Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 6
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
~~~~~
Derek lay with his head and torso partially elevated, swathed in blankets, eyes shut, looking indescribably peaceful. Meredith pulled up a chair, careful to drag it gently across the tiles so that it didn't make too much noise. She sat next to him, staring.
A small patch of his hair had been shaved away, and the long gash that ran along his hairline had been cleaned and sutured. His head tilted to the side toward his left shoulder, like he'd been awake and looking toward the door, only to drift off accidentally. A saline drip pumped fluids quietly into a catheter taped against his wrist. His other wrist was wrapped in a thin nametag that read "Derek Shepherd" in new courier type. A heart monitor on the other side of the bed announced the steady, solid progress of his heartbeat.
Meredith sat there, happy to just watch him breathe. Was this how he'd felt when she'd been in the hospital? He'd spent the night spooned up to her, looking pensive and distraught. She'd fallen asleep to his breaths on the back of her neck, to the soothing motions of his hands as he'd stroked her.
She longed to climb into bed with him right then, just lie down along the length of him and embrace him, run her hands along his chest to assure herself that he was fine. But she didn't want to wake him up, and people with head injuries were often confused or agitated. Breaching the personal space barrier like that before she had a good idea of his state of mind, well, that might end up being bad, might make things worse.
Instead, Meredith contented herself to watch his chest rise and fall, rise and fall. The room was dark, but the windows on the side wall let light in from the hallway, where nurses and doctors and night staff wandered by with relative infrequency. She could make out his outline, could see everything clearly despite the dimness. He had one of those flimsy hospital gowns on. It made him look sick and helpless. She suddenly realized she had no idea where the car had been towed to, the car that had their luggage in it. So, he would be stuck with the gown for now. God, she couldn't even offer him the comfort of his own clothes, his own flannel pants and a lived in t-shirt.
A nurse trotted in after about twenty minutes. "Mr. Shepherd?" she said loudly as she walked over to him. "Time to wake up now." The nurse turned to Meredith and smiled. "You can let him go back to sleep after this. We just need to make sure we can rouse him."
Meredith nodded as Derek blinked and sighed. He moved sluggishly as he pulled his hands up to his face and scrubbed at the skin. The nurse leaned over him, quickly checking his vitals, which he allowed without comment or issue.
"Mr. Shepherd," the nurse asked, "Can you tell me where you are?"
Derek swallowed, blinking at her, staring in the nurse's direction, but not quite at the nurse. "Hospital," he said. His voice came out raspy and worn and slurred just enough to sound strange.
"Very good. Do you know what happened?" the nurse prodded.
"Mmm," Derek moaned. After several false starts, he managed to say, "Car crash, I think..." He leaned back against the pillows and sighed, his face creased with discomfort.
"Yes. You're at Sharon Hospital," the nurse clarified. "You have a bad concussion, and you were up having an MRI just a little while ago. Do you remember that?"
Derek nodded slowly, making several repeated swallowing motions, as if he were trying to clear his throat to speak, but not actually coming up with any words. The nurse put a glass of water and two pills on his tray table, probably painkillers, though Meredith didn't really get a good look. Derek reached out, but either his depth perception was messed up, or everything was just blurry, and he missed as he pawed with shaky hands at the place where the nurse had placed the pills. The nurse guided him to it, and he scooped them up and downed them without too much more difficulty.
His hand had started to shake as he wiped at his face again. The nurse took a penlight and flashed it at him, asking him to follow the light. He did. She smiled, satisfied, and left them, saying she'd be back in another hour or so.
He sighed, and his eyelids started to droop, but then he turned toward her and froze, as if he was noticing her sitting there for the first time. He swallowed, swallowed, swallowed, and made a noise that might have been a word, had he opened his mouth to speak it. His eyes wandered across her face, as though he were trying to focus on her, but couldn't quite manage it.
