All Along The Watchtower - Part 18 [Day Three]

[ariaadagio]

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 18 [Day Three]

Meredith lay on her back on the gurney in the hot sunshine, her arms cupped over her stomach.  She sighed.  Heat laved her face, but it wasn't a good kind of heat.  It was a sweaty, room-spinny heat propagated by a fishy stench and the panicky thought that, if she moved, she would vomit.  Something crinkled, and a another wave of nausea overwhelmed her.  She covered her nose and mouth and rolled to a sitting position.  The gurney squeaked.

Alex sat in his lab coat and scrubs.  He chewed on something.  He clutched a shiny metallic potato chip bag in his hands, and as his temples moved, she heard him crunch, crunch, crunch.  Logic drew her attention away from the bag and to his plate.  She fixated on the goop-y conglomeration of cheese and whitish pinkish... gunk, smashed between two toasted slices of bread.  Still hot, the sandwich steamed slightly.  She groaned and reached for it, but he sat at the other end of the bed, and it was so.  Far.  Away.

He glanced at her with an affronted expression, and pulled the plate closer to his body.

As if she would want to steal it!

“Could you put that away or eat it somewhere else?” she snapped.  “It's making me want to hurl.”

He stopped crunching.  “My chips?” he said.

“No,” she wailed and gestured to the source of the noxious odors.  “That.”

“It's just a tuna melt,” he said.

“I don't care what it is; I can't freaking stand it,” she said.  She flopped back onto the gurney.  “It's making my stomach churn.  I'm already struggling to find reasons to stay in this horrible place for my entire shift, and that's not helping me.  I want to go home.”

Alex narrowed his eyes.

“What?” she growled.

He shook his head and slid off the gurney.  He put down his potato chips.  He took his plate to the trashcan, and--

“Throwing it out right there won't make it smell less!” she said.

He rolled his eyes, passed the buzzing snack machine, and pushed through the doorway.  He disappeared through the little window in the door as he cut to the left on the other side.  She sighed with relief as the clot of tuna odor left her nasal passages, and she could breathe again.  She rolled onto her side to face the door as she cupped her tortured stomach.

Alex returned empty-handed through the doorway.  “Thank you,” she said.  “I'll pay you back.”

He shrugged.  “It didn't look that good anyway.”  And yet he'd tried to keep it from her?  Her lip twitched as she fought a smile.  He flopped back onto the gurney with a sigh and pulled a chip out of his bag.  His pager whirred.  He pulled it from his lab coat pocket and checked it.  His gaze shifted to his watch.  With a small nod, he put the pager back in his pocket, and he relaxed.

“What time is it?” she asked the mattress.

“11:20,” he responded.  “I'm scrubbing in at noon.”

She sighed.  She didn't feel any amount of jealousy that he'd managed to find a real surgery.  She just felt dismay over the time.  How had it only been seventeen hours since she'd started this horrible shift?  “I should be at home,” she said.

“You're being kind of melodramatic,” he replied  “Shepherd can live for thirty-six hours without you.”

“I'm not being melodramatic.”

“Yes, you are,” Alex said.  He shrugged and munched on another chip.  “So, he's an addict.  He'll cry and vomit for a few days.  At least he's trying to fix it, now.  Wanting to fix it is the hard part.”

She clawed into a sitting position.  “I never said he's an--”

“Meredith, I'm not an idiot,” he said.

“I never said he's an addict.”

“Dude,” he said.  He waved a chip in the air for emphasis.  “I get that you want to preserve his privacy bubble, but don't patronize me.”

“But--”

“I figured it out this week,” he said.  “It wasn't really hard to do the math.”

“But--”

“I see vomiting, sweating, chills, a runny nose, a nasty-ass temper, endless pacing, and sobbing, and I'm pretty much going to think crazy psycho with the flu, or withdrawal.  And we all know he's not a crazy psycho.”

Meredith's mouth tumbled open.  “He was sobbing?” she said.  “Right in front of you?”

