexy, as she slid past Mark's broad shoulder. Her hip brushed Mark's as she went. Derek watched her depart.
Derek raised his eyebrows. If it had been a normal day, and he had never been shot, Derek would have smirked. Teased. Instead, he felt nothing but irritated. He sighed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Seriously, Mark? You used a rhinoplasty chart as an excuse to talk to an oncology nurse?”
“It's not like she could read my writing,” Mark said. “I told her it was for a mastectomy.”
“That's mature of you.”
Mark shrugged. “Lexie's not interested.”
“Oh,” said Derek. Lexie had been spending an inordinate amount of time with Karev. Derek didn't mention it. Silence stretched. He grasped at straws. “Did Meredith talk to you recently?”
Mark cleared his throat as though something had gotten stuck in it. “About what?”
“She's upset about something, but she won't talk to me.”
“Hmm,” Mark said. He fidgeted. Since when did Mark fidget? “No idea, man.”
“She hasn't talked to you?”
“Why would she talk to me?” Mark said.
Derek ground his teeth. “Since I got shot, she's been talking to you. Or hadn't you noticed that?”
“Oh,” Mark said.
“So, has she?”
“Has she what?”
“Talked to you, Mark,” Derek said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh,” Mark said. He jumped and fished his pager out of his pocket. The pager hadn't beeped. He squinted at the screen. “I have to go.”
“Mark, come on,” Derek said. “You didn't get paged. I'm not an idiot.”
“I had it on vibrate,” Mark said. “I gotta go.”
Derek watched his supposed friend depart down the long hall, dodging between moving bodies and crash carts and stretchers. Mark had lied. He'd fucking lied to Derek's face. Derek had seen that type of lie many times before, enough to recognize it without any effort. Mark screwed a lot of women. Inevitably, one would try to continue a relationship past Mark's arbitrarily chosen expiration date. Derek had watched over and over again as Mark had told his latest in a long line of victims that he had other plans without having any other plans except a new lay.
“And yet you missed it entirely when he was fucking your wife,” Mr. Clark said.
Derek stilled.
“Nobody wants to stay with you,” Mr. Clark said.
Derek closed his eyes, drew in a shaky breath and let it out, and he forced himself to focus. Mark had lied. Which meant Meredith had talked to Mark about the thing from this morning. Apprehension gripped Derek. What could Meredith possibly be so afraid to talk to him about that she would be okay talking to Mark about? What could Meredith want to discuss that had nothing to do with her being pregnant, but she thought it would be a long, scary conversation? Unless the thing from this morning was her working up the nerve to mention she'd been bumped back a year in her residency, he had no idea. None.
“Whatever it is, I'm sure it's your fault,” said Mr. Clark. “That's the theme of the day, isn't it?”
Derek needed to find her. Meredith. He needed to know what was going on. He moved downstairs to the pit, first, where he knew she'd been paged when they'd arrived. Chaos spread before him, and trying to separate that chaos into individuals and unrelated events made him lean on the wall and stop to stare for a long, long time. The shrieks of somebody's baby broke the air into pieces, and he winced as he stared out over the bay. Doctors he knew fixed bloody noses, stubbed toes, stitched wounds, and diagnosed. He caught a glimpse of Dr. Hunt as he moved at a jog beside a stretcher with a moaning, bloody woman on it. A whiff of perforated bowel as they passed made Derek grimace. Dr. Bailey and Richard were absent. Derek didn't see Meredith.
As a nurse trotted past, Derek touched her sleeve. The motion felt clunky and imprecise, but she stopped, smiled. “Dr. Shepherd,” she said.
“Have you seen Dr. Grey?” he asked.
“Sure,” said the nurse, and she pointed with a gloved hand to the small room less than twenty feet away. “She's in trauma room two.”
“Thanks,” Derek said. He strode to the door, knocked once, and entered.
Lexie looked up as she palpated an overweight, hairy man's abdomen. The man moaned, and his jowls seemed to shudder with suffering. Lexie's eyebrows raised as she caught sight of Derek. “Dr. Shepherd,” she said.
“Dr. Grey,” Derek said. “Sorry. Wrong room.” His heart sank as he closed the door behind him.
