Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 37
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
Well, here it is. Part Maybe-30, which I wrote back when part 26 was still in its infancy. I can't believe that was more than ten parts ago! And I really can't believe I thought this would be even close to part 30. I mean, for Derek to be waking up, he would have required surgery. And I hadn't even gotten them home yet when I wrote this, lol.
This chapter is based more off a moment toward the end than a driving map for character development, and I think it shows in the pacing - no roller coaster in this one, just a steady, subtle building. No big shocks. Nothing super eventful. Waking up is a damned hard job, sometimes. I hope you like the breather, at least ;p
/salutes the icon! Back to the regularly scheduled elevatorage after this.
~~~~~
Meredith's lungs were burning by the time the doors to Recovery Room 3 came into sight. As she rounded the corner, a nurse clad in pale OR scrubs exited the room. She didn't recognize him. He had clipped brown hair and, from the way his scrubs sagged loosely and the angular bits of his limbs she could see, he sported a thin, gangly physique that screamed stereotypical chess club. Definitely not a varsity sports contributor. He looked tired, like he'd been on his feet for hours. Redness flushed his cheeks, but the rest of him seemed pale. He smiled when he caught sight of her barreling toward him.
"Dr. Grey!" he said. "Good, you got my page. We just wheeled Dr. Shepherd in and got him settled. He's not really awake yet, but you can go ahead and sit with him if you want. Just try not to get in Lucy's way. She's the floor nurse." He winced, looked her up and down, and shook his head. "What am I saying? You know the rules, don't you. Sorry."
"Thank you, Craig," she said, breathless, sparing only a second to read his nametag before she went back to trying to collect herself. Breathe, breathe, breathe. "Were you...?" There with him...
The man nodded. "Yes. He did very well. As far as I know, there were no problems, but I'm sure Dr. Weller will talk to you soon. He's scrubbing out, still. I think."
She smiled weakly, trying not to shake with the urge to brush past him and go in, trying to spare a moment for him. She didn't even know him, and he'd taken the time to page her almost immediately? "Thank you for paging me," she said, even as the whining pull of the room began to ache. Derek, Derek, Derek, waking up. Go. Go in. Go! "I hadn't expected to hear anything until he was in the ICU."
"We bend the rules for our own," Craig said with a wink. He didn't keep her with idle conversation. He just smiled and pulled the door open for her, adding his congratulations into the mix. Her breath caught as the breeze of the motion hit her in the face, and she stepped forward.
The room was bright, but in that harsh, ugly way brought on by the saturation of fluorescent overhead lights, and there were no windows. Soft, tinny music played from a small radio sitting on the counter of the nurses' station. The room was fairly small, relatively speaking, and was more of a wide, converted hallway than anything else. The nurse standing behind the desk looked up, waved, and pointed before she went back to whatever notes she was taking. Meredith followed the invisible line to the three beds perpendicular to the wall across from the nurses' station. The middle bed was empty. The one on the right had a woman she didn't recognize in it. In the bed on the left lay Derek, though she almost didn't recognize him at first.
Meredith fought down the lump in her throat as she walked over and sat down on the small, wheeled stool next to his bed. There weren't a lot of chairs around to choose from. Visits to the post-op recovery areas weren't normally permitted. Usually, only nurses and doctors passed through, and they didn't have much reason to be sitting down.
His bed was slightly raised to keep his head elevated, which would reduce any potential swelling. A periwinkle-colored thermal blanket covered him up to the armpits. His arms rested on top of the blankets, unmoving. An automated blood pressure cuff wrapped around his left bicep and was just beginning to unconstrict as she approached. An intravenous line dripped fluids and medications into a vein in his right forearm. There was a heart monitor clipped to his right middle finger, and the larger monitor screen that sat on a stand near the head of the bed bleeped, softly pronouncing the slow, steady rhythm of his heart. Multiple wire leads snaked down underneath the neckline of his thin hospital gown. He looked small and vulnerable, but what really made her want to cry was the endotracheal tube that was still stuck down his throat.
She hadn't expected...
She shook her head. Of course he would still be intubated. He wasn't awake yet, well, not really. It was normal procedure after brain surgeries to leave the recipient intubated until the anesthesia wore off a little more. But that knowledge didn't help her now. This was... this was Derek. Not some patient she'd met the same day. And he would have to wake up more before they would take it out. She hoped the portion of the anesthetic that caused memory loss would take that away from him, would blot out the moments until the tube was gone, later when he was looking back on the experience. He would be so scared, and intubation was a horrible experience regardless of any phobias.
For a moment, she found herself unable to focus, and her gaze went from monitor to monitor to monitor to him and back around in circles like a child in toy store overload. What first, what first, what first? Except with not nearly the same amount of exuberance or elation. He looked... She just hadn't expected... Derek was supposed to be smiling and joking with her, bemoaning the fact that the nurses hadn't taken his hair in a bag request seriously.
But that had been stupid. Stupid, of course. He'd just been wheeled out of the OR moments ago, if what Craig had said was any indication. Derek, waking up, literally meant Derek, waking up. He'd been out for a long time. Anesthesia was a troublesome drug to shake off. But...
Fine. Everything looked fine. All things considered. Fine. Everything...
She rested her elbows along the bedside railing and stared for a moment before picking up his left hand. It hung limply in her grasp. His eyelids fluttered, and she occasionally caught a glimpse of brilliant blue peeking out from underneath his lashes, but for the most part, he remained still and silent.
"Hey," she said, swallowing back tears. "I'm here." What was she supposed to say? Sorry you probably feel like crap? Platitudes containing sorry in them seemed asinine and silly. And reassurances seemed just as stupid. But...
"You're fine," she said. "You're in the recovery area. They'll move you to the ICU after you wake up a little more. But everything is fine. Really fine, not just Meredith fine. Your surgery is over, and you're fine."
He lay there, not moving, not answering, not giving her any indication that her words had helped in some way, not that she had expected much after fully realizing the state he was in. Not so soon.
He hadn't wanted to do this, hadn't wanted to get this procedure done. He'd said it was major surgery, said that he would be out of work for six weeks or more, said that he'd be in the hospital for a week. Hell, she'd assisted him through enough craniotomies to know exactly what shape he'd be in afterward. But it hadn't really hit home. Not until this moment. He'd had his skull drilled open. Derek. It didn't seem so scientific or fascinating or fun when it was Derek. She almost felt guilty for even getting excited over the people who weren't Derek.
She swallowed. She knew he was still working his way out from under the crush of the anesthesia. She knew it, knew there was absolutely nothing wrong. That all of this was normal. The tubes, the wires, the monitors. His silent stillness. All normal. But she still kept half-expecting him to open his eyes, smile at her, spit out the tube, and make some ridiculous, snarky, flirty joke. Got you! Just kidding! But he didn't. He didn't do anything.
"Dr. Grey?" Dr. Weller said in his soothing, rich, baritone voice as he walked up, clipboard in hand. He still wore his navy surgical scrubs, though he had replaced his protective gear with a pristine lab coat that had his name in embroidered script on the pocket.
Dr. Weller smiled as she looked up. "The surgery went fantastically," he said. "I was able to remove all of the excess blood and clots as well as repair the area. No problems at all. We'll leave him intubated until he wakes up a bit more, but really, the whole thing was textbook."
"Good," Meredith said, looking back at Derek. "That's... That's good." Even to her own ears, she sounded like some lost little girl, everything cracking and crumbling against her vocal cords.
Dr. Weller put his hand on her shoulder in an almost paternal gesture. The warmth of his skin seeped through the fabric of her scrubs. "He'll be fine, Dr. Grey. Really," Dr. Weller said as he went around to the other side of the bed. "He's strong, he's extremely healthy, and we caught things in time." He leaned down. "Dr. Shepherd? Are you awake yet?" he said in a loud, authoritative voice.
Derek twitched, the first real movement Meredith had seen from him since she'd sat down. His eyes opened and he stared dully at nothing in particular for a few moments before he fell back into the artificial slumber gnawing on his central nervous system like a parasite. Not welcome anymore, but lingering to its last breath.
Dr. Weller turned to the floor nurse as she came up at a hurried, bouncing trot. "Lucy," he said, "Let's give him another twenty minutes or so, and then we'll see about taking this out." He gestured at the tube.
Lucy nodded. "Okay, Dr. Weller," she said. The pair of them walked off to chat at the nurses' station, leaving Meredith alone again.
Meredith leaned against the railings and stared. Just... stared. Her first instinct was to reach forward and brush her hands through his hair, except his skull was swathed in a crown of white bandages, and underneath, were she to peel them back, she knew she would find only cleanly-shaven skin, save for a few inevitable nicks, and the sutures over the area where they had opened everything up. The thought of it made her eyes sting, the thought of him shaven and sewn up. The shaving thing had bothered him before, even more than the prospect of potentially facing death. She'd understood his fears on a rational level at the time, understood his reservations, understood that he didn't want to be vulnerable and at someone else's mercy, but, now... She was starting to get it in a gut deep, twisting, heart-panging way, seeing him like this.
He was stripped. Stripped of his dignity, or at least that was probably how he would feel about it. Stripped of his control, stripped of himself. There was no part of his body that was his own right then. None. He was a sick man in a bed, labeled with a name on his wrist, monitored, regulated, defined in the vast terms of what he couldn't do, rather than what he could, which, at that moment, was hardly anything. To someone like Derek Shepherd, the whole experience would be awful and frightening and... just...
Bad.
"I'm here, Derek. You're not alone. Everything is fine," she whispered. Don't be scared. Please. Be okay.
He twitched, and she felt a surging snake of relief tunnel through her, even as tears threatened. He'd heard. She was certain he'd heard that. Maybe... Maybe she was helping. She hoped. Hoped she was helping.
She settled for stroking her thumb along his hand as she tried to bite back the weeping feeling that threatened her in throbbing pulses, like a wave or something. The warmth of his skin was comforting against the immaculate lack of personality that surrounded them. White, white, white. The smell of antiseptic made her nose tickle. The hospital had never bothered her before, but now, it seemed so... austere... Not even the soft hum of the radio sitting on the counter, which was tuned to the local soft rock station and emitted distant tinny notes of melody and taps of percussion, overcame the sudden chill that swept against her. And Derek... Derek had to wake up to this.
"I'm here," she repeated. Not running. Here. Forever. Please, be okay.
For the longest set of moments, she hovered in a vague state, almost disconnected from herself, letting the beeping heart monitor lull her with its repeated assurances that Derek was fine, Derek was fine, Derek was fine, bleep, bleep, bleep, alive, alive, alive, until finally, his fingers moved, really moved, not just twitched. For the barest flicker of a second, she felt the sharp stirrings of unexpected panic. What if this was like the last time? Are you a nurse? This had been brain surgery. Dr. Weller could have inadvertently damaged something without even realizing it. Who knew what could---
Her breath caught in her throat when she felt him grip her hand. Not a spasm, but a real grip, albeit weak. She followed the line of his arm and found him staring at the space she occupied, not exactly at her, but close enough. A drugged haze clouded his expressive eyes with a quality of dullness, and his gaze was spaced, not all there, but... he was staring. At her. Sort of. She smiled, the panic flushed away, and his eyelids drooped shut again. His grip relaxed, but not all the way. Enough strength remained to tell her he was awake, sort of. Awake and aware that his hand was being held.
"Hey," she whispered as she leaned forward to brush his cheek, to reassure him. "You're doing great. Everything is fine. You're in post-op recovery right now. Your surgery is over. You just have to do the healing thing, now."
