Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 46A
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
Thanks for the comments everyone. I'm behind again, and I'm super busy right now, but I will get to your feedback on the previous part as soon as I can. Hope you enjoy!
~~~~~
The little plastic baggie crinkled in her hands as she stepped out of the elevator. She’d been standing, slanted against the corner, gripping the rails, when it’d hit her. There would be no Derek at work to greet her or interrupt her day anymore. No Derek cornering her in an elevator for at least six weeks. And that was… She’d spent the remainder of the ride wondering what exactly that was.
She felt a little throb of elation for him. He was going home, finally going home, and he would be so much happier away from this place. Away from this place that caged his spirits, made him feel less than human. She had a feeling, deep and twisting and scary in her gut, that even if they tried to keep him an extra day or so for further observation, he would leave against medical advice. He hated it there that much.
The afternoon and night before had been difficult. They’d dropped him off codeine. He’d still had a bit of an ache, so they’d replaced it with simple Tylenol. As a result, he’d had absolutely nothing in him to help him sleep, nothing pushing him into a doze against his will, and he’d spent all afternoon the day before alternating between staring at the door, watching bodies pass by, and staring at the window wistfully, where the sun had finally decided to start shining. The last vestiges of a drugged glaze had slipped from his eyes as his blood had burned off the codeine, but in return, she’d watched the sharp, desperate, stir-crazy look of a prisoner replace it. He definitely wanted to go home.
She’d given him his earplugs, but every time she’d woken up during the night, he’d been staring at the ceiling, his fingers worrying at the blankets on his bed as he pondered the complexities of the tiles above him. He’d flinched, despite the earplugs, every time a noise had filtered in from the hallway, almost as if he didn’t need to hear it, he just knew the noise was there, just like some sort of medicinal Beethoven, and she’d been torn. Torn because she’d been happy he felt well enough to have such an overriding desire to get out of there, but upset that he’d been so disturbed.
Elation. She definitely felt elation for him. Derek was going home.
At the same time, she felt empty. Because after Sunday passed into memory, she was expected back for her shift on Monday, ready to work, ready to go, ready to cut, ready to be a doctor again instead of just a glorified med student studying for finals. And there would be no Derek snarking at her in the elevator, running into her all the time in the hallways for no apparent reason other than his deviously good planning.
She shook her head.
That was… selfish. It was entirely too selfish, she decided, to be feeling things like that. Derek needed to go home almost as much as he needed to breathe at this point, and it was selfish to miss him. He wasn’t even gone yet, and she missed him. How did that even work?
“I finished filling everything out,” Ellen said in a deep, earthy voice. Meredith snapped awake from her musing, only to realize that, at some point, Ellen had fallen into step beside her. She wore casual, black knit pants and a blouse, looking sunny and bright to match the morning that had graced them.
Meredith smiled weakly, twisting her fingers around the bundle crunched between her palms. “That’s great,” she said. “I can’t wait to get out of here. Just watching him is making me antsy.”
Ellen laughed, and they lapsed into comfortable silence. They walked down the hall of the step-down wing. Derek had never been moved to standard care, probably because of the fever scare on Friday. Equipment and roaming nurses and staff and patients made negotiating the hall a sometimes-difficult experience.
Derek’s door was open, and even from the hallway, Dr. Weller’s rich baritone oozed through the air, unhindered, strong beneath the constant murmur of hospital like a collection of sticky honey, clinging to everything it touched. Dr. Weller had the perfect voice for doctoring, because, while it said everything was all right, that everything would be fine, it held an underlying, knowledgeable authority to it. Everything wasn’t just all right. It was under control. And he knew what he was doing. Some doctors came off as arrogant in that knowledge, but Dr. Weller had never once shown himself to have a speck of ego. It was odd, all things considered, and very atypical of a surgeon.
“Dr. Shepherd,” Dr. Weller said, and then his voice dropped lower, into something warmer, kinder, reserved more for a friend than a colleague or a patient as he continued, still in that rich, perfect voice, “Derek. I know you know about homecare following craniotomies. I won’t insult you. But I did want to say one thing.”
“What?” Derek said. He lay stretched out against the bed, sitting up and on top of the blankets as though he were ready to bolt the moment someone said it was okay to leave, as though the hindrance of blankets would be three seconds too much in his journey to escape. He wore a loose set of gray sweats, cross trainers, and a comfortable old t-shirt that had, at one point, probably been a crisp, electric indigo, but had faded as the dye had been slowly scrubbed out of it. It was a perfect outfit for lounging, but also a perfect outfit for exercise, for jogging, which further emphasized his desire to split.
Dr. Weller sat beside the bed in a chair, scribbling notes over what Meredith presumed was Derek’s chart. His white lab coat crinkled at the shoulders, disrupted from its natural flow by the back of the chair. His watch glittered as he wrote, the glass shifting with the motions of his wrist and catching the sunlight filtering through the smudged windowpane. It was as if the world outside had realized what a momentous day this was and had gifted them with something other than rain as a going home present. The lazy patter of drizzle against the window was, for once that week, absent.
Dr. Weller and Derek looked up as Meredith and Ellen entered the room, but their conversation didn’t falter. Meredith sat down in the chair on her side of the bed and Ellen sank down onto the couch. Derek’s eyes crinkled around the edges just a little, and a soft smile of greeting coursed across his face like a wave as he glanced at Meredith, a soft smile that said so many things all at once. Hello. I love you. How are you? I’m going home! I’m happy. The expression disappeared as the crush hit shore, and Dr. Weller spoke. Despite the brevity of the look, Meredith grinned widely at Derek as she placed her small plastic bundle on the stand beside the bed and eased further into her chair.
“As a doctor,” Dr. Weller said as he turned back to Derek, “It’s very easy to think you know better, and it’s very easy to get frustrated. Just take it easy. The next week is still critical. You’re purely in the recovery phase right now. I can’t stress that enough.”
“I know,” Derek said, and the last hints of his happy but silent greeting dripped away. Meredith noticed, finally, in the absence of his disarming smile, after the exhilaration over seeing him had passed, just how strained he looked. His gaze wandered to the window, and he sighed. Fleshy bags hugged his eyes, and the careworn lines around his eyes had deepened from something merely sexy to something tired and longing.
“Derek… I’m just not sure you do know. As your doctor in this case, I have to ask,” Dr. Weller said. “Do you have someone to stay home with you for the first week or so? Or at least someone immediately available if you need help?”
Derek blinked and turned back to Dr. Weller. He crossed his arms over his chest and shifted slightly. The intravenous line was gone, replaced by a taped up square of gauze. “No…” he said.
Meredith felt the quiver of tension drawing the air between them tightly into its grasp. She sighed. She’d wanted to stay home with him. She’d have given anything to stay home with him, but she’d already used up all her resources. She had no leave banked, no bargaining power left with which to procure leave she didn’t have, and Dr. Bailey’s kindness only went so far before she’d decide Meredith was too far behind in the program to ever make up the time. Derek had been doing so well the last few days, Meredith had tried not to let it bother her that he’d be staying home alone. She’d tried. And she’d never brought it up with him, because, hello? She’d imagined it would be a major sore spot. Just judging from the way he reacted now, it was a sore spot. He wanted to go home. He wanted it badly. But one of the main reasons for it was to get away from all the people crowding him with assistance and help he didn’t want, didn’t think he needed.