When his pager beeped, he almost didn't recognize the sound, a single thread in a tapestry of bedlam. His pocket vibrated. He blinked, and he looked down. Who would page him on his first day back? He was useless. He hadn't been cleared to do anything but desk jockey. He stared at the display, and nerves clenched. OR 2. Who would page him to OR 2? And why? He stared. And stared, and stared, until a loud crash startled him into looking up. Paramedics had brought in another stretcher, and they'd transferred a cyanotic, seizing patient onto a gurney fifteen feet away. A free ER doctor rushed over. Derek shook his head. The pager in his hand didn't display a number anymore. It'd gone dark. How long had he been staring?
The thought that the page might have been from Meredith got his feet moving. When he arrived at OR 2, he grabbed a sterile mask from the dispenser, and he poked his head in to see what was going on, he didn't see Meredith.
Dr. Weller and two newer residents Derek didn't recognize stood over an open skull flap. The body and face of the patient had been obscured by flowing curtains of blue sterile drapes. The ventilator hissed, and the EKG monitor bleeped with a steady, stable rhythm. Dr. Weller looked up. The skin around his eyes creased, and he gestured with the pneumatic drill in his hands. His white gloves shined with a red sheen.
“Dr. Shepherd,” he said.
“Dr. Weller,” said Derek, his voice muffled behind the mask he held. He didn't move from the door. He tried to ignore the heat of everyone staring at him. Doctors. The scrub nurses. All on eggshells. All waiting for him to choke.
“I have a bit of an unusual aneurysm, here,” Dr. Weller said. “It's a lot more complicated to clip off than the scans indicated it would be. Dr. Langly, Dr. Fisk, and I were discussing how to proceed, and we were wondering if you could take a look.”
Derek tried to dip into his mental well for information about aneurysms, but he received only cobwebs and dust bunnies for his trouble. He should know things like this. Instead, his head had been stuffed with cotton.
“I'm not cleared to cut,” Derek said.
“We just want you to take a look,” Dr. Weller said.
Derek gripped the doorframe. The bright OR lights disoriented him, and the sea of eyes disappeared behind the nuclear flare. He swallowed. “I'm...” he began. He took a step toward the body on the table without thinking about the sterile environment, and then he stopped. Scrub in. He should scrub in if he was going to contribute to...
He stared at the table. The lights ran into him like a train, and then all he could hear was the beep, beep, beep of the EKG. His heart pounded.
It'll be over soon, Meredith had whispered as he struggled to breathe. I love you.
The room became a kaleidoscope of color and light, and the beeps and whirs and voices mushed together.
“Dr. Shepherd?” Dr. Weller said.
I know this is very scary, Dr. Shepherd.
“Dr. Shepherd?”
Derek blinked, and the room tightened into focus like a screw. Where had he gone? He... “I'm sorry,” he said. And he fled before they could say a word. He tossed the used mask in a trash bin as he passed it.
Do you want to see Dr. Grey? Meredith Grey. Do you want to see Meredith, Dr. Shepherd?
He went to the nearest nurses' station and paged Meredith once. Twice. He waited twenty minutes, but she never showed. He checked her favorite coffee cart, which was covered with scones and chocolate croissants and smelled like some sort of mocha blend. He checked the cafeteria to see if she was eating with her friends. He checked the residents' locker room, and every other place he could think of. He became so determined that he didn't feel dizzy or strange or nauseous or scared. He just kept moving. Place to place. He checked x-ray. He checked all the MRI machines and CT rooms. He checked the lab, and the pharmacy, and every nurses' station in sequential order.
As his last stab in the dark, he went to the hallway where the hospital kept decommissioned gurneys and other equipment because it had nowhere better to put them all. The long hallway with a snack machine where he knew Meredith and her friends liked to hang out. He didn't find Meredith. It was as though she'd been stamped out of existence. Or she was intentionally keeping her eye out for him and hiding. His page would have alerted her to keep her eye out for him, whether she'd answered it or not. But he did find Cristina, who sat on the empty bed with her legs crossed.
She didn't look up as he pushed through the doorway. Sunlight framed her dark hair with a bright halo. She'd drawn her hair into a thick ponytail with a white band, and she wore a yellow undershirt beneath her blue scrubs. She read a thick medical text with keen focus. Her highlighter squeaked as she drew it across the page. He came to a stop in front of her and cleared his throat. He watched her highlighter drag across another line. She read an article on angina. Her gold bracelet sparkled as she flipped the page.
