Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 41B
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
~~~~~
"Aside from the fact that my hair is now the fairest in all the clan," Stewart said as he reached out to steady her before she fell on her ass. "Derek seems to be doing okay."
"I know," she said as she brushed herself off.
"Really?" he said.
She loosed an exasperated sigh. "You just agreed with me."
"I meant you, Meredith," Stewart said. "You don't seem to know."
"Derek's fine," she said, even as something in the back of her mind squealed at her. Wrong, wrong, wrong. "I'm fine. We're all fine!"
"I sense a but," Stewart said. "And not the mesmerizing kind attached to women."
I mean I can't. I just... Please. Please, I can't.
The elevator dinged, finally greeting the main floor, but she ignored it as a flourish of the nightshift hospital staff, doctors, nurses, orderlies, custodial folks, others, scrambled into the cavernous space, renewing the emptiness around her and Stewart. The doors trundled shut. She sniffled, trying not to think of Derek as she'd helped him into the bathroom, practically bowing under his weight. The weight he'd been too tired and too broken to help her with. And she tried not to think of Derek on her living room floor, twitching, blue. Dead.
It didn't work.
"What if he dies?" she blurted. "What if there's a complication, and there's a moment where he has to decide if he wants to live or not, and he doesn't. What if he doesn't want it?"
Stewart sighed. "Meredith..."
"No," she said. "You can't tell me it's stupid. I drowned. I've been dead. I know."
"Pardon?"
She blinked as she realized what she'd said. She didn't want Derek's family to know how screwed up she'd been. How stupid she'd been. She didn't want them to know, and yet, this was the second time she'd gotten herself into a verbal tangle with Stewart about it. Stewart. Stewart, unassuming, there, but not in an oppressive way, not in a way that smothered who she was or how she felt. He'd let her whine about her family and tell him how poisonous and undeserving she was. He'd paced with her in his station wagon and bought her liquor in his pajamas. He'd given her tequila and let her make her own choice about whether she would drink it. And he was...
Stewart.
Gangly, giraffey Stewart, who always seemed to disarm her with his stupid smiles and his sarcastic comments, who always seemed to understand her whether he liked it or not. He was like her bridge. Screwed up, family-fearing Meredith. Stewart. Shepherd family in a Christmas-loving, Thanksgiving-gathering, happy, boisterous, supportive heap.
A decision snapped into place. She sighed as tired exhaustion wept from her pores like tears of sweat. She wanted to lie down and let everything go away for a while. She did. She was tired, but she couldn't sleep. She was worried, and heartsick, and wishing she could be somehow better. Better for Derek. Better than the wispy, sniffly, shivery thing she'd devolved into as the hours had dragged on and proven her newfound not-running strength was misguided, wishful thinking. She wasn't strong at all.
"The ferryboat crash," she said, sniffling. "It was all over the news. We were onsite trying to help triage the accident victims. A patient knocked me into the water, and I drowned. I was dead, Stewart. Derek pulled me out of the water, but I was dead. Freaking dead. Meredith is a blueberry popsicle dead. He said I matched my scrubs. That I was like ice. And then he had to wait three hours while they tried everything in the book before they managed to revive me."
She stared at Stewart, but his face didn't betray any particular emotion or judgment. She took the opportunity to pull them away from the elevators, where a crowd was gathering again for the next trip up. She and Stewart sat down in the waiting area, facing each other. She felt Lilliputian to his titan as he folded over his knees, resting his face against his hands and his elbows on his kneecaps. Even slouched, he towered.
"So," he said, hesitant as he pieced things together. "When you told me last week that he saved you, you sort of meant literally."
"Yes," she said. "I was dead. I had a moment in the water. It was cold. And I was sad. And I thought, why bother? Just a moment. And it killed me. What if Derek has one of those moments?"
She eyed the entrance to the hospital. People walked in and out, even at the late hour. Shuffling. Moving. Like ants in the scuffle. The air outside the windows was dark and wet, and the pavement glittered against the streetlights. But it wasn't raining. A car rolled up to let a man out, and the paint wasn't wet. The air in front of the streetlight near the entrance didn't shiver with small slivers of drizzle. Nobody walking in or out had umbrellas unfurled or raincoats donned.
"Meredith, please don't take this the wrong way," Stewart said, drawing her gaze back inside. "I'm sure it violates the sympathetic girl talk code, which, by the way, I am none too happy about being continually dragged into with you, but you compel me for some strange reason." He paused and schooled his expression. "You're being ridiculous."
She sighed. "I know! I know I'm being ridiculous."
She was a ridiculous, exhausted, death-fearing freak. She'd already come to the conclusion hours ago. She'd also come to the conclusion that there wasn't a blessed thing she could do about it except wait until she got Derek safely home.
"Exactly," Stewart said. "You think you're being ridiculous. Not that the fear itself is ridiculous."
"What?"
"Meredith," he said. "Do you know what I do for a living?"
She blinked. It'd never come up. She'd never asked. "N-no," she stuttered. "I never really..." She sighed. "Great. I'm so bad at the family thing, I just-"
Crap.
Guilt overwhelmed her when she realized she had absolutely no idea. None. And she'd never asked. Never thought about asking. Never considered it. Everything had been about her and how she couldn't do the family thing. She'd wasted a lot of time hiding behind Derek, not necessarily physically, but a lot of what she'd talked about had had to do specifically with him. Aunt Meredith. Aunt implied she was someone's sister.
Crap, crap, crap.
Kathy works too much. She's bright and shiny until she's not. And then she's really, really not. She'd let Kathy provide endless counsel, never once asking Kathy if Kathy was okay. If Kathy cared that Derek couldn't remember a freaking year of his life.
And then there was Sarah. Who seemed friendly enough, but she was obviously not nearly the hotshot Derek was. Chief Webber hadn't come barreling in, trying to woo her the second she'd stepped over the hospital's threshold. She was younger than Derek. How much younger? Meredith hadn't asked. Maybe Sarah hadn't had a chance to really make her mark yet. Was she an attending? Or just a resident?
And Natalie. Meredith had barely spoken to Natalie. She'd looked so much like Derek, Meredith had found it disconcerting enough during the initial few days that a divide had sort of settled between them, and the lack of familiarity had stuck until Meredith's departure.
And Nancy. She was going through her own personal hell right then. Though, despite their shakily better terms, Meredith didn't think she could ever offer the woman much comfort. Meredith was a reminder. But Nancy had to talk with the other women. Didn't she? Did they have conference calls to express their woes? Tea parties? Girls' nights out? What did... How did that work?
And then there were the men.
John. What did John do? And Chris... Chris, she'd speculated, was in the military. But she hadn't asked. And Rob. Why had Rob left Nancy? Surely, there'd been a reason. A precursor. And what did he do with his life? Why did he drive that little sports car? She wondered what else she'd missed, and suddenly found herself wondering when the next family thing was.
Because she wanted to try again.
"I'm a stay-at-home dad," he said, interrupting the downward spiral of her thoughts.
"You?" she blurted. "But you're..."
He grinned, easing further into a slouch. "Entirely too manly? Thank you for the compliment," he said. She couldn't help but snort as he pulled back and sprawled his long arms over the backs of the chairs to his left and right like some sort of triumphant cowboy. "I played in the NBA before I had to retire because I wrecked my knee. The Knicks. I met Sarah at a game Mark dragged her to because Derek was busy. They sat right behind the bench, and she caught my eye." He smiled as he lost himself in the memory.
"Alex," Meredith said as understanding dawned. "Holy crap! I thought... You..."
"Yep," he replied. "You have the privilege of being almost legally related to your very own has-been! I had surgery to fix the knee, and I'm mostly okay for things like capture the flag, but there was a while there where I couldn't walk without assistance, and then crutches, and then a cane."
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Derek is a doer. Derek is cocky. He will get depressed from time to time. But he'll get over it. Just because he's down doesn't mean he wants to die."
"You didn't see the way he was acting earlier."
"I know firsthand the way he was acting earlier. He's drugged. Give him a week before you label him with chronic anything, let alone a death wish."
"It doesn't have to be chronic," she said. "It just takes a second."
He regarded her silently for a moment. He gripped the backs of the chairs, and a sigh rolled from his shoulders to the tips of his fingers as he re-slouched. "Meredith, are you familiar with the concept of metal fatigue?"
She frowned. "Metal breaks when it's bent too much."
He nodded. "Take my knee, for instance," he said. His right hand left the back of the chair, and he grasped his kneecap, flexing his fingers as he squeezed. She wondered if he wore a brace under his pants or something. If he had a prescription for pain. If he'd had a hard time with the capture the flag, but did it anyway because it was a Shepherd family thing, and he enjoyed it. She'd never paid attention. She'd never...
"Do you think that one day I was running down the court, and it just snapped for no good reason?" he asked.
She blinked, torn from her thoughts. "Uh."
"Months, Meredith," he said. "I had months of aches and pains before it finally went. I knew it was coming even if I didn't want to admit it."
"I don't..."
"How many months or years of aches and pains did you have before you had your moment?"
"But I..."
"And how long has Derek been having troubles?"
"But..."