"Hey," she said, smiling as brightly as she could manage despite how upset she felt. She was unused to doing this. The sick thing. The part of a relationship where you had to be supportive and brave and comforting. Derek was usually so healthy. He hadn't even had a cold since she'd known him. And he rarely got into a funk, mood-wise, at least not like she tended to do. It was always him asking her if she was okay, if she needed anything. Now it was her turn to do that for him, and it just felt, well, it felt weird, and heart wrenching, and strange.
She reached out, put her hand over his own, and squeezed it. "You look so much better." She almost wanted to kick herself for sounding so lame, but the whole situation just seemed odd. Derek continued to watch her, his expression blank. When she moved her fingers across his own, his gaze drifted down in a sluggish readjustment.
He stared down at her hand, still cupped over his. She took up his palm in a two-handed grasp and started to massage the joints. He watched, silent, with a curious expression on his face. Far from agitated, his concussion made him seem downright docile, she thought. She tried not to wonder why he hadn't said anything yet when she knew very well that he could speak, at least a little.
"I'm so glad you're okay," she said, suddenly feeling the need to fill the awkward, scary silence. The emotions shook loose from her like apples from a tree in a gale. She started to sniffle. "Derek, I was so worried. I thought... You were... Well, if this is anything like how you felt when I-- I'm so sorry." The tears heaved into a torrent, and she found herself weeping at him as the stress began to overwhelm her. "I love you, I love you, I love you," she moaned. "I'm so glad you're okay."
He pulled his hand away as though she'd scalded him. His breaths, which had been relaxed before, kicked up into a higher, gasping gear. And his eyes widened. "Don't touch me," he snapped, his words loose, the sounds not entirely grouped together in the correct way, enough that were he speaking that way on a regular day, she would have thought he was tipsy.
She froze at his harsh, vehement tone, pausing in mid sob. She leaned back in the chair. "What?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
He started to twitch and breathe and show all the signs of a minor panic attack. "Derek?" she asked. Meredith frowned and hit the call button when he didn't reply. His eyes flared wide, showing the whites all around the irises. The nurse came running in a few moments later. Meredith pointed at Derek, who gasped and heaved with upset. His eyes watered and streaked his cheeks with tears.
"I don't know what happened!" she said as the nurse rushed over.
"Mr. Shepherd! Mr. Shepherd, can you calm down for me? You're at Sharon hospital. You were in a very bad car accident, but you're doing great. Can you look at me?" the nurse prodded.
"What... What..." Derek said between pants. His eyes leaked. He brought a shaking hand up to grip the bridge of his nose like he was trying to stave off a tension headache.
"You're okay, Derek. You're fine," Meredith said as the nurse checked him over. He just kept staring at her over the nurse, staring at her with confused, tearing eyes. Maybe he was remembering the accident? She couldn't tell, couldn't even begin to guess at what had upset him. "Your family is all here, Derek," she said, trying to reassure him, give him some comfort. "Do you want to see your sisters? Your mom?"
He sniffled. "Where's Addi? Where..." he asked.
Meredith swallowed. Confused. He was just confused. "Addison is in Seattle, Derek..." she said.
"Se..." He made a choking noise. "Seattle?" The answer only seemed to upset him more. "What? Wh... Did she... Does she have a medical conference there?"
"What? No, Derek. She works there," Meredith said, a pit of dread forming in a slow, twining curl in her stomach. This was wrong. This was all wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
The nurse frowned. "I'm going to get his doctor. Try and keep him calm."
Derek swallowed, staring off into his own world, sputtering nonsensical, slurred questions that began with the sound of the first word, only to fall of into choking gasps. Meredith gripped his hand again. "Derek. Derek, look at me. Breathe. You're fine," she said.
He stared at her for all of two seconds before he ripped his hand away from her. "Are you..." he said, his voice searching, his unfocused gaze full of pleading, desperate fear. "Are you a nurse? I don't..."
"What?" she asked. She felt the floor dropping out from under her, and she collapsed back onto her chair and stared at him utterly helpless to do anything other than watch him panic. Her chest wrenched at the sight of him, afraid, not knowing what was going on. She'd seen this problem before countless times in victims with head wounds, but nothing would have ever prepared her for that, to see the man she loved looking back at her with absolute, terrifying lack of recognition.
