Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 8
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
~~~~~
Meredith woke to the thunder of feet tearing down the hall. She cracked one eye open to peer muzzily across the flat plane of a king-sized bed. She twitched and groaned, and then the other eye came open. For a brief, panicked moment, she forgot where she was, and she launched off the mattress in shock. Reality settled back in a moment after, and her heartbeat calmed.
The room had a homey, lived-in feel to it. Ruffled, white-lace curtains were tied back with bows at the windows, which were obstructed by pale blue Venetian blinds. A thin quilt covered the bed, and framed family photographs dotted every wall. She recognized Derek in some of them, much, much younger. He made a cute kid.
She found her suitcase propped up against the wall under one of the windowsills. The room was large enough that it had two windows along the side. There was a sticky note attached to her bag that gave her the number of the rental agency, which she supposed she should call to start going over the insurance stuff. Later, she decided, when she thought about the headache that would entail.
She rummaged through her luggage and pulled out a fresh t-shirt to replace her soiled one. She raised the blinds, only to be greeted by quickly waning daylight. The small analog clock on the nightstand said it was 5:30 PM, but it couldn't be that late. Could it? Had she really been out that long? Her muscles ached, and a light headache persisted, but she felt so, so much better than she had the night before.
The sound of several small bodies thudding down the hall again was followed by a deep male voice shouting, "I told you not to run in the house!" But it was an amused sort of scolding, not trembling with anger or vitriol.
Meredith wandered out into the hallway. Three little bodies skidded to a stop and gasped. "Hello," she said. Three sets of wide eyes stared back.
"Daddy told us not to wake you," said the small, brown-haired girl. She couldn't have been more than five.
"Shut up, Mary," hissed a taller, similar looking boy, probably eight. "You'll get us into trouble."
"I will not! Meredith likes us!" replied Mary.
The third one, a short, doe-eyed, black-haired girl, a spitting image of Ellen, feature-wise, just stood there, sucking her thumb.
Meredith blinked at the trio. "I won't tell," she said. "And you didn't wake me," she lied. The trio giggled and thumped off.
She wandered downstairs to find a tall, muscular, brown-haired man in the kitchen supervising a small army of kids at the kitchen table as they played with paper and glue and noodles in a whirlwind of disaster. There were more noodles stuck to kids than there were noodles stuck to paper.
Thunder poured down through the ceiling. "Stop running!" the man shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth.
He turned when he noticed her. His eyes narrowed as he took in her disheveled appearance, but he gave her a thin smile. "Hello, I'm Rob," he said, his tone scraping up against cautious tolerance. He brushed off his palms on his stained jeans and reached out to shake her hand.
His grasp was warm, and firm, but she didn't sense a whole lot of friendliness there. "Meredith," she replied. "Nancy's husband, right?"
"Yeah. She's told me a lot about you," Rob said, noncommittal.
At least that explained the attitude, Meredith thought with a sigh. "Is Derek doing okay?" she asked.
Rob nodded. "They're bringing him home in about two hours or so. Doctors are letting him go early since he has supervision, and he's supposedly improved so much."
"Really?" she asked with a frown. She would have expected them to keep Derek until the next morning at the very least. Two hours would mark a point barely past twenty-four hours since he'd been wheeled into the trauma ward. At Seattle Grace it was standard to keep people with concussions as bad as Derek's for at least forty-eight hours. And Derek had the contusions in addition to the concussion... She frowned.
Rob nodded again. "Yeah. Julie, stop that," he snapped and walked over to one of the girls at the head of the table, who was doing some bad, bad things with a permanent marker to the wooden finish. Little black scribbles sprawled out well past the placemat.
"I'm going to go take a shower," she muttered, but he pretty much ignored her, which she guessed was at least better than needling.
It wasn't until she was in the shower that the situation really, truly started to sink in. Before, it had almost been surreal. Kids. A random brother-in-law of Derek's. More kids. As she stood under the warm spray, lathering up a washcloth, she started to sob. She collapsed in a pile in the tub basin and let the spray drown her as her breaths rattled and sputtered in her chest.
Derek was okay, she kept trying to tell herself. Derek was okay, and he was coming home, and everything would be fine, she tried to tell herself. Except herself wasn't listening. She was stuck in a house with his hostile family, and he would be there while they tore her to shreds. He would be there, and he wouldn't remember that he'd promised to help her out, that he'd promised to always come back. That somehow made it worse than if he weren't there at all.