He didn't move or do much to answer other than weakly squeeze her hand, but it was enough. Enough to send a steady thrum of overwhelming giddiness down her spine as though someone had plucked it like a guitar string. He was awake, sort of, and he knew her, and he would be okay. He would be.
She could vaguely recall coming out of anesthesia after her appendectomy, which was a much less complicated procedure than a craniotomy. There had been a brief period where she had been awake and mostly aware of her surroundings, but even the little things like movement, opening her eyes, speaking, those had all been a pipe dream, and she'd just sort of languished, hovering in the cloud. Then the discomfort had set in as everything had worn off more, and she'd groggily asked for more morphine. When they'd wheeled her out of recovery and shoved a glass of water and some graham crackers at her, she'd drooped over the tray table, picked at the meager offerings of food and drink. The crackers had tasted like cardboard, almost made her sick thinking about eating more. The water had felt good, but she'd been unhappy enough that it hadn't really registered. Finally, they'd left her alone to sleep while they'd rounded up Izzie and George to drive her home. It had been a miserable experience, one she didn't care to repeat any time soon, and she'd been on the table for all of forty minutes, if that. Derek had been out for hours, and he was older than she was. Older enough that there was no way he was going to just bounce back, no matter how healthily he treated his body.
She stroked his hand, watched the crease of his skin as it followed her touch, watched the streak of white that the pressure of her thumb against him created. His fingers flexed. His eyelids fluttered. He was struggling. Struggling to push himself above the drowning undertow of muscle relaxants and slowly dissipating sedatives. A soft, sputtering noise escaped from his mouth around the tube, and his head jerked minutely.
"Take your time," she whispered, squeezing him back. "I know this sucks. The tube will come out soon. Don't worry. Don't fight it. You're fine. You're in the recovery room. Nothing went wrong. It's all finished. And I'm here. I'm here, Derek." Don't be frightened. Please. Please, be okay.
His lips twitched and the little barely-movements stilled as the sound of her voice washed over him. He tilted his head toward her, though he didn't open his eyes. He was listening. Even if he wasn't entirely with her yet, he was listening.
"I'm here, Derek. It's okay. I love you. I'm here. Take your time. I'll be here." Be okay.
His lips twitched around the breathing tube again, but this time, it seemed more like he was trying to smile and couldn't than it seemed like he was struggling. His eyes came open for a sluggish crawl of moments. Through the glaze of all the crap circulating in his system, he managed to meet her gaze, look at her, right at her, not through her, or at the blurry space she occupied. He blinked.
"Hey," she said, her voice gushing like a some sort of spurting wound. Inappropriately gushing. She was sure. Inappropriate. Gushy. She couldn't help it. A wavery smile quivered against her teeth, and she reached up to wipe her eyes as she sniffled. "Hey, you're doing great, Derek. Dr. Weller said everything went excellently. You're fine. I'm here."
His eyes slipped shut again, the surface he'd fought so hard to break through sucked him back under, and she felt bereft in the sudden absence. His heart monitor bleeped softly. He was fine. Still fighting all the drugs, trying to come back. But fine. The blood pressure cuff constricted.
Lucy smiled as she came to check his vitals once again. "You two are so sweet," she babbled. "I think Debbie won the hospital pool, though."
Meredith turned to the woman as she scanned Derek's various monitors, checked his urine output, and then checked his pulse manually with her fingers at his wrist. His other hand hung limply in Lucy's grasp. "Hospital pool?" Meredith asked, finding her voice again after a long set of sputtering moments.
Lucy grinned. "Over when you two were finally getting engaged. Debbie changed her bet about a nanosecond after she found out he was taking you to meet his family."
"Oh," Meredith replied. Why? Why was she not surprised?
"Congratulations, by the way," Lucy said, and then she moved off to check the woman in the other bed, who seemed to be a lot further along than Derek was in the whole waking up process. Her eyes were open, and she was snuffling around sort of groggily. It looked like she'd had some sort of abdominal procedure done.
Meredith turned back to Derek and squeezed his hand. "Did you know there was a pool? I didn't know there was a pool..."
He didn't answer, not that she'd expected he would. A hospital pool about when they would get engaged? It seemed so... Didn't they have better things to do? And yet... She smiled. Smiled so hard it made her face hurt. A fuzzy warmth spilled into her brain. She'd proposed. She'd actually freakin' proposed. She'd stolen Derek's eventual knee thing thunder, but she didn't regret it. It felt right to have it announced and for real. Well, realer than it had seemed only hours before, when she'd been wandering the halls in a grieving, spaced-out daze.
"It's so weird that everyone knows," she continued as she lowered her face closer to him and sank her tone into something conspiratorial. "I only proposed this morning. The gossip chain in this place would probably put the CIA intelligence network to shame. I mean, I knew it would get around fast. But I've never even met Lucy before and she's acting like she knows us. And Craig. Do you know a nurse named Craig? He seemed pretty nice. We should sic Nurse Debbie on Bin Laden. Seriously. It's late afternoon, by the way, if you were wondering. There aren't any windows in here, so you might be. You were out for about five hours, prep room time after they wheeled you away included. It feels good, though. Everyone knowing. It feels really good. Not to jump subjects on you. Sorry if I'm confusing you. I'll try to babble less. I will. I know I'm pretty hard to follow sometimes, even when you're not drugged and I'm not ridiculously freaked out. Non-mobiley ridiculously freaked out, for your information."
He did the not-really-a-smile-but-trying lip-twitchy thing again before he stilled. She grinned back at him even though he wasn't watching her. Sometimes, you could tell when someone was smiling at you even if you weren't looking. Derek needed smiles right then. He needed to not be afraid that he couldn't move, that he was so unwell. For someone like Derek, he needed it almost as much as he needed air.
She rubbed his fingers, worked at his knuckles firmly, just to let him know that she was still there, to offer him what little comfort she could. He remained quiet, eyes closed, but there was a more... there... quality to him, like he was just underneath the surface of himself, wavering beneath the ripples of water, visible, ready to burst through and stay surfaced... He seemed... awake, but stuck, somehow, rather than hovering in some sort of waking, surreal daydream with a few breaks of clarity.
Dr. Weller returned with Lucy in tow after a few more minutes. "All right. Dr. Shepherd, are you awake?" he said loudly. "We'd like to take this tube out if you're with us again."
Derek opened his eyes, and, though his stare remained a little wandery and spaced, he looked toward Dr. Weller. He spluttered around the tube again, and his whole neck seemed like it was straining. His jaw moved. Intubation was extremely unpleasant. The more he woke up, the more miserable he would get if they didn't take the tube out soon. His arms twitched, just the barest flutter of movement. Meredith frowned at the pinched look that had developed around his eyes. Before, when he'd been staring, he'd seemed dazed and... well... Not there in a definitive, Derek's-at-the-wheel sense. He blinked. He was definitely there now. He weakly grasped at her fingers, almost like he was trying to tell her something, but...
"It'll come out soon," she said, grasping his hand lightly.
He calmed, but his eyes retained their pleading misery, and she just wanted to scream. He was obviously awake. Take the damned thing out! She refrained, though. Dr. Weller knew what he was doing. And if Derek went into some sort of distress, already being intubated would save time and perhaps his life. Anesthesia could really mess around with a person's respiratory system, and he needed his airway to be guaranteed clear and protected until he was definitively in control again. Not to mention, anesthesia had the tendency to make people feel sick, and the tube would protect from vomit as well. Dr. Weller was just doing his job. Just doing his job.
Why did she still want to scream, then?
"Can you wiggle your toes?" Dr. Weller asked as he walked to the foot of the bed and gripped the blankets over Derek's feet. Meredith didn't see any movement, but Dr. Weller smiled and said, "Wonderful. Can you touch your fingers one after the other to your thumb?" Meredith felt a surge of relief as Derek's fingers moved in her grasp, but it didn't get rid of the nagging whisper at the edge of her mind. She didn't think Derek's expression was just because of the tube. Something wasn't quite right...
"Excellent," Dr. Weller said. "Follow my penlight?" He flashed a light at Derek, and Derek followed, blinking, tearing. "All right, Dr. Shepherd. I'm sure you know the drill. Breathe out on three. One, two, three." Dr. Weller pulled the tube out slowly. Derek was utterly silent until the very end. He made a strange, curtailed choking noise as he gagged, and Dr. Weller drew the tip of the tube away. Derek shut his eyes again without speaking and licked his lips.
Lucy checked him over again and replaced the absent tube with a much less intrusive nasal cannula. She snaked the oxygen lines over his ears and turned the air on. "Looking wonderful, Dr. Shepherd," Lucy commented, cheerful and bubbly.
Derek rested silently, semi-dozing with his eyes half-lidded for a few minutes while Lucy went off to do other things. A team of nurses wheeled another man in from some operating room. They lined him up next to the middle bed, and as the space next to Derek fell into a swell of activity, Derek cracked his eyes open. His gaze darted to the next bed as Lucy, another doctor Meredith didn't recognize, and several other hands counted to three. They gripped the sheet, and transferred the person... the body... the patient, whatever, with a set of groaning heaves to the middle bed.
Derek's eyes widened. He blinked and peeled his gaze away after a moment, but the clawing fear didn't leave his expression. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came was a throaty, hoarse, twisted syllable. He winced, swallowed, and shut his eyes, but his fingers wrapped around her own and tightened. His heart rate started to climb. Just a little.
"It's okay," she whispered. She sat, leaning up against the bed railing, running her hand up and down his arm with one hand, clutching his hand with the other. "It's over, and you're fine, Derek. I'm here." She cried. She couldn't stop herself. She... He was remembering the motorcycle stuff. She was fairly certain. The way he'd looked at that patient who'd just been brought in... Was he seeing himself? Tossed, unconscious, on a gurney like a thing. Just a thing and not a person.
His heart rate kept climbing bit by bit, and she was fairly certain it had nothing to do with him waking up. It was something else. Fear. Maybe. Something. She was certain. His fingers kept tightening, tight, tight, tighter, until the bones in her hand ached, and if it were anyone else, she would have commented, would have slapped the grip away. But she would let him wring her palm until something was broken if it made him feel a little better.
"Derek, are you doing okay?" she said, but he didn't really answer, just gave her some mumbly, incoherent bit of sluggish, hoarse syllables. His throat was probably a wreck after the intubation, and it didn't help that he was still drugged out of his mind. His eyes closed for a moment, he took a breath, and he stared at her, his gaze pleading, sick... Help. She gripped his hand, trying to ignore the pain in her knuckles as he squeezed her fingers.
"You okay?" she asked. It was a stupid question. Stupid. His stare clearly said no. Help, it said. Help. But she had no idea what he wanted. "What do you need?"
He swallowed once, twice, again, licked his lips. The first time he tried, all he managed was another throaty sound that didn't make sense. She leaned closer as he prepared another attempt with rough, dry pants.
"'M cold," Derek finally managed to rasp. The words sounded so weak and quiet and wispy, so unlike the man she knew that Meredith felt the lump from earlier returning with a vengeance. She stroked his hand, and suddenly, as she stared at his eyes, which were upset, pinched, blinking, watering, she knew, knew what she'd missed. That nagging thing. He was at the part of waking up where he realized he was in pain. Where the cloud went away. The relaxants and all that junk were withdrawing in defeat, and now his body was checking in. I'm cold. I'm thirsty. I'm tired. I've been violated, and I hurt. Please, help me.
Meredith waved Lucy back over. The dark-haired, bubbly nurse trotted up, a concerned look on her face despite her effervescence. "He needs another blanket," Meredith said. "Maybe a heated one? And I think he needs more painkillers."