Her jaw tightened as she watched Dr. Weller’s friendly face sink into something far more serious. If he thought Derek wasn’t well enough to go home by himself, completely by himself, there was a chance Dr. Weller would increase the length Derek’s hospital stay in the interests of Derek’s safety, which, really, would not make Derek very happy. At all.
“I can stay with you, sweetheart,” Ellen offered. “It’s no bother at all. I was planning on staying in Seattle for at least another week anyway, and I imagine Mark would like his spare bedroom back.”
“Oh, Ellen,” Meredith replied, a stab of relief cutting deep even as she found herself mechanically protesting, “I don’t have any beds left. Just the couch in the den, and that’s-“
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Derek said, his tone low and wary.
“It’s all right, dear,” Ellen said, waving her hand dismissively in Derek’s direction. “I’ll be perfectly fine on the couch.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Derek said again.
Ellen turned to him and sighed, her gaze flicking between him and Meredith and Dr. Weller as if she couldn’t decide what to say, couldn’t decide what was safe to say, and the pain that racked her expression made Meredith shiver. Ellen didn’t want to be the pest that made Derek feel like crap for being sick.
“Derek, you can’t drive,” Dr. Weller said, saving Ellen from the worry of it. Meredith reached for Derek’s hand and stroked his palm as Dr. Weller continued, “What if you need to go somewhere?”
His fingers tightened in Meredith’s grasp. “I can call a cab.”
“You can’t lift anything,” Ellen said.
“Shouldn’t,” he insisted. “Shouldn’t lift anything.”
“Derek,” Ellen said, “I really don’t want to upset you, but-“
“I just want to go home,” he snapped. “I’ll be fine when I get home. I feel fine today. I felt fine yesterday. I just get a little tired when I do too much.”
The fact that he didn’t turn, didn’t wink at Meredith over the sexy, secret meaning of his words brought Meredith pause, helped forge the lump in her throat. She heard the undercurrent in his tone. He could, he could, he could, and now everyone was telling him he couldn’t, and that was frustrating to him. Maybe he really did think he’d be fine, that when he got home, things would be fine. Home was supposed to be freedom from this place, and now everyone was insisting he needed someone to take care of him. Meredith bit her lip.
Coward, coward, coward, her mind screamed. This was Derek. Frustratingly stubborn, god-complex-y Derek. Of course he was going to assume he’d be walking on water as soon as he got out of this place, which was the sort of feeling that would only set him up for a drastic, horrible upset when he finally got home and discovered he was still tired, still drained, still not quite right. Why couldn’t she bring herself to contribute?
She felt like a maniacal mad scientist with scissors, clutching at some poor, hapless bird. Clip, clip, clip the wings. That was why. She hated the look on his face. The way the water swirled against the surface of his eyes in a sea of denied tears. That was why. He just wanted to go home. They could talk about this later. They could talk about this later when they were away from Seattle Grace, when he’d had some time to freaking unwind and relax a little, after he’d had five minutes to enjoy the fact that he was alone again, relatively speaking, after a week of constant people.
She opened her mouth to steer the conversation away from this place, this place that was making him look so agitated, but the words that followed came from Dr. Weller. Not her. “Can you walk up steps?” Dr. Weller asked.
Derek blinked, flinching as he started to look between everyone in the room as if he couldn’t figure out where the next jab was going to come from. “What?”
“Have you tried to walk up any steps yet?” Dr. Weller clarified.
“When the hell would I have walked up steps?” Derek snarled. “Nobody lets me walk anywhere unless I’m on a fucking leash.”
“Derek, this is what I meant about getting frustrated, about thinking you know better,” Dr. Weller said. “You need to let yourself heal, and you need to acknowledge that you’re not healed yet. When you get home, there won’t be a call button. There won’t be a nursing staff doing things for you anymore. What they do is easy to overlook, but it’s a huge part of why you’re feeling like you could be fine, now. Most people, when they go home, are surprised by how much worse things seem all of the sudden. I’m sure you’ve gotten plenty of calls from concerned patients wondering what went wrong.”
“I just want to go home,” Derek said. His eyes reddened as he blinked, blinked, blinked. “I’ll be fine when I get home. I just need home. Please. Please, tell me I can go home.” His skin started to shiver and redden with embarrassment, and Meredith felt like crap for not jumping in earlier. Utter crap. She knew the look on his face. He was begging. He was begging, and he hated it, but he was so upset he couldn’t stop himself.
“Nobody’s saying you can’t go home, Derek,” Meredith said, trying to reassure him. Dr. Weller stared at her for a moment, his expression curious, and she knew. She knew Dr. Weller actually was considering recommending Derek stay for a few more days if he decided he didn’t want Ellen around.
Meredith sighed softly. Coward, a small voice said. Coward, coward, coward. Nothing was being voiced that she didn’t agree with at least on some level. And even if he didn’t want to hear it, he should. He wasn’t freaking Superman. He’d just had brain surgery. The next week was still a critical week. He didn’t even have his stitches out yet. She hadn’t pressed the issue of him being by himself, but now everyone was pressing it. Everyone. And if Ellen was available to stay with him and offering…
She took a breath, shivering with a sob she refused herself. She took the scissors and began to clip, feeling horrid for doing it, but… But…
“Derek, it’s easy for you to assume you’ll be fine,” Meredith whispered softly. “It is. I know you, and I know you’ll be perfectly okay ninety-nine percent of the time, but you’ll be all alone, and that one percent terrifies me. What if you fall? You could have a seizure, Derek, and no one would be home to help you.”
Meredith tried to ignore the sting behind her eyes as tears gathered. Derek wasn’t taking this well. He drew his hand away, his jaw set in a firm line. For a brief, nasty moment, she wished she’d let Ellen and Dr. Weller take the brunt of this, but it was a valid point. Derek would be home alone, and, though he was much, much better, he was still not well.
“Derek, please,” Meredith said. “You could have a seizure.”
“Stop it,” Derek said. “Stop.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellen said. “I’ll… I’ll stay at Mark’s.”
“You don’t have to do that, Ellen,” Meredith replied, sighing. “You can stay with us.”
“I don’t want to impose…”
Derek sighed. “It’s fine.”
Ellen sniffled. “Derek, sweetheart…”
“Jesus Christ,” Derek snapped. “First you want to babysit me, and now you don’t. Make up your goddamned mind.”
“Derek Shepherd, you will not speak to me that way!” Ellen roared.
Silence sliced the room apart shard by shard by shard, until the air between them was a broken collection of puzzle pieces that didn’t connect anymore. Everyone hovered in his or her own discordant world. Red, angry defiance gripped Derek in a vice of frustration. Meredith shivered with weepy uncertainty that threatened to melt into anger. Anger at herself for letting this devolve to the point of breaking. Ellen appeared to be juggling an apology with the firm resoluteness that an apology wasn’t needed. Dr. Weller remained impassive, only the ticking skin around his eyes revealing that he was as affected by this exchange as they were. Meredith saw it then, in his gaze. Dr. Weller considered Derek a friend. He didn’t want to do this anymore than they did.