She tried not to think of him, helpless and vomiting on the gurney in the trauma room. It was an image that would stay burned in her mind for a long, long time. And she regretted that she'd done the same to Derek with the accident on the pier. She hadn't realized, hadn't even begun to comprehend the deep psychological wound she'd given him...
She missed him already, missed him so much it hurt. She wanted this to be a shower where she smiled as she lathered up her lavender conditioner against her scalp, wondering if Derek would hop in with her. She wanted him to say her name like he had before, not like he was reading it out of a dictionary. She wanted him breathing next to her at night.
She didn't doubt that he would get his memories back. It was the one time during this whole horrific ordeal when actually knowing about head injuries because of her status as a soon to be brain surgeon was turning out to be comforting. He hadn't received any sort of penetrating injury. No damage to the brain matter itself, at least no obliterating damage. He'd never been rated comatose, not even close, which, really, was the main indicator of a severe enough injury that the amnesia might be permanent.
But waiting for the moment when she would slip back into his self-identity would be torture. It already had been torture.
"This is such crap," she moaned, leaning her head against the cool tiles. Okay, she could do this. She could be the fighter. She could stand up for herself on her own. She didn't need a knight in shining whatever. She'd managed well enough before he'd come along, back when she'd had her pink hair and combat boots phase. Countless times, she'd been insulted, derided. And she'd managed.
Except, she hadn't, really. She'd become dark and twisty and avoidy.
But avoiding twenty-three people... four sisters, four brothers-in-law, one mother, and fourteen children... That wasn't going to work in a house this size.
And that just sucked.
For a long set of moments, she sat there under the spray, worrying, agonizing, staring through the haze. The pelting water slowly washed her grief away. She heaved in a breath when she noticed the tears had finally subsided. She stood and finished with her shower slowly, taking time to scrub each and every last ache away, scour every pore, not caring that she was probably wasting the house's entire hot water supply. She was already a slutty home-wrecker, so she wasn't that worried about being labeled a water hog.
After she'd changed, she went to sit in the living room on one of the hulking leather chairs that held the corner of the room hostage. She set her purse on the doily that covered the small lamp table. Giggles and sounds of movement filtered out from the kitchen, but it was a distant thing. Rob didn't seem to care where she was, and she was happy to stay away. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed up the rental agency.
It was a long, painful conversation. But as soon as the failure of the airbag to deploy came to light, they became a lot, lot nicer. She rolled her eyes as they assured her they would have the car checked over by a mechanic immediately. Blah, blah, blah. Finally, it was over, and she sat against the cushy chair. Her muscles ached, and even despite the heinous amount of sleep she'd indulged in, she still felt tired, and underneath that, worried.
When she heard cars pull up outside, followed by the chatter of voices, she swallowed. Apprehension pulled her into a tight pile of nerves. She hunkered down in the chair like a piston getting ready to launch.
Meredith looked up as the door opened. Derek's sisters cut a swath through the entryway foyer, chatting and talking and bubbling, as if this wasn't some sort of monumental moment. Ellen and Stewart came next. Ellen kept peering over her shoulder with a concerned frown. Chris, Derek, and John came through a few moments after the main procession, preceded by a couple grunts and, "No, turn, turn this way, okay, yeah," type comments. Worry pinched the back of her throat when she received her first glimpse of them.
Chris was a large man. Not overweight. Just large. Huge. He had a buzz cut, and his whole demeanor screamed ex or current military. He had vaguely blonde hair, and a ruddy complexion. John was much closer to Derek's size, though he had the beginnings of a beer belly. His face was round and warm with a sort of innate cheer. They both stumbled through the door with Derek in tow.
Derek was practically draped between the two men, and it was obvious that the only reason he was standing was from their support. His eyes were hugged with deep, fleshy circles. His arms, wrapped over the men's necks, trembled with strain, and he wobbled sort of drunkenly as the three of them plodded forward. Derek had his eyes screwed shut and he was breathing in short, pleading little gasps. "I need to lie down," he whispered. "I can't. I need. I--"
Sisters, mother, and Stewart parted as they staggered him over to the couch in the living room. The kids rushed in, all screaming, "Uncle Derek, Uncle Derek!" as they started shoving macaroni noodle pictures and toys and other things at him in a sort of look-what-I-made smorgasbord.