Which meant Derek was still really, really sick.  Not in a million freaking years would he have let himself fall apart where he could be seen by people he considered subordinates if he could have helped it.  Alex was, like Cristina, in Derek's life because he mattered to Meredith.  He was not a part of it because Derek and Alex were friends.  Derek hated the whole roommates thing, but he'd stopped complaining, and he'd lived with it for over a year, even after Alex had returned sans Izzie, and Lexie had returned sans Mark, both somewhat uninvited.  This wasn't the first time she'd thought about it since Derek had been shot.  He did that for her, and not once, since their initial conversation about it, had he ever brought it up or used it as ammunition or anything since then, just as he'd promised.  She clenched her fingers as her lungs and stomach constricted.  She wouldn't cry.  Not now.

“In the hallway, when I left this morning,” Alex said.  “Sloan gave me the glare of death and practically shoved me out the door, so I figured you guys have it covered, and it's not really my business.”  He shrugged.  “So, whatever.”

“Oh,” she said.  Her eyes watered, and she brushed her face with her hands.  Alex would think like that, wouldn't he?  She forced herself not to give him a hug.  What was...  She was not a hugging person unless it was with Derek.  Where was this coming from?  She sniffled.  “He's still that bad?”

“I'm sure it'll get better soon,” Alex said.  “The first few days are the worst.”

And it'd only been, well...  She squinted as she thought about it.  Monday night to lunchtime Thursday wasn't even three full days.  She hadn't planned for more than four, yet, though she knew Mark was on standby if she needed backup.  Still...  She closed her eyes.  It sure felt like an eternity, and she wasn't the one who'd been lying on the freaking bathroom floor, too sick to move other than to puke.  She wasn't the one who had panic atta--

She covered her mouth with her hands.

You're stoned, she'd said.  Did you hurt yourself?  Are you hurting?  Derek?

He'd acted like a lumbering, tranquilized elephant after his panic attack on the catwalk.  He'd done it then.  Taken pills to supplant bad feelings instead of pain.  She'd seen it, it'd been blatant, and she'd just... let it go.  Guilty nausea and hot sparks of anger coiled in her throat.  She hated rewinding her life with him and finding idiocy and lies wherever she went.  She'd been like one of those freaking horses with the blinders on its bridle, and he'd been feeding her falsities for...  How long would she keep remembering new things?

She didn't want to remember new things.

“I should have paid more attention to him,” she said as she stared at her lap and clenched her fists around a tent of her scrubs.  “The proof was all right there, and I--”

“Addicts can be persuasive people.”

She peered at him.  “Did you have suspicions before?”

“I just knew he wasn't dealing well with all of this.”

“Oh,” she said.  “No tiny inklings?”

“I barely saw the guy.”

“Not even an itty bitty clue?” she prodded.  “Something he said?  Something you saw?”

“No,” Alex said.  He crumpled up his empty chip bag and tossed it like a basketball into the trashcan on the opposite wall.  “What are you getting at?”

“Nothing.  I just...”  She crossed her arms and scooted back against the window.  “I feel like such an idiot.”

“Why?” he said.

“He's been falling off a cliff, and I didn't even notice,” she said.  “Or, I did notice.  I just did the wrong thing.  I saw him using drugs, and I assumed it was pain, exactly like he said.  I should have realized the second he started fixating on the Percocet.  Or sooner.”  She sighed.  “I went to medical school.  They train us on what to look for.  And I knew people who suffer the kind of trauma he did are prone to substance abuse in the aftermath.”  She shook her head.  “He lied to me, but I let him.”

Alex grunted as he scooted across the gurney and sat next to her.  “You can't blame yourself.”

Meredith looked at her lap.  “I'm not.  Not really.”

Alex raised his eyebrows.

She sighed.  “I mean, I know Derek is the one who did this to himself.  I know that on a conceptual level or whatever.  He took the pills.  He poisoned his body.  I just wish I'd noticed he needed help sooner.  I wish I'd...”  Her eyes stung, and she rubbed at them.  Please, help me, he'd said.  Please.  P-please.  She'd waited for the literal cry for help, and that just felt... wrong.  And clueless.  “I just wish I'd... done something.”

“That's crap.  You're doing a lot.”

“This whole thing is crap.  Derek's always been a flag-waving, card-carrying member of the say-no-to-drugs club.”

Alex nodded.  “Which is why it makes sense that you gave him the benefit of the doubt.”