Meredith swallowed, staring at the floor, watching Derek shiver with upset, looking almost like he wanted to bolt for the door at this point regardless of what they said. She’d mother-henned. She’d done the mother hen thing. She’d freaking mother-henned. What the hell. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t do that. She knew that even if Derek couldn’t when he thought he could, he was one of those people who had to come to terms with it on his own, not because someone had told him he couldn’t. She looked up, intent on muttering a litany of self-deprecating words of apology, but, surprisingly, Derek beat her to the conversational starting line.
A sigh shuddered through Derek’s frame. “I’m sorry,” he said as he visibly worked his body through the paces of calming down and the redness leaked away from his skin, replaced by a healthy peach. “This place… I need to get out of here. I didn’t mean to yell, Mom.”
Another cleansing sigh tore through his frame, and then he turned to Meredith. The sharp, clear blue of his stare peeled away her self-flagellation, and without any words, he said everything that needed to be said. I know you’re scared. I’m sorry. It’s all right.
Meredith stood up from the chair and eased onto the bed beside him, feeling the need to be closer like a siren call amongst a ship of sea-weary men. She needed him. And she hated fighting with him. He wrapped his arms around her shivery frame, his warmth seeped into her, and everything inside except her heart fell into stillness. She sighed, breathing in the musky scent of him, pushing her nose into the crook of his neck and taking comfort in the rough forest of stubble that’d broken the surface of his skin. His palm followed the curve of her spine, and he whispered something at her, not really a word, but it didn’t matter, because it made things perfect and okay anyway.
“Sorry,” she muttered, her voice strained and hoarse with tears she hadn’t shed.
“It’s okay,” he said. And it was. “I know,” he said. And he did. He looked up and smiled brightly. Though the expression didn’t quite tear away the clawing desperation on his face, it did a great deal to make him seem more at peace with things. “It’ll be nice to visit with Mom when I’m not stuck in a bed all the time,” he said as he forced confidence back into his posture, his tone, everything. Meredith could see the determination coiling behind his expressive gaze. He wouldn’t be stuck in bed. He wouldn’t. He would be fine.
Meredith ran a hand down the length of his arm, sighing as she melted against his solid frame.
“All right, well, I’ll leave you all to deliberate on the specifics,” Dr. Weller said, slapping his hands on his knees as he stood. “I’m sorry I sowed some harsh feelings. Abasi will be in shortly to escort you to the door. You’ll need to sign some forms at the admitting desk.”
“Already done,” Ellen said. “I have all the homecare pamphlets and everything.”
“Wonderful,” Dr. Weller said. He stopped in the doorframe. “I’ll see you in two days to take out those sutures, Derek.”
“I can walk to the car,” Derek said.
“Sorry,” Dr. Weller said, a helpless look crossing over his features as he shrugged. “You know policy.”
Derek sighed, but if the words upset him, he didn’t let on, which made Meredith smile, despite the fact that she wanted to take whatever binder the drafts of hospital policy were written in and light fire to it. This place had laid him bare, but he was building himself back up again, slowly but surely building. His body was healing. His state-of-mind had lagged a little, but it was healing, too. Slowly.
“Hey, Mike…” Derek called after the departing surgeon.
“Yeah?” Dr. Weller said, turning around with a curious expression. His fingers clasped around Derek’s chart, whitening his knuckles even further. He brought his free hand back into his hair, ruffling it in a Derek-like, I’m-upset-and-I’m-thinking gesture, but he didn’t look upset. Just wondering. Meredith didn’t think she’d ever heard Derek call Dr. Weller by his first name before, though Dr. Weller had been calling Derek by his on and off for a while.
“When I get back,” Derek said, flashing a wide grin, “I owe you a drink. A very large drink.”
“Derek…” Dr. Weller said. He sighed, and a stiff sort of tension that had held his posture straight and rod-like leaked away. He slumped against the doorframe and smiled. “When you get back, I’ll happily take you up on that.”
Derek chuckled. “Glad you didn’t kill me?”
“Immensely,” Dr. Weller said. “Talk about working under pressure.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Derek said, his tone dipping into soft sincerity.
“Anytime,” Dr. Weller said. “Though, you know, preferably not.” He grinned, and then he was gone.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Ellen said. “I promise not to bother you. I wish…”
“I didn’t mean to snap,” Derek said. “I didn’t. I was… I think I’ll be grateful for the company.” He turned a pointed gaze toward Meredith. “I’m used to having company lately,” he said before another wide smile creased his features.
“I know,” Ellen said. “I’ll leave you two alone for a bit. Give me a call when the nurse comes. I’ll bring the car around, all right? If we time it right, you won’t have to wait outside, and we’ll be home before you know it.” His mother smiled brightly.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Of course, Der. I love you.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
Ellen gathered up her red-striped tote bag and purse and left the room. Meredith rested against his chest, clutching a small tent of his shirt in her fingers, and sighed at the scent of him, the scent that was Derek. Just Derek. He ran his hand through her hair, and it was as if the conversation about the seizures, about him needing someone to stay with him, had evaporated into nothing. It’d happened. It had. But it wasn’t overriding, wasn’t something he felt was crippling him anymore. He was all right. He’d just had a momentary lapse of… something.
“You too, huh,” she said, unable to stop wistfulness from edging her tone into breathlessness. She grinned. “I was kind of wondering what I’d do without you interrupting all my elevator rides.”
“Really?” he said, laughing. “I was having early onset lavender-lust.”
“Lavender-lust. Is that a technical term?” she said.
“Oh, yes,” he replied. “I have a thing for lavender.”
“Really?”
“Mmm,” he said as though he were sampling a taste of the world’s finest Godiva. He leaned into her, until his lips were millimeters from her ear. He breathed, and then he whispered, “It’s very intense.”
“I thought that was ferries,” she said, shivering as the rumble of his words slipped down her spine and tingled lower, starting a throb of desire. She bit her lip, willing it to go away. They’d be home. They’d be home in just a little while. She could wait. She could freaking wait.
“I’m an intense person,” he said. He pulled her against him and sighed. “I’m sorry,” he added. “I know… Seizures. I know they scare you. I didn’t mean to scare you, Meredith. I really didn’t. I get… stuck. Stuck sometimes. In my own head.”
“I know,” she whispered. “They don’t scare you?”
“Seizures?” he said. “They do.”
“But?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead he kissed her cheek and held her close. He didn’t need to answer her. His embrace spoke enough to paint a picture worth a million words or more, and silence stole the moments away into its comforting keeping. He absently rubbed her arm with his hand. She watched him as he peered out the window, staring at the cerulean sky with a sort of longing, and she hoped the nurse would come soon with the wheelchair.