Derek shrank back against the pillows of the couch. "That's great," he replied, his voice the barest wisp of air. He raised his hands to his head as his whole body started to shake with shivery, uncontrolled movement in the midst of all the people and noise.
Rob rushed in. "I'm sorry! I didn't warn them," he said, frantic.
Sisters converged in an army to draw the children away, and Meredith watched transfixed as the whole family moved as a unit. The kids were gone, corralled away by the she-Shepherds. Stewart plodded upstairs, saying something about getting the bed ready so they could move Derek upstairs. Rob, Chris, and John all moved out into the kitchen, mentioning something about starting dinner. Only Ellen remained in the room with Meredith.
Derek collapsed against the couch, laying himself out flat, though his legs still hung off the side, as if he didn't have the energy to pull them up. He swallowed a throaty, warbling, sick-sounding moan. Everything trembled. His eyes watered.
Ellen looked distraught. "Can I get you anything?"
"I just want to sleep," he said, miserable, shuddering with tension.
Ellen rubbed his shoulder. "Okay," she whispered.
Meredith came forward and grabbed his ankles, pulling them up onto the couch. She pulled off his slippers, and then she yanked the afghan off the back of the couch and laid it across him. Slowly, Derek calmed down, and the terrifying shakes receded.
Ellen left for a moment when he finally appeared to settle. Meredith looked up from the sofa as Ellen came back in with a glass of water in hand, and when she looked down, Derek was already out. Just gone. She'd never seen someone conk out like that. His breaths rasped in his chest, each one deep and racking, like the simple act of sleep itself was a Herculean feat.
He must have been exhausted from the hospital stay. If there was one thing Meredith had learned from her appendectomy, hospital stays were far from restful, which, really, was quite ironic. She stared at him, frowning. He looked so awful... Almost as bad as the night before, though it didn't help that his pajamas were too big for him, giving him a somewhat skeletal appearance.
Ellen placed the glass of water on the coffee table next to him. She sighed, watching Derek for a moment, patting his shoulder in a twitching, worried, repetitive motion. Meredith frowned even deeper when Derek didn't wake up from the disturbance.
With a final heaving sigh, Ellen stood and then walked out of the room toward the kitchen. Meredith watched her go, swallowing. Sitting out here in the quiet dark with a sleeping Derek was so, so much more tempting than going into the kitchen.
She frowned. Rip the band-aid. Just rip it. She could do this...
She stood and followed along the path Ellen had taken. She came into the room just as Ellen sat down at the kitchen table, frowning at the marker print that scrawled across the head of the table.
"Sorry, Ellen," Rob said with a sigh. "Fourteen kids is a lot to manage. I'll try and get the stains out tomorrow."
Ellen gave a weary smile. "Marker stains are the least of my worries right now," she said.
Meredith sat down at the kitchen table across from Ellen as John and Rob lorded over the stove, making something that smelled really, really good, though she couldn't identify the scent. Chris stood at the center island chopping up celery and potatoes and other things. They made it look like a serious job, though she supposed it probably was, cooking for fourteen kids and eleven adults. Her stomach rumbled as whatever was brewing in the pot started to bubble and steam and send a delicious odor her way.
Sarah, Kathy, Nancy, and Natalie came back into the kitchen in a staggered pattern. Nancy wiped her brow and sighed.
"Do the kids know they shouldn't make a lot of noise?" Meredith asked as everyone slowly trickled into the room. Everyone in the room looked at her, as if they simply hadn't noticed she'd been there this whole time.
"Yeah, we just told them that Uncle Derek is sick and to leave him alone. Hopefully, they'll take it to heart until we can get him up to the bedroom behind a closed door," Nancy said.
"We should leave him where he is for now, regardless. He really needs the sleep," Kathy commented. "He was in tears earlier today when they took him up for his second MRI and CT. I've never seen him like that. Never."
"Did the doctors give him any prescriptions for dizziness?" Meredith asked.
Nancy frowned. "No, he didn't get any prescriptions. Dr. Masden told us to get a follow-up appointment with a neurologist in a week or two, and that he could get prescriptions then if any symptoms were still persisting. Why?"