"That's all I've got," he said, smiling. "You don't have to stammer anymore."
"But."
"I know," he said. "I've ruined some quality moping, haven't I? My work here is done!" he said as he slapped his knees and stood. "Sarah is probably wondering whether I fell into one of the urinals. I should get back. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Okay," she replied, her voice weak and small as she watched his lanky, departing figure, but as she had time to settle in and think about it more, the fear he'd sucker-punched out of her system came creeping back like a coiling, ugly weed.
Derek had been depressed for less than two days from this surgery, sure. And Stewart was right. Just that alone... It would be really kind of silly to worry about. She knew the statistics about post-surgery depression.
But the week and a half before the craniotomy hadn't been all that pleasant, either. And he'd been really off since she'd drowned. Really, really off. Dark and twisty in his own, internalizing, suffering way. He thought things over and over and over until he was dizzy with it, until he'd looked at every possible angle forty times or more, and when it was a dark thing he pondered, he just got darker, darker, and darker still as the badness coiled.
That was what he'd done with her drowning. He'd hovered. Slept poorly. Moped. Lost out on a job he'd thought he wanted. And he'd finally ended up needing to go home to his family for some relief, which he hadn't gotten. He'd gotten his head cracked against a steering wheel for his trouble, and he'd had to deal with the drowning thing all over again. He'd had to deal with everything, Addison, Mark, everything, all over again in a fraction of the time. He'd been broken with anxiety and upset and twisty disquiet.
He'd been broken.
And then he'd had this stupid surgery, which had terrified him, dehumanized him, and left him weeping and tired, and what was left of his walls had come crashing down. Maybe he hadn't been a chronic sufferer like she had been with her stupid not-family and her stupid, disastrous life. Maybe his dead gaze from the morning, his hopeless surrender, maybe they hadn't been around long enough to strip him of everything that he felt he wanted to live for. But a month and a half was a long time to get pounded into submission. What if that was enough time for him to have a moment?
On second glance, she'd regretted her decision to stop flailing and kicking her limbs when she'd hit the freezing water. On second glance. But the first glance was what had mattered when it came down to it. And Derek, on first glance, might think about his fiancé swan diving into the Puget Sound, might think about Mark's backstabbing, might look at the door to his room and wonder if walking there was worth the exhaustion. And that might be enough. Enough that he wouldn't get that second glance. All it took was infection, or post-op pneumonia, or cerebral edema, and he'd be in trouble.
Big trouble.
She doubted Stewart had taken any of the crap that had happened prior to the surgery into consideration with his metal fatigue analogy. Derek? Derek was pretty freaking fatigued when it came down to it. When it came down to that first glance.
A pang jabbed her. She stared at the elevator as she stood up. It'd gone back up to floor five and hovered there. She opted for the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, almost tripping more than once. But she needed to get to him. Needed to reassure herself that he was okay. It was a biting, hurting sort of need that nearly had her sobbing by the time she'd reached his floor and wound her way through the hallways to his door.
When she rushed through the door and plowed to a halt, her heart jackhammered for several pulses and then began a gasping, slow decline to normal again. Derek was still sitting up, but his eyes were shut. His head had tilted to the side toward the door, as if he'd been watching for something or someone and had drifted off. His lips hung slightly parted, relaxed. The soft, deep, rasping sound of his breathing filled the lull between the beeps of his heart monitor. He slept. Peaceful. Not scared, or disturbed, or anything at all. Removed from the world.
She walked over to the bed. "I'm back," she whispered, but he didn't budge. "Sorry I took so long." For a moment, she just stared at him. His face was slack, expressionless. If he was dreaming, it didn't show. She blinked, watching. Watching for the longest time.
Sighing, she grabbed her pile of books and highlighters from the bedside table and eased up onto the bed next to him, curling into him, into the crook of his shoulder. She sat the book between them, resting the end of spine between their hips and the front and back against their thighs. Test questions. She couldn't just read right then. She needed interactive. She needed something that would make her focus, something that wouldn't let her space out, wouldn't let her stop thinking. Not as easily, anyway.
Tiredness slogged through her brain. Crying that refused to happen hurt her eyes. She hadn't slept. She hadn't slept more than an hour or two in the last forty some hours or so. She needed sleep. But she couldn't bring herself to close her eyes for more than a second.
When her eyes were open, Derek was warm and breathing. His heart throbbed against the wall of his chest, and the sounds of sleep, the rustle of air and the vague rush of blood underneath his skin, were a soothing, relaxing thrum of life against her mental disquiet. And, physically, he was so much better. He'd been looking better every time he woke up. When she closed her eyes, though, he wasn't better at all. He was seizing and dying and giving up. One nightmare had been enough. Sleeping was... Not happening.
She sighed and stared at the first question, trying not to let her mind wander as she absorbed the words. She scribbled notes down onto the sheet of paper, flipping back and forth, trying to decide. Somewhere between answering question one and the moment when she'd mustered enough energy to read question two, he woke.
It wasn't an abrupt sort of awakening. It was the kind that happened on a weekend, when the alarm hadn't gone off, the sun beat through the windows, and wakefulness sort of slipped in through the cracks of dreams. His slow, even breathing shortened just enough to tell her he was with her.
"Hey," she whispered as she moved to question three.
He muttered a half-asleep, grunty syllable. His head shifted minutely to rest against hers. The warmth of his cheek spread into her left temple like a bath of sunlight. His fingers twitched, he wrapped the arm she'd curled up under, the arm with the intravenous line and the finger clip, more tightly against her hip, and then he went quiet. He wasn't sleeping. He wasn't talking either, but the silence that hummed between them wasn't the sort that begged for filling. It had a warm quality to it. An I'm-just-enjoying-you-here quality.
"Everyone went home for the night," she whispered. Question four. "We're alone again."
He seemed to be content just sitting there, so she didn't press it when he didn't speak. Question five was hard. She paused on it for what seemed like an eternity before the answer came to her, and she was able to move on. This was, ironically, a section on traumatic brain injury. She'd flipped to it quite by accident, but she needed to cover it sometime, and... She doubted it would get any easier. At least, not in the nearish, before-the-test future. A pang ripped through the back of her throat when she read the question on steps to relieve intracranial pressure. That could have easily been Derek. Derek needing the shunt or a barbiturate coma or the decompressive craniectomy. Fatality percentages of epidural hematomas brought her to a shaky halt.
"That one is A," Derek whispered.
Meredith stilled. "What?"
He shifted and raised a finger to point at question five. She'd been way past that, on to question nine, but it didn't matter. The pad of his index finger lightly brushed the page, pawing at it, almost as if he were trying desperately to keep his place. "The answer is A, not B. Increased urination after a traumatic brain injury can indicate..." His voice trailed away for a moment before whatever struggle he was fighting yielded him with the remainder of his sentence, "A hormonal imbalance."
She stared at the page. B had been anxiety. It was the only symptom on the list she had direct experience with. But when he said it, reasoning she'd missed clicked into place. Anxiety was more about increased urge, not increased output. "Deficient ADH output?" she said.
"Right," he replied after a pause. "And what causes it?"
"That could mean an injury to the hypothalamus," she said excitedly as some of the stuff she'd studied earlier in the day started shaking loose from the mental jumble. It'd just needed a nudge. "Or the connection between the hypothalamus and the pituitary. Or to just the pituitary."
"Yes," he said. "What's deficient ADH production called?"
"Cranial diabetes insipidus?"
"Yeah. Treatment?"
"Non-surgical. Medication can replace the missing hormones."
"Mmm," he replied. It was a low sort of rumble that vibrated against her spine. It was the first time he'd used it in the last two days where it didn't have an "I'm tired" tacked onto the meaning. All it said was yes.
She leaned into his neck and breathed him in, relished the warmth of him. "Thanks," she said. She pointed to question nine. "What about this one? I was waffling..."
He put his hand on the page, breathing softly as he stared at it. His fingers felt along the text, almost as if he were blind, but instead of over the words, he ran them under. It was an odd gesture, because Derek wasn't a finger reader. He rarely touched the pages except to turn them. His progress was slow. He made it to choice A before his hand fell away.
"Read it to me?" he said with a sigh, but if he was disturbed by the fact that he needed her help, he didn't let on. He breathed against her, softly, waiting for her, and she felt almost like they were back at home in bed, just sharing a moment caught in an ebb of activity.
A few weeks before the ferry accident, he'd been up late, his bedside lamp glowing in the relative dimness, reading when she'd come home from her shift. She'd flopped down onto her side of the bed and pulled out her own book, but it'd been one of those nights when the silence had been getting to her. She'd tossed her book onto her pillow and rolled toward him, asking him what he was reading. He'd flashed her the book spine.
"Hemingway," she'd said, making a face as she'd flopped down against his chest and heaved a woeful sigh.
He'd smirked. "For Whom the Bell Tolls is a good read. Way better than Night Pleasures." He'd looked pointedly at her discarded paperback, complete with its half-naked, leather pants-clad, muscular male model painted on the front. "Seriously, Meredith?"
"Seriously," she'd said. "Reading is for escape. How can anything they made me read in high school be an escape?"