“I forgot,” she said as she pulled away. A spike of longing twanged down her spine like she was a plucked string of a violin. She grabbed the plastic bag from the table and handed it to him, resettling quickly against him with a sigh. “This is… This is for you. It’s not a scrub cap or anything, but I saw it in the gift shop while I was stretching my legs, and I thought you’d… I thought…”
She closed her eyes when the words wouldn’t come anymore, and a shiver of embarrassment coursed through her. What if he… This was a gift that he could easily take the wrong way. And it was the first gift she’d ever given him. It wasn’t romantic or meaningful like the scrub cap he’d bought her. It was practical. For him. Because the hair thing really bothered him, even though he took care not to say much about it. It really bothered him, and if she could fix it…
The bag crinkled. She watched his deft, surgeon’s hands as they searched the contents within. He pulled the bundle out, flicking the sticker tag with his fingers as he assessed the gift. It was a thin, cream-colored knit skullcap. The hospital had them in the gift shop for people undergoing chemotherapy primarily, but it also served in instances like this. It looked like the hats Alex liked to wear, close to the head, minimally intrusive, subtle.
“Thank you,” he said. He yanked at the tag, which came away from the cap without much effort, and he slipped it over his head, hiding the stitches, the scar, and his pale skin away from view.
“It’s okay?” she said. “I didn’t want... I mean, I’m sorry if…”
“Thank you, Mere,” he said, cutting her off with a gorgeous smile. The cap’s light color made him seem less tired, though the smile did more to that end. He straightened a little, and the overall effect was striking, even if it was small.
“Sure,” she said.
He ran his fingers over the edges, smoothing the cap against his scalp. “Well, I imagine it’s not The Hair, but…”
She grinned. “Very sexy,” she assured him. “Very hip or something. We should get you some bling.”
He blinked. “Some bling.”
“Totally,” she said, nodding. “You need some bling.”
“I’m a thirty-nine-year-old, brain-damaged neurosurgeon. Not Eminem.”
She laughed. “Definitely not Eminem.”
“Definitely not,” he replied with a smirk. “I’m happy, I have no rhythm, and I have no bling. Three strikes against any hopes of me being a rapper.”
She snorted, trying to contain the gurgle of laughter that threatened to erupt as she pictured him trying to do anything remotely coordinated like move to The Real Slim Shady, or some equally offensive song. Under normal circumstances, he was graceful, lithe, and athletic. His thin but muscled frame was perfect for outdoorsy things like hiking and camping, perfect for the exertion of wild sex or jogging. But music had a way of stripping the grace from the most graceful of souls, and aside from sexy slow-dancing, she couldn’t picture him as anything but an awkwardly flailing pile of limbs no matter what the music, no matter what the dance, whether it was hip-hop, the flamenco, or just the kind of writhing you did at a club, where you let the beat decide the motions for you. Derek was an arrogant individual. He flaunted it if there was even a chance he had it. If he didn’t dance in public, there was most likely a very good reason. A very good, beatless, flailing, hilarious reason. Instead of ribbing him, though, she latched onto the first thing he’d said and sighed as the mirth she’d found in the thoughts of him dancing settled into a hum of relaxed happiness. She kissed him softly on the lips. “You’re happy,” she purred.
“When I look at you?” he said. He caught her gaze with his unblinking, twinkling eyes. “Very.”
“Cheesy.”
He winked. “You love me for it.”
“I do. I really, really do.”
“I love you, too,” he said as she settled back against him.
She rubbed his arms, wishing she could just get them both out of there, away from everything. “Just a little longer, Derek. Abasi will be here any minute, I’m sure.”
He sighed against her, but it was an unhurried, relaxed gesture more than a perturbed one. His grip tightened around her. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Good.”
One moment, they rested in silence, the next, commotion tore down everything they’d built. She felt Derek tense underneath her, and his relaxed, what comes will come Zen attitude bled back into anxious wanting. Wanting to get away from all the interruptions.
“Hey, Shepherd,” Dr. Burke said as he burst into the room, “Do you-“
“Would you stop with the bachelor party plans?” Cristina snarled as she entered the room just behind him, interrupting Dr. Burke’s question. Her scrubs were rumpled and slept in, and her hair was clipped back in a loose, mangy ponytail that had seen better days. She looked like she’d seen about five minutes of an on-call room in the past thirty-six hours, and tiredness rolled from her frame, but the exhaustion seemed almost like a fuel that kept her words from halting, a little like tequila in the hands of Meredith.
The two of them came to a stop just inside the door, crossed their arms, and glared at each other.
“Cristina…” Dr. Burke said, his tone low, patronizing, and woeful.
“I told you,” Cristina said. “We’re not getting married unless we do it at City Hall like I said I wanted.” She gestured toward the bed, giving the first indication that she realized the room they’d wandered into was otherwise occupied. “Just him and Meredith. No one else. That means no Moms, flower girls, white dresses, or priests. I’m not doing it.”
“Why are you being so difficult?” Dr. Burke said.
“Hey, Cristina,” Meredith offered to the tension in the air, but the words fell apart like confetti and disappeared into the conversational pause like they hadn’t been uttered at all.
“Difficult?” Cristina demanded. She turned briefly to Meredith. “Hi,” she added gruffly, confirming that Meredith had, in fact, spoken, before turning back to Dr. Burke. Meredith sank back against Derek, trying to catch up with the whirlwind of fighting that had entered the room. “Difficult?” Cristina continued. “Difficult is you screwing around with my professional life to get me to do what you want in our personal life. I don’t appreciate being bullied or punished whenever I don’t fit your mold. You, Preston Burke, are difficult.”
Dr. Burke sighed again. His gaze drifted momentarily to Derek’s bed, considering. He turned back to Cristina and stiffened. “Cristina…” he said.
“No. No, we’re having this fight here. If we don’t have it now, we’re not having it at all. I’m done. And it’s not like she’s not going to hear about it later.”
“I’m feeling rather overlooked,” Derek commented, a smirk pasted on his face, though in the corners of his eyes, Meredith found clipped annoyance. Go away. Go away and leave me alone, for once. He’d had major disturbances in his room practically every day. Mark. Addison. Ellen. He didn’t need more, particularly if they weren’t even about him.
Cristina shrugged. “I was assuming the grapevine effect.”
“Cristina…” said Dr. Burke, which only incensed her further.
“Stop Cristinaing me!” Cristina snapped.
“Maybe you two need to chat in an on-call room, or something,” Meredith suggested quietly, her mind racing. She’d wanted Cristina to stand up for herself. She’d wanted Cristina to be sure she was getting some of what she wanted out of the deal, instead of letting Dr. Burke push, push, push her for things she didn’t want. But she hadn’t expected… Well, she hadn’t expected them to be fighting in Derek’s room, of all places.
For a moment, Dr. Burke stood still. The skin around his eyes ticked. His crossed arms tightened against his chest, and then he launched forward, spitting like an enraged lion or something. He gripped Cristina’s arms and shook her. “I have to push you!” he exclaimed.
“Excuse me?” Cristina said.
“Every step we’ve ever taken, I’ve had to push you,” he said. He started to pace. “You’re always happy later, but getting you there? It’s impossible. You don’t listen when I speak to you reasonably. What else am I supposed to do?”
“But I want to get married!” Cristina said.
Dr. Burke drew back. “You do…” he said, his arrested, quiet tone betraying just how flummoxed he was to his audience, though his face remained calm and collected. He was Preston Burke, and there was no fighting there.
“Yes! I told you I did. I just don’t want some frilly, girly affair. We’ll get enough of that when Meredith finally goes through with it.”