"If it's still bad tomorrow, I'll prescribe him one. He can barely walk unassisted, it looks like. I'm a little worried that the hospital let him go too early."
Ellen frowned. "What should we do?"
Meredith shrugged. "Keep him in a quiet, dark room and let him rest. Lots of people, lots of colors or lights, lots of noise, all bad."
Nancy frowned. "Oh, um..." and then she stuttered away into silence.
"What?"
"Well," Nancy said. "There aren't any guestrooms left. Should we put him in Kathy's room, and then have Kathy sleep with Meredith? Then John would be with Derek, and... Stu!" she called as Stewart wandered in. "What bed did you set up for Der?"
Stewart frowned. "I put fresh sheets on the one in Meredith's room. Why?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Nancy," Ellen snapped. "They're both mature adults. They'll be fine in the same bed."
"But Derek doesn't know Meredith anymore-" Nancy protested.
"And Meredith doesn't know me," Kathy replied. "What's your point?"
Nancy flushed. "Fine. I'm just trying to look out for him."
Nancy did have a point... Meredith swallowed, trying not to let the sudden prick of tears overwhelm her. It was selfish, yes, but she kind of wanted him there next to her that night. Very selfish, she amended when the image of him panicked, force-fed a sedative leaked into her brain. She didn't want him to be uncomfortable...
"I can sleep on the couch," Meredith offered.
"You'll do no such thing in my house," Ellen snapped.
An awkward silence fell. Tension thrummed in the air like the pulse of a badly tuned violin. Everyone shuffled and peered this way and that, as long as it didn't make eye contact with anyone else. The analog clock on the wall tick, tick, ticked. Spoons scraped against pots. Liquid bubbled. Despite all that, the stillness threatened to suffocate her. She started inching out of her seat.
Natalie cleared her throat and looked over just as Meredith was about to stand and flee. "Meredith, how are you feeling? Any whiplash?"
"A little," Meredith said as she forced herself to relax in her seat. "I'll be fine."
Kathy frowned. "Are you okay, though? With Derek? I know this has to be difficult."
Meredith shrugged. She felt like she was under a microscope as everyone took a turn to stare at her. Why was everyone was being so nice to her all of the sudden? Well, everyone except Nancy. She swallowed. "I'm fine. It's... I'm fine."
"So," Sarah said, changing the subject as awkward silence clouded around them again. "How are you enjoying your intern year? Mine was awful. I remember a constant, splitting headache, all the time as I wished, no, prayed, for people not to call me while I was on-call, just so I could get some sleep."
"Are you a surgeon?" Meredith asked.
"Cardio-thoracic. I work at Mount Sinai. It's weird not seeing Derek and Addison roaming the halls anymore."
"I've fallen asleep sitting in the shower. It's pretty bad sometimes. Especially with no leave. Frankly, I'm amazed the Chief let me off for this thing," Meredith replied, trying like hell to ignore the Addison dig. It had been so blasé that it quite possibly could have been unintentional. Possibly.
"So," she said. "Is everyone a surgeon here, or something? I'm somehow getting the impression that Derek's family is a house of surgeon spawn."
Kathy snickered. "Nah. I'm a psychiatrist. Natalie is a teacher. None of our illustrious husbands are in the medical field at all. They just humor us well."
"We try, anyway," John muttered.
"What do you do, Ellen?" Meredith asked.
Ellen looked surprised she'd even been asked. "I didn't work."
Meredith frowned. "Oh," she said.
"It's not something I'm ashamed of. I raised five beautiful children."
Everyone smiled, and choruses of, "Love you, Mom," and "Thank you," flitted through the air.
Meredith swallowed at the sudden swell of family solidarity. "I'm going to go sit with Derek for a while," she said.
She retreated as quickly as she could without running, but she'd only made it to the foyer when Kathy caught up with her. "Hey, Meredith," she said. "It's okay."
"What's okay?" Meredith asked, turning around with a sigh.
"To be part of the family. Nancy will come around. She's just being stubborn. And Mom likes you; she just hasn't admitted it yet. I can tell."
"I..."
Kathy just grinned. "Go sit with Derek."