He hadn't answered her. Instead, he'd flipped several pages forward to a section where the pages were slightly more ruffled with wear and started to read in the low, reverent, whispery tone he often reserved for her name. He'd sucked her in just with that, and she'd been entranced for a whole chapter while he read and absently rubbed her shoulder with his palm. Hemingway had a sort of simple, primer style that she'd always found distasteful and dry, but when Derek read it, it seemed like every word was a brushstroke in a masterpiece.
"Oh," she'd said lamely when he'd finished.
He'd raised an eyebrow as he'd lain the book on his nightstand. "Well?"
"Well what?" she'd said.
"Now's your chance to convince me on the merits of romantic heroes named Vladimir."
"Seriously? And it's Kyrian, Derek. Jeez."
"Kyrian," he'd said, correcting himself with a smirk. "Pardon me."
She'd picked up the book she'd discarded. "I can't read you this. It's like... It's..."
He'd rolled on top of her, spreading her legs. "Sex?" he'd whispered against her navel as he'd rolled her pants off the curve of her hips like he'd been unwrapping a delicate present and didn't want to rip the paper.
"Um," she'd managed to gasp as he'd run his tongue against her skin like a big, grinning cat, leaving a cool trail of evaporating passion behind. His fingers had curled around her hips, possessive, dragging her toward him just an inch, resettling her, and then he'd started to knead her with his hands.
"Read it to me," he'd growled.
She blinked. Okay, this wasn't quite like that. But. She blinked, trying to force the pelting imagery away. Her eyes stung. She wanted to do that again. She wanted to go home as badly as he did... She hated it at the hospital. She knew if she took him home they very likely would not be having erotic, book-assisted sex, at least not for a few days, not until he got some sustainable energy back, not until his pain was less enough that he didn't need to be stoned all the time to endure it, but there was something about spooning him, reading to him softly while he rested that just tugged at her heart. He would be so much better at home. She would be. She would be so much better at home without all the reminders that he might not be there when she came back if she left him alone.
"Meredith?" he said.
"S--sorry," she said, reaching up quickly to clear away the sudden spread of tears. "What percentage of TBI cases present with damage to the optic nerve? The choices are three, five, eight, and ten."
He thought for a minute, long enough that she thought she might need to repeat the question, and he didn't want to ask. "Five percent," he said. "Roughly." He rubbed her arm.
"Thank you," she whispered, unable to stop the sniffle that brought with it a new spattering of tears. She wiped her face and tried to read the next question, but he reached down and closed the book. Her highlighter warped the pages in the middle. He clenched the edges of the book, leaning forward as he swept it away and put it on the table on the other side of the bed. Out of her reach. He sighed as he leaned back, breathing as though he'd been lifting weights, not a book, which made things burn and start all over again. She couldn't stop herself.
"But I have to study," she protested softly.
He wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulling her against him. Her ear lay flat against his chest, and he rested his chin on her head, burying it in her hair. He sighed. "You have to sleep, Mere."
"But..."
"I'll be here," he said. "And I'll be fine." He kissed her softly, rubbing his arm up and down her back, slow and soothing, and she felt her eyelids start to droop, only to snap open again. This was wrong. This was all wrong.
"You need it more, Derek."
"If you don't sleep, I'm not going to sleep either."
"Oh, Derek."
"I'm feeling better," he said. His hand stopped for a moment, stopped soothing her. It was as if he were pausing for a serious self-assessment. "Really. I'm lifting heavy medical volumes. I'm walking across the room. I'm even letting you have my side of the bed."
"This is a small bed," she said. "There aren't really sides."
She fell apart. Finally. It was a stupid thing to fall apart about. The bed not having sides. She wanted to go home. She wanted to take him home. She wanted them to be home, sleeping in their own sheets, away from this place, away from the place that had laid him bare and was doing similar metaphorical work with her. She hated it so much. Except he couldn't leave. He'd nearly died. He'd had his skull drilled open. It was a miracle of very modern medicine that he was even around to chat at all. And it... She was... He...
The torrent of tears, the ones that had refused time and time again to fall all seemed to hit her all at once, more of a hurricane than anything else, and she sobbed. Ugly, sucking sobs that racked her torso, and made her hair stick to her face as the salty wetness dried and replenished and dried and replenished, leaving her skin a hurting, burning wasteland.
"Hey," he whispered in her ear. "It's all right. I'm here."
She clutched at his shirt, selfishly happy her fingers weren't tangling up in lead wires and other things, selfishly happy that all she had to touch was the warm, comforting expanse of his shirt stretched over his chest, which expanded with every soft, living breath. Living. Living.
"I'm so afraid," she said.
"I'm sorry I scared you. I'm so sorry, Meredith."
"It's n-not your fault," she said, inhaling deeply, shakily, trying. Trying to stop. He wasn't supposed to be apologizing. He wasn't supposed to have her wrapped in his arms. That was... That was her job. She was... "It's the freaking deer's fault."
"No, I meant about... After," he said, his embrace tightening. "After I woke up. I should have... Been fine. You were there with me, and that means more to me than anything. But I let... I let the situation own me, and I... You've been starving yourself and not sleeping, and I..." He went silent, and she shifted to look at him. He was staring. Staring off, somewhere. Not visibly upset, not a mess like she was. But he wasn't happy, and she forgot her crying for a moment.
"Derek, no," she said definitively. She kissed him. Their noses bumped, and she was vaguely aware of the nasal cannula breaking what should have been an interlocking gesture of nothing but skin. He tasted perfect, a warm fire blasting away the sudden chill of her fears, and she never wanted it to end. The moment made the room fall away, made everything fall away. She slid her hands over his shoulders and squeezed as he nudged her with his nose. She tilted, and he caressed the sensitive skin under her jaw, twisting, trailing along the line of bone, ending with a wet, needing kiss against her lips. She moaned as he sucked on her lower lip. Her breath was gone. His breath was gone. They panted, dueling for one last piece. When she pulled back, his fingers curled against her in silent protest as he fought to catch his breath. He leaned against her, resting his forehead on hers. His eyelids dipped, and she remembered why she'd kissed him.
Tired. He was tired. He was healing. He wasn't supposed to be doing this. She was supposed to be the support.
"No," she continued, splaying her palms against his chest. "You don't always have to be the rock, Derek. You don't always have to be the one supporting me. You're a person. You get scared. You get sad. And I want to be there for you when it happens, even though it frightens me. I want to... You've always been... and I want to... I want to be there. I want to."
He stared at her, meeting her gaze, so very close. Meeting it with sharp, blue, tired eyes. No haze of drugs kept him from staring into her, delving for the meaning she wasn't saying. A glaze blotted some of it out, yes, but he sort of... broke through it. "You were," he said, kissing her. "You are." He kissed her again. "I love you." He smiled. Truly. Despite everything. In the dim light, his eyes sparkled, and it sent a tremor trough her body, started a deep, twanging, burning sort of need. It elated her and terrified her all at once.
I want sex.
He'd been happy then, too. A shiver sent claws scraping down her spine, made her twitch in his grasp. His grip tightened, and he frowned. "Mere?" he whispered, soft, concerned, and he was doing it again.
He was...
He was trying to be perfect. For her. For everyone. He wasn't supposed to need to do that right then. She was supposed to be... She was supposed to be enough.
Her.
And she wasn't.
Because she was falling apart. Because she was being ridiculous.
"No, no, I mean," she said as the tears started to leak again. "I want to be there. And I can't. I can't be there if you're dead, and I'm..."
He sighed. "Mere, I'm fine," he assured her. "I'm not dead. I'm tired, and I feel awful, but I'm not dead. I'm here, and I'll be fine."
She sniffled as she shook her head. "You don't need this right now. This is all messed up. You're not supposed to be helping me. I'm being crappy at the pylon thing. The supporting. I'm..."
Her voice fell away from her as she started to cry again in earnest. She was. She was awful at this. But he felt so good. Wrapped around her. Whispering. She'd missed him. Missed him being Derek like this. He tightened his arms around her, and his words soothed her until the torrent stalled to a drizzle and then quiet.
"Mere, when Annie sat down in my lap, do you know what I was thinking?"
"I know you want kids, Derek. I know. I really, really know. I'm going to think-"
"Stop," he said, halting her. "No. Yes, I was thinking about having my own someday, but that's not what I meant. I meant..."
"What?"
"I was happy because she poked me in the rib and didn't care," he said, a light, whuffing laugh dotting his sentence. "You don't need to treat me with kid gloves, Meredith. Even if I'm scared. Even if I'm sad. Even if I'm tired or depressed."
She sighed, leaning against him. "Where do you think I learned it from? You do that to me, Derek. You did that to me when this whole thing was starting. Not telling me about how bad your headache was until I pried it out of you."
"I'm sorry," he said. He kissed her softly. "I know. I'll... I'll try not to, Mere. I'm sick right now. I feel... Tired, and spacey, and I know if I got up right now and tried to get away from here, I'd make it maybe halfway down the hall before I had to sit because I'm so fatigued. But, Mere, knowing you're hurting yourself trying to make me feel better? That's what's making this unbearable."
"Derek, you... You're you. You almost never admit there's something you can't handle. And I told you I would deal with this. I promised I would."