Lucy smiled. "I'll get a blanket, Dr. Shepherd. Do you need more morphine?"
Derek blinked, blinked, blinked. "Yes," he whispered hoarsely. Lucy nodded and left for a moment.
Meredith had to stop herself from crushing his fingers in her grasp as her wakeful strength overruled his weakened, clenching fingers. He looked at her. "Sorry," she said as she forcibly relaxed her grip. She watched with an awful, sinking feeling as Derek's eyes watered and started to spill over in earnest, but he didn't make a sound, didn't move. She'd been so elated that he had been waking up, and now... Now, it was almost worse.
"I'm here," she said again, struggling to find anything to say that might help. Anything at all, but there was nothing. No words came. She leaned forward and brushed his cheek. Her fingers slipped against his wet skin. He leaned into the touch and let loose a ratcheting breath with a little cracking moan piggybacking on its coattails. "Lucy will be back in a minute," she said. "Hold on."
Anesthesia made people cry. Sometimes. She tried to tell herself it was just that. And that he really wasn't suffering so terribly. But...
"Mere," he croaked, and he gazed at her with a look that plainly said he hurt before his eyes drooped shut again under the pull of exhaustion and ache. His heart monitor was starting to speed up even more. Long, slow breaths shortened into clipped gasps as whatever pain receptors dampened by the anesthesia came roaring back to life.
"I know," she said, swallowing. She should have realized earlier, when he'd just been starting to ache. She should have. Earlier. Back when his heart rate had just begun its slow crawl toward racing. "You're doing really great, Der. You're doing so, so great."
Her eyelids pinched out tears every time she blinked. She couldn't stop them. This was Derek. This was Derek, and he couldn't move, he was frightened, he was in pain, he was probably feeling sick, and she couldn't do a damned thing for him. She didn't think she'd ever seen him cry over physical pain before. Never ever. He seemed to live and breathe by the whole stoic thing, not in the sense that he wouldn't admit to pain, but that he ignored it, or tried to stuff it away, or just didn't realize he was even in pain in the first place. This was all new. And horrible. This was her future husband.
Husband. The word had such an odd ring to it. It made her lip quiver. There was such a finality to it. Husband. The sick thing. She would be vowing to do this whenever he needed it. Her gut twisted, and the back of her throat constricted with pain. Screw the sick thing, she wanted to flat out trade. It hurt, and it felt awful to sit there with him while he was suffering, but it was right. She was sure. Husband. Dr. Shepherd. Dr. Grey-Shepherd. Dr. Shepherd-Grey. Whatever. The name didn't even matter all that much. Not to her. The details were immaterial at that point. Wife. That would be her. And he would be... Husband. It was right. The idea of offering to do this for eternity seemed right, no matter how helpless and sick it made her feel. Because...
She loved him. Deeply. In a throw-herself-on-the-sword sort of way. She had no idea when it had gotten that serious. But she did. She loved him. That much.
Lucy returned with a dark blue thermal blanket and draped it over him while he rested, panting, with his eyes closed. Lucy slipped some morphine into his intravenous drip. "Morphine is in," she said. "You should feel a little better soon. Once you're down in the ICU, we'll give you a button so you can self-administer it."
Lucy went back to straightening the blanket after she'd finished administering the morphine. She covered his arms with it and tucked it in at the edges of the bed. The hand Meredith held poked out from the side, but otherwise, he was completely covered. The blanket came to a stop at his neck, and he looked even smaller, somehow.
Feel better soon turned out to be almost instantaneous. Perhaps thirty or forty seconds. One moment, suffering had clung to his features like a dark shroud, and the next moment, Derek had relaxed back into a weary, glazed stupor of drugs. His heart rate repelled back down off the cliff into a hypnotic drawl, and his breaths relaxed into long, raspy things that soothed Meredith like the subtle rocking of a boat over water. Meredith slumped as his grip slackened, swallowing back the sob of relief she felt when she looked into Derek's eyes and didn't find raw pain staring back at her. The gentle pulse of tears stopped, leaving a glistening, evaporating mess on his face. She brushed his cheek again as she sniffled.
He blinked, swallowed. "Water?" Derek said, his voice cracking and weak.
Lucy frowned, looking up from his chart as she wrote notes on it. "Sorry, Dr. Shepherd. You can't have fluids yet. I'll be back in a few minutes to check on you."
Can't. You can't. You can't. A vague swell of upset clouded his features as Lucy walked away.
Meredith tried to smile when Derek turned to her, his silent, glazed-looking stare falling on her. She was sure she looked very reassuring. Puffy-faced and crying. Wonderful. She couldn't help it. She just couldn't. He looked so sick, so helpless, so not himself... She'd thought she would be prepared for this, what with all the crap that had happened the week before, what with sitting with him before they'd come to take him away, but this... This was different. Different, but... She loved him. And there was no way she was moving from that stool. No. Way.
He swallowed, took in short little breaths, looked for a moment like he was trying to find a word, trying, trying to talk, but she squeezed his hand and shushed him. "Don't try. I know your throat is really sore. Dr. Weller said everything went perfectly. No complications or anything," she babbled in the silence as he watched her. She knew she was repeating herself from before, but she had no idea how much of anything he would or did remember from the last hour or so, and she wanted to make sure he was reassured. Not scared. She stroked his hand. He was stuck there. Stuck. What could she do for him?
She settled on a gentle, flowing narrative. "You're fine," she said. "No complications," she emphasized again, just to make sure the message got through the haze. No complications yet, anyway. But she didn't want to go there right then. "And you're doing really great. I bet you'll be up and walking by tomorrow. I called your Mom, by the way. She's coming, Derek. She won't be here until tomorrow, but she's coming. I don't know about the rest of your family. I didn't talk to them. Ellen promised to call around. The whole hospital knows we're engaged, including Cristina, by the way. That didn't go so well, at first, but I think we figured some stuff out. It's pretty nice that everyone knows, I think. I really love you. And I love my ring. And I love showing it off. So, thanks for saying yes. Oh, and Dr. Bailey has insisted that I study all week. I ran into her on the way back with your things. I probably should have mentioned it, but... there were other things to talk about then. Anyway, she said I should find a quiet place to study, namely, your bedside. So, if you can help it, I'd appreciate some peace and quiet, buster. I know it might be hard to manage. By the way, I think you need a new duffel bag. Yours is getting kind of holey. As in containing holes, not obtaining status as a religious object thing."
He settled back against his pillow and relaxed, his eyelids drooping as he listened to her rattle on and on and on. He watched her, silent, just watched. His hand was warm in her grasp, warm and solid and real. She talked about anything she could think of, anything at all. On, and on, just keeping him company, letting him know she was there, even if she ended up somewhere in a pit of nonsense, which she did, quite often. She doubted he really cared about why she'd used a different shampoo that morning, or the fact that she'd somehow lost an earring in the chaos of that day, or how she hoped the traffic cameras had realized, when she'd bolted through the intersections that morning, returning with his duffel bag, that the lights had still been yellow for a nanosecond or two. Talk about inane. Talk about drivel. As an improviser, she really kind of sucked.
He didn't seem to mind, though. The longer she droned, the less tense he seemed. He drifted in and out, but she kept talking. After about twenty minutes, she finally had to stop, take a breath, and rest. It was exhausting. Exhausting trying to be so freaking strong when all she wanted to do was crawl in bed with him. Exhausting trying to come up with a million different subjects, even for her, Queen of Nervous Babble-on-and-on, Destroyer of Words. She chose a moment to take a break when he had his eyes shut in what appeared to be a light doze. Her endless river of words stuttered to a halt. She dotted the end of her sentence with a quiet, "I love you." And then she leaned down onto the railing and let herself recuperate for a minute. Her eyes drifted shut and the surroundings started to fuzz up into a background haze as the beginnings of sleep pilfered her senses. Just a minute. She just needed a minute to...
"Thank you," he whispered, his voice barely audible above the beeps and clicks and whirs of all the stuff hooked up to him and his neighbors, all the machinery in the room. The blood pressure cuff chose that moment to constrict with a rush of air.
Her eyes snapped open as his words laved her ears. She shifted and found him staring at her. There was no twinkle there in his eyes. But there wasn't any fear or upset either. He seemed relaxed. A bit dazed, kind of out of things, but with the amount of stuff he was on right then... That was normal. In general, he seemed okay.
"For what?" she said, sniffling, and then she flinched. Way to keep him quiet, asking him stuff. Good going. Real great. Sure. "Wait, no, don't talk- it's," she babbled. But she was too late.
"Sitting here," he said, as if her mere presence was the greatest gift to him in all the world. He closed his eyes, and she sat there, flummoxed, her eyes tearing, her mouth slightly agape. She found it hard to believe he could find her warbly litany of randomness or her quivery sniveling all that comforting, though, she really was trying. But. He'd reacted much the same way before his surgery, too. All she'd done was walk into the room, and he'd visibly brightened, despite his obvious discomfort, despite her obvious discomfort. He'd...
Sometimes holding someone is enough, Meredith.
She wasn't holding him. She looked down at her hand, clenched around his palm tightly. The touch reassured her as much as she hoped it reassured him. Well, okay, she wasn't embracing him. But she was holding him in the strictest definition of the word, she guessed.
A brief thrill of warmth snuck down her throat and pulled her crying back inside, down into her infinite well of freak out. She breathed, calming slightly. She wiped her face, and for once, a new stream of tears didn't immediately replace the crap she'd just cleared away.
Derek had his eyes closed. He was relaxed. He wasn't anxious or nervous or having any trouble slipping into catnaps anymore. She'd...
Maybe she really was enough, buckets of tears, blotchy skin, shaky grip, and snarly, messed-up, split-endy hair notwithstanding.
Maybe.
She let him sleep. Lucy came to check on him about every ten minutes or so, but it all started running together in one long crawl of minutes. Lucy chatted occasionally as she checked everything, but to Meredith, it was all a tired, tired blur. Her eyelids drooped, and she drifted off against the railing to the sound of the bleeping monitors and the warm feel of Derek's hand resting in her grasp.
A sound snapped Meredith awake, and she blinked to focus on Lucy, who had returned with a Dixie cup in hand. She glanced at her watch blearily, trying not to glare as Lucy grinned at her. An hour. Only a freakin' hour. She swallowed, feeling pasty. Her neck ached from resting at such an awkward angle, and she tilted from side to side, trying to work out the crick. At least Derek was still sleeping, or sleeping again, or... whatever. He needed it.
Leave it to Lucy to ruin it. Lucy set the Dixie cup on his tray table and pulled the table over so that it lay across the bed over his lap. She reached for the controls and hit a button to raise the head of the bed. Meredith bit back on her anger. Lucy was doing her job. Lucy had a mapped schedule based on countless craniotomy patients for Derek to regain full consciousness by, and she was making sure he was following it. If he wasn't following it, something might be wrong. And it was important to discover that immediately. Meredith swallowed. When they moved him to the ICU in a little while, and then after that to step-down, probably the next day, he would get more rest.
Post-op recovery was about making sure Derek was recovering from the anesthesia correctly. And that was not Lucy's fault. In a purely subjective sense, though, Meredith still wanted to snap at her. Leave him alone, and let him heal. Which was also why they didn't let visitors into this area. And Meredith was a visitor, not a doctor at that moment. She halted her anger and stuffed it down under a pile of grateful that she'd been shown up to see Derek in this state at all. She'd expected to have to wait. And she didn't want to think about Derek waking up alone here, not after... everything. He had been scared enough, even with her constant drawl of reassurances.