“Thanks, Cristina…” Meredith snapped.
Cristina rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You want the white dress and the doves and all that crap. I know you under that Ellis-poisoned exterior.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting white dresses and doves,” Derek said.
Everyone turned to him, considering.
“Not for me, damn it,” he added, his face reddening. “There’s definitely something wrong with that.”
Meredith swallowed, unprepared for the overwhelming turn of focus in the room from Dr. Burke and Cristina to her and Derek. “You want me in a white dress?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper as she wiped her face and stared at him.
She hadn’t really thought about it. What she’d want. What kind of wedding. She wasn’t even sure whether he was Catholic or Protestant or what. She was pretty sure he was some flavor of Christian. Well, he probably wasn’t Catholic. What with the divorce. But he celebrated Christmas, which, unless he was just one of those people who liked Christmas trees and Santa Claus and mistletoe for the hell of it without thinking about the underlying reason for the holiday, she could rule out pretty much everything without a bible containing the New Testament. Then again, he’d also never struck her as very spiritual, either. He loved the outdoors, but she’d always perceived that as more of an appreciation for the peace being close to nature brought him, not for any connection it might have offered him to whatever was out there that was bigger. It was one of those things they just hadn’t gotten around to talking about. It’d never been…
Well, it hadn’t been very important. Not to her. Not when she was such a faith-challenged mess. She wasn’t even sure what she was. She hadn’t been to church since… Never. Ellis hadn’t been a religious woman, and Sundays were a valuable day for work.
“Meredith, I want what you want,” he said softly, breaking her from her spiral of thoughts. “If it’s legal, I really don’t care.”
“But you like the idea of a white dress.”
“Meredith…”
“Shut up and stop deferring for once,” she snapped. “If what I wanted wasn’t a factor, you’d want to do the white wedding thing, wouldn’t you?”
She tried to picture herself walking down an aisle in a huge, airy church, a train of frilly, lacey white flowing after her. Bells would be ringing, and there’d be hundreds of people there, mostly because of Derek and his family. She didn’t have a big family. Four interns, and a budding relationship with a fake-mom. She shuddered. She wasn’t a frilly, lacey, white dress person, was she? That was a fairytale.
“Well, I…” Derek stammered, but she saw in his eyes what his tongue wouldn’t straighten out to say. Yes. Yes, he did. He wanted that.
Sometimes, fairytales were nice, a small, breathy whisper flitted through her head. She changed her focus, instead thinking of Derek standing up front in a tuxedo, smiling at her as she walked up to him and they gave each other the rest of their lives. He would wear a rose pinned on his pocket. She didn’t know why. It just seemed appropriate. And when he would smile and take her hand, the world would fall away, the church would fall away, everything would fall away, and the only thing she would care about would be the timbre of his breaths beside her, the soft, winding way he would recite his wedding vows, as though each word alone were an act of love. His vows would probably make her melt. He was a cheesy romantic. He’d do the cheesy, romantic vows thing. What would she write?
She didn’t know. She couldn’t even explain her favorite color without a paragraph of babble. Explaining whatever this was that she had with Derek? It seemed sort of like trying to cram the Iliad into a haiku.
“You’re both really disgusting, I hope you know,” Cristina said. “You’re going home in like two minutes. The sex can wait.”
Derek blinked first. Meredith swallowed and tore her gaze away. Had she really been staring that deeply? She… Heat flushed her cheeks and swept away as she recovered. Derek squeezed her shoulder. We’ll talk later, his gesture seemed to say. She nodded against him and sighed.
They would definitely need to talk later about this. Her brief flirtation with May and his mother’s gazebo was nowhere near the end. A pit of realization widened beneath her, and she clutched at Derek, trying to stay afloat in the sudden, drenching enormity of it. Definitely nowhere near the end. They had a lot of planning. A ton. A whole. Freaking. Ton.
“You actually want to get married?” Dr. Burke prodded, but his voice was like an echo against the roar. Meredith blinked.
“You okay?” Derek whispered.
“Yes!” Cristina said. “And if you’d get your arrogant head out of your ass long enough to listen to what I’ve been saying, you’d know that.”
“Well, if you’d stop trying to punish me all the time for loving you, I’d stop pushing you!” Dr. Burke said.
“Yeah,” Meredith replied, low and throaty against his skin as she leaned to kiss his jaw line. “Just had a whoa moment… Thing. Whoa. Good whoa, though. Totally good.”
Derek nodded, and hugged her tighter.
“Fine!” Cristina said.
“Fine!” Dr. Burke said.
Dr. Burke and Cristina would have been almost nose-to-nose, were it not for the height difference. As it were, Cristina stood, glaring, inches from Dr. Burke’s chest, looking up to him, but not seeming at all like she was looking up. She glared, glared, glared him down, and he wilted into a slouch.
“And I want it in September,” she said.
He bristled again. “What? Why?”
“Why?” Cristina said. “Because all the kiddies are back in their state-run prisons where they belong and surgeries will be at an all-time low? Or, maybe, because I don’t want to get married the day after my test! That was the worst date choice ever.” She let loose a breath that puffed the stray pieces of her hair away from her forehead, and her whole body seemed to deflate. She looked at the floor, shuffling her feet in an uncharacteristic, unconfident gesture. “And I like September,” she added in a lower, softer voice. Her eyes watered, and she looked up at him. Her lower lip started to tremble.
“Well, okay then,” Dr. Burke said.
“Yeah,” replied Cristina. She blinked, and the water in her eyes spilled over.
“September,” Dr. Burke said. He stepped into her embrace and pulled her close.
“Yeah,” Cristina whispered.
They shared a long, deep, understanding look. Cristina peered back over her shoulder, her eyes snapping wide with a sort of, “Holy hell, what did I just do?” bit of freak out, but then it slipped away. She wiped her face, sniffling.
“Rain check on that bachelor party,” Dr. Burke said, not taking his eyes from Cristina.
“Okay,” Derek replied.
And then Cristina and Dr. Burke left. They stepped out of the room. Burke’s fingers sought Cristina’s loosely, though he didn’t drag her, and they disappeared from sight in the direction of… Well, there were on-call rooms. His office. Maybe they were going to chat a little more reasonably. It didn’t matter. Meredith blinked as the air around her and Derek seemed to empty. Dr. Burke had sort of an imposing presence, and when he left, it was like replacing a fire with a void. She clutched at Derek’s shirt, relishing the comfort of having him close. What she felt for Derek she likened to fire, but Derek himself? Her rock.
“That was…” Derek began in the silence that followed.
Meredith inhaled. “Whoa.”
“Yeah,” Derek said. “I guess I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to do that, then.”
“Do what?”
“Make it through a bachelor party where I wouldn’t even be allowed to drink anything alcoholic because of all the stuff I’m on, and then somehow stand through a wedding ceremony and reception,” he said, a wry, bitter smile tearing across his features. He raised his hands to his head in a jerky motion, like he wanted to claw his fingers through hair he didn’t have. His fingertips slipped against the cap, and he yanked his hands away. A subtle shiver ran through him from his shoulders to his feet, and he sighed, clutching at her.
“Are you okay, Derek?” she said, worried that the yelling had gotten him more riled than she’d realized. She frowned, realizing she’d sort of put him on the spot with the wedding dress questions, forced his involvement.