Meredith didn't need any further cueing.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
~~~~~
Meredith woke to the thunder of feet tearing down the hall. She cracked one eye open to peer muzzily across the flat plane of a king-sized bed. She twitched and groaned, and then the other eye came open. For a brief, panicked moment, she forgot where she was, and she launched off the mattress in shock. Reality settled back in a moment after, and her heartbeat calmed.
The room had a homey, lived-in feel to it. Ruffled, white-lace curtains were tied back with bows at the windows, which were obstructed by pale blue Venetian blinds. A thin quilt covered the bed, and framed family photographs dotted every wall. She recognized Derek in some of them, much, much younger. He made a cute kid.
She found her suitcase propped up against the wall under one of the windowsills. The room was large enough that it had two windows along the side. There was a sticky note attached to her bag that gave her the number of the rental agency, which she supposed she should call to start going over the insurance stuff. Later, she decided, when she thought about the headache that would entail.
She rummaged through her luggage and pulled out a fresh t-shirt to replace her soiled one. She raised the blinds, only to be greeted by quickly waning daylight. The small analog clock on the nightstand said it was 5:30 PM, but it couldn't be that late. Could it? Had she really been out that long? Her muscles ached, and a light headache persisted, but she felt so, so much better than she had the night before.
The sound of several small bodies thudding down the hall again was followed by a deep male voice shouting, "I told you not to run in the house!" But it was an amused sort of scolding, not trembling with anger or vitriol.
Meredith wandered out into the hallway. Three little bodies skidded to a stop and gasped. "Hello," she said. Three sets of wide eyes stared back.
"Daddy told us not to wake you," said the small, brown-haired girl. She couldn't have been more than five.
"Shut up, Mary," hissed a taller, similar looking boy, probably eight. "You'll get us into trouble."
"I will not! Meredith likes us!" replied Mary.
The third one, a short, doe-eyed, black-haired girl, a spitting image of Ellen, feature-wise, just stood there, sucking her thumb.
Meredith blinked at the trio. "I won't tell," she said. "And you didn't wake me," she lied. The trio giggled and thumped off.
She wandered downstairs to find a tall, muscular, brown-haired man in the kitchen supervising a small army of kids at the kitchen table as they played with paper and glue and noodles in a whirlwind of disaster. There were more noodles stuck to kids than there were noodles stuck to paper.
Thunder poured down through the ceiling. "Stop running!" the man shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth.
He turned when he noticed her. His eyes narrowed as he took in her disheveled appearance, but he gave her a thin smile. "Hello, I'm Rob," he said, his tone scraping up against cautious tolerance. He brushed off his palms on his stained jeans and reached out to shake her hand.
His grasp was warm, and firm, but she didn't sense a whole lot of friendliness there. "Meredith," she replied. "Nancy's husband, right?"
"Yeah. She's told me a lot about you," Rob said, noncommittal.
At least that explained the attitude, Meredith thought with a sigh. "Is Derek doing okay?" she asked.
Rob nodded. "They're bringing him home in about two hours or so. Doctors are letting him go early since he has supervision, and he's supposedly improved so much."
"Really?" she asked with a frown. She would have expected them to keep Derek until the next morning at the very least. Two hours would mark a point barely past twenty-four hours since he'd been wheeled into the trauma ward. At Seattle Grace it was standard to keep people with concussions as bad as Derek's for at least forty-eight hours. And Derek had the contusions in addition to the concussion... She frowned.
Rob nodded again. "Yeah. Julie, stop that," he snapped and walked over to one of the girls at the head of the table, who was doing some bad, bad things with a permanent marker to the wooden finish. Little black scribbles sprawled out well past the placemat.
"I'm going to go take a shower," she muttered, but he pretty much ignored her, which she guessed was at least better than needling.
It wasn't until she was in the shower that the situation really, truly started to sink in. Before, it had almost been surreal. Kids. A random brother-in-law of Derek's. More kids. As she stood under the warm spray, lathering up a washcloth, she started to sob. She collapsed in a pile in the tub basin and let the spray drown her as her breaths rattled and sputtered in her chest.
Derek was okay, she kept trying to tell herself. Derek was okay, and he was coming home, and everything would be fine, she tried to tell herself. Except herself wasn't listening. She was stuck in a house with his hostile family, and he would be there while they tore her to shreds. He would be there, and he wouldn't remember that he'd promised to help her out, that he'd promised to always come back. That somehow made it worse than if he weren't there at all.