"Dr. Shepherd?" Lucy said as the bed hummed and pushed him further into a sitting position. Derek snuffled, blinked a little. "Try and eat some ice chips," she said. "We'll do something a little more solid in a bit if you're okay with those." And then she was gone again.
Derek just sort of sat there, eyes closed, like it was too much for him to prop open his eyelids. He moved his hand from Meredith's grasp to the tray table and flopped it down next to the cup, not even bothering to try and move the hand still buried under the extra thermal blanket, the one clipped with the heart monitor. He looked like he wanted to put his head down and just plow back into sleeping. He swallowed and sat with his head tilting forward slightly over the tray.
"Need some help?" Meredith whispered, hesitant, when he didn't move for almost two minutes. She bit her lip. She didn't know if she should have offered. Needing help would definitely not make him feel strong, powerful, and in control. Especially since it was just about lifting a freaking cup.
He jerked as though he'd fallen asleep, and she'd woken him. He blinked once or twice and stared at her.
"Hey," she said with a smile. "You know, you're not nearly as interesting on drugs as I was. Though, the loopy bit before you went under was fun." At first, anyway.
A tired smile curled slowly across his face. He breathed, fast enough to almost be a laugh were he to have put any vocal oomph into it. "Sorry," he said. His voice was still pretty wispy, pretty hoarse, but he sounded so, so much better, like it was more an issue of him not being able to make his throat cooperate than it was him being too weak to speak properly. The hour of sleep and the proper dosage of painkillers had done wonders. The only obstacle remaining seemed to be a sore throat.
"I don't remember," he whispered, breaking her from her thoughts. He sounded vaguely confused, searching for something that just wasn't there. "Nothing after... I... Not like you..."
"You were a bit high," she offered when his voice fell away, elated at his bare hint of levity, the smile he'd gifted her with. He looked so good wearing a smile, even a weak one. "But not like me. You barely said a word."
Another heavy almost-laugh ratcheted out of him. "Somehow, I don't believe you." He blinked, long and slow, and sighed. He curled his fingers around the cup, drew it to his mouth, and sucked on the first ice chip that fell, cracking it between his teeth after letting it melt for a few moments. His eyelids drooped, and the weak smile from before dripped out of his features as he swallowed. The cup sat loosely in a half-hearted grasp, and he seemed utterly disinterested in attempting a second ice chip.
"Try another one, Derek," she prodded.
He grunted and pushed the cup away.
"Nauseated?" she asked as the blood pressure cuff inflated again.
"Mmm," he muttered as he closed his eyes. A curdled, sick sound fell from his lips as he leaned back against the pillows.
"Do you want something for it? The nausea, I mean."
He sniffed and shook his head minutely. "No more drugs," he rasped. He lowered his hand to the side of the bed, searching blindly along the edge for a moment. His face flushed, and he stared ahead, distant and vague, at the nurses' station.
"Can you... Put me back?" he said, his voice wilting with defeat. "The bed... Please."
"Sure," Meredith said. She reached for the controls and lowered him back down to the slightly elevated point he'd started at.
Lucy chose that moment to return for Derek's first neurological check. She drilled him with questions. What day was it, could he spell his name, could he recite three words from memory after she told them to him. She made him move his feet, his arms, made him breathe deeply and cough to clear his lungs. She flashed a penlight at him and made him follow it back and forth. By the end, he was pale and quiet and swallowing. The coughing part had made him wince, and Meredith wondered if he might still be aching from that.
Lucy smiled as she put the penlight away in her breast pocket and said, "Looking wonderful, Dr. Shepherd. I'm going to tell the orderlies you're ready to go down to the ICU now. We'll keep working on those ice chips, maybe again in a few hours. You're doing just fine." Meredith was sure that Lucy meant to be comforting, but there was a tone she had, a quality to her speech that just... Stung. Like she was speaking down or something. Speaking to a kid. Speaking to someone who wasn't fully capable of understanding, and so the words were slowed and over-cheerful. And that was something Derek didn't need at all. Not when... Well, not ever. But especially not right then.
Lucy left in a whirlwind of motion, off to the next bed for the next check. Derek looked away from Meredith as he blinked frantically. She didn't comment, let him have his moment to collect himself. There was so little he could control right then. But she would give him that moment.
She pulled his hand back into her grasp, flattening it between her palms, relishing the warmth before she crumpled her fingers and started tracing the lines on his palm with her thumb. "It sucks," she whispered. "I know it sucks. I'm here, though. ICU will be a little better. The neuro checks will only be every two or three hours, and they'll let you regulate your own morphine. Plus, you'll probably get a window, and I... will stop now. Because I'm probably just making it sound dismal, aren't I? I'm sorry."
He pulled a deep, shuddering breath into his chest and let it out slowly before he turned back to look at her. The crushed look gradually slipped away from him, only to be replaced by the dull, sick look from before. Not anxious, not scared, not hurting. Just... Not healthy. Not all there. Dazed and sick. But, she supposed, that was definitely better than the other three.
"You'll stay?" he asked quietly.
"Of course, I'll stay, Derek. I said I'd be here the whole time."
"Work?"
She blinked when she realized what he was getting at. She'd told him already, but... "Dr. Bailey let me off to study. I won't do any surgeries. I'll just read while you sleep. I'm pretty wicked with a highlighter, you know. I'll ace this thing, no problem. So, you're not allowed to worry about that. Maybe you can quiz me later if you're up to it."
"Okay," he said.
Her breath hitched. He wasn't even trying to convince her to do surgeries. Wasn't trying to make himself sound fine or argue that she would be missing out by staying with him. That tore at her.
"Derek," she said. She had to ask. "Do you remember waking up with the tube?"
"No," he said, sounding just a little lost. "I don't... think so." His tone was flat, sort of detached and drugged. He didn't seem particularly disturbed by the hole or anything, just... slow. A bit disoriented. Which was normal.
She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. She'd been hoping.
"Your mom is coming, by the way," she said. In case he didn't remember that either. "I called her. I'll call her again in a bit to tell her you came out of surgery all right. Maybe when you're sleeping."
"Okay."
"Are you warm enough? Do you need anything? I could... You..." She deflated when she realized this was the sort of thing that was killing him inside. The physical aspects of the whole pampering thing, he didn't seem to mind at all, actually seemed to be taking an immense amount of comfort in them. The handholding. The rubbing. The petting. But the doing things for him? The fact that he couldn't do much more than lie there while she and Lucy did things for him seemed to be what was really crushing his spirit. "Sorry. Sorry, I'm trying, Derek."
His gaze ticked to her hands as she sat there, petting his fingers, wishing there was something else she could do to give him back something of himself. He wasn't forced to endure the endotracheal tube anymore, but the wires, the monitors... He'd been exposed, shaved, cut up. He couldn't even urinate on his own. He had a bag collecting things for him. For someone used to playing god... She swallowed, feeling sick just from the helplessness of watching him be helpless. She couldn't even imagine how it felt to be the one lying there. The appendectomy had been like a short story compared to the freakin' novel Derek was experiencing, or something. She'd been able to go home that day, albeit with light supervision and someone to drive her. He wouldn't even be walking until tomorrow, let alone be able to take care of himself. No, the little bit of plot from her appendectomy had given her a taste of the whole, ugly story, but that was it. A taste, and it had been a bitter one. She wanted to trade with him so badly it was an aching, gnawing thing in her gut. Thoughts of fleeing, running, avoiding never even hit her. She just wanted to trade. It was the only thing she could think of that would definitively fix it all for him. Trading would be good.
"The Chief told me you withdrew from the whole job race thing," she said quietly.
He blinked slowly. His eyes went distant as he went through the slow, visible process of thinking through the drug-induced haze. "Yeah," he said. "Don't want it anymore." He stared pointedly at her, though his eyes were dull.
"I love you, Derek," she replied. "I really, really do. I'm glad you figured things out."
She cried, staring at his hand, his beautiful, lithe, surgeon hand. The skin was warm and pale and flawless. He had nice, strong, wonderful hands. Perfect tendons. Smooth palms. His hands were one of her many favorite features, and he held his still for her in her grasp with not even a hint of shaking, which was... Good. That was good.
He would be fine. He would still be the surgeon he wanted so desperately to be. Fine.
He flexed his fingers in her grasp. The sick look in his eyes fleeted, slowly replaced by something else, something... "Dr. Grey," he said, his lips curling slightly in a weak half-grin. "Are you feeling me up?"
"I might be," she replied, sniffling. She wiped at her face with her free hand.
"You should pace yourself," he said. "I'm playing hard to get."
"Oh, are you?" she said, unable to stop a small grin.
His eyes dipped shut. "Mmm," he replied in a low, exhausted, sick-sounding rumble. "For at least a week or so." He sighed, and it was a depressed sound, but it didn't wreck the fact that he'd joked. He'd made a joke.
She leaned down over the railing, releasing his hand. She brushed his cheek. "You tease," she said, her heart fluttering. He was playing. He felt awful, and he could barely move, but he was playing. With her. Her chest throbbed with sudden, elated warmth.
"I know I'm hard to resist and all..."
"Well, I can't help it," she said, leaning closer. The railing cut her sharply in the stomach as she tilted over it, but she didn't care, didn't care because he felt awful, and he was still playing. With her. "You are pretty sexy," she purred, millimeters from his lips. If he wanted to banter, she would banter.
You make me happy, Mere. Isn't that enough?
He let loose a weary chuckle, but she cut him off with a kiss, gentle, searching, and his eyes snapped open. She slid her lips against his, and his light, surprised grunt melted down the back of her throat like chocolate. The taste of him was sweet and soft and sure and so, so familiar, and she wanted more, more, always more, but she resisted the urge to delve. Frenching in the post-op recovery room was probably another reason they didn't usually let visitors back there. That, and she didn't want to strain him. He was the sort of person who'd kiss her back until he was dead from the trying. She pulled back, licking her lips.
He stared at her through a half-lidded gaze as she petted his face with her palm, careful to avoid the oxygen line running high along his cheekbones and back behind his ears. His eyelids drooped, but not before she caught a twinkle, a moment of self-assured I've-still-got-it bleeding through his tired gaze, just a hint of how he'd looked on the plane after their lavatory adventure.
"Naughty, naughty, Dr. Grey," he whispered, licking his lips as if he relished the taste of her as much as she did his. His eyes drifted shut the rest of the way. He swallowed, sniffed. A smirk pulled at his mouth and his torso rumbled with a breathy, light laugh as he wandered into an amusing thought and got lost there. The smirk evened out into a general expression of well-being after a long, crawling journey.
She bit her lip. He looked better. More relaxed. Less defeated. And she realized somewhere along the way that she'd stopped crying. He made her happy, too. She wondered if he'd started to flirt on purpose, and not just for his own peace of mind.
She picked up his hand again. Husband. She tried to imagine a wedding ring there. She'd never seen one. Not even when he'd gone back to Addison. Wedding rings. They would have to pick those out, too. He would look good with one, she decided. He had the perfect fingers for it, perfect hands, perfect... everything. Husband. A smile ripped across her face.
As if he'd shared her thoughts, his fingers moved in her grasp, searching blindly but with an intimate familiarity. His exploration stopped when the tips of his fingers brushed the metal of her engagement ring, weak and light, like the sweep of feathers across her skin, just at the base of her ring finger. He slid his index finger along the cool, thin slice of platinum encircling her.
"I have what I want," he rasped.