"What I can't handle is you being so upset that you're not sleeping or eating, Mere, promise or not," he insisted.
She lay her ear flat against his chest as she curled into his warmth. The dark blur of the hospital room wavered as his inhalations and exhalations shifted her view with an even rhythm. Up and down. Up and down. He rubbed her back, soft and soothing and perfect and Derek-y. And it felt so nice. The blood rushed under his skin, and she felt almost like she'd put a conch shell to her ear and was listening for the ocean. Where's the heartbeat. There. Thump. Thump. Thump. There it was. Slightly off time with the distant, quiet beeps pulsing from his heart monitor. She ran her index finger up and down over the bump of his pectoral muscle as she listened. The sound of his hand against her back rustled, and the repeated, unending soothing built friction on her skin, making her feel warm and loved and safe.
She sighed, the effort of it making her shudder.
"Mere, the support thing you keep spouting is mutual. It doesn't have to be an either or deal," Derek said. "That much, I know."
She wiped her hands at her face. Her skin was sticky, probably blotched and unattractive. But dry. It'd dried. The gross, ugly crying had dried. He'd... He was Derek. And he had the unique ability to make everything seem fine again. The unique ability to exorcise the most horrific horrors, the saddest grief, and the most painful hurting. She wanted that sort of comforting. She wanted that desperately, selfishly even. He had to be tired. He had to be struggling. He had to be... But he was insisting. He was being all Derek-y and stubborn. And she wanted to be able to close her eyes again. She wasn't going to make it until they took him home. Not if the awful, twisting feelings in her gut after just the last forty odd hours were any indication.
"I had a nightmare," she confessed.
"Okay," he said, cautious, as if he expected one wrong word to send her running away from him and any potential relief he thought he could give her. "Of what?"
"You," she said. "We were at home. And you wanted to have sex. And we started, but then you stopped and you... You had a seizure Derek. A full tonic-clonic seizure. And I had to watch it. You turned blue. And then you died. You just... I don't want you to die. Please, please don't die, Derek."
"Shhh," he whispered as she started to cry again, but it wasn't like before. It wasn't the ugly, racking tears that made her torso shake. It was quiet, subtle suffering. The kind that stole in on a moment of weakness and hung around like a parasite, unwilling to abate. The kind that came with the worst kind of pain and never went away entirely. Grieving for a loved one. Even years later, it smuggled itself along, quiet, until a stupid reminder would set it off again. A favorite cup. A smell. A picture.
"You were so depressed this morning," she whispered. "I thought... What if you have a complication? What if your heart stops, or you stop breathing, and you have a second to choose, but you're so depressed you just decide, what's the point? That's why I drowned, Derek. I don't want you to drown."
"Oh, Mere," he said with a low, shuddering sigh. "Is that... Mere, I was embarrassed, and frustrated, and tired, and sure, I wanted to be far, far away, but dead? No. You're marrying me, Meredith. That trumps anything as far as I'm concerned."
"But you asked for morphine," she said. "And when we woke you up to move you, you barely said a word. And I had to drag you into the bathroom. And you were crying."
"Mere, serious exertion like that causes headaches," he replied. "I was in pain. A lot of pain. Asking for morphine had nothing to do with me wanting to shut the world out permanently."
"But you don't like morphine. You were begging them to take you off it."
He rubbed her back. "Mere, I don't like morphine, no. If my choice is a little headache or being tripped up on morphine, I'll pick the headache. But I don't like solid pain either. And that was as bad as it was Monday night. Worse."
"But the crying. And the dead staring. And... You barely..."
"Stoned," he said, giving her a wry, weak smile. "I was really, really stoned. Stoned, exhausted, and embarrassed. I don't like that I can't do things anymore. It embarrasses me, and it makes me feel like a burden. It doesn't mean I want to die, Meredith. It means I want to be able to do things again."
"You're not a burden, Derek," she said.
He grinned as he ran his fingers under her jaw line, settled to grip her chin, and then he leaned in to kiss her. "Neither are you, Mere. Ever."
"What if you develop epilepsy?" she said. "Will you still want to live then?"
"Yes," he said, quick, sure, definitive. Despite everything, he hadn't had to think about it, consider, or wonder, and that heartened her more than she'd expected it to.
"But you wouldn't be able to be a surgeon anymore," she said. "You could wish all you want to do it again, but nobody would let you cut when you could have a seizure any minute."
"Meredith, being a surgeon..." He shrugged. "It means a lot to me. It does. I won't lie. Losing the career I've spent my life building would be painful. But..."
"But?" she prodded.
"I could go into teaching. I'm one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. Any university with a medical program would kill to have me doing lectures. I could go strictly into research. I could... I don't know. There are options."
He'd really thought about this. She'd thought he'd been too scared to think coherently about his future if things went wrong. Too scared and worried and other things. But he'd thought about it. He'd thought rationally about the possibility of his career ending. Permanently.
She felt guilty for missing it. How had she missed that? She'd proposed, more for herself than for him, and she'd told him everything would be okay, refused to let him try and comfort her, but she'd never thought to try and work things out with him, make it really seem like it would be okay, even if things ended up vastly not okay. They hadn't done it. The mutual thing. Discussion. That, in the long run, probably would have been better for them both. Talking. Rationally talking. The comforting thing... She still had some stuff to learn, apparently.
She closed her eyes, trying to imagine him as Derek the professor or Derek the researcher. It didn't fit. It didn't fit at all. But it would keep him in medicine, would keep him in the field, and the essence of the field, the helping... That was what made him the happiest out of all of it. Even if he couldn't directly change anything, couldn't clip off aneurysms, couldn't save someone from damage that would affect his or her entire life, he'd still be saving lives, making them better. And that. That was what he valued most. Right?
Still...
"But you love the cutting," she said.
He nodded. "I love the cutting," he admitted softly.
"How can you be so sure then?"
"I love a lot of things, Meredith," he said. "But I love you the most. I really can't imagine wanting to die in light of that."
She blinked. All at once, the world started making sense again. The cogs clanked, and the wheels turned. Gears shifted. She sighed as beating, unending waves of relief overwhelmed her, splashed against the crags of worry and obliterated them, and she was a smooth shore of glittering sand again. Because he'd finally said something she could digest and believe and hold onto. She'd been there herself. She sighed, listening to the soft sound of his breathing, letting the warmth soak her.
She'd never admitted it. She'd never told him. But, now, it seemed so important. Something that had to be... said. If him telling her had that sort of effect when it was only hypothetical, she couldn't imagine the relief she'd denied him when it'd been real. She couldn't... She clutched his shirt and sighed, a fresh swath of tears cutting her down like a storm of rapiers. But it wasn't grief or... anything really. Just...
Letting go.
"You're why I came back," she murmured into his shirt, breathing in the scent of him, his warmth, everything.
He stilled, and all that remained of him for a long set of moments was his quiet breathing and the solid feel of him against her, living. She rested against him, not opening her eyes, letting him process what she'd said in peace. And she liked it. She liked just... Resting. Resting there.
"If I had a choice," he said, "You'd be the reason, too."
"Really?"
"Yes, really, Meredith," he said. "Though, I'd rather not be in a position to prove it to you. And Meredith?"
"What?"
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"Being here with me. I'm..."
She lifted her head from him to peer at him. His face was wet. He'd been crying. When had he been crying again? She'd missed it. Missed it again. But he didn't look sad. Didn't look... anything bad other than exhausted. He was relieved. Happy to be in love. Happy to be loved. Happy to offer comfort and be comforted. Despite the fact that he was stuck in the bed and she had the ability to run far, far away, everything between them was equal. And that was perfect enough to hurt.
She gave him a watery smile. "I know."
"Sleep, Meredith," he whispered, kissing the top of her head as he gathered her firmly in his embrace. The bed hummed as he lowered them, and he sighed with tired relief as they flattened out. She settled against him. They fit. They really fit. She clutched at his shirt. His hand found hers, and he brushed the ring with his fingertips, caressed her knuckles, and raised her fingers to his lips. He kissed her. She breathed him in as he gently let her hand drop back to his chest. Moving took effort, and he was warm and soft and Derek. Hers. Her fiancé. Her eyes shut, and she couldn't get them to open again, not that she wanted them to. The dark wasn't scary anymore.
"Sleep," he said again. "We both need it."
"Even though I'm on your side of the bed?" she said.
He laughed as he rubbed her back, up and down and up and down. "I'll live," he said, his tone thick with sleep. He shifted, and she felt his chin settling against the pillow over her head. His body relaxed, and the motions of his hand stopped. His breathing evened out. He hovered, not quite sleeping yet, but relaxed, drifting in the space just above it.
Though he'd meant it as a joke, she realized she believed him. Believed him in her head. Believed him in her heart. Innately believed. He was Derek. He was very good at making her believe things. Making her know things that she should have known. He always had been.
I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you for... ever. I'm a little late. I... I know I'm a little late in telling you that. I... I just... I just want you to take your time. You know? Take all the time you need. Because you have... A choice to make. And when I had a choice to make... I chose wrong.
She couldn't be sure whether he surrendered first or she did. It didn't matter.