Dr. Zalkind came rushing into the room, followed by the nurse that had left to fetch him. "What's the problem?"
"Why is Addison in Seattle? What... Wh..." Derek said, panting, until the words fell away into a moan. He blinked at them, his whole face flushed, and everything crumpled.
Dr. Zalkind turned to Meredith. "Who is Addison?"
"His ex-wife. They've been divorced for months," she said in a small, warbly voice. "I don't think he remembers."
"What?" Derek said. "When did... What? Wh--" His heart monitor started to whine as his heart rate skyrocketed. He panted so hard it sounded like he was choking on the air he managed to suck down.
"Mr. Shepherd, you need to calm down. You're showing signs of retrograde amnesia that's a little worse than we originally thought. But it's normal for this kind of head injury. It should clear up. Can you breathe for me? Can you calm down?"
Meredith watched in silence as Dr. Zalkind frowned at Derek and whispered to the nurse, "Jess, I think we need to sedate him. Get some diazepam, push five milligrams."
The nurse went to work, and soon Derek stopped sputtering, stopped pelting them with breathless questions. He sank back onto the pillows with a sigh and stared blankly as the shaking dulled to a faint tremor, and then died away completely. "Mr. Shepherd, can you hear me?" Dr. Zalkind prodded.
Derek sighed and nodded, staring ahead like some broken toy. Meredith felt bitter, racking sobs clogging up her throat, but she forced them to stay there, lumping up, not coming out. Derek hated being drunk and out of control of himself. This would be so much worse for him. She wanted to rush the bed, rush him and hug him and tell him everything would be fine. Except he had no idea who the hell she was. She wasn't even that sexy girl who'd caught his eye in the bar anymore. She was a haggard, crying, shocked little drip of skin and bones that probably looked very far from eye-catching. Well, the blood all over her shirt was probably eye-catching, but... not the right kind. She had nothing to work with. She couldn't rely on some first spark to make him at least open-minded to her. Not when he was this disoriented, this confused. Not when she looked like crap. Not when she felt like crap.
"Okay," Dr. Zalkind said, apparently satisfied that Derek had settled down. "You need to get some rest. Try not to worry too much yet. This type of thing usually clears up within the first twenty-four hours or so. If it doesn't, then we'll get concerned."
Dr. Zalkind turned to Meredith. "The best thing for him right now is to relax and not worry. This type of thing is normal so far. Overall, he seems to be recovering very well. We'll keep monitoring him overnight."
"Okay," Meredith said with a sigh that melted into a sob. She had a long string of them. Sobs. But she'd crunched them up in her throat in a long, traffic jam of crying that she hadn't yet given a green light for. That would be for later.
The doctor and the nurse left, and she stayed back by the wall, her fists clenched at her mouth, just staring at him, not knowing what to do. Should she leave? Should she stay? Was she supposed to answer questions, or let him remember on his own? She grasped at straws, trying to remember how to deal with people who had amnesia, but she came up blank. Stress and surprise and fear had taken her senses and run off with them, laughing and chortling while she floundered behind them, a wreck.
He turned to face her after a few moments. He swallowed, and gazed at her with a dull sort of calm, no doubt forced on him by the blanket of drugs now clouding his mind. She wondered if he was worried, worried behind all the relaxants, pounding on a cage to get out, or if he was genuinely loose and not anxious.
"Are we?" he stuttered. "Are we... Are you?" He seemed unable to complete a thought, or at least connect the thoughts with his mouth. He brought his hands up to his tray table and rested them there, but they seemed more like dead appendages he was dragging along with his arms, rather than hands he was moving deliberately. "Who?" he continued. He frowned at her, squinting, as if he couldn't see her clearly but desperately wanted to.
"Meredith," she said. "My name is Meredith. We're... sort of somewhere close to married, but not engaged. If that makes sense. You should rest, Derek."