A small smile curled his lips, and he escaped into dreaming for a while.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
Well, here it is. Part Maybe-30, which I wrote back when part 26 was still in its infancy. I can't believe that was more than ten parts ago! And I really can't believe I thought this would be even close to part 30. I mean, for Derek to be waking up, he would have required surgery. And I hadn't even gotten them home yet when I wrote this, lol.
This chapter is based more off a moment toward the end than a driving map for character development, and I think it shows in the pacing - no roller coaster in this one, just a steady, subtle building. No big shocks. Nothing super eventful. Waking up is a damned hard job, sometimes. I hope you like the breather, at least ;p
/salutes the icon! Back to the regularly scheduled elevatorage after this.
~~~~~
Meredith's lungs were burning by the time the doors to Recovery Room 3 came into sight. As she rounded the corner, a nurse clad in pale OR scrubs exited the room. She didn't recognize him. He had clipped brown hair and, from the way his scrubs sagged loosely and the angular bits of his limbs she could see, he sported a thin, gangly physique that screamed stereotypical chess club. Definitely not a varsity sports contributor. He looked tired, like he'd been on his feet for hours. Redness flushed his cheeks, but the rest of him seemed pale. He smiled when he caught sight of her barreling toward him.
"Dr. Grey!" he said. "Good, you got my page. We just wheeled Dr. Shepherd in and got him settled. He's not really awake yet, but you can go ahead and sit with him if you want. Just try not to get in Lucy's way. She's the floor nurse." He winced, looked her up and down, and shook his head. "What am I saying? You know the rules, don't you. Sorry."
"Thank you, Craig," she said, breathless, sparing only a second to read his nametag before she went back to trying to collect herself. Breathe, breathe, breathe. "Were you...?" There with him...
The man nodded. "Yes. He did very well. As far as I know, there were no problems, but I'm sure Dr. Weller will talk to you soon. He's scrubbing out, still. I think."
She smiled weakly, trying not to shake with the urge to brush past him and go in, trying to spare a moment for him. She didn't even know him, and he'd taken the time to page her almost immediately? "Thank you for paging me," she said, even as the whining pull of the room began to ache. Derek, Derek, Derek, waking up. Go. Go in. Go! "I hadn't expected to hear anything until he was in the ICU."
"We bend the rules for our own," Craig said with a wink. He didn't keep her with idle conversation. He just smiled and pulled the door open for her, adding his congratulations into the mix. Her breath caught as the breeze of the motion hit her in the face, and she stepped forward.
The room was bright, but in that harsh, ugly way brought on by the saturation of fluorescent overhead lights, and there were no windows. Soft, tinny music played from a small radio sitting on the counter of the nurses' station. The room was fairly small, relatively speaking, and was more of a wide, converted hallway than anything else. The nurse standing behind the desk looked up, waved, and pointed before she went back to whatever notes she was taking. Meredith followed the invisible line to the three beds perpendicular to the wall across from the nurses' station. The middle bed was empty. The one on the right had a woman she didn't recognize in it. In the bed on the left lay Derek, though she almost didn't recognize him at first.
Meredith fought down the lump in her throat as she walked over and sat down on the small, wheeled stool next to his bed. There weren't a lot of chairs around to choose from. Visits to the post-op recovery areas weren't normally permitted. Usually, only nurses and doctors passed through, and they didn't have much reason to be sitting down.
His bed was slightly raised to keep his head elevated, which would reduce any potential swelling. A periwinkle-colored thermal blanket covered him up to the armpits. His arms rested on top of the blankets, unmoving. An automated blood pressure cuff wrapped around his left bicep and was just beginning to unconstrict as she approached. An intravenous line dripped fluids and medications into a vein in his right forearm. There was a heart monitor clipped to his right middle finger, and the larger monitor screen that sat on a stand near the head of the bed bleeped, softly pronouncing the slow, steady rhythm of his heart. Multiple wire leads snaked down underneath the neckline of his thin hospital gown. He looked small and vulnerable, but what really made her want to cry was the endotracheal tube that was still stuck down his throat.
She hadn't expected...
She shook her head. Of course he would still be intubated. He wasn't awake yet, well, not really. It was normal procedure after brain surgeries to leave the recipient intubated until the anesthesia wore off a little more. But that knowledge didn't help her now. This was... this was Derek. Not some patient she'd met the same day. And he would have to wake up more before they would take it out. She hoped the portion of the anesthetic that caused memory loss would take that away from him, would blot out the moments until the tube was gone, later when he was looking back on the experience. He would be so scared, and intubation was a horrible experience regardless of any phobias.
For a moment, she found herself unable to focus, and her gaze went from monitor to monitor to monitor to him and back around in circles like a child in toy store overload. What first, what first, what first? Except with not nearly the same amount of exuberance or elation. He looked... She just hadn't expected... Derek was supposed to be smiling and joking with her, bemoaning the fact that the nurses hadn't taken his hair in a bag request seriously.
But that had been stupid. Stupid, of course. He'd just been wheeled out of the OR moments ago, if what Craig had said was any indication. Derek, waking up, literally meant Derek, waking up. He'd been out for a long time. Anesthesia was a troublesome drug to shake off. But...
Fine. Everything looked fine. All things considered. Fine. Everything...
She rested her elbows along the bedside railing and stared for a moment before picking up his left hand. It hung limply in her grasp. His eyelids fluttered, and she occasionally caught a glimpse of brilliant blue peeking out from underneath his lashes, but for the most part, he remained still and silent.
"Hey," she said, swallowing back tears. "I'm here." What was she supposed to say? Sorry you probably feel like crap? Platitudes containing sorry in them seemed asinine and silly. And reassurances seemed just as stupid. But...
"You're fine," she said. "You're in the recovery area. They'll move you to the ICU after you wake up a little more. But everything is fine. Really fine, not just Meredith fine. Your surgery is over, and you're fine."
He lay there, not moving, not answering, not giving her any indication that her words had helped in some way, not that she had expected much after fully realizing the state he was in. Not so soon.
He hadn't wanted to do this, hadn't wanted to get this procedure done. He'd said it was major surgery, said that he would be out of work for six weeks or more, said that he'd be in the hospital for a week. Hell, she'd assisted him through enough craniotomies to know exactly what shape he'd be in afterward. But it hadn't really hit home. Not until this moment. He'd had his skull drilled open. Derek. It didn't seem so scientific or fascinating or fun when it was Derek. She almost felt guilty for even getting excited over the people who weren't Derek.
She swallowed. She knew he was still working his way out from under the crush of the anesthesia. She knew it, knew there was absolutely nothing wrong. That all of this was normal. The tubes, the wires, the monitors. His silent stillness. All normal. But she still kept half-expecting him to open his eyes, smile at her, spit out the tube, and make some ridiculous, snarky, flirty joke. Got you! Just kidding! But he didn't. He didn't do anything.
"Dr. Grey?" Dr. Weller said in his soothing, rich, baritone voice as he walked up, clipboard in hand. He still wore his navy surgical scrubs, though he had replaced his protective gear with a pristine lab coat that had his name in embroidered script on the pocket.
Dr. Weller smiled as she looked up. "The surgery went fantastically," he said. "I was able to remove all of the excess blood and clots as well as repair the area. No problems at all. We'll leave him intubated until he wakes up a bit more, but really, the whole thing was textbook."
"Good," Meredith said, looking back at Derek. "That's... That's good." Even to her own ears, she sounded like some lost little girl, everything cracking and crumbling against her vocal cords.
Dr. Weller put his hand on her shoulder in an almost paternal gesture. The warmth of his skin seeped through the fabric of her scrubs. "He'll be fine, Dr. Grey. Really," Dr. Weller said as he went around to the other side of the bed. "He's strong, he's extremely healthy, and we caught things in time." He leaned down. "Dr. Shepherd? Are you awake yet?" he said in a loud, authoritative voice.
Derek twitched, the first real movement Meredith had seen from him since she'd sat down. His eyes opened and he stared dully at nothing in particular for a few moments before he fell back into the artificial slumber gnawing on his central nervous system like a parasite. Not welcome anymore, but lingering to its last breath.
Dr. Weller turned to the floor nurse as she came up at a hurried, bouncing trot. "Lucy," he said, "Let's give him another twenty minutes or so, and then we'll see about taking this out." He gestured at the tube.
Lucy nodded. "Okay, Dr. Weller," she said. The pair of them walked off to chat at the nurses' station, leaving Meredith alone again.
Meredith leaned against the railings and stared. Just... stared. Her first instinct was to reach forward and brush her hands through his hair, except his skull was swathed in a crown of white bandages, and underneath, were she to peel them back, she knew she would find only cleanly-shaven skin, save for a few inevitable nicks, and the sutures over the area where they had opened everything up. The thought of it made her eyes sting, the thought of him shaven and sewn up. The shaving thing had bothered him before, even more than the prospect of potentially facing death. She'd understood his fears on a rational level at the time, understood his reservations, understood that he didn't want to be vulnerable and at someone else's mercy, but, now... She was starting to get it in a gut deep, twisting, heart-panging way, seeing him like this.
He was stripped. Stripped of his dignity, or at least that was probably how he would feel about it. Stripped of his control, stripped of himself. There was no part of his body that was his own right then. None. He was a sick man in a bed, labeled with a name on his wrist, monitored, regulated, defined in the vast terms of what he couldn't do, rather than what he could, which, at that moment, was hardly anything. To someone like Derek Shepherd, the whole experience would be awful and frightening and... just...
Bad.
"I'm here, Derek. You're not alone. Everything is fine," she whispered. Don't be scared. Please. Be okay.
He twitched, and she felt a surging snake of relief tunnel through her, even as tears threatened. He'd heard. She was certain he'd heard that. Maybe... Maybe she was helping. She hoped. Hoped she was helping.
She settled for stroking her thumb along his hand as she tried to bite back the weeping feeling that threatened her in throbbing pulses, like a wave or something. The warmth of his skin was comforting against the immaculate lack of personality that surrounded them. White, white, white. The smell of antiseptic made her nose tickle. The hospital had never bothered her before, but now, it seemed so... austere... Not even the soft hum of the radio sitting on the counter, which was tuned to the local soft rock station and emitted distant tinny notes of melody and taps of percussion, overcame the sudden chill that swept against her. And Derek... Derek had to wake up to this.
"I'm here," she repeated. Not running. Here. Forever. Please, be okay.
For the longest set of moments, she hovered in a vague state, almost disconnected from herself, letting the beeping heart monitor lull her with its repeated assurances that Derek was fine, Derek was fine, Derek was fine, bleep, bleep, bleep, alive, alive, alive, until finally, his fingers moved, really moved, not just twitched. For the barest flicker of a second, she felt the sharp stirrings of unexpected panic. What if this was like the last time? Are you a nurse? This had been brain surgery. Dr. Weller could have inadvertently damaged something without even realizing it. Who knew what could---
Her breath caught in her throat when she felt him grip her hand. Not a spasm, but a real grip, albeit weak. She followed the line of his arm and found him staring at the space she occupied, not exactly at her, but close enough. A drugged haze clouded his expressive eyes with a quality of dullness, and his gaze was spaced, not all there, but... he was staring. At her. Sort of. She smiled, the panic flushed away, and his eyelids drooped shut again. His grip relaxed, but not all the way. Enough strength remained to tell her he was awake, sort of. Awake and aware that his hand was being held.
"Hey," she whispered as she leaned forward to brush his cheek, to reassure him. "You're doing great. Everything is fine. You're in post-op recovery right now. Your surgery is over. You just have to do the healing thing, now."