She tried not to think of him, helpless and vomiting on the gurney in the trauma room. It was an image that would stay burned in her mind for a long, long time. And she regretted that she'd done the same to Derek with the accident on the pier. She hadn't realized, hadn't even begun to comprehend the deep psychological wound she'd given him...
She missed him already, missed him so much it hurt. She wanted this to be a shower where she smiled as she lathered up her lavender conditioner against her scalp, wondering if Derek would hop in with her. She wanted him to say her name like he had before, not like he was reading it out of a dictionary. She wanted him breathing next to her at night.
She didn't doubt that he would get his memories back. It was the one time during this whole horrific ordeal when actually knowing about head injuries because of her status as a soon to be brain surgeon was turning out to be comforting. He hadn't received any sort of penetrating injury. No damage to the brain matter itself, at least no obliterating damage. He'd never been rated comatose, not even close, which, really, was the main indicator of a severe enough injury that the amnesia might be permanent.
But waiting for the moment when she would slip back into his self-identity would be torture. It already had been torture.
"This is such crap," she moaned, leaning her head against the cool tiles. Okay, she could do this. She could be the fighter. She could stand up for herself on her own. She didn't need a knight in shining whatever. She'd managed well enough before he'd come along, back when she'd had her pink hair and combat boots phase. Countless times, she'd been insulted, derided. And she'd managed.
Except, she hadn't, really. She'd become dark and twisty and avoidy.
But avoiding twenty-three people... four sisters, four brothers-in-law, one mother, and fourteen children... That wasn't going to work in a house this size.
And that just sucked.
For a long set of moments, she sat there under the spray, worrying, agonizing, staring through the haze. The pelting water slowly washed her grief away. She heaved in a breath when she noticed the tears had finally subsided. She stood and finished with her shower slowly, taking time to scrub each and every last ache away, scour every pore, not caring that she was probably wasting the house's entire hot water supply. She was already a slutty home-wrecker, so she wasn't that worried about being labeled a water hog.
After she'd changed, she went to sit in the living room on one of the hulking leather chairs that held the corner of the room hostage. She set her purse on the doily that covered the small lamp table. Giggles and sounds of movement filtered out from the kitchen, but it was a distant thing. Rob didn't seem to care where she was, and she was happy to stay away. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed up the rental agency.
It was a long, painful conversation. But as soon as the failure of the airbag to deploy came to light, they became a lot, lot nicer. She rolled her eyes as they assured her they would have the car checked over by a mechanic immediately. Blah, blah, blah. Finally, it was over, and she sat against the cushy chair. Her muscles ached, and even despite the heinous amount of sleep she'd indulged in, she still felt tired, and underneath that, worried.
When she heard cars pull up outside, followed by the chatter of voices, she swallowed. Apprehension pulled her into a tight pile of nerves. She hunkered down in the chair like a piston getting ready to launch.
Meredith looked up as the door opened. Derek's sisters cut a swath through the entryway foyer, chatting and talking and bubbling, as if this wasn't some sort of monumental moment. Ellen and Stewart came next. Ellen kept peering over her shoulder with a concerned frown. Chris, Derek, and John came through a few moments after the main procession, preceded by a couple grunts and, "No, turn, turn this way, okay, yeah," type comments. Worry pinched the back of her throat when she received her first glimpse of them.
Chris was a large man. Not overweight. Just large. Huge. He had a buzz cut, and his whole demeanor screamed ex or current military. He had vaguely blonde hair, and a ruddy complexion. John was much closer to Derek's size, though he had the beginnings of a beer belly. His face was round and warm with a sort of innate cheer. They both stumbled through the door with Derek in tow.
Derek was practically draped between the two men, and it was obvious that the only reason he was standing was from their support. His eyes were hugged with deep, fleshy circles. His arms, wrapped over the men's necks, trembled with strain, and he wobbled sort of drunkenly as the three of them plodded forward. Derek had his eyes screwed shut and he was breathing in short, pleading little gasps. "I need to lie down," he whispered. "I can't. I need. I--"
Sisters, mother, and Stewart parted as they staggered him over to the couch in the living room. The kids rushed in, all screaming, "Uncle Derek, Uncle Derek!" as they started shoving macaroni noodle pictures and toys and other things at him in a sort of look-what-I-made smorgasbord.