"Meredith," he said, sampling the word with a curious look on his face, ignoring the rest of her speech. She wanted to cry when she heard it, her name, coming from his lips with absolutely no inflection, none of the adoration he usually slathered all across the syllables, no look on his face like he'd placed her on a pedestal and was awed and amazed that she would even be with him. No, her name sounded strange, now. Strange, and dead. He swallowed. Swallowed and moaned before managing a slurred, "Addison?"
"She cheated on you, Derek. You tried to fix things, well, sort of... It didn't work out so well."
He blinked and closed his eyes. "I don't remember."
"I know, Derek. It's okay. Do you want to see your family?" she asked, but he didn't answer. His head dipped to the side, his hands slid off the tray table, and soon his breaths came in even, soothing rasps. She sat with him for a few minutes, sat watching him breathe. He was okay. He would be all right. Retrograde amnesia usually faded quickly, and really, things could have been so, so much worse. Perhaps next time the nurse came to wake him, he would remember her.
A tear slipped down her cheek and she waited with him while he slept. But when the nurse came in to wake him up an hour later in a vague repeat of before, he still didn't know anything. And the hour after that, again the same. He remembered her name, knew he was supposed to know her, and the rest of the information she'd given him just before he'd fallen asleep, but that was it. He wasn't panicking at the sight of her anymore, but neither was he at all comfortable with it, either.
After three hours of sitting with him, exhaustion clung to her like a warm blanket, dragging her down into a droopy, tired, barely there state. She ached everywhere. Apparently the whiplash was finally starting to kick in. She sighed, suddenly finding her chair agonizing to sit in. Her back hurt. Her head swam. Derek was asleep again. And his poor family was all probably still crowded in the waiting room, waiting for their own time with him, waiting for word from her. She'd been selfish, languishing this long, and they'd been incredibly polite to leave her to it. She made a woozy, tired mental note to thank them, thank them for letting her stay there and take their brother/son/brother-in-law away from them for so long, for letting her stay there and do the sick thing that she had no idea how to do properly.
Derek lay there in the darkness, breathing softly. She couldn't resist rubbing her hand across his cheek before she left. It was rough with the usual day's end stubble, but she found it comforting all the same. He slept right through the caress, probably a product of the drugs, the exhaustion, and the concussion all combined. Normally, he would have snapped awake.
But he was okay, she told herself. He would be okay. He didn't appear to have any lasting brain damage, not yet anyway, although something could always crop up. And seeing somebody whose face he actually knew might be comforting to him. She went to greet his family, her muscles locked into a state of bitter tension.
All of them were still there. All of them, despite how early in the morning it was now. They were awake and smiling and chatting like nothing was wrong, although she could sense, just underneath all the joviality, there was a layer of worry. They quieted when she approached.
"He's doing better," she said, her voice dull and creaky and exhausted.
"You look wiped out," one of Derek's sisters who wasn't Nancy said. Meredith tried to pull apart her memory for a name, but she just couldn't do it.
"I'm fine," she said. "I need to find out where they towed the car to. It has our luggage. And-" She gasped as the world started to tilt.
Somebody caught her. "We'll take care of that. John, why don't you take her to the house so she can sleep?"
One of Derek's brothers-in-law scooped her up like she was nothing. She vaguely remembered being taken out into the cold and put in the seat of a car. She vaguely remembered being carried into a dark, clean bedroom. After that, she didn't remember a thing.
Author's Note: Okay. I know... I know... You're yelling. You're screaming. You're thinking, I can't believe she actually went there... I warned everyone up front that this story was based off a whole host of ridiculous cliches, and so far, I've delivered. Meredith meets the family despite immense opposition. There's a car crash. Derek has amnesia. I mean, good lord, right? But I hope I haven't scared anyone away. That was it. The biggie. The amnesia is my embarrassing redheaded stepchild that I almost didn't want to write about because I was afraid of the reaction I'd get. But my goal here is to create an intelligent, fresh look at an old shoe. I have no more desire to write banality than you do to read it. And an intelligent look does not equal using amnesia as a time-wasting roadblock. I promise. I hope you have faith, and continue to enjoy the story. Thanks!