He swallowed thickly, leaning back against the pillow. “I’m fine,” he said.
“Okay,” she whispered, not entirely convinced as he resumed staring at the window.
“I want to go home,” he said.
She frowned. “I know. Maybe I should go get--”
“No,” he said. He sighed softly. His eyelids drooped shut for a long, suffering, tired moment before he opened them again, too wide, like he was forcing his eyelids apart.
She stood, slipping out of his arms with woeful regret at ceasing contact, but a fresh determination. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll walk. Your mother signed everything. Everyone here took a freaking Hippocratic oath. What are they going to do to us if we walk?”
He laughed softly and pushed himself into a full sitting position. His muscles shook a little, but he seemed game enough to try. “All right.”
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
Thanks for the comments everyone. I'm behind again, and I'm super busy right now, but I will get to your feedback on the previous part as soon as I can. Hope you enjoy!
~~~~~
The little plastic baggie crinkled in her hands as she stepped out of the elevator. She’d been standing, slanted against the corner, gripping the rails, when it’d hit her. There would be no Derek at work to greet her or interrupt her day anymore. No Derek cornering her in an elevator for at least six weeks. And that was… She’d spent the remainder of the ride wondering what exactly that was.
She felt a little throb of elation for him. He was going home, finally going home, and he would be so much happier away from this place. Away from this place that caged his spirits, made him feel less than human. She had a feeling, deep and twisting and scary in her gut, that even if they tried to keep him an extra day or so for further observation, he would leave against medical advice. He hated it there that much.
The afternoon and night before had been difficult. They’d dropped him off codeine. He’d still had a bit of an ache, so they’d replaced it with simple Tylenol. As a result, he’d had absolutely nothing in him to help him sleep, nothing pushing him into a doze against his will, and he’d spent all afternoon the day before alternating between staring at the door, watching bodies pass by, and staring at the window wistfully, where the sun had finally decided to start shining. The last vestiges of a drugged glaze had slipped from his eyes as his blood had burned off the codeine, but in return, she’d watched the sharp, desperate, stir-crazy look of a prisoner replace it. He definitely wanted to go home.
She’d given him his earplugs, but every time she’d woken up during the night, he’d been staring at the ceiling, his fingers worrying at the blankets on his bed as he pondered the complexities of the tiles above him. He’d flinched, despite the earplugs, every time a noise had filtered in from the hallway, almost as if he didn’t need to hear it, he just knew the noise was there, just like some sort of medicinal Beethoven, and she’d been torn. Torn because she’d been happy he felt well enough to have such an overriding desire to get out of there, but upset that he’d been so disturbed.
Elation. She definitely felt elation for him. Derek was going home.
At the same time, she felt empty. Because after Sunday passed into memory, she was expected back for her shift on Monday, ready to work, ready to go, ready to cut, ready to be a doctor again instead of just a glorified med student studying for finals. And there would be no Derek snarking at her in the elevator, running into her all the time in the hallways for no apparent reason other than his deviously good planning.
She shook her head.
That was… selfish. It was entirely too selfish, she decided, to be feeling things like that. Derek needed to go home almost as much as he needed to breathe at this point, and it was selfish to miss him. He wasn’t even gone yet, and she missed him. How did that even work?
“I finished filling everything out,” Ellen said in a deep, earthy voice. Meredith snapped awake from her musing, only to realize that, at some point, Ellen had fallen into step beside her. She wore casual, black knit pants and a blouse, looking sunny and bright to match the morning that had graced them.
Meredith smiled weakly, twisting her fingers around the bundle crunched between her palms. “That’s great,” she said. “I can’t wait to get out of here. Just watching him is making me antsy.”
Ellen laughed, and they lapsed into comfortable silence. They walked down the hall of the step-down wing. Derek had never been moved to standard care, probably because of the fever scare on Friday. Equipment and roaming nurses and staff and patients made negotiating the hall a sometimes-difficult experience.
Derek’s door was open, and even from the hallway, Dr. Weller’s rich baritone oozed through the air, unhindered, strong beneath the constant murmur of hospital like a collection of sticky honey, clinging to everything it touched. Dr. Weller had the perfect voice for doctoring, because, while it said everything was all right, that everything would be fine, it held an underlying, knowledgeable authority to it. Everything wasn’t just all right. It was under control. And he knew what he was doing. Some doctors came off as arrogant in that knowledge, but Dr. Weller had never once shown himself to have a speck of ego. It was odd, all things considered, and very atypical of a surgeon.
“Dr. Shepherd,” Dr. Weller said, and then his voice dropped lower, into something warmer, kinder, reserved more for a friend than a colleague or a patient as he continued, still in that rich, perfect voice, “Derek. I know you know about homecare following craniotomies. I won’t insult you. But I did want to say one thing.”
“What?” Derek said. He lay stretched out against the bed, sitting up and on top of the blankets as though he were ready to bolt the moment someone said it was okay to leave, as though the hindrance of blankets would be three seconds too much in his journey to escape. He wore a loose set of gray sweats, cross trainers, and a comfortable old t-shirt that had, at one point, probably been a crisp, electric indigo, but had faded as the dye had been slowly scrubbed out of it. It was a perfect outfit for lounging, but also a perfect outfit for exercise, for jogging, which further emphasized his desire to split.
Dr. Weller sat beside the bed in a chair, scribbling notes over what Meredith presumed was Derek’s chart. His white lab coat crinkled at the shoulders, disrupted from its natural flow by the back of the chair. His watch glittered as he wrote, the glass shifting with the motions of his wrist and catching the sunlight filtering through the smudged windowpane. It was as if the world outside had realized what a momentous day this was and had gifted them with something other than rain as a going home present. The lazy patter of drizzle against the window was, for once that week, absent.
Dr. Weller and Derek looked up as Meredith and Ellen entered the room, but their conversation didn’t falter. Meredith sat down in the chair on her side of the bed and Ellen sank down onto the couch. Derek’s eyes crinkled around the edges just a little, and a soft smile of greeting coursed across his face like a wave as he glanced at Meredith, a soft smile that said so many things all at once. Hello. I love you. How are you? I’m going home! I’m happy. The expression disappeared as the crush hit shore, and Dr. Weller spoke. Despite the brevity of the look, Meredith grinned widely at Derek as she placed her small plastic bundle on the stand beside the bed and eased further into her chair.
“As a doctor,” Dr. Weller said as he turned back to Derek, “It’s very easy to think you know better, and it’s very easy to get frustrated. Just take it easy. The next week is still critical. You’re purely in the recovery phase right now. I can’t stress that enough.”
“I know,” Derek said, and the last hints of his happy but silent greeting dripped away. Meredith noticed, finally, in the absence of his disarming smile, after the exhilaration over seeing him had passed, just how strained he looked. His gaze wandered to the window, and he sighed. Fleshy bags hugged his eyes, and the careworn lines around his eyes had deepened from something merely sexy to something tired and longing.
“Derek… I’m just not sure you do know. As your doctor in this case, I have to ask,” Dr. Weller said. “Do you have someone to stay home with you for the first week or so? Or at least someone immediately available if you need help?”