Derek shrank back against the pillows of the couch. "That's great," he replied, his voice the barest wisp of air. He raised his hands to his head as his whole body started to shake with shivery, uncontrolled movement in the midst of all the people and noise.
Rob rushed in. "I'm sorry! I didn't warn them," he said, frantic.
Sisters converged in an army to draw the children away, and Meredith watched transfixed as the whole family moved as a unit. The kids were gone, corralled away by the she-Shepherds. Stewart plodded upstairs, saying something about getting the bed ready so they could move Derek upstairs. Rob, Chris, and John all moved out into the kitchen, mentioning something about starting dinner. Only Ellen remained in the room with Meredith.
Derek collapsed against the couch, laying himself out flat, though his legs still hung off the side, as if he didn't have the energy to pull them up. He swallowed a throaty, warbling, sick-sounding moan. Everything trembled. His eyes watered.
Ellen looked distraught. "Can I get you anything?"
"I just want to sleep," he said, miserable, shuddering with tension.
Ellen rubbed his shoulder. "Okay," she whispered.
Meredith came forward and grabbed his ankles, pulling them up onto the couch. She pulled off his slippers, and then she yanked the afghan off the back of the couch and laid it across him. Slowly, Derek calmed down, and the terrifying shakes receded.
Ellen left for a moment when he finally appeared to settle. Meredith looked up from the sofa as Ellen came back in with a glass of water in hand, and when she looked down, Derek was already out. Just gone. She'd never seen someone conk out like that. His breaths rasped in his chest, each one deep and racking, like the simple act of sleep itself was a Herculean feat.
He must have been exhausted from the hospital stay. If there was one thing Meredith had learned from her appendectomy, hospital stays were far from restful, which, really, was quite ironic. She stared at him, frowning. He looked so awful... Almost as bad as the night before, though it didn't help that his pajamas were too big for him, giving him a somewhat skeletal appearance.
Ellen placed the glass of water on the coffee table next to him. She sighed, watching Derek for a moment, patting his shoulder in a twitching, worried, repetitive motion. Meredith frowned even deeper when Derek didn't wake up from the disturbance.
With a final heaving sigh, Ellen stood and then walked out of the room toward the kitchen. Meredith watched her go, swallowing. Sitting out here in the quiet dark with a sleeping Derek was so, so much more tempting than going into the kitchen.
She frowned. Rip the band-aid. Just rip it. She could do this...
She stood and followed along the path Ellen had taken. She came into the room just as Ellen sat down at the kitchen table, frowning at the marker print that scrawled across the head of the table.
"Sorry, Ellen," Rob said with a sigh. "Fourteen kids is a lot to manage. I'll try and get the stains out tomorrow."
Ellen gave a weary smile. "Marker stains are the least of my worries right now," she said.
Meredith sat down at the kitchen table across from Ellen as John and Rob lorded over the stove, making something that smelled really, really good, though she couldn't identify the scent. Chris stood at the center island chopping up celery and potatoes and other things. They made it look like a serious job, though she supposed it probably was, cooking for fourteen kids and eleven adults. Her stomach rumbled as whatever was brewing in the pot started to bubble and steam and send a delicious odor her way.
Sarah, Kathy, Nancy, and Natalie came back into the kitchen in a staggered pattern. Nancy wiped her brow and sighed.
"Do the kids know they shouldn't make a lot of noise?" Meredith asked as everyone slowly trickled into the room. Everyone in the room looked at her, as if they simply hadn't noticed she'd been there this whole time.
"Yeah, we just told them that Uncle Derek is sick and to leave him alone. Hopefully, they'll take it to heart until we can get him up to the bedroom behind a closed door," Nancy said.
"We should leave him where he is for now, regardless. He really needs the sleep," Kathy commented. "He was in tears earlier today when they took him up for his second MRI and CT. I've never seen him like that. Never."
"Did the doctors give him any prescriptions for dizziness?" Meredith asked.
Nancy frowned. "No, he didn't get any prescriptions. Dr. Masden told us to get a follow-up appointment with a neurologist in a week or two, and that he could get prescriptions then if any symptoms were still persisting. Why?"