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
~~~~~
Derek lay with his head and torso partially elevated, swathed in blankets, eyes shut, looking indescribably peaceful. Meredith pulled up a chair, careful to drag it gently across the tiles so that it didn't make too much noise. She sat next to him, staring.
A small patch of his hair had been shaved away, and the long gash that ran along his hairline had been cleaned and sutured. His head tilted to the side toward his left shoulder, like he'd been awake and looking toward the door, only to drift off accidentally. A saline drip pumped fluids quietly into a catheter taped against his wrist. His other wrist was wrapped in a thin nametag that read "Derek Shepherd" in new courier type. A heart monitor on the other side of the bed announced the steady, solid progress of his heartbeat.
Meredith sat there, happy to just watch him breathe. Was this how he'd felt when she'd been in the hospital? He'd spent the night spooned up to her, looking pensive and distraught. She'd fallen asleep to his breaths on the back of her neck, to the soothing motions of his hands as he'd stroked her.
She longed to climb into bed with him right then, just lie down along the length of him and embrace him, run her hands along his chest to assure herself that he was fine. But she didn't want to wake him up, and people with head injuries were often confused or agitated. Breaching the personal space barrier like that before she had a good idea of his state of mind, well, that might end up being bad, might make things worse.
Instead, Meredith contented herself to watch his chest rise and fall, rise and fall. The room was dark, but the windows on the side wall let light in from the hallway, where nurses and doctors and night staff wandered by with relative infrequency. She could make out his outline, could see everything clearly despite the dimness. He had one of those flimsy hospital gowns on. It made him look sick and helpless. She suddenly realized she had no idea where the car had been towed to, the car that had their luggage in it. So, he would be stuck with the gown for now. God, she couldn't even offer him the comfort of his own clothes, his own flannel pants and a lived in t-shirt.
A nurse trotted in after about twenty minutes. "Mr. Shepherd?" she said loudly as she walked over to him. "Time to wake up now." The nurse turned to Meredith and smiled. "You can let him go back to sleep after this. We just need to make sure we can rouse him."
Meredith nodded as Derek blinked and sighed. He moved sluggishly as he pulled his hands up to his face and scrubbed at the skin. The nurse leaned over him, quickly checking his vitals, which he allowed without comment or issue.
"Mr. Shepherd," the nurse asked, "Can you tell me where you are?"
Derek swallowed, blinking at her, staring in the nurse's direction, but not quite at the nurse. "Hospital," he said. His voice came out raspy and worn and slurred just enough to sound strange.
"Very good. Do you know what happened?" the nurse prodded.
"Mmm," Derek moaned. After several false starts, he managed to say, "Car crash, I think..." He leaned back against the pillows and sighed, his face creased with discomfort.
"Yes. You're at Sharon Hospital," the nurse clarified. "You have a bad concussion, and you were up having an MRI just a little while ago. Do you remember that?"
Derek nodded slowly, making several repeated swallowing motions, as if he were trying to clear his throat to speak, but not actually coming up with any words. The nurse put a glass of water and two pills on his tray table, probably painkillers, though Meredith didn't really get a good look. Derek reached out, but either his depth perception was messed up, or everything was just blurry, and he missed as he pawed with shaky hands at the place where the nurse had placed the pills. The nurse guided him to it, and he scooped them up and downed them without too much more difficulty.
His hand had started to shake as he wiped at his face again. The nurse took a penlight and flashed it at him, asking him to follow the light. He did. She smiled, satisfied, and left them, saying she'd be back in another hour or so.
He sighed, and his eyelids started to droop, but then he turned toward her and froze, as if he was noticing her sitting there for the first time. He swallowed, swallowed, swallowed, and made a noise that might have been a word, had he opened his mouth to speak it. His eyes wandered across her face, as though he were trying to focus on her, but couldn't quite manage it.