Derek blinked and turned back to Dr. Weller. He crossed his arms over his chest and shifted slightly. The intravenous line was gone, replaced by a taped up square of gauze. “No…” he said.
Meredith felt the quiver of tension drawing the air between them tightly into its grasp. She sighed. She’d wanted to stay home with him. She’d have given anything to stay home with him, but she’d already used up all her resources. She had no leave banked, no bargaining power left with which to procure leave she didn’t have, and Dr. Bailey’s kindness only went so far before she’d decide Meredith was too far behind in the program to ever make up the time. Derek had been doing so well the last few days, Meredith had tried not to let it bother her that he’d be staying home alone. She’d tried. And she’d never brought it up with him, because, hello? She’d imagined it would be a major sore spot. Just judging from the way he reacted now, it was a sore spot. He wanted to go home. He wanted it badly. But one of the main reasons for it was to get away from all the people crowding him with assistance and help he didn’t want, didn’t think he needed.
Her jaw tightened as she watched Dr. Weller’s friendly face sink into something far more serious. If he thought Derek wasn’t well enough to go home by himself, completely by himself, there was a chance Dr. Weller would increase the length Derek’s hospital stay in the interests of Derek’s safety, which, really, would not make Derek very happy. At all.
“I can stay with you, sweetheart,” Ellen offered. “It’s no bother at all. I was planning on staying in Seattle for at least another week anyway, and I imagine Mark would like his spare bedroom back.”
“Oh, Ellen,” Meredith replied, a stab of relief cutting deep even as she found herself mechanically protesting, “I don’t have any beds left. Just the couch in the den, and that’s-“
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Derek said, his tone low and wary.
“It’s all right, dear,” Ellen said, waving her hand dismissively in Derek’s direction. “I’ll be perfectly fine on the couch.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Derek said again.
Ellen turned to him and sighed, her gaze flicking between him and Meredith and Dr. Weller as if she couldn’t decide what to say, couldn’t decide what was safe to say, and the pain that racked her expression made Meredith shiver. Ellen didn’t want to be the pest that made Derek feel like crap for being sick.
“Derek, you can’t drive,” Dr. Weller said, saving Ellen from the worry of it. Meredith reached for Derek’s hand and stroked his palm as Dr. Weller continued, “What if you need to go somewhere?”
His fingers tightened in Meredith’s grasp. “I can call a cab.”
“You can’t lift anything,” Ellen said.
“Shouldn’t,” he insisted. “Shouldn’t lift anything.”
“Derek,” Ellen said, “I really don’t want to upset you, but-“
“I just want to go home,” he snapped. “I’ll be fine when I get home. I feel fine today. I felt fine yesterday. I just get a little tired when I do too much.”
The fact that he didn’t turn, didn’t wink at Meredith over the sexy, secret meaning of his words brought Meredith pause, helped forge the lump in her throat. She heard the undercurrent in his tone. He could, he could, he could, and now everyone was telling him he couldn’t, and that was frustrating to him. Maybe he really did think he’d be fine, that when he got home, things would be fine. Home was supposed to be freedom from this place, and now everyone was insisting he needed someone to take care of him. Meredith bit her lip.
Coward, coward, coward, her mind screamed. This was Derek. Frustratingly stubborn, god-complex-y Derek. Of course he was going to assume he’d be walking on water as soon as he got out of this place, which was the sort of feeling that would only set him up for a drastic, horrible upset when he finally got home and discovered he was still tired, still drained, still not quite right. Why couldn’t she bring herself to contribute?
She felt like a maniacal mad scientist with scissors, clutching at some poor, hapless bird. Clip, clip, clip the wings. That was why. She hated the look on his face. The way the water swirled against the surface of his eyes in a sea of denied tears. That was why. He just wanted to go home. They could talk about this later. They could talk about this later when they were away from Seattle Grace, when he’d had some time to freaking unwind and relax a little, after he’d had five minutes to enjoy the fact that he was alone again, relatively speaking, after a week of constant people.
She opened her mouth to steer the conversation away from this place, this place that was making him look so agitated, but the words that followed came from Dr. Weller. Not her. “Can you walk up steps?” Dr. Weller asked.
Derek blinked, flinching as he started to look between everyone in the room as if he couldn’t figure out where the next jab was going to come from. “What?”
“Have you tried to walk up any steps yet?” Dr. Weller clarified.
“When the hell would I have walked up steps?” Derek snarled. “Nobody lets me walk anywhere unless I’m on a fucking leash.”
“Derek, this is what I meant about getting frustrated, about thinking you know better,” Dr. Weller said. “You need to let yourself heal, and you need to acknowledge that you’re not healed yet. When you get home, there won’t be a call button. There won’t be a nursing staff doing things for you anymore. What they do is easy to overlook, but it’s a huge part of why you’re feeling like you could be fine, now. Most people, when they go home, are surprised by how much worse things seem all of the sudden. I’m sure you’ve gotten plenty of calls from concerned patients wondering what went wrong.”
“I just want to go home,” Derek said. His eyes reddened as he blinked, blinked, blinked. “I’ll be fine when I get home. I just need home. Please. Please, tell me I can go home.” His skin started to shiver and redden with embarrassment, and Meredith felt like crap for not jumping in earlier. Utter crap. She knew the look on his face. He was begging. He was begging, and he hated it, but he was so upset he couldn’t stop himself.
“Nobody’s saying you can’t go home, Derek,” Meredith said, trying to reassure him. Dr. Weller stared at her for a moment, his expression curious, and she knew. She knew Dr. Weller actually was considering recommending Derek stay for a few more days if he decided he didn’t want Ellen around.
Meredith sighed softly. Coward, a small voice said. Coward, coward, coward. Nothing was being voiced that she didn’t agree with at least on some level. And even if he didn’t want to hear it, he should. He wasn’t freaking Superman. He’d just had brain surgery. The next week was still a critical week. He didn’t even have his stitches out yet. She hadn’t pressed the issue of him being by himself, but now everyone was pressing it. Everyone. And if Ellen was available to stay with him and offering…
She took a breath, shivering with a sob she refused herself. She took the scissors and began to clip, feeling horrid for doing it, but… But…
“Derek, it’s easy for you to assume you’ll be fine,” Meredith whispered softly. “It is. I know you, and I know you’ll be perfectly okay ninety-nine percent of the time, but you’ll be all alone, and that one percent terrifies me. What if you fall? You could have a seizure, Derek, and no one would be home to help you.”
Meredith tried to ignore the sting behind her eyes as tears gathered. Derek wasn’t taking this well. He drew his hand away, his jaw set in a firm line. For a brief, nasty moment, she wished she’d let Ellen and Dr. Weller take the brunt of this, but it was a valid point. Derek would be home alone, and, though he was much, much better, he was still not well.
“Derek, please,” Meredith said. “You could have a seizure.”
“Stop it,” Derek said. “Stop.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellen said. “I’ll… I’ll stay at Mark’s.”
“You don’t have to do that, Ellen,” Meredith replied, sighing. “You can stay with us.”
“I don’t want to impose…”
Derek sighed. “It’s fine.”