He didn't move or do much to answer other than weakly squeeze her hand, but it was enough. Enough to send a steady thrum of overwhelming giddiness down her spine as though someone had plucked it like a guitar string. He was awake, sort of, and he knew her, and he would be okay. He would be.
She could vaguely recall coming out of anesthesia after her appendectomy, which was a much less complicated procedure than a craniotomy. There had been a brief period where she had been awake and mostly aware of her surroundings, but even the little things like movement, opening her eyes, speaking, those had all been a pipe dream, and she'd just sort of languished, hovering in the cloud. Then the discomfort had set in as everything had worn off more, and she'd groggily asked for more morphine. When they'd wheeled her out of recovery and shoved a glass of water and some graham crackers at her, she'd drooped over the tray table, picked at the meager offerings of food and drink. The crackers had tasted like cardboard, almost made her sick thinking about eating more. The water had felt good, but she'd been unhappy enough that it hadn't really registered. Finally, they'd left her alone to sleep while they'd rounded up Izzie and George to drive her home. It had been a miserable experience, one she didn't care to repeat any time soon, and she'd been on the table for all of forty minutes, if that. Derek had been out for hours, and he was older than she was. Older enough that there was no way he was going to just bounce back, no matter how healthily he treated his body.
She stroked his hand, watched the crease of his skin as it followed her touch, watched the streak of white that the pressure of her thumb against him created. His fingers flexed. His eyelids fluttered. He was struggling. Struggling to push himself above the drowning undertow of muscle relaxants and slowly dissipating sedatives. A soft, sputtering noise escaped from his mouth around the tube, and his head jerked minutely.
"Take your time," she whispered, squeezing him back. "I know this sucks. The tube will come out soon. Don't worry. Don't fight it. You're fine. You're in the recovery room. Nothing went wrong. It's all finished. And I'm here. I'm here, Derek." Don't be frightened. Please. Please, be okay.
His lips twitched and the little barely-movements stilled as the sound of her voice washed over him. He tilted his head toward her, though he didn't open his eyes. He was listening. Even if he wasn't entirely with her yet, he was listening.
"I'm here, Derek. It's okay. I love you. I'm here. Take your time. I'll be here." Be okay.
His lips twitched around the breathing tube again, but this time, it seemed more like he was trying to smile and couldn't than it seemed like he was struggling. His eyes came open for a sluggish crawl of moments. Through the glaze of all the crap circulating in his system, he managed to meet her gaze, look at her, right at her, not through her, or at the blurry space she occupied. He blinked.
"Hey," she said, her voice gushing like a some sort of spurting wound. Inappropriately gushing. She was sure. Inappropriate. Gushy. She couldn't help it. A wavery smile quivered against her teeth, and she reached up to wipe her eyes as she sniffled. "Hey, you're doing great, Derek. Dr. Weller said everything went excellently. You're fine. I'm here."
His eyes slipped shut again, the surface he'd fought so hard to break through sucked him back under, and she felt bereft in the sudden absence. His heart monitor bleeped softly. He was fine. Still fighting all the drugs, trying to come back. But fine. The blood pressure cuff constricted.
Lucy smiled as she came to check his vitals once again. "You two are so sweet," she babbled. "I think Debbie won the hospital pool, though."
Meredith turned to the woman as she scanned Derek's various monitors, checked his urine output, and then checked his pulse manually with her fingers at his wrist. His other hand hung limply in Lucy's grasp. "Hospital pool?" Meredith asked, finding her voice again after a long set of sputtering moments.
Lucy grinned. "Over when you two were finally getting engaged. Debbie changed her bet about a nanosecond after she found out he was taking you to meet his family."
"Oh," Meredith replied. Why? Why was she not surprised?
"Congratulations, by the way," Lucy said, and then she moved off to check the woman in the other bed, who seemed to be a lot further along than Derek was in the whole waking up process. Her eyes were open, and she was snuffling around sort of groggily. It looked like she'd had some sort of abdominal procedure done.
Meredith turned back to Derek and squeezed his hand. "Did you know there was a pool? I didn't know there was a pool..."
He didn't answer, not that she'd expected he would. A hospital pool about when they would get engaged? It seemed so... Didn't they have better things to do? And yet... She smiled. Smiled so hard it made her face hurt. A fuzzy warmth spilled into her brain. She'd proposed. She'd actually freakin' proposed. She'd stolen Derek's eventual knee thing thunder, but she didn't regret it. It felt right to have it announced and for real. Well, realer than it had seemed only hours before, when she'd been wandering the halls in a grieving, spaced-out daze.
"It's so weird that everyone knows," she continued as she lowered her face closer to him and sank her tone into something conspiratorial. "I only proposed this morning. The gossip chain in this place would probably put the CIA intelligence network to shame. I mean, I knew it would get around fast. But I've never even met Lucy before and she's acting like she knows us. And Craig. Do you know a nurse named Craig? He seemed pretty nice. We should sic Nurse Debbie on Bin Laden. Seriously. It's late afternoon, by the way, if you were wondering. There aren't any windows in here, so you might be. You were out for about five hours, prep room time after they wheeled you away included. It feels good, though. Everyone knowing. It feels really good. Not to jump subjects on you. Sorry if I'm confusing you. I'll try to babble less. I will. I know I'm pretty hard to follow sometimes, even when you're not drugged and I'm not ridiculously freaked out. Non-mobiley ridiculously freaked out, for your information."
He did the not-really-a-smile-but-trying lip-twitchy thing again before he stilled. She grinned back at him even though he wasn't watching her. Sometimes, you could tell when someone was smiling at you even if you weren't looking. Derek needed smiles right then. He needed to not be afraid that he couldn't move, that he was so unwell. For someone like Derek, he needed it almost as much as he needed air.
She rubbed his fingers, worked at his knuckles firmly, just to let him know that she was still there, to offer him what little comfort she could. He remained quiet, eyes closed, but there was a more... there... quality to him, like he was just underneath the surface of himself, wavering beneath the ripples of water, visible, ready to burst through and stay surfaced... He seemed... awake, but stuck, somehow, rather than hovering in some sort of waking, surreal daydream with a few breaks of clarity.
Dr. Weller returned with Lucy in tow after a few more minutes. "All right. Dr. Shepherd, are you awake?" he said loudly. "We'd like to take this tube out if you're with us again."
Derek opened his eyes, and, though his stare remained a little wandery and spaced, he looked toward Dr. Weller. He spluttered around the tube again, and his whole neck seemed like it was straining. His jaw moved. Intubation was extremely unpleasant. The more he woke up, the more miserable he would get if they didn't take the tube out soon. His arms twitched, just the barest flutter of movement. Meredith frowned at the pinched look that had developed around his eyes. Before, when he'd been staring, he'd seemed dazed and... well... Not there in a definitive, Derek's-at-the-wheel sense. He blinked. He was definitely there now. He weakly grasped at her fingers, almost like he was trying to tell her something, but...
"It'll come out soon," she said, grasping his hand lightly.
He calmed, but his eyes retained their pleading misery, and she just wanted to scream. He was obviously awake. Take the damned thing out! She refrained, though. Dr. Weller knew what he was doing. And if Derek went into some sort of distress, already being intubated would save time and perhaps his life. Anesthesia could really mess around with a person's respiratory system, and he needed his airway to be guaranteed clear and protected until he was definitively in control again. Not to mention, anesthesia had the tendency to make people feel sick, and the tube would protect from vomit as well. Dr. Weller was just doing his job. Just doing his job.
Why did she still want to scream, then?
"Can you wiggle your toes?" Dr. Weller asked as he walked to the foot of the bed and gripped the blankets over Derek's feet. Meredith didn't see any movement, but Dr. Weller smiled and said, "Wonderful. Can you touch your fingers one after the other to your thumb?" Meredith felt a surge of relief as Derek's fingers moved in her grasp, but it didn't get rid of the nagging whisper at the edge of her mind. She didn't think Derek's expression was just because of the tube. Something wasn't quite right...
"Excellent," Dr. Weller said. "Follow my penlight?" He flashed a light at Derek, and Derek followed, blinking, tearing. "All right, Dr. Shepherd. I'm sure you know the drill. Breathe out on three. One, two, three." Dr. Weller pulled the tube out slowly. Derek was utterly silent until the very end. He made a strange, curtailed choking noise as he gagged, and Dr. Weller drew the tip of the tube away. Derek shut his eyes again without speaking and licked his lips.
Lucy checked him over again and replaced the absent tube with a much less intrusive nasal cannula. She snaked the oxygen lines over his ears and turned the air on. "Looking wonderful, Dr. Shepherd," Lucy commented, cheerful and bubbly.
Derek rested silently, semi-dozing with his eyes half-lidded for a few minutes while Lucy went off to do other things. A team of nurses wheeled another man in from some operating room. They lined him up next to the middle bed, and as the space next to Derek fell into a swell of activity, Derek cracked his eyes open. His gaze darted to the next bed as Lucy, another doctor Meredith didn't recognize, and several other hands counted to three. They gripped the sheet, and transferred the person... the body... the patient, whatever, with a set of groaning heaves to the middle bed.
Derek's eyes widened. He blinked and peeled his gaze away after a moment, but the clawing fear didn't leave his expression. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came was a throaty, hoarse, twisted syllable. He winced, swallowed, and shut his eyes, but his fingers wrapped around her own and tightened. His heart rate started to climb. Just a little.
"It's okay," she whispered. She sat, leaning up against the bed railing, running her hand up and down his arm with one hand, clutching his hand with the other. "It's over, and you're fine, Derek. I'm here." She cried. She couldn't stop herself. She... He was remembering the motorcycle stuff. She was fairly certain. The way he'd looked at that patient who'd just been brought in... Was he seeing himself? Tossed, unconscious, on a gurney like a thing. Just a thing and not a person.
His heart rate kept climbing bit by bit, and she was fairly certain it had nothing to do with him waking up. It was something else. Fear. Maybe. Something. She was certain. His fingers kept tightening, tight, tight, tighter, until the bones in her hand ached, and if it were anyone else, she would have commented, would have slapped the grip away. But she would let him wring her palm until something was broken if it made him feel a little better.
"Derek, are you doing okay?" she said, but he didn't really answer, just gave her some mumbly, incoherent bit of sluggish, hoarse syllables. His throat was probably a wreck after the intubation, and it didn't help that he was still drugged out of his mind. His eyes closed for a moment, he took a breath, and he stared at her, his gaze pleading, sick... Help. She gripped his hand, trying to ignore the pain in her knuckles as he squeezed her fingers.
"You okay?" she asked. It was a stupid question. Stupid. His stare clearly said no. Help, it said. Help. But she had no idea what he wanted. "What do you need?"
He swallowed once, twice, again, licked his lips. The first time he tried, all he managed was another throaty sound that didn't make sense. She leaned closer as he prepared another attempt with rough, dry pants.
"'M cold," Derek finally managed to rasp. The words sounded so weak and quiet and wispy, so unlike the man she knew that Meredith felt the lump from earlier returning with a vengeance. She stroked his hand, and suddenly, as she stared at his eyes, which were upset, pinched, blinking, watering, she knew, knew what she'd missed. That nagging thing. He was at the part of waking up where he realized he was in pain. Where the cloud went away. The relaxants and all that junk were withdrawing in defeat, and now his body was checking in. I'm cold. I'm thirsty. I'm tired. I've been violated, and I hurt. Please, help me.
Meredith waved Lucy back over. The dark-haired, bubbly nurse trotted up, a concerned look on her face despite her effervescence. "He needs another blanket," Meredith said. "Maybe a heated one? And I think he needs more painkillers."