“Cristina,” he said when she didn't look up.
She still didn't look up. “Is there a particular reason you're hovering?”
He folded his arms over his chest. “What's wrong with Meredith?”
“I don't know,” Cristina said. He watched the highlighter brighten another line with neon pink. “What's wrong with Meredith?”
“You don't know?” he prodded.
Cristina shrugged.
“So, she hasn't talked to you?”
“Nope,” Cristina said.
“Great,” he said with a sigh. He sat beside her on the gurney. His head had started to pound again, and the hallway lights seemed impossibly bright. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Perfect.”
Cristina glanced at him once out of the corner of her eye. Her head flicked to the side as she did it. She capped her highlighter, slammed shut her book, and stood. She went to the snack machine and dumped a pile of quarters from her pocket into the change slot. She hit buttons and waited with her hands on her hips. When she returned to her seat, she tossed her bounty at him. It landed in his lap.
The sudden movement and unexpected contact made him flinch. His heart throbbed. He took a shaky, slow breath, trying to calm himself down, trying not to show visible panic. He wouldn't let Cristina scare him with a fucking bag of Doritos or whatever she'd bought. He swallowed, and he stared at his lap. She pulled out her book again and didn't watch him. Her highlighter squeaked.
“What's this?” he said.
“It's a sandwich.”
“I know it's a sandwich,” he said. “I meant why.”
She glanced at him with a withering look that told him he should ask what he meant, then, if he expected a certain answer. Her lips pursed. She pointed at the clock over the door with her marker. “It's lunch time. If you're going to hover and annoy me, you can eat.”
He frowned. “I'm not hovering.”
“You're hovering.”
“Why does everybody think I hover?” he said.
She shook her head. “Because you do. It's your thing,” she said. “You lean, you have perfect hair, and you hover.” She pointed at the sandwich with her highlighter, her expression imperious. “Eat.”
He stared at the sandwich wedge encased in saran wrap. Two stale slices of bread hugged a sliver of dark yellow cheese, pale pinkish meat, old lettuce, and a lackluster tomato that seemed a bit greenish. He fingered the package. The saran wrap crinkled. He peered at the expiration date. Tomorrow. It looked like it had expired last week. The mere sight of it made his stomach turn.
A brunette nurse guiding an emaciated man in a wheelchair pushed through the doors by the snack machine. She smiled at them and waved, but didn't say hello. The man didn't seem coherent. He stared ahead, his gaze blank. An IV pole dripped fluids into the back of his boney hand. “You're doing great, Mr. Finch,” the nurse said, her saccharine voice too sweet to be comforting. Derek glanced at the telltale Foley bag hooked on the back of the chair, and he closed his eyes as the nurse and her ward departed.
That'd been him. In the chair. When he'd had pneumonia, and they'd transferred him out of ICU. Meredith and Mark together had helped him move into the wheelchair to be taken downstairs while the nurse had supervised. His first time out of bed in days, and he'd barely been able to stay upright. His chest had squeezed with the agony of gravity, and he hadn't been able to breathe without wheezing. He'd still been attached to everything. Mark, of all people, had moved the Foley bag from the bed to the back of Derek's wheelchair. That's good, Dr. Shepherd, the nurse had exclaimed as Derek had collapsed into the chair, breaths whistling in his chest. You're doing great.
Derek shook his head, and the memory faded. “She really hasn't talked to you about anything?” he said.
“Nope,” Cristina said. “She really hasn't.”
“And you're not worried.”
“I'm still not even clear why I should be worried,” Cristina said.
“Because she was upset this morning, and I can't figure out why.”
Cristina shrugged. “A man can't figure out his post-it wife. Like that's news.”
“She has a lot to deal with,” he said. “I just want--”
“You just want to stroke your wounded hero complex and save something,” Cristina said.
“That's not what this is about.”
“That's so what this is about,” she said. “McDreamy's coming back.”
He glared. “Don't call me that.”
“Well, what do you want me to call you, then?” she countered.
“Derek would be fine. It is my name.”
“Fine,” she said. She pointed at the sandwich. “Derek, take a bite.”
“Why are you--”
“Because this is your first day back,” she said. “Cardio patients typically don't know what the hell hit them on their first day back, and if you relapse before dinner, Meredith will get all sad and pout-y-faced.”