They slept.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
~~~~~
"Aside from the fact that my hair is now the fairest in all the clan," Stewart said as he reached out to steady her before she fell on her ass. "Derek seems to be doing okay."
"I know," she said as she brushed herself off.
"Really?" he said.
She loosed an exasperated sigh. "You just agreed with me."
"I meant you, Meredith," Stewart said. "You don't seem to know."
"Derek's fine," she said, even as something in the back of her mind squealed at her. Wrong, wrong, wrong. "I'm fine. We're all fine!"
"I sense a but," Stewart said. "And not the mesmerizing kind attached to women."
I mean I can't. I just... Please. Please, I can't.
The elevator dinged, finally greeting the main floor, but she ignored it as a flourish of the nightshift hospital staff, doctors, nurses, orderlies, custodial folks, others, scrambled into the cavernous space, renewing the emptiness around her and Stewart. The doors trundled shut. She sniffled, trying not to think of Derek as she'd helped him into the bathroom, practically bowing under his weight. The weight he'd been too tired and too broken to help her with. And she tried not to think of Derek on her living room floor, twitching, blue. Dead.
It didn't work.
"What if he dies?" she blurted. "What if there's a complication, and there's a moment where he has to decide if he wants to live or not, and he doesn't. What if he doesn't want it?"
Stewart sighed. "Meredith..."
"No," she said. "You can't tell me it's stupid. I drowned. I've been dead. I know."
"Pardon?"
She blinked as she realized what she'd said. She didn't want Derek's family to know how screwed up she'd been. How stupid she'd been. She didn't want them to know, and yet, this was the second time she'd gotten herself into a verbal tangle with Stewart about it. Stewart. Stewart, unassuming, there, but not in an oppressive way, not in a way that smothered who she was or how she felt. He'd let her whine about her family and tell him how poisonous and undeserving she was. He'd paced with her in his station wagon and bought her liquor in his pajamas. He'd given her tequila and let her make her own choice about whether she would drink it. And he was...
Stewart.
Gangly, giraffey Stewart, who always seemed to disarm her with his stupid smiles and his sarcastic comments, who always seemed to understand her whether he liked it or not. He was like her bridge. Screwed up, family-fearing Meredith. Stewart. Shepherd family in a Christmas-loving, Thanksgiving-gathering, happy, boisterous, supportive heap.
A decision snapped into place. She sighed as tired exhaustion wept from her pores like tears of sweat. She wanted to lie down and let everything go away for a while. She did. She was tired, but she couldn't sleep. She was worried, and heartsick, and wishing she could be somehow better. Better for Derek. Better than the wispy, sniffly, shivery thing she'd devolved into as the hours had dragged on and proven her newfound not-running strength was misguided, wishful thinking. She wasn't strong at all.
"The ferryboat crash," she said, sniffling. "It was all over the news. We were onsite trying to help triage the accident victims. A patient knocked me into the water, and I drowned. I was dead, Stewart. Derek pulled me out of the water, but I was dead. Freaking dead. Meredith is a blueberry popsicle dead. He said I matched my scrubs. That I was like ice. And then he had to wait three hours while they tried everything in the book before they managed to revive me."
She stared at Stewart, but his face didn't betray any particular emotion or judgment. She took the opportunity to pull them away from the elevators, where a crowd was gathering again for the next trip up. She and Stewart sat down in the waiting area, facing each other. She felt Lilliputian to his titan as he folded over his knees, resting his face against his hands and his elbows on his kneecaps. Even slouched, he towered.
"So," he said, hesitant as he pieced things together. "When you told me last week that he saved you, you sort of meant literally."
"Yes," she said. "I was dead. I had a moment in the water. It was cold. And I was sad. And I thought, why bother? Just a moment. And it killed me. What if Derek has one of those moments?"
She eyed the entrance to the hospital. People walked in and out, even at the late hour. Shuffling. Moving. Like ants in the scuffle. The air outside the windows was dark and wet, and the pavement glittered against the streetlights. But it wasn't raining. A car rolled up to let a man out, and the paint wasn't wet. The air in front of the streetlight near the entrance didn't shiver with small slivers of drizzle. Nobody walking in or out had umbrellas unfurled or raincoats donned.
"Meredith, please don't take this the wrong way," Stewart said, drawing her gaze back inside. "I'm sure it violates the sympathetic girl talk code, which, by the way, I am none too happy about being continually dragged into with you, but you compel me for some strange reason." He paused and schooled his expression. "You're being ridiculous."
She sighed. "I know! I know I'm being ridiculous."
She was a ridiculous, exhausted, death-fearing freak. She'd already come to the conclusion hours ago. She'd also come to the conclusion that there wasn't a blessed thing she could do about it except wait until she got Derek safely home.
"Exactly," Stewart said. "You think you're being ridiculous. Not that the fear itself is ridiculous."
"What?"
"Meredith," he said. "Do you know what I do for a living?"
She blinked. It'd never come up. She'd never asked. "N-no," she stuttered. "I never really..." She sighed. "Great. I'm so bad at the family thing, I just-"
Crap.
Guilt overwhelmed her when she realized she had absolutely no idea. None. And she'd never asked. Never thought about asking. Never considered it. Everything had been about her and how she couldn't do the family thing. She'd wasted a lot of time hiding behind Derek, not necessarily physically, but a lot of what she'd talked about had had to do specifically with him. Aunt Meredith. Aunt implied she was someone's sister.
Crap, crap, crap.
Kathy works too much. She's bright and shiny until she's not. And then she's really, really not. She'd let Kathy provide endless counsel, never once asking Kathy if Kathy was okay. If Kathy cared that Derek couldn't remember a freaking year of his life.
And then there was Sarah. Who seemed friendly enough, but she was obviously not nearly the hotshot Derek was. Chief Webber hadn't come barreling in, trying to woo her the second she'd stepped over the hospital's threshold. She was younger than Derek. How much younger? Meredith hadn't asked. Maybe Sarah hadn't had a chance to really make her mark yet. Was she an attending? Or just a resident?
And Natalie. Meredith had barely spoken to Natalie. She'd looked so much like Derek, Meredith had found it disconcerting enough during the initial few days that a divide had sort of settled between them, and the lack of familiarity had stuck until Meredith's departure.
And Nancy. She was going through her own personal hell right then. Though, despite their shakily better terms, Meredith didn't think she could ever offer the woman much comfort. Meredith was a reminder. But Nancy had to talk with the other women. Didn't she? Did they have conference calls to express their woes? Tea parties? Girls' nights out? What did... How did that work?
And then there were the men.
John. What did John do? And Chris... Chris, she'd speculated, was in the military. But she hadn't asked. And Rob. Why had Rob left Nancy? Surely, there'd been a reason. A precursor. And what did he do with his life? Why did he drive that little sports car? She wondered what else she'd missed, and suddenly found herself wondering when the next family thing was.
Because she wanted to try again.
"I'm a stay-at-home dad," he said, interrupting the downward spiral of her thoughts.
"You?" she blurted. "But you're..."
He grinned, easing further into a slouch. "Entirely too manly? Thank you for the compliment," he said. She couldn't help but snort as he pulled back and sprawled his long arms over the backs of the chairs to his left and right like some sort of triumphant cowboy. "I played in the NBA before I had to retire because I wrecked my knee. The Knicks. I met Sarah at a game Mark dragged her to because Derek was busy. They sat right behind the bench, and she caught my eye." He smiled as he lost himself in the memory.
"Alex," Meredith said as understanding dawned. "Holy crap! I thought... You..."
"Yep," he replied. "You have the privilege of being almost legally related to your very own has-been! I had surgery to fix the knee, and I'm mostly okay for things like capture the flag, but there was a while there where I couldn't walk without assistance, and then crutches, and then a cane."
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Derek is a doer. Derek is cocky. He will get depressed from time to time. But he'll get over it. Just because he's down doesn't mean he wants to die."
"You didn't see the way he was acting earlier."
"I know firsthand the way he was acting earlier. He's drugged. Give him a week before you label him with chronic anything, let alone a death wish."
"It doesn't have to be chronic," she said. "It just takes a second."
He regarded her silently for a moment. He gripped the backs of the chairs, and a sigh rolled from his shoulders to the tips of his fingers as he re-slouched. "Meredith, are you familiar with the concept of metal fatigue?"
She frowned. "Metal breaks when it's bent too much."
He nodded. "Take my knee, for instance," he said. His right hand left the back of the chair, and he grasped his kneecap, flexing his fingers as he squeezed. She wondered if he wore a brace under his pants or something. If he had a prescription for pain. If he'd had a hard time with the capture the flag, but did it anyway because it was a Shepherd family thing, and he enjoyed it. She'd never paid attention. She'd never...
"Do you think that one day I was running down the court, and it just snapped for no good reason?" he asked.
She blinked, torn from her thoughts. "Uh."
"Months, Meredith," he said. "I had months of aches and pains before it finally went. I knew it was coming even if I didn't want to admit it."
"I don't..."
"How many months or years of aches and pains did you have before you had your moment?"
"But I..."
"And how long has Derek been having troubles?"
"But..."
"That's all I've got," he said, smiling. "You don't have to stammer anymore."