"Hey," she said, smiling as brightly as she could manage despite how upset she felt. She was unused to doing this. The sick thing. The part of a relationship where you had to be supportive and brave and comforting. Derek was usually so healthy. He hadn't even had a cold since she'd known him. And he rarely got into a funk, mood-wise, at least not like she tended to do. It was always him asking her if she was okay, if she needed anything. Now it was her turn to do that for him, and it just felt, well, it felt weird, and heart wrenching, and strange.
She reached out, put her hand over his own, and squeezed it. "You look so much better." She almost wanted to kick herself for sounding so lame, but the whole situation just seemed odd. Derek continued to watch her, his expression blank. When she moved her fingers across his own, his gaze drifted down in a sluggish readjustment.
He stared down at her hand, still cupped over his. She took up his palm in a two-handed grasp and started to massage the joints. He watched, silent, with a curious expression on his face. Far from agitated, his concussion made him seem downright docile, she thought. She tried not to wonder why he hadn't said anything yet when she knew very well that he could speak, at least a little.
"I'm so glad you're okay," she said, suddenly feeling the need to fill the awkward, scary silence. The emotions shook loose from her like apples from a tree in a gale. She started to sniffle. "Derek, I was so worried. I thought... You were... Well, if this is anything like how you felt when I-- I'm so sorry." The tears heaved into a torrent, and she found herself weeping at him as the stress began to overwhelm her. "I love you, I love you, I love you," she moaned. "I'm so glad you're okay."
He pulled his hand away as though she'd scalded him. His breaths, which had been relaxed before, kicked up into a higher, gasping gear. And his eyes widened. "Don't touch me," he snapped, his words loose, the sounds not entirely grouped together in the correct way, enough that were he speaking that way on a regular day, she would have thought he was tipsy.
She froze at his harsh, vehement tone, pausing in mid sob. She leaned back in the chair. "What?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
He started to twitch and breathe and show all the signs of a minor panic attack. "Derek?" she asked. Meredith frowned and hit the call button when he didn't reply. His eyes flared wide, showing the whites all around the irises. The nurse came running in a few moments later. Meredith pointed at Derek, who gasped and heaved with upset. His eyes watered and streaked his cheeks with tears.
"I don't know what happened!" she said as the nurse rushed over.
"Mr. Shepherd! Mr. Shepherd, can you calm down for me? You're at Sharon hospital. You were in a very bad car accident, but you're doing great. Can you look at me?" the nurse prodded.
"What... What..." Derek said between pants. His eyes leaked. He brought a shaking hand up to grip the bridge of his nose like he was trying to stave off a tension headache.
"You're okay, Derek. You're fine," Meredith said as the nurse checked him over. He just kept staring at her over the nurse, staring at her with confused, tearing eyes. Maybe he was remembering the accident? She couldn't tell, couldn't even begin to guess at what had upset him. "Your family is all here, Derek," she said, trying to reassure him, give him some comfort. "Do you want to see your sisters? Your mom?"
He sniffled. "Where's Addi? Where..." he asked.
Meredith swallowed. Confused. He was just confused. "Addison is in Seattle, Derek..." she said.
"Se..." He made a choking noise. "Seattle?" The answer only seemed to upset him more. "What? Wh... Did she... Does she have a medical conference there?"
"What? No, Derek. She works there," Meredith said, a pit of dread forming in a slow, twining curl in her stomach. This was wrong. This was all wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
The nurse frowned. "I'm going to get his doctor. Try and keep him calm."
Derek swallowed, staring off into his own world, sputtering nonsensical, slurred questions that began with the sound of the first word, only to fall of into choking gasps. Meredith gripped his hand again. "Derek. Derek, look at me. Breathe. You're fine," she said.
He stared at her for all of two seconds before he ripped his hand away from her. "Are you..." he said, his voice searching, his unfocused gaze full of pleading, desperate fear. "Are you a nurse? I don't..."
"What?" she asked. She felt the floor dropping out from under her, and she collapsed back onto her chair and stared at him utterly helpless to do anything other than watch him panic. Her chest wrenched at the sight of him, afraid, not knowing what was going on. She'd seen this problem before countless times in victims with head wounds, but nothing would have ever prepared her for that, to see the man she loved looking back at her with absolute, terrifying lack of recognition.