He pulled the sandwich to his mouth and took a bite. The stale bread made him want to choke. The soggy tomato burst under the pressure of his teeth. He had no idea what kind of meat this was. Turkey or chicken. He could only identify that it was cold and tasteless. The lettuce didn't crunch. The mayonnaise made everything slimy. He chewed once, and he swallowed.
“It won't kill you before the expiration date,” she said.
He glared at her, and he bit off another chunk. He swallowed with a grimace. “I'm touched that you care,” he said.
“I care,” she responded.
He raised his eyebrows. “You care?”
“I do care.” She shrugged. “I just don't 'care'.”
He scoffed. “Because that makes sense.”
They sat in silence for several moments.
“Meredith didn't tell me you're food challenged,” Cristina said.
“Right,” he said. “You figured it out in five minutes of talking to me.”
“I pay attention.”
He crossed his arms. “So, you have me all figured out.”
“Yes.”
“Really.”
“Yes,” she said. Silence stretched. “How's your pain?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
Her lip twitched. “Why wouldn't you answer?”
They stared at each other. Her deep brown eyes pierced him, and he couldn't help the feeling that he'd been laid bare. She knows, said a small voice. She knows, and Mark knows, and Meredith knows. They all know. He closed his eyes, and he took a breath.
“Meredith would talk to you,” he said. “If there was a problem. Right?”
“If there was a problem, yes.”
“So, you don't think there's a problem.”
“At this point in time, I'm reading this book about angina,” she said. “I'm not thinking about problems.”
“You really frustrate me.”
She snorted. “The feeling's mutual. Take a bite.”
He stared at the partially eaten sandwich. His stomach roiled. He couldn't do it. “I'm not hungry,” he said. He stood and stretched.
The room blacked out, and the floor dropped away in a sickening twist. Just for a moment. He put his hand on the gurney behind him to steady himself. He inhaled as he waited for the fuzzy blackness to recede. As colors replaced the black dots, he found her staring at him, eyes narrowed. Face heating, he turned away. When he reached the trash bin by the snack machine, he tossed the gloppy remnants of his sandwich into it. Relief flooded him when his poor coordination didn't cause him to miss his shot while she watched. He felt her gaze on his back, peeling away layers of his skin.
“She wouldn't talk to me if it was about you,” Cristina said as he grabbed the door handle.
He stopped and turned. He couldn't withhold a burble of bitter laughter. “She talks to you about me all the time.”
“Something she thinks you'd want kept private,” Cristina clarified.
He sighed. “And she really hasn't talked to you?”
“Really hasn't.”
“Would you tell me if she had?” he asked.
Cristina drew her highlighter across the page. “If it meant I could read this book in peace, I would.”
He took the hint and left her alone. He returned to his office, past more and more people who thought it was great that he was back, and told him so in detail. When he entered, he scowled at the bobbing balloons and glittery cards in the corner on the filing cabinet and went to the desk, where he'd left a still huge stack of paperwork.
When he sat down, a profound wave of tiredness crashed into him. He sighed, and he glanced at his watch. 1:00 PM. He only had to make it to 2:00 PM, and then he could leave. He stared at the pile of paperwork. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't.
He took a breath, and he let the room tumble out of focus. If he didn't think, everything was easy. And it didn't hurt. And nothing frightened him. He let his eyelids droop. He wouldn't fall asleep. He wouldn't let himself. If he fell asleep at work after only five hours on his first day back... His head tilted, and the world panned downward, into his lap. He blinked.
Dark, choppy water splashed in his eyes and then swallowed him whole. He dipped underneath the surface, searching. Everything, black. Dark. His eyes burned. He would need air soon. Blue, in the distance. In the deep. Like a blue jay. Or a bird egg. Or...
He kicked. His body sliced the water. Bubbles sprayed in his face. His frozen fingers caught in the wet web of her tangled hair. He hooked his arm around her chest, underneath her armpits, and then he kicked harder than he'd ever kicked. Spots formed in his vision. And then dark and black and cold split apart into light and gray and colder.
Wind blustered against his face. He choked on the air. Sputtered.
“Meredith,” he gasped.
She didn't help. Or speak. He fought his freezing limbs and the heady urge to sink as he splashed and kicked them toward the dock.