“How could he do this?”  She punched the mattress with her fist.

Alex shrugged.  “Crap happens to good people.  At least he didn't go crazy.”

She raised her eyebrows.  “That's it?” she said.  “Those are your words of wisdom?”

“Shepherd was hurt,” Alex said.  “He took pain medication legitimately for pain, at least for a while.  Shitty luck gave him a big shove.”

She stared at Alex, and she bit her lip.  He'd bounced back from near death, physically, after he'd come out of his sepsis-wrought coma.  The bullet had migrated to the surface of his torso as he'd healed, and he'd had it removed under local anesthetic by Dr. Bailey.  Afterward, Lexie had driven him home and plied him with babble-y, bubbly TLC, much to his chagrin.  He was younger and more athletic, and none of his bones had been broken.  He hadn't been like Derek, who still struggled with fatigue, malaise, and pain on top of everything else.  Sometimes, she found it difficult to remember that Alex had been, at one point, so much worse off than Derek, that she'd been told over the phone to come and say goodbye.

You should visit him, Derek had said.

I can't, she'd replied.

Why not?

Because I just can't do it right now, Derek.  I can't.

A sliver of guilt slipped behind her heart.  Derek hadn't known about the call.  He'd been fishing for names of the deceased.  He'd been upset.  She'd lost the baby, and he'd nearly died, and she hadn't been able to deal with Alex maybe dying, too.

Alex is a freaking iceberg, Derek.  Ninety-nine percent of what's going on in his head, you'll never see.  I sincerely doubt he's fine, and I imagine his whole life-is-great Broadway musical routine will crash and burn just like mine did after I drowned.  It's fake, she'd speculated.  More for Derek's benefit than anything else, but, what if she was doing the blinder thing again?

She swallowed, and she touched Alex's shoulder.  Not a hug.  There would be no hugging.  “Well, how are you fine, then?  You were--”

“I don't know,” he said.  “I just am.”

“Are you?” Meredith said.

“Look, just because your husband is a disaster doesn't mean I am,” he said.  “It wasn't personal for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn't know Mr. Clark.  I saw the gun for two seconds, and then I'd been shot and left for dead.”

“So, you're equating you getting shot to... to what?” she said as she struggled to grasp his attitude.  “A freak accident like getting struck by lightning or a piano falling on your head?”

“Shit happens,” he said.  “I'm better, now.  Why dwell on it?”

“You were shot, Alex.  How can you--”

The door burst open.  “Hey guys,” Lexie said.  She chomped on a familiar-looking toasted sandwich full of melted cheese and goop-y white pink meat.  Was that a freaking daily special in the cafeteria or something?  “What are we chatting about?” Lexie said rudely around her mouthful.  She clutched a green apple and a juice box in her other hand.

Meredith had about three seconds of clean air before the tuna stench hit her.  Her stomach roiled, and she put one hand to her mouth and the other against her rebelling, churning, kickboxing stomach.

“Dude, you can't eat that here,” Alex said from somewhere far away.

Lexie's eyes widened.  The half-sandwich dangled from her mouth.  “Why can't I--”

Alex jerked his thumb at Meredith.  “Tuna makes her barf today.”

“What do you mean?  She likes tuna,” Lexie said, as though Meredith weren't even in the room.  Meredith clenched her teeth.  She would not throw up.  She would not.

“Not today,” said Alex.

Meredith groaned and hobbled off the gurney.  She shambled toward her half-sister.  The trip took her closer to it.  The sandwich.  The horrible smell.  It.  But she needed to get to the trashcan--  “Ugh.  Lexie.”  She gasped, and she pushed on Lexie's shoulders as she stumbled past.  “Get it away.”

Meredith slammed into the trashcan with her hands, and she lost track of Lexie.  Blood rushed in her ears, and the heat and swelter of nausea made her perception of the world swim.  She clenched her jaws, and she stood over the open bin, fighting a gag reflex that really wanted her to hurl.  The warm reek of garbage wafted against her face.  Strong hands wrapped around her shoulders, squeezed, and pulled her away from the can.  Shh, she imagined Derek whispering.  It's okay.  Breathe.  And she did, and the stench of the trash receded, and tuna didn't replace it.