Dr. Zalkind came rushing into the room, followed by the nurse that had left to fetch him. "What's the problem?"
"Why is Addison in Seattle? What... Wh..." Derek said, panting, until the words fell away into a moan. He blinked at them, his whole face flushed, and everything crumpled.
Dr. Zalkind turned to Meredith. "Who is Addison?"
"His ex-wife. They've been divorced for months," she said in a small, warbly voice. "I don't think he remembers."
"What?" Derek said. "When did... What? Wh--" His heart monitor started to whine as his heart rate skyrocketed. He panted so hard it sounded like he was choking on the air he managed to suck down.
"Mr. Shepherd, you need to calm down. You're showing signs of retrograde amnesia that's a little worse than we originally thought. But it's normal for this kind of head injury. It should clear up. Can you breathe for me? Can you calm down?"
Meredith watched in silence as Dr. Zalkind frowned at Derek and whispered to the nurse, "Jess, I think we need to sedate him. Get some diazepam, push five milligrams."
The nurse went to work, and soon Derek stopped sputtering, stopped pelting them with breathless questions. He sank back onto the pillows with a sigh and stared blankly as the shaking dulled to a faint tremor, and then died away completely. "Mr. Shepherd, can you hear me?" Dr. Zalkind prodded.
Derek sighed and nodded, staring ahead like some broken toy. Meredith felt bitter, racking sobs clogging up her throat, but she forced them to stay there, lumping up, not coming out. Derek hated being drunk and out of control of himself. This would be so much worse for him. She wanted to rush the bed, rush him and hug him and tell him everything would be fine. Except he had no idea who the hell she was. She wasn't even that sexy girl who'd caught his eye in the bar anymore. She was a haggard, crying, shocked little drip of skin and bones that probably looked very far from eye-catching. Well, the blood all over her shirt was probably eye-catching, but... not the right kind. She had nothing to work with. She couldn't rely on some first spark to make him at least open-minded to her. Not when he was this disoriented, this confused. Not when she looked like crap. Not when she felt like crap.
"Okay," Dr. Zalkind said, apparently satisfied that Derek had settled down. "You need to get some rest. Try not to worry too much yet. This type of thing usually clears up within the first twenty-four hours or so. If it doesn't, then we'll get concerned."
Dr. Zalkind turned to Meredith. "The best thing for him right now is to relax and not worry. This type of thing is normal so far. Overall, he seems to be recovering very well. We'll keep monitoring him overnight."
"Okay," Meredith said with a sigh that melted into a sob. She had a long string of them. Sobs. But she'd crunched them up in her throat in a long, traffic jam of crying that she hadn't yet given a green light for. That would be for later.
The doctor and the nurse left, and she stayed back by the wall, her fists clenched at her mouth, just staring at him, not knowing what to do. Should she leave? Should she stay? Was she supposed to answer questions, or let him remember on his own? She grasped at straws, trying to remember how to deal with people who had amnesia, but she came up blank. Stress and surprise and fear had taken her senses and run off with them, laughing and chortling while she floundered behind them, a wreck.
He turned to face her after a few moments. He swallowed, and gazed at her with a dull sort of calm, no doubt forced on him by the blanket of drugs now clouding his mind. She wondered if he was worried, worried behind all the relaxants, pounding on a cage to get out, or if he was genuinely loose and not anxious.
"Are we?" he stuttered. "Are we... Are you?" He seemed unable to complete a thought, or at least connect the thoughts with his mouth. He brought his hands up to his tray table and rested them there, but they seemed more like dead appendages he was dragging along with his arms, rather than hands he was moving deliberately. "Who?" he continued. He frowned at her, squinting, as if he couldn't see her clearly but desperately wanted to.
"Meredith," she said. "My name is Meredith. We're... sort of somewhere close to married, but not engaged. If that makes sense. You should rest, Derek."