"But."
"I know," he said. "I've ruined some quality moping, haven't I? My work here is done!" he said as he slapped his knees and stood. "Sarah is probably wondering whether I fell into one of the urinals. I should get back. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Okay," she replied, her voice weak and small as she watched his lanky, departing figure, but as she had time to settle in and think about it more, the fear he'd sucker-punched out of her system came creeping back like a coiling, ugly weed.
Derek had been depressed for less than two days from this surgery, sure. And Stewart was right. Just that alone... It would be really kind of silly to worry about. She knew the statistics about post-surgery depression.
But the week and a half before the craniotomy hadn't been all that pleasant, either. And he'd been really off since she'd drowned. Really, really off. Dark and twisty in his own, internalizing, suffering way. He thought things over and over and over until he was dizzy with it, until he'd looked at every possible angle forty times or more, and when it was a dark thing he pondered, he just got darker, darker, and darker still as the badness coiled.
That was what he'd done with her drowning. He'd hovered. Slept poorly. Moped. Lost out on a job he'd thought he wanted. And he'd finally ended up needing to go home to his family for some relief, which he hadn't gotten. He'd gotten his head cracked against a steering wheel for his trouble, and he'd had to deal with the drowning thing all over again. He'd had to deal with everything, Addison, Mark, everything, all over again in a fraction of the time. He'd been broken with anxiety and upset and twisty disquiet.
He'd been broken.
And then he'd had this stupid surgery, which had terrified him, dehumanized him, and left him weeping and tired, and what was left of his walls had come crashing down. Maybe he hadn't been a chronic sufferer like she had been with her stupid not-family and her stupid, disastrous life. Maybe his dead gaze from the morning, his hopeless surrender, maybe they hadn't been around long enough to strip him of everything that he felt he wanted to live for. But a month and a half was a long time to get pounded into submission. What if that was enough time for him to have a moment?
On second glance, she'd regretted her decision to stop flailing and kicking her limbs when she'd hit the freezing water. On second glance. But the first glance was what had mattered when it came down to it. And Derek, on first glance, might think about his fiancé swan diving into the Puget Sound, might think about Mark's backstabbing, might look at the door to his room and wonder if walking there was worth the exhaustion. And that might be enough. Enough that he wouldn't get that second glance. All it took was infection, or post-op pneumonia, or cerebral edema, and he'd be in trouble.
Big trouble.
She doubted Stewart had taken any of the crap that had happened prior to the surgery into consideration with his metal fatigue analogy. Derek? Derek was pretty freaking fatigued when it came down to it. When it came down to that first glance.
A pang jabbed her. She stared at the elevator as she stood up. It'd gone back up to floor five and hovered there. She opted for the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, almost tripping more than once. But she needed to get to him. Needed to reassure herself that he was okay. It was a biting, hurting sort of need that nearly had her sobbing by the time she'd reached his floor and wound her way through the hallways to his door.
When she rushed through the door and plowed to a halt, her heart jackhammered for several pulses and then began a gasping, slow decline to normal again. Derek was still sitting up, but his eyes were shut. His head had tilted to the side toward the door, as if he'd been watching for something or someone and had drifted off. His lips hung slightly parted, relaxed. The soft, deep, rasping sound of his breathing filled the lull between the beeps of his heart monitor. He slept. Peaceful. Not scared, or disturbed, or anything at all. Removed from the world.
She walked over to the bed. "I'm back," she whispered, but he didn't budge. "Sorry I took so long." For a moment, she just stared at him. His face was slack, expressionless. If he was dreaming, it didn't show. She blinked, watching. Watching for the longest time.
Sighing, she grabbed her pile of books and highlighters from the bedside table and eased up onto the bed next to him, curling into him, into the crook of his shoulder. She sat the book between them, resting the end of spine between their hips and the front and back against their thighs. Test questions. She couldn't just read right then. She needed interactive. She needed something that would make her focus, something that wouldn't let her space out, wouldn't let her stop thinking. Not as easily, anyway.
Tiredness slogged through her brain. Crying that refused to happen hurt her eyes. She hadn't slept. She hadn't slept more than an hour or two in the last forty some hours or so. She needed sleep. But she couldn't bring herself to close her eyes for more than a second.
When her eyes were open, Derek was warm and breathing. His heart throbbed against the wall of his chest, and the sounds of sleep, the rustle of air and the vague rush of blood underneath his skin, were a soothing, relaxing thrum of life against her mental disquiet. And, physically, he was so much better. He'd been looking better every time he woke up. When she closed her eyes, though, he wasn't better at all. He was seizing and dying and giving up. One nightmare had been enough. Sleeping was... Not happening.
She sighed and stared at the first question, trying not to let her mind wander as she absorbed the words. She scribbled notes down onto the sheet of paper, flipping back and forth, trying to decide. Somewhere between answering question one and the moment when she'd mustered enough energy to read question two, he woke.
It wasn't an abrupt sort of awakening. It was the kind that happened on a weekend, when the alarm hadn't gone off, the sun beat through the windows, and wakefulness sort of slipped in through the cracks of dreams. His slow, even breathing shortened just enough to tell her he was with her.
"Hey," she whispered as she moved to question three.
He muttered a half-asleep, grunty syllable. His head shifted minutely to rest against hers. The warmth of his cheek spread into her left temple like a bath of sunlight. His fingers twitched, he wrapped the arm she'd curled up under, the arm with the intravenous line and the finger clip, more tightly against her hip, and then he went quiet. He wasn't sleeping. He wasn't talking either, but the silence that hummed between them wasn't the sort that begged for filling. It had a warm quality to it. An I'm-just-enjoying-you-here quality.
"Everyone went home for the night," she whispered. Question four. "We're alone again."
He seemed to be content just sitting there, so she didn't press it when he didn't speak. Question five was hard. She paused on it for what seemed like an eternity before the answer came to her, and she was able to move on. This was, ironically, a section on traumatic brain injury. She'd flipped to it quite by accident, but she needed to cover it sometime, and... She doubted it would get any easier. At least, not in the nearish, before-the-test future. A pang ripped through the back of her throat when she read the question on steps to relieve intracranial pressure. That could have easily been Derek. Derek needing the shunt or a barbiturate coma or the decompressive craniectomy. Fatality percentages of epidural hematomas brought her to a shaky halt.
"That one is A," Derek whispered.
Meredith stilled. "What?"
He shifted and raised a finger to point at question five. She'd been way past that, on to question nine, but it didn't matter. The pad of his index finger lightly brushed the page, pawing at it, almost as if he were trying desperately to keep his place. "The answer is A, not B. Increased urination after a traumatic brain injury can indicate..." His voice trailed away for a moment before whatever struggle he was fighting yielded him with the remainder of his sentence, "A hormonal imbalance."
She stared at the page. B had been anxiety. It was the only symptom on the list she had direct experience with. But when he said it, reasoning she'd missed clicked into place. Anxiety was more about increased urge, not increased output. "Deficient ADH output?" she said.
"Right," he replied after a pause. "And what causes it?"
"That could mean an injury to the hypothalamus," she said excitedly as some of the stuff she'd studied earlier in the day started shaking loose from the mental jumble. It'd just needed a nudge. "Or the connection between the hypothalamus and the pituitary. Or to just the pituitary."
"Yes," he said. "What's deficient ADH production called?"
"Cranial diabetes insipidus?"
"Yeah. Treatment?"
"Non-surgical. Medication can replace the missing hormones."
"Mmm," he replied. It was a low sort of rumble that vibrated against her spine. It was the first time he'd used it in the last two days where it didn't have an "I'm tired" tacked onto the meaning. All it said was yes.
She leaned into his neck and breathed him in, relished the warmth of him. "Thanks," she said. She pointed to question nine. "What about this one? I was waffling..."
He put his hand on the page, breathing softly as he stared at it. His fingers felt along the text, almost as if he were blind, but instead of over the words, he ran them under. It was an odd gesture, because Derek wasn't a finger reader. He rarely touched the pages except to turn them. His progress was slow. He made it to choice A before his hand fell away.
"Read it to me?" he said with a sigh, but if he was disturbed by the fact that he needed her help, he didn't let on. He breathed against her, softly, waiting for her, and she felt almost like they were back at home in bed, just sharing a moment caught in an ebb of activity.
A few weeks before the ferry accident, he'd been up late, his bedside lamp glowing in the relative dimness, reading when she'd come home from her shift. She'd flopped down onto her side of the bed and pulled out her own book, but it'd been one of those nights when the silence had been getting to her. She'd tossed her book onto her pillow and rolled toward him, asking him what he was reading. He'd flashed her the book spine.
"Hemingway," she'd said, making a face as she'd flopped down against his chest and heaved a woeful sigh.
He'd smirked. "For Whom the Bell Tolls is a good read. Way better than Night Pleasures." He'd looked pointedly at her discarded paperback, complete with its half-naked, leather pants-clad, muscular male model painted on the front. "Seriously, Meredith?"
"Seriously," she'd said. "Reading is for escape. How can anything they made me read in high school be an escape?"