Lucy smiled. "I'll get a blanket, Dr. Shepherd. Do you need more morphine?"
Derek blinked, blinked, blinked. "Yes," he whispered hoarsely. Lucy nodded and left for a moment.
Meredith had to stop herself from crushing his fingers in her grasp as her wakeful strength overruled his weakened, clenching fingers. He looked at her. "Sorry," she said as she forcibly relaxed her grip. She watched with an awful, sinking feeling as Derek's eyes watered and started to spill over in earnest, but he didn't make a sound, didn't move. She'd been so elated that he had been waking up, and now... Now, it was almost worse.
"I'm here," she said again, struggling to find anything to say that might help. Anything at all, but there was nothing. No words came. She leaned forward and brushed his cheek. Her fingers slipped against his wet skin. He leaned into the touch and let loose a ratcheting breath with a little cracking moan piggybacking on its coattails. "Lucy will be back in a minute," she said. "Hold on."
Anesthesia made people cry. Sometimes. She tried to tell herself it was just that. And that he really wasn't suffering so terribly. But...
"Mere," he croaked, and he gazed at her with a look that plainly said he hurt before his eyes drooped shut again under the pull of exhaustion and ache. His heart monitor was starting to speed up even more. Long, slow breaths shortened into clipped gasps as whatever pain receptors dampened by the anesthesia came roaring back to life.
"I know," she said, swallowing. She should have realized earlier, when he'd just been starting to ache. She should have. Earlier. Back when his heart rate had just begun its slow crawl toward racing. "You're doing really great, Der. You're doing so, so great."
Her eyelids pinched out tears every time she blinked. She couldn't stop them. This was Derek. This was Derek, and he couldn't move, he was frightened, he was in pain, he was probably feeling sick, and she couldn't do a damned thing for him. She didn't think she'd ever seen him cry over physical pain before. Never ever. He seemed to live and breathe by the whole stoic thing, not in the sense that he wouldn't admit to pain, but that he ignored it, or tried to stuff it away, or just didn't realize he was even in pain in the first place. This was all new. And horrible. This was her future husband.
Husband. The word had such an odd ring to it. It made her lip quiver. There was such a finality to it. Husband. The sick thing. She would be vowing to do this whenever he needed it. Her gut twisted, and the back of her throat constricted with pain. Screw the sick thing, she wanted to flat out trade. It hurt, and it felt awful to sit there with him while he was suffering, but it was right. She was sure. Husband. Dr. Shepherd. Dr. Grey-Shepherd. Dr. Shepherd-Grey. Whatever. The name didn't even matter all that much. Not to her. The details were immaterial at that point. Wife. That would be her. And he would be... Husband. It was right. The idea of offering to do this for eternity seemed right, no matter how helpless and sick it made her feel. Because...
She loved him. Deeply. In a throw-herself-on-the-sword sort of way. She had no idea when it had gotten that serious. But she did. She loved him. That much.
Lucy returned with a dark blue thermal blanket and draped it over him while he rested, panting, with his eyes closed. Lucy slipped some morphine into his intravenous drip. "Morphine is in," she said. "You should feel a little better soon. Once you're down in the ICU, we'll give you a button so you can self-administer it."
Lucy went back to straightening the blanket after she'd finished administering the morphine. She covered his arms with it and tucked it in at the edges of the bed. The hand Meredith held poked out from the side, but otherwise, he was completely covered. The blanket came to a stop at his neck, and he looked even smaller, somehow.
Feel better soon turned out to be almost instantaneous. Perhaps thirty or forty seconds. One moment, suffering had clung to his features like a dark shroud, and the next moment, Derek had relaxed back into a weary, glazed stupor of drugs. His heart rate repelled back down off the cliff into a hypnotic drawl, and his breaths relaxed into long, raspy things that soothed Meredith like the subtle rocking of a boat over water. Meredith slumped as his grip slackened, swallowing back the sob of relief she felt when she looked into Derek's eyes and didn't find raw pain staring back at her. The gentle pulse of tears stopped, leaving a glistening, evaporating mess on his face. She brushed his cheek again as she sniffled.
He blinked, swallowed. "Water?" Derek said, his voice cracking and weak.
Lucy frowned, looking up from his chart as she wrote notes on it. "Sorry, Dr. Shepherd. You can't have fluids yet. I'll be back in a few minutes to check on you."
Can't. You can't. You can't. A vague swell of upset clouded his features as Lucy walked away.
Meredith tried to smile when Derek turned to her, his silent, glazed-looking stare falling on her. She was sure she looked very reassuring. Puffy-faced and crying. Wonderful. She couldn't help it. She just couldn't. He looked so sick, so helpless, so not himself... She'd thought she would be prepared for this, what with all the crap that had happened the week before, what with sitting with him before they'd come to take him away, but this... This was different. Different, but... She loved him. And there was no way she was moving from that stool. No. Way.
He swallowed, took in short little breaths, looked for a moment like he was trying to find a word, trying, trying to talk, but she squeezed his hand and shushed him. "Don't try. I know your throat is really sore. Dr. Weller said everything went perfectly. No complications or anything," she babbled in the silence as he watched her. She knew she was repeating herself from before, but she had no idea how much of anything he would or did remember from the last hour or so, and she wanted to make sure he was reassured. Not scared. She stroked his hand. He was stuck there. Stuck. What could she do for him?
She settled on a gentle, flowing narrative. "You're fine," she said. "No complications," she emphasized again, just to make sure the message got through the haze. No complications yet, anyway. But she didn't want to go there right then. "And you're doing really great. I bet you'll be up and walking by tomorrow. I called your Mom, by the way. She's coming, Derek. She won't be here until tomorrow, but she's coming. I don't know about the rest of your family. I didn't talk to them. Ellen promised to call around. The whole hospital knows we're engaged, including Cristina, by the way. That didn't go so well, at first, but I think we figured some stuff out. It's pretty nice that everyone knows, I think. I really love you. And I love my ring. And I love showing it off. So, thanks for saying yes. Oh, and Dr. Bailey has insisted that I study all week. I ran into her on the way back with your things. I probably should have mentioned it, but... there were other things to talk about then. Anyway, she said I should find a quiet place to study, namely, your bedside. So, if you can help it, I'd appreciate some peace and quiet, buster. I know it might be hard to manage. By the way, I think you need a new duffel bag. Yours is getting kind of holey. As in containing holes, not obtaining status as a religious object thing."
He settled back against his pillow and relaxed, his eyelids drooping as he listened to her rattle on and on and on. He watched her, silent, just watched. His hand was warm in her grasp, warm and solid and real. She talked about anything she could think of, anything at all. On, and on, just keeping him company, letting him know she was there, even if she ended up somewhere in a pit of nonsense, which she did, quite often. She doubted he really cared about why she'd used a different shampoo that morning, or the fact that she'd somehow lost an earring in the chaos of that day, or how she hoped the traffic cameras had realized, when she'd bolted through the intersections that morning, returning with his duffel bag, that the lights had still been yellow for a nanosecond or two. Talk about inane. Talk about drivel. As an improviser, she really kind of sucked.
He didn't seem to mind, though. The longer she droned, the less tense he seemed. He drifted in and out, but she kept talking. After about twenty minutes, she finally had to stop, take a breath, and rest. It was exhausting. Exhausting trying to be so freaking strong when all she wanted to do was crawl in bed with him. Exhausting trying to come up with a million different subjects, even for her, Queen of Nervous Babble-on-and-on, Destroyer of Words. She chose a moment to take a break when he had his eyes shut in what appeared to be a light doze. Her endless river of words stuttered to a halt. She dotted the end of her sentence with a quiet, "I love you." And then she leaned down onto the railing and let herself recuperate for a minute. Her eyes drifted shut and the surroundings started to fuzz up into a background haze as the beginnings of sleep pilfered her senses. Just a minute. She just needed a minute to...
"Thank you," he whispered, his voice barely audible above the beeps and clicks and whirs of all the stuff hooked up to him and his neighbors, all the machinery in the room. The blood pressure cuff chose that moment to constrict with a rush of air.
Her eyes snapped open as his words laved her ears. She shifted and found him staring at her. There was no twinkle there in his eyes. But there wasn't any fear or upset either. He seemed relaxed. A bit dazed, kind of out of things, but with the amount of stuff he was on right then... That was normal. In general, he seemed okay.
"For what?" she said, sniffling, and then she flinched. Way to keep him quiet, asking him stuff. Good going. Real great. Sure. "Wait, no, don't talk- it's," she babbled. But she was too late.
"Sitting here," he said, as if her mere presence was the greatest gift to him in all the world. He closed his eyes, and she sat there, flummoxed, her eyes tearing, her mouth slightly agape. She found it hard to believe he could find her warbly litany of randomness or her quivery sniveling all that comforting, though, she really was trying. But. He'd reacted much the same way before his surgery, too. All she'd done was walk into the room, and he'd visibly brightened, despite his obvious discomfort, despite her obvious discomfort. He'd...
Sometimes holding someone is enough, Meredith.
She wasn't holding him. She looked down at her hand, clenched around his palm tightly. The touch reassured her as much as she hoped it reassured him. Well, okay, she wasn't embracing him. But she was holding him in the strictest definition of the word, she guessed.
A brief thrill of warmth snuck down her throat and pulled her crying back inside, down into her infinite well of freak out. She breathed, calming slightly. She wiped her face, and for once, a new stream of tears didn't immediately replace the crap she'd just cleared away.
Derek had his eyes closed. He was relaxed. He wasn't anxious or nervous or having any trouble slipping into catnaps anymore. She'd...
Maybe she really was enough, buckets of tears, blotchy skin, shaky grip, and snarly, messed-up, split-endy hair notwithstanding.
Maybe.
She let him sleep. Lucy came to check on him about every ten minutes or so, but it all started running together in one long crawl of minutes. Lucy chatted occasionally as she checked everything, but to Meredith, it was all a tired, tired blur. Her eyelids drooped, and she drifted off against the railing to the sound of the bleeping monitors and the warm feel of Derek's hand resting in her grasp.
A sound snapped Meredith awake, and she blinked to focus on Lucy, who had returned with a Dixie cup in hand. She glanced at her watch blearily, trying not to glare as Lucy grinned at her. An hour. Only a freakin' hour. She swallowed, feeling pasty. Her neck ached from resting at such an awkward angle, and she tilted from side to side, trying to work out the crick. At least Derek was still sleeping, or sleeping again, or... whatever. He needed it.
Leave it to Lucy to ruin it. Lucy set the Dixie cup on his tray table and pulled the table over so that it lay across the bed over his lap. She reached for the controls and hit a button to raise the head of the bed. Meredith bit back on her anger. Lucy was doing her job. Lucy had a mapped schedule based on countless craniotomy patients for Derek to regain full consciousness by, and she was making sure he was following it. If he wasn't following it, something might be wrong. And it was important to discover that immediately. Meredith swallowed. When they moved him to the ICU in a little while, and then after that to step-down, probably the next day, he would get more rest.
Post-op recovery was about making sure Derek was recovering from the anesthesia correctly. And that was not Lucy's fault. In a purely subjective sense, though, Meredith still wanted to snap at her. Leave him alone, and let him heal. Which was also why they didn't let visitors into this area. And Meredith was a visitor, not a doctor at that moment. She halted her anger and stuffed it down under a pile of grateful that she'd been shown up to see Derek in this state at all. She'd expected to have to wait. And she didn't want to think about Derek waking up alone here, not after... everything. He had been scared enough, even with her constant drawl of reassurances.