"If it's still bad tomorrow, I'll prescribe him one. He can barely walk unassisted, it looks like. I'm a little worried that the hospital let him go too early."
Ellen frowned. "What should we do?"
Meredith shrugged. "Keep him in a quiet, dark room and let him rest. Lots of people, lots of colors or lights, lots of noise, all bad."
Nancy frowned. "Oh, um..." and then she stuttered away into silence.
"What?"
"Well," Nancy said. "There aren't any guestrooms left. Should we put him in Kathy's room, and then have Kathy sleep with Meredith? Then John would be with Derek, and... Stu!" she called as Stewart wandered in. "What bed did you set up for Der?"
Stewart frowned. "I put fresh sheets on the one in Meredith's room. Why?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Nancy," Ellen snapped. "They're both mature adults. They'll be fine in the same bed."
"But Derek doesn't know Meredith anymore-" Nancy protested.
"And Meredith doesn't know me," Kathy replied. "What's your point?"
Nancy flushed. "Fine. I'm just trying to look out for him."
Nancy did have a point... Meredith swallowed, trying not to let the sudden prick of tears overwhelm her. It was selfish, yes, but she kind of wanted him there next to her that night. Very selfish, she amended when the image of him panicked, force-fed a sedative leaked into her brain. She didn't want him to be uncomfortable...
"I can sleep on the couch," Meredith offered.
"You'll do no such thing in my house," Ellen snapped.
An awkward silence fell. Tension thrummed in the air like the pulse of a badly tuned violin. Everyone shuffled and peered this way and that, as long as it didn't make eye contact with anyone else. The analog clock on the wall tick, tick, ticked. Spoons scraped against pots. Liquid bubbled. Despite all that, the stillness threatened to suffocate her. She started inching out of her seat.
Natalie cleared her throat and looked over just as Meredith was about to stand and flee. "Meredith, how are you feeling? Any whiplash?"
"A little," Meredith said as she forced herself to relax in her seat. "I'll be fine."
Kathy frowned. "Are you okay, though? With Derek? I know this has to be difficult."
Meredith shrugged. She felt like she was under a microscope as everyone took a turn to stare at her. Why was everyone was being so nice to her all of the sudden? Well, everyone except Nancy. She swallowed. "I'm fine. It's... I'm fine."
"So," Sarah said, changing the subject as awkward silence clouded around them again. "How are you enjoying your intern year? Mine was awful. I remember a constant, splitting headache, all the time as I wished, no, prayed, for people not to call me while I was on-call, just so I could get some sleep."
"Are you a surgeon?" Meredith asked.
"Cardio-thoracic. I work at Mount Sinai. It's weird not seeing Derek and Addison roaming the halls anymore."
"I've fallen asleep sitting in the shower. It's pretty bad sometimes. Especially with no leave. Frankly, I'm amazed the Chief let me off for this thing," Meredith replied, trying like hell to ignore the Addison dig. It had been so blasé that it quite possibly could have been unintentional. Possibly.
"So," she said. "Is everyone a surgeon here, or something? I'm somehow getting the impression that Derek's family is a house of surgeon spawn."
Kathy snickered. "Nah. I'm a psychiatrist. Natalie is a teacher. None of our illustrious husbands are in the medical field at all. They just humor us well."
"We try, anyway," John muttered.
"What do you do, Ellen?" Meredith asked.
Ellen looked surprised she'd even been asked. "I didn't work."
Meredith frowned. "Oh," she said.
"It's not something I'm ashamed of. I raised five beautiful children."
Everyone smiled, and choruses of, "Love you, Mom," and "Thank you," flitted through the air.
Meredith swallowed at the sudden swell of family solidarity. "I'm going to go sit with Derek for a while," she said.
She retreated as quickly as she could without running, but she'd only made it to the foyer when Kathy caught up with her. "Hey, Meredith," she said. "It's okay."
"What's okay?" Meredith asked, turning around with a sigh.
"To be part of the family. Nancy will come around. She's just being stubborn. And Mom likes you; she just hasn't admitted it yet. I can tell."
"I..."
Kathy just grinned. "Go sit with Derek."
Meredith didn't need any further cueing.