He hadn't answered her. Instead, he'd flipped several pages forward to a section where the pages were slightly more ruffled with wear and started to read in the low, reverent, whispery tone he often reserved for her name. He'd sucked her in just with that, and she'd been entranced for a whole chapter while he read and absently rubbed her shoulder with his palm. Hemingway had a sort of simple, primer style that she'd always found distasteful and dry, but when Derek read it, it seemed like every word was a brushstroke in a masterpiece.
"Oh," she'd said lamely when he'd finished.
He'd raised an eyebrow as he'd lain the book on his nightstand. "Well?"
"Well what?" she'd said.
"Now's your chance to convince me on the merits of romantic heroes named Vladimir."
"Seriously? And it's Kyrian, Derek. Jeez."
"Kyrian," he'd said, correcting himself with a smirk. "Pardon me."
She'd picked up the book she'd discarded. "I can't read you this. It's like... It's..."
He'd rolled on top of her, spreading her legs. "Sex?" he'd whispered against her navel as he'd rolled her pants off the curve of her hips like he'd been unwrapping a delicate present and didn't want to rip the paper.
"Um," she'd managed to gasp as he'd run his tongue against her skin like a big, grinning cat, leaving a cool trail of evaporating passion behind. His fingers had curled around her hips, possessive, dragging her toward him just an inch, resettling her, and then he'd started to knead her with his hands.
"Read it to me," he'd growled.
She blinked. Okay, this wasn't quite like that. But. She blinked, trying to force the pelting imagery away. Her eyes stung. She wanted to do that again. She wanted to go home as badly as he did... She hated it at the hospital. She knew if she took him home they very likely would not be having erotic, book-assisted sex, at least not for a few days, not until he got some sustainable energy back, not until his pain was less enough that he didn't need to be stoned all the time to endure it, but there was something about spooning him, reading to him softly while he rested that just tugged at her heart. He would be so much better at home. She would be. She would be so much better at home without all the reminders that he might not be there when she came back if she left him alone.
"Meredith?" he said.
"S--sorry," she said, reaching up quickly to clear away the sudden spread of tears. "What percentage of TBI cases present with damage to the optic nerve? The choices are three, five, eight, and ten."
He thought for a minute, long enough that she thought she might need to repeat the question, and he didn't want to ask. "Five percent," he said. "Roughly." He rubbed her arm.
"Thank you," she whispered, unable to stop the sniffle that brought with it a new spattering of tears. She wiped her face and tried to read the next question, but he reached down and closed the book. Her highlighter warped the pages in the middle. He clenched the edges of the book, leaning forward as he swept it away and put it on the table on the other side of the bed. Out of her reach. He sighed as he leaned back, breathing as though he'd been lifting weights, not a book, which made things burn and start all over again. She couldn't stop herself.
"But I have to study," she protested softly.
He wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulling her against him. Her ear lay flat against his chest, and he rested his chin on her head, burying it in her hair. He sighed. "You have to sleep, Mere."
"But..."
"I'll be here," he said. "And I'll be fine." He kissed her softly, rubbing his arm up and down her back, slow and soothing, and she felt her eyelids start to droop, only to snap open again. This was wrong. This was all wrong.
"You need it more, Derek."
"If you don't sleep, I'm not going to sleep either."
"Oh, Derek."
"I'm feeling better," he said. His hand stopped for a moment, stopped soothing her. It was as if he were pausing for a serious self-assessment. "Really. I'm lifting heavy medical volumes. I'm walking across the room. I'm even letting you have my side of the bed."
"This is a small bed," she said. "There aren't really sides."
She fell apart. Finally. It was a stupid thing to fall apart about. The bed not having sides. She wanted to go home. She wanted to take him home. She wanted them to be home, sleeping in their own sheets, away from this place, away from the place that had laid him bare and was doing similar metaphorical work with her. She hated it so much. Except he couldn't leave. He'd nearly died. He'd had his skull drilled open. It was a miracle of very modern medicine that he was even around to chat at all. And it... She was... He...
The torrent of tears, the ones that had refused time and time again to fall all seemed to hit her all at once, more of a hurricane than anything else, and she sobbed. Ugly, sucking sobs that racked her torso, and made her hair stick to her face as the salty wetness dried and replenished and dried and replenished, leaving her skin a hurting, burning wasteland.
"Hey," he whispered in her ear. "It's all right. I'm here."
She clutched at his shirt, selfishly happy her fingers weren't tangling up in lead wires and other things, selfishly happy that all she had to touch was the warm, comforting expanse of his shirt stretched over his chest, which expanded with every soft, living breath. Living. Living.
"I'm so afraid," she said.
"I'm sorry I scared you. I'm so sorry, Meredith."
"It's n-not your fault," she said, inhaling deeply, shakily, trying. Trying to stop. He wasn't supposed to be apologizing. He wasn't supposed to have her wrapped in his arms. That was... That was her job. She was... "It's the freaking deer's fault."
"No, I meant about... After," he said, his embrace tightening. "After I woke up. I should have... Been fine. You were there with me, and that means more to me than anything. But I let... I let the situation own me, and I... You've been starving yourself and not sleeping, and I..." He went silent, and she shifted to look at him. He was staring. Staring off, somewhere. Not visibly upset, not a mess like she was. But he wasn't happy, and she forgot her crying for a moment.
"Derek, no," she said definitively. She kissed him. Their noses bumped, and she was vaguely aware of the nasal cannula breaking what should have been an interlocking gesture of nothing but skin. He tasted perfect, a warm fire blasting away the sudden chill of her fears, and she never wanted it to end. The moment made the room fall away, made everything fall away. She slid her hands over his shoulders and squeezed as he nudged her with his nose. She tilted, and he caressed the sensitive skin under her jaw, twisting, trailing along the line of bone, ending with a wet, needing kiss against her lips. She moaned as he sucked on her lower lip. Her breath was gone. His breath was gone. They panted, dueling for one last piece. When she pulled back, his fingers curled against her in silent protest as he fought to catch his breath. He leaned against her, resting his forehead on hers. His eyelids dipped, and she remembered why she'd kissed him.
Tired. He was tired. He was healing. He wasn't supposed to be doing this. She was supposed to be the support.
"No," she continued, splaying her palms against his chest. "You don't always have to be the rock, Derek. You don't always have to be the one supporting me. You're a person. You get scared. You get sad. And I want to be there for you when it happens, even though it frightens me. I want to... You've always been... and I want to... I want to be there. I want to."
He stared at her, meeting her gaze, so very close. Meeting it with sharp, blue, tired eyes. No haze of drugs kept him from staring into her, delving for the meaning she wasn't saying. A glaze blotted some of it out, yes, but he sort of... broke through it. "You were," he said, kissing her. "You are." He kissed her again. "I love you." He smiled. Truly. Despite everything. In the dim light, his eyes sparkled, and it sent a tremor trough her body, started a deep, twanging, burning sort of need. It elated her and terrified her all at once.
I want sex.
He'd been happy then, too. A shiver sent claws scraping down her spine, made her twitch in his grasp. His grip tightened, and he frowned. "Mere?" he whispered, soft, concerned, and he was doing it again.
He was...
He was trying to be perfect. For her. For everyone. He wasn't supposed to need to do that right then. She was supposed to be... She was supposed to be enough.
Her.
And she wasn't.
Because she was falling apart. Because she was being ridiculous.
"No, no, I mean," she said as the tears started to leak again. "I want to be there. And I can't. I can't be there if you're dead, and I'm..."
He sighed. "Mere, I'm fine," he assured her. "I'm not dead. I'm tired, and I feel awful, but I'm not dead. I'm here, and I'll be fine."
She sniffled as she shook her head. "You don't need this right now. This is all messed up. You're not supposed to be helping me. I'm being crappy at the pylon thing. The supporting. I'm..."
Her voice fell away from her as she started to cry again in earnest. She was. She was awful at this. But he felt so good. Wrapped around her. Whispering. She'd missed him. Missed him being Derek like this. He tightened his arms around her, and his words soothed her until the torrent stalled to a drizzle and then quiet.
"Mere, when Annie sat down in my lap, do you know what I was thinking?"
"I know you want kids, Derek. I know. I really, really know. I'm going to think-"
"Stop," he said, halting her. "No. Yes, I was thinking about having my own someday, but that's not what I meant. I meant..."
"What?"
"I was happy because she poked me in the rib and didn't care," he said, a light, whuffing laugh dotting his sentence. "You don't need to treat me with kid gloves, Meredith. Even if I'm scared. Even if I'm sad. Even if I'm tired or depressed."
She sighed, leaning against him. "Where do you think I learned it from? You do that to me, Derek. You did that to me when this whole thing was starting. Not telling me about how bad your headache was until I pried it out of you."
"I'm sorry," he said. He kissed her softly. "I know. I'll... I'll try not to, Mere. I'm sick right now. I feel... Tired, and spacey, and I know if I got up right now and tried to get away from here, I'd make it maybe halfway down the hall before I had to sit because I'm so fatigued. But, Mere, knowing you're hurting yourself trying to make me feel better? That's what's making this unbearable."
"Derek, you... You're you. You almost never admit there's something you can't handle. And I told you I would deal with this. I promised I would."