She groaned.  “Oh, that was bad,” she said as she held the back of her hand to her lips.  Alex supported her and kept her from slipping to the floor.

“Okay?” he said.

She nodded as her stomach calmed down.  “Yeah.”

He let go.

Lexie returned through the doorway empty-handed.  No tuna.  The apple and the juice box had disappeared, too, as though she thought any food might offend.  “I'm so sorry,” she said.  Meredith didn't have a chance to protest before her half-sister stood in her face, the back of her hand pressed against Meredith's forehead, all hovering, hyper-concerned, and crowding.  Lexie frowned.  “Do you have the flu or something?” she said.  “You were sick on Tuesday, too.”  She glanced at Alex.  “No fever,” she relayed.

Alex and Lexie pushed Meredith back onto the gurney.  Lexie stood over Meredith, dark brown eyes full of concern as Meredith lay back on the mattress.  Alex hung farther back by Meredith's ankles, but, still, he stayed close.  Lexie didn't lift her hand from Meredith's forehead.  She stared.  A long time.

“Any muscle aches?” Lexie said.

“No,” Meredith grumbled.  “What are you looking at?”

Lexie's frown deepened.  Her hand shifted.  Meredith felt her cheek press inward with pressure from Lexie's thumb.  “Your face is really full,” Lexie said.

“Are you saying my face is fat?”  Meredith pushed Lexie away.

“No,” Lexie said.  “Just full, and I...”  Her eyes narrowed as though she were staring at puzzle pieces that almost fit.  Almost.  If she were to just shift an edge piece one way and flip another...  Her eyes widened.  “Oh, my god, are you pregnant?” she blurted.

Meredith sat up so fast the room swam.  She glanced back at Alex through a dissipating waterfall of black.  “What?” Meredith said.

Alex held up his hands.  “I wasn't gonna go there.”

“But you thought it, too?” Meredith snapped.

He backed away, as if to say, “Yeah, and that's exactly why I didn't go there.”

Lexie's concerned frown broke into a wide, warm smile.  “Well, you've been trying, right?”

Meredith folded her arms over her chest.  “Yeah.  So?”

“So, you don't normally barf over tuna,” said Lexie.  “And your face is full.  And you've been nauseous all week.  You threw out my leftover Moo Goo Gai Pan, and it wasn't even a day old.”

“Those are small bullet points in a long list of possible symptoms,” Meredith said.  “How do you get that I'm pregnant from that?  Maybe it's stomach flu or something, like you said.”

“You don't have a fever or muscle aches.  And your face is full.  How is that flu?”

“I moisturize,” Meredith said.  “I could have a full face!  I could have a full face and have the flu.”

“You do look a bit busty, you know,” Alex said.

She gaped at him.  “Busty!” Meredith exclaimed.  She looked down at her chest.  She didn't notice anything strange.  She hadn't needed a larger bra.  She wore her favorite one - white with no lace or ornamentation -- because it was comfortable, though Derek didn't like it as much because the clasp confounded him for some reason she couldn't fathom.

How could she be more busty if she could wear the same bra?  That made no sense.

Alex shrugged.  “Well, you're not popping out of your scrubs or anything, but you're bigger.”

“Because you stare at my breasts all day and notice these things?” Meredith said.  “Alex!”

“What?” he said.  He smirked as he gave her a once over and then gave her an approving nod.  “I think your jugs look good today.”

“I'm not even dignifying that with a response,” Meredith said.  “I can't be pregnant.  It's impossible.”

Lexie's face fell.  “Oh,” she said.

It's totally possible, said a small voice.  You haven't had your period yet since the last one, and it's been five weeks.  Which was normal, Meredith insisted to herself.  After a miscarriage, cycles were screwy for a bit.  That was a given.  Right?

“I cannot be pregnant,” Meredith said.  “Not right now.”

Lexie nodded.  Her smile returned.  “Oh,” she said.  Her tone sounded more... knowing.  “Maybe, you should take a test.”

Meredith blinked.  “But Derek is--”

“Probably looking for some good news in his life right now,” Alex said.