"Meredith," he said, sampling the word with a curious look on his face, ignoring the rest of her speech. She wanted to cry when she heard it, her name, coming from his lips with absolutely no inflection, none of the adoration he usually slathered all across the syllables, no look on his face like he'd placed her on a pedestal and was awed and amazed that she would even be with him. No, her name sounded strange, now. Strange, and dead. He swallowed. Swallowed and moaned before managing a slurred, "Addison?"
"She cheated on you, Derek. You tried to fix things, well, sort of... It didn't work out so well."
He blinked and closed his eyes. "I don't remember."
"I know, Derek. It's okay. Do you want to see your family?" she asked, but he didn't answer. His head dipped to the side, his hands slid off the tray table, and soon his breaths came in even, soothing rasps. She sat with him for a few minutes, sat watching him breathe. He was okay. He would be all right. Retrograde amnesia usually faded quickly, and really, things could have been so, so much worse. Perhaps next time the nurse came to wake him, he would remember her.
A tear slipped down her cheek and she waited with him while he slept. But when the nurse came in to wake him up an hour later in a vague repeat of before, he still didn't know anything. And the hour after that, again the same. He remembered her name, knew he was supposed to know her, and the rest of the information she'd given him just before he'd fallen asleep, but that was it. He wasn't panicking at the sight of her anymore, but neither was he at all comfortable with it, either.
After three hours of sitting with him, exhaustion clung to her like a warm blanket, dragging her down into a droopy, tired, barely there state. She ached everywhere. Apparently the whiplash was finally starting to kick in. She sighed, suddenly finding her chair agonizing to sit in. Her back hurt. Her head swam. Derek was asleep again. And his poor family was all probably still crowded in the waiting room, waiting for their own time with him, waiting for word from her. She'd been selfish, languishing this long, and they'd been incredibly polite to leave her to it. She made a woozy, tired mental note to thank them, thank them for letting her stay there and take their brother/son/brother-in-law away from them for so long, for letting her stay there and do the sick thing that she had no idea how to do properly.
Derek lay there in the darkness, breathing softly. She couldn't resist rubbing her hand across his cheek before she left. It was rough with the usual day's end stubble, but she found it comforting all the same. He slept right through the caress, probably a product of the drugs, the exhaustion, and the concussion all combined. Normally, he would have snapped awake.
But he was okay, she told herself. He would be okay. He didn't appear to have any lasting brain damage, not yet anyway, although something could always crop up. And seeing somebody whose face he actually knew might be comforting to him. She went to greet his family, her muscles locked into a state of bitter tension.
All of them were still there. All of them, despite how early in the morning it was now. They were awake and smiling and chatting like nothing was wrong, although she could sense, just underneath all the joviality, there was a layer of worry. They quieted when she approached.
"He's doing better," she said, her voice dull and creaky and exhausted.
"You look wiped out," one of Derek's sisters who wasn't Nancy said. Meredith tried to pull apart her memory for a name, but she just couldn't do it.
"I'm fine," she said. "I need to find out where they towed the car to. It has our luggage. And-" She gasped as the world started to tilt.
Somebody caught her. "We'll take care of that. John, why don't you take her to the house so she can sleep?"
One of Derek's brothers-in-law scooped her up like she was nothing. She vaguely remembered being taken out into the cold and put in the seat of a car. She vaguely remembered being carried into a dark, clean bedroom. After that, she didn't remember a thing.
Author's Note: Okay. I know... I know... You're yelling. You're screaming. You're thinking, I can't believe she actually went there... I warned everyone up front that this story was based off a whole host of ridiculous cliches, and so far, I've delivered. Meredith meets the family despite immense opposition. There's a car crash. Derek has amnesia. I mean, good lord, right? But I hope I haven't scared anyone away. That was it. The biggie. The amnesia is my embarrassing redheaded stepchild that I almost didn't want to write about because I was afraid of the reaction I'd get. But my goal here is to create an intelligent, fresh look at an old shoe. I have no more desire to write banality than you do to read it. And an intelligent look does not equal using amnesia as a time-wasting roadblock. I promise. I hope you have faith, and continue to enjoy the story. Thanks!