"What I can't handle is you being so upset that you're not sleeping or eating, Mere, promise or not," he insisted.
She lay her ear flat against his chest as she curled into his warmth. The dark blur of the hospital room wavered as his inhalations and exhalations shifted her view with an even rhythm. Up and down. Up and down. He rubbed her back, soft and soothing and perfect and Derek-y. And it felt so nice. The blood rushed under his skin, and she felt almost like she'd put a conch shell to her ear and was listening for the ocean. Where's the heartbeat. There. Thump. Thump. Thump. There it was. Slightly off time with the distant, quiet beeps pulsing from his heart monitor. She ran her index finger up and down over the bump of his pectoral muscle as she listened. The sound of his hand against her back rustled, and the repeated, unending soothing built friction on her skin, making her feel warm and loved and safe.
She sighed, the effort of it making her shudder.
"Mere, the support thing you keep spouting is mutual. It doesn't have to be an either or deal," Derek said. "That much, I know."
She wiped her hands at her face. Her skin was sticky, probably blotched and unattractive. But dry. It'd dried. The gross, ugly crying had dried. He'd... He was Derek. And he had the unique ability to make everything seem fine again. The unique ability to exorcise the most horrific horrors, the saddest grief, and the most painful hurting. She wanted that sort of comforting. She wanted that desperately, selfishly even. He had to be tired. He had to be struggling. He had to be... But he was insisting. He was being all Derek-y and stubborn. And she wanted to be able to close her eyes again. She wasn't going to make it until they took him home. Not if the awful, twisting feelings in her gut after just the last forty odd hours were any indication.
"I had a nightmare," she confessed.
"Okay," he said, cautious, as if he expected one wrong word to send her running away from him and any potential relief he thought he could give her. "Of what?"
"You," she said. "We were at home. And you wanted to have sex. And we started, but then you stopped and you... You had a seizure Derek. A full tonic-clonic seizure. And I had to watch it. You turned blue. And then you died. You just... I don't want you to die. Please, please don't die, Derek."
"Shhh," he whispered as she started to cry again, but it wasn't like before. It wasn't the ugly, racking tears that made her torso shake. It was quiet, subtle suffering. The kind that stole in on a moment of weakness and hung around like a parasite, unwilling to abate. The kind that came with the worst kind of pain and never went away entirely. Grieving for a loved one. Even years later, it smuggled itself along, quiet, until a stupid reminder would set it off again. A favorite cup. A smell. A picture.
"You were so depressed this morning," she whispered. "I thought... What if you have a complication? What if your heart stops, or you stop breathing, and you have a second to choose, but you're so depressed you just decide, what's the point? That's why I drowned, Derek. I don't want you to drown."
"Oh, Mere," he said with a low, shuddering sigh. "Is that... Mere, I was embarrassed, and frustrated, and tired, and sure, I wanted to be far, far away, but dead? No. You're marrying me, Meredith. That trumps anything as far as I'm concerned."
"But you asked for morphine," she said. "And when we woke you up to move you, you barely said a word. And I had to drag you into the bathroom. And you were crying."
"Mere, serious exertion like that causes headaches," he replied. "I was in pain. A lot of pain. Asking for morphine had nothing to do with me wanting to shut the world out permanently."
"But you don't like morphine. You were begging them to take you off it."
He rubbed her back. "Mere, I don't like morphine, no. If my choice is a little headache or being tripped up on morphine, I'll pick the headache. But I don't like solid pain either. And that was as bad as it was Monday night. Worse."
"But the crying. And the dead staring. And... You barely..."
"Stoned," he said, giving her a wry, weak smile. "I was really, really stoned. Stoned, exhausted, and embarrassed. I don't like that I can't do things anymore. It embarrasses me, and it makes me feel like a burden. It doesn't mean I want to die, Meredith. It means I want to be able to do things again."
"You're not a burden, Derek," she said.
He grinned as he ran his fingers under her jaw line, settled to grip her chin, and then he leaned in to kiss her. "Neither are you, Mere. Ever."
"What if you develop epilepsy?" she said. "Will you still want to live then?"
"Yes," he said, quick, sure, definitive. Despite everything, he hadn't had to think about it, consider, or wonder, and that heartened her more than she'd expected it to.
"But you wouldn't be able to be a surgeon anymore," she said. "You could wish all you want to do it again, but nobody would let you cut when you could have a seizure any minute."
"Meredith, being a surgeon..." He shrugged. "It means a lot to me. It does. I won't lie. Losing the career I've spent my life building would be painful. But..."
"But?" she prodded.
"I could go into teaching. I'm one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. Any university with a medical program would kill to have me doing lectures. I could go strictly into research. I could... I don't know. There are options."
He'd really thought about this. She'd thought he'd been too scared to think coherently about his future if things went wrong. Too scared and worried and other things. But he'd thought about it. He'd thought rationally about the possibility of his career ending. Permanently.
She felt guilty for missing it. How had she missed that? She'd proposed, more for herself than for him, and she'd told him everything would be okay, refused to let him try and comfort her, but she'd never thought to try and work things out with him, make it really seem like it would be okay, even if things ended up vastly not okay. They hadn't done it. The mutual thing. Discussion. That, in the long run, probably would have been better for them both. Talking. Rationally talking. The comforting thing... She still had some stuff to learn, apparently.
She closed her eyes, trying to imagine him as Derek the professor or Derek the researcher. It didn't fit. It didn't fit at all. But it would keep him in medicine, would keep him in the field, and the essence of the field, the helping... That was what made him the happiest out of all of it. Even if he couldn't directly change anything, couldn't clip off aneurysms, couldn't save someone from damage that would affect his or her entire life, he'd still be saving lives, making them better. And that. That was what he valued most. Right?
Still...
"But you love the cutting," she said.
He nodded. "I love the cutting," he admitted softly.
"How can you be so sure then?"
"I love a lot of things, Meredith," he said. "But I love you the most. I really can't imagine wanting to die in light of that."
She blinked. All at once, the world started making sense again. The cogs clanked, and the wheels turned. Gears shifted. She sighed as beating, unending waves of relief overwhelmed her, splashed against the crags of worry and obliterated them, and she was a smooth shore of glittering sand again. Because he'd finally said something she could digest and believe and hold onto. She'd been there herself. She sighed, listening to the soft sound of his breathing, letting the warmth soak her.
She'd never admitted it. She'd never told him. But, now, it seemed so important. Something that had to be... said. If him telling her had that sort of effect when it was only hypothetical, she couldn't imagine the relief she'd denied him when it'd been real. She couldn't... She clutched his shirt and sighed, a fresh swath of tears cutting her down like a storm of rapiers. But it wasn't grief or... anything really. Just...
Letting go.
"You're why I came back," she murmured into his shirt, breathing in the scent of him, his warmth, everything.
He stilled, and all that remained of him for a long set of moments was his quiet breathing and the solid feel of him against her, living. She rested against him, not opening her eyes, letting him process what she'd said in peace. And she liked it. She liked just... Resting. Resting there.
"If I had a choice," he said, "You'd be the reason, too."
"Really?"
"Yes, really, Meredith," he said. "Though, I'd rather not be in a position to prove it to you. And Meredith?"
"What?"
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"Being here with me. I'm..."
She lifted her head from him to peer at him. His face was wet. He'd been crying. When had he been crying again? She'd missed it. Missed it again. But he didn't look sad. Didn't look... anything bad other than exhausted. He was relieved. Happy to be in love. Happy to be loved. Happy to offer comfort and be comforted. Despite the fact that he was stuck in the bed and she had the ability to run far, far away, everything between them was equal. And that was perfect enough to hurt.
She gave him a watery smile. "I know."
"Sleep, Meredith," he whispered, kissing the top of her head as he gathered her firmly in his embrace. The bed hummed as he lowered them, and he sighed with tired relief as they flattened out. She settled against him. They fit. They really fit. She clutched at his shirt. His hand found hers, and he brushed the ring with his fingertips, caressed her knuckles, and raised her fingers to his lips. He kissed her. She breathed him in as he gently let her hand drop back to his chest. Moving took effort, and he was warm and soft and Derek. Hers. Her fiancé. Her eyes shut, and she couldn't get them to open again, not that she wanted them to. The dark wasn't scary anymore.
"Sleep," he said again. "We both need it."
"Even though I'm on your side of the bed?" she said.
He laughed as he rubbed her back, up and down and up and down. "I'll live," he said, his tone thick with sleep. He shifted, and she felt his chin settling against the pillow over her head. His body relaxed, and the motions of his hand stopped. His breathing evened out. He hovered, not quite sleeping yet, but relaxed, drifting in the space just above it.
Though he'd meant it as a joke, she realized she believed him. Believed him in her head. Believed him in her heart. Innately believed. He was Derek. He was very good at making her believe things. Making her know things that she should have known. He always had been.
I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you for... ever. I'm a little late. I... I know I'm a little late in telling you that. I... I just... I just want you to take your time. You know? Take all the time you need. Because you have... A choice to make. And when I had a choice to make... I chose wrong.
She couldn't be sure whether he surrendered first or she did. It didn't matter.
They slept.