“Well, yes, but he's--”

“I hear good news cancels vomit.”

“What?” Meredith said.  “Alex, that's--”

“Dude wants kids.”  Alex shrugged.  “Could help him feel better.  Just a thought.”

Lexie frowned.  “So, he is sick again?  Meredith, I'm sorry.  He just can't seem to catch a break.”

“I can't be pregnant!” Meredith insisted, ignoring her.  “I just miscarried.  We've had sex like ten times.  Not even the sweaty, shout-y, bed-break-y sex you guys always complain about.”

“It only takes once,” said Lexie.

“It know it takes only once, but I drowned, and Derek got shot.  Our childhoods have enough trauma and abandonment in them to give Freud a wet dream or whatever when you mash them together.  And let's not even get into the whole freaking mess with Addison.  It's clear to me that the universe hates us with a fiery passion.  Why would it pick our side, now, of all times?”

Lexie shrugged, her expression helpless.

Meredith growled with frustration.  “Great.  This is just great.”

“You're not happy?” said Lexie.

“No, I'm not happy!” Meredith snapped.  “I promised Derek I wouldn't take a test without letting him know, and because I also let him make me promise I'd try not to take more time off work, I'm stuck here for another...” she stopped to glance at her watch, “Eighteenish hours looking even less productive than the utter not productiveness I was exhibiting when we started this chat, and I can't take a pregnancy test here and tell him over the phone because who tells people gigantic news like I could be pregnant over the phone when there's a reasonable amount of vicinity and means to freaking get together?  Plus, I told him on Monday I wasn't being hormonal, and I apparently have been.  Or might have been.  Maybe.  Assuming he knocked me up again like a virile he-man jerk instead of letting me have the stomach flu like a normal person.”

Meredith flopped flat on the gurney and heaved a dramatic sigh.  Lexie snickered.  Snickered!

Meredith glared.  “It's not funny, Lexie.”

“It's kinda funny,” Alex said.

Cristina joined them before Meredith could respond, and the horrible cycle of sickness began again when the funk of tuna rolled over her like a dump truck.  Heat burned her from the inside.  Meredith's stomach clenched and jerked.  She gagged.  Bile and other fluid filled her throat as she rolled to the side.  And then everything spilled onto the floor out of her innards.  She gagged and gasped and choked as everybody scattered to avoid wayward projectiles.

Meredith sniffed.  Her nose ran.  She wiped her mouth with her hand as her body relaxed, and she pushed away the sticky, wet ends of her ponytail from her face.  “There's too much freaking vomit in my life right now,” she croaked as she lay there with her eyes squeezed shut against the gurney.  “Seriously.  Is that sandwich a special or something?”

Cristina looked at the mess on the floor as she munched on her sandwich, and then back up at Meredith.  At least, now appeased with its need to evacuate itself, Meredith's stomach had stopped protesting the mere presence of tuna.  “Okay, what's wrong with you?” Cristina said.  “I thought you said yesterday night was a fluke.”

“Dude,” Alex said.  “She's hormonal.”

“I am not hormonal!” Meredith snapped.  “What time is it?”

“11:51,” Alex said.  “Why?”

Meredith pressed her face into the gurney, breathing.  Oh, god.  Derek's sperm was a bunch of super-powered, squiggly bullies.  She didn't need a test.  She knew.  That was the exact time.  She'd puked right on time.  How could she be pregnant, now?  Now, of all times, when Derek was so sick from withdrawal because of his freaking drug addiction he couldn't even pick himself up off the bathroom floor half the time.  Neither of them were in any shape to be parents, right now.  How the hell were they going to do this?  What had they been thinking?  Oh, god, how were they going to do this?

“Crap,” Meredith said, her voice the barest whisper.  She struggled to sit up.

“Neat,” said Cristina.  She sat on the gurney and swung her feet.  “Am I still the godmother?”

“Crap!” Meredith repeated.  She crawled off the gurney.  Her sneakers squeaked and squished as she nearly slipped on the puddle of vomit she'd created.  Her vomit.  Great.  This was just great.

Lexie stared with a helpless expression.  “Congratulations?”

“I don't like you people anymore!” Meredith snapped as she stalked off to find a towel and the janitor.