"Dr. Shepherd?" Lucy said as the bed hummed and pushed him further into a sitting position. Derek snuffled, blinked a little. "Try and eat some ice chips," she said. "We'll do something a little more solid in a bit if you're okay with those." And then she was gone again.
Derek just sort of sat there, eyes closed, like it was too much for him to prop open his eyelids. He moved his hand from Meredith's grasp to the tray table and flopped it down next to the cup, not even bothering to try and move the hand still buried under the extra thermal blanket, the one clipped with the heart monitor. He looked like he wanted to put his head down and just plow back into sleeping. He swallowed and sat with his head tilting forward slightly over the tray.
"Need some help?" Meredith whispered, hesitant, when he didn't move for almost two minutes. She bit her lip. She didn't know if she should have offered. Needing help would definitely not make him feel strong, powerful, and in control. Especially since it was just about lifting a freaking cup.
He jerked as though he'd fallen asleep, and she'd woken him. He blinked once or twice and stared at her.
"Hey," she said with a smile. "You know, you're not nearly as interesting on drugs as I was. Though, the loopy bit before you went under was fun." At first, anyway.
A tired smile curled slowly across his face. He breathed, fast enough to almost be a laugh were he to have put any vocal oomph into it. "Sorry," he said. His voice was still pretty wispy, pretty hoarse, but he sounded so, so much better, like it was more an issue of him not being able to make his throat cooperate than it was him being too weak to speak properly. The hour of sleep and the proper dosage of painkillers had done wonders. The only obstacle remaining seemed to be a sore throat.
"I don't remember," he whispered, breaking her from her thoughts. He sounded vaguely confused, searching for something that just wasn't there. "Nothing after... I... Not like you..."
"You were a bit high," she offered when his voice fell away, elated at his bare hint of levity, the smile he'd gifted her with. He looked so good wearing a smile, even a weak one. "But not like me. You barely said a word."
Another heavy almost-laugh ratcheted out of him. "Somehow, I don't believe you." He blinked, long and slow, and sighed. He curled his fingers around the cup, drew it to his mouth, and sucked on the first ice chip that fell, cracking it between his teeth after letting it melt for a few moments. His eyelids drooped, and the weak smile from before dripped out of his features as he swallowed. The cup sat loosely in a half-hearted grasp, and he seemed utterly disinterested in attempting a second ice chip.
"Try another one, Derek," she prodded.
He grunted and pushed the cup away.
"Nauseated?" she asked as the blood pressure cuff inflated again.
"Mmm," he muttered as he closed his eyes. A curdled, sick sound fell from his lips as he leaned back against the pillows.
"Do you want something for it? The nausea, I mean."
He sniffed and shook his head minutely. "No more drugs," he rasped. He lowered his hand to the side of the bed, searching blindly along the edge for a moment. His face flushed, and he stared ahead, distant and vague, at the nurses' station.
"Can you... Put me back?" he said, his voice wilting with defeat. "The bed... Please."
"Sure," Meredith said. She reached for the controls and lowered him back down to the slightly elevated point he'd started at.
Lucy chose that moment to return for Derek's first neurological check. She drilled him with questions. What day was it, could he spell his name, could he recite three words from memory after she told them to him. She made him move his feet, his arms, made him breathe deeply and cough to clear his lungs. She flashed a penlight at him and made him follow it back and forth. By the end, he was pale and quiet and swallowing. The coughing part had made him wince, and Meredith wondered if he might still be aching from that.
Lucy smiled as she put the penlight away in her breast pocket and said, "Looking wonderful, Dr. Shepherd. I'm going to tell the orderlies you're ready to go down to the ICU now. We'll keep working on those ice chips, maybe again in a few hours. You're doing just fine." Meredith was sure that Lucy meant to be comforting, but there was a tone she had, a quality to her speech that just... Stung. Like she was speaking down or something. Speaking to a kid. Speaking to someone who wasn't fully capable of understanding, and so the words were slowed and over-cheerful. And that was something Derek didn't need at all. Not when... Well, not ever. But especially not right then.
Lucy left in a whirlwind of motion, off to the next bed for the next check. Derek looked away from Meredith as he blinked frantically. She didn't comment, let him have his moment to collect himself. There was so little he could control right then. But she would give him that moment.
She pulled his hand back into her grasp, flattening it between her palms, relishing the warmth before she crumpled her fingers and started tracing the lines on his palm with her thumb. "It sucks," she whispered. "I know it sucks. I'm here, though. ICU will be a little better. The neuro checks will only be every two or three hours, and they'll let you regulate your own morphine. Plus, you'll probably get a window, and I... will stop now. Because I'm probably just making it sound dismal, aren't I? I'm sorry."
He pulled a deep, shuddering breath into his chest and let it out slowly before he turned back to look at her. The crushed look gradually slipped away from him, only to be replaced by the dull, sick look from before. Not anxious, not scared, not hurting. Just... Not healthy. Not all there. Dazed and sick. But, she supposed, that was definitely better than the other three.
"You'll stay?" he asked quietly.
"Of course, I'll stay, Derek. I said I'd be here the whole time."
"Work?"
She blinked when she realized what he was getting at. She'd told him already, but... "Dr. Bailey let me off to study. I won't do any surgeries. I'll just read while you sleep. I'm pretty wicked with a highlighter, you know. I'll ace this thing, no problem. So, you're not allowed to worry about that. Maybe you can quiz me later if you're up to it."
"Okay," he said.
Her breath hitched. He wasn't even trying to convince her to do surgeries. Wasn't trying to make himself sound fine or argue that she would be missing out by staying with him. That tore at her.
"Derek," she said. She had to ask. "Do you remember waking up with the tube?"
"No," he said, sounding just a little lost. "I don't... think so." His tone was flat, sort of detached and drugged. He didn't seem particularly disturbed by the hole or anything, just... slow. A bit disoriented. Which was normal.
She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. She'd been hoping.
"Your mom is coming, by the way," she said. In case he didn't remember that either. "I called her. I'll call her again in a bit to tell her you came out of surgery all right. Maybe when you're sleeping."
"Okay."
"Are you warm enough? Do you need anything? I could... You..." She deflated when she realized this was the sort of thing that was killing him inside. The physical aspects of the whole pampering thing, he didn't seem to mind at all, actually seemed to be taking an immense amount of comfort in them. The handholding. The rubbing. The petting. But the doing things for him? The fact that he couldn't do much more than lie there while she and Lucy did things for him seemed to be what was really crushing his spirit. "Sorry. Sorry, I'm trying, Derek."
His gaze ticked to her hands as she sat there, petting his fingers, wishing there was something else she could do to give him back something of himself. He wasn't forced to endure the endotracheal tube anymore, but the wires, the monitors... He'd been exposed, shaved, cut up. He couldn't even urinate on his own. He had a bag collecting things for him. For someone used to playing god... She swallowed, feeling sick just from the helplessness of watching him be helpless. She couldn't even imagine how it felt to be the one lying there. The appendectomy had been like a short story compared to the freakin' novel Derek was experiencing, or something. She'd been able to go home that day, albeit with light supervision and someone to drive her. He wouldn't even be walking until tomorrow, let alone be able to take care of himself. No, the little bit of plot from her appendectomy had given her a taste of the whole, ugly story, but that was it. A taste, and it had been a bitter one. She wanted to trade with him so badly it was an aching, gnawing thing in her gut. Thoughts of fleeing, running, avoiding never even hit her. She just wanted to trade. It was the only thing she could think of that would definitively fix it all for him. Trading would be good.
"The Chief told me you withdrew from the whole job race thing," she said quietly.
He blinked slowly. His eyes went distant as he went through the slow, visible process of thinking through the drug-induced haze. "Yeah," he said. "Don't want it anymore." He stared pointedly at her, though his eyes were dull.
"I love you, Derek," she replied. "I really, really do. I'm glad you figured things out."
She cried, staring at his hand, his beautiful, lithe, surgeon hand. The skin was warm and pale and flawless. He had nice, strong, wonderful hands. Perfect tendons. Smooth palms. His hands were one of her many favorite features, and he held his still for her in her grasp with not even a hint of shaking, which was... Good. That was good.
He would be fine. He would still be the surgeon he wanted so desperately to be. Fine.
He flexed his fingers in her grasp. The sick look in his eyes fleeted, slowly replaced by something else, something... "Dr. Grey," he said, his lips curling slightly in a weak half-grin. "Are you feeling me up?"
"I might be," she replied, sniffling. She wiped at her face with her free hand.
"You should pace yourself," he said. "I'm playing hard to get."
"Oh, are you?" she said, unable to stop a small grin.
His eyes dipped shut. "Mmm," he replied in a low, exhausted, sick-sounding rumble. "For at least a week or so." He sighed, and it was a depressed sound, but it didn't wreck the fact that he'd joked. He'd made a joke.
She leaned down over the railing, releasing his hand. She brushed his cheek. "You tease," she said, her heart fluttering. He was playing. He felt awful, and he could barely move, but he was playing. With her. Her chest throbbed with sudden, elated warmth.
"I know I'm hard to resist and all..."
"Well, I can't help it," she said, leaning closer. The railing cut her sharply in the stomach as she tilted over it, but she didn't care, didn't care because he felt awful, and he was still playing. With her. "You are pretty sexy," she purred, millimeters from his lips. If he wanted to banter, she would banter.
You make me happy, Mere. Isn't that enough?
He let loose a weary chuckle, but she cut him off with a kiss, gentle, searching, and his eyes snapped open. She slid her lips against his, and his light, surprised grunt melted down the back of her throat like chocolate. The taste of him was sweet and soft and sure and so, so familiar, and she wanted more, more, always more, but she resisted the urge to delve. Frenching in the post-op recovery room was probably another reason they didn't usually let visitors back there. That, and she didn't want to strain him. He was the sort of person who'd kiss her back until he was dead from the trying. She pulled back, licking her lips.
He stared at her through a half-lidded gaze as she petted his face with her palm, careful to avoid the oxygen line running high along his cheekbones and back behind his ears. His eyelids drooped, but not before she caught a twinkle, a moment of self-assured I've-still-got-it bleeding through his tired gaze, just a hint of how he'd looked on the plane after their lavatory adventure.
"Naughty, naughty, Dr. Grey," he whispered, licking his lips as if he relished the taste of her as much as she did his. His eyes drifted shut the rest of the way. He swallowed, sniffed. A smirk pulled at his mouth and his torso rumbled with a breathy, light laugh as he wandered into an amusing thought and got lost there. The smirk evened out into a general expression of well-being after a long, crawling journey.
She bit her lip. He looked better. More relaxed. Less defeated. And she realized somewhere along the way that she'd stopped crying. He made her happy, too. She wondered if he'd started to flirt on purpose, and not just for his own peace of mind.
She picked up his hand again. Husband. She tried to imagine a wedding ring there. She'd never seen one. Not even when he'd gone back to Addison. Wedding rings. They would have to pick those out, too. He would look good with one, she decided. He had the perfect fingers for it, perfect hands, perfect... everything. Husband. A smile ripped across her face.
As if he'd shared her thoughts, his fingers moved in her grasp, searching blindly but with an intimate familiarity. His exploration stopped when the tips of his fingers brushed the metal of her engagement ring, weak and light, like the sweep of feathers across her skin, just at the base of her ring finger. He slid his index finger along the cool, thin slice of platinum encircling her.
"I have what I want," he rasped.
A small smile curled his lips, and he escaped into dreaming for a while.