Ellen sniffled. “Derek, sweetheart…”
“Jesus Christ,” Derek snapped. “First you want to babysit me, and now you don’t. Make up your goddamned mind.”
“Derek Shepherd, you will not speak to me that way!” Ellen roared.
Silence sliced the room apart shard by shard by shard, until the air between them was a broken collection of puzzle pieces that didn’t connect anymore. Everyone hovered in his or her own discordant world. Red, angry defiance gripped Derek in a vice of frustration. Meredith shivered with weepy uncertainty that threatened to melt into anger. Anger at herself for letting this devolve to the point of breaking. Ellen appeared to be juggling an apology with the firm resoluteness that an apology wasn’t needed. Dr. Weller remained impassive, only the ticking skin around his eyes revealing that he was as affected by this exchange as they were. Meredith saw it then, in his gaze. Dr. Weller considered Derek a friend. He didn’t want to do this anymore than they did.
Meredith swallowed, staring at the floor, watching Derek shiver with upset, looking almost like he wanted to bolt for the door at this point regardless of what they said. She’d mother-henned. She’d done the mother hen thing. She’d freaking mother-henned. What the hell. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t do that. She knew that even if Derek couldn’t when he thought he could, he was one of those people who had to come to terms with it on his own, not because someone had told him he couldn’t. She looked up, intent on muttering a litany of self-deprecating words of apology, but, surprisingly, Derek beat her to the conversational starting line.
A sigh shuddered through Derek’s frame. “I’m sorry,” he said as he visibly worked his body through the paces of calming down and the redness leaked away from his skin, replaced by a healthy peach. “This place… I need to get out of here. I didn’t mean to yell, Mom.”
Another cleansing sigh tore through his frame, and then he turned to Meredith. The sharp, clear blue of his stare peeled away her self-flagellation, and without any words, he said everything that needed to be said. I know you’re scared. I’m sorry. It’s all right.
Meredith stood up from the chair and eased onto the bed beside him, feeling the need to be closer like a siren call amongst a ship of sea-weary men. She needed him. And she hated fighting with him. He wrapped his arms around her shivery frame, his warmth seeped into her, and everything inside except her heart fell into stillness. She sighed, breathing in the musky scent of him, pushing her nose into the crook of his neck and taking comfort in the rough forest of stubble that’d broken the surface of his skin. His palm followed the curve of her spine, and he whispered something at her, not really a word, but it didn’t matter, because it made things perfect and okay anyway.
“Sorry,” she muttered, her voice strained and hoarse with tears she hadn’t shed.
“It’s okay,” he said. And it was. “I know,” he said. And he did. He looked up and smiled brightly. Though the expression didn’t quite tear away the clawing desperation on his face, it did a great deal to make him seem more at peace with things. “It’ll be nice to visit with Mom when I’m not stuck in a bed all the time,” he said as he forced confidence back into his posture, his tone, everything. Meredith could see the determination coiling behind his expressive gaze. He wouldn’t be stuck in bed. He wouldn’t. He would be fine.
Meredith ran a hand down the length of his arm, sighing as she melted against his solid frame.
“All right, well, I’ll leave you all to deliberate on the specifics,” Dr. Weller said, slapping his hands on his knees as he stood. “I’m sorry I sowed some harsh feelings. Abasi will be in shortly to escort you to the door. You’ll need to sign some forms at the admitting desk.”
“Already done,” Ellen said. “I have all the homecare pamphlets and everything.”
“Wonderful,” Dr. Weller said. He stopped in the doorframe. “I’ll see you in two days to take out those sutures, Derek.”
“I can walk to the car,” Derek said.
“Sorry,” Dr. Weller said, a helpless look crossing over his features as he shrugged. “You know policy.”
Derek sighed, but if the words upset him, he didn’t let on, which made Meredith smile, despite the fact that she wanted to take whatever binder the drafts of hospital policy were written in and light fire to it. This place had laid him bare, but he was building himself back up again, slowly but surely building. His body was healing. His state-of-mind had lagged a little, but it was healing, too. Slowly.
“Hey, Mike…” Derek called after the departing surgeon.
“Yeah?” Dr. Weller said, turning around with a curious expression. His fingers clasped around Derek’s chart, whitening his knuckles even further. He brought his free hand back into his hair, ruffling it in a Derek-like, I’m-upset-and-I’m-thinking gesture, but he didn’t look upset. Just wondering. Meredith didn’t think she’d ever heard Derek call Dr. Weller by his first name before, though Dr. Weller had been calling Derek by his on and off for a while.
“When I get back,” Derek said, flashing a wide grin, “I owe you a drink. A very large drink.”
“Derek…” Dr. Weller said. He sighed, and a stiff sort of tension that had held his posture straight and rod-like leaked away. He slumped against the doorframe and smiled. “When you get back, I’ll happily take you up on that.”
Derek chuckled. “Glad you didn’t kill me?”
“Immensely,” Dr. Weller said. “Talk about working under pressure.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Derek said, his tone dipping into soft sincerity.
“Anytime,” Dr. Weller said. “Though, you know, preferably not.” He grinned, and then he was gone.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Ellen said. “I promise not to bother you. I wish…”
“I didn’t mean to snap,” Derek said. “I didn’t. I was… I think I’ll be grateful for the company.” He turned a pointed gaze toward Meredith. “I’m used to having company lately,” he said before another wide smile creased his features.
“I know,” Ellen said. “I’ll leave you two alone for a bit. Give me a call when the nurse comes. I’ll bring the car around, all right? If we time it right, you won’t have to wait outside, and we’ll be home before you know it.” His mother smiled brightly.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Of course, Der. I love you.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
Ellen gathered up her red-striped tote bag and purse and left the room. Meredith rested against his chest, clutching a small tent of his shirt in her fingers, and sighed at the scent of him, the scent that was Derek. Just Derek. He ran his hand through her hair, and it was as if the conversation about the seizures, about him needing someone to stay with him, had evaporated into nothing. It’d happened. It had. But it wasn’t overriding, wasn’t something he felt was crippling him anymore. He was all right. He’d just had a momentary lapse of… something.
“You too, huh,” she said, unable to stop wistfulness from edging her tone into breathlessness. She grinned. “I was kind of wondering what I’d do without you interrupting all my elevator rides.”
“Really?” he said, laughing. “I was having early onset lavender-lust.”
“Lavender-lust. Is that a technical term?” she said.
“Oh, yes,” he replied. “I have a thing for lavender.”
“Really?”
“Mmm,” he said as though he were sampling a taste of the world’s finest Godiva. He leaned into her, until his lips were millimeters from her ear. He breathed, and then he whispered, “It’s very intense.”
“I thought that was ferries,” she said, shivering as the rumble of his words slipped down her spine and tingled lower, starting a throb of desire. She bit her lip, willing it to go away. They’d be home. They’d be home in just a little while. She could wait. She could freaking wait.
“I’m an intense person,” he said. He pulled her against him and sighed. “I’m sorry,” he added. “I know… Seizures. I know they scare you. I didn’t mean to scare you, Meredith. I really didn’t. I get… stuck. Stuck sometimes. In my own head.”
“I know,” she whispered. “They don’t scare you?”
“Seizures?” he said. “They do.”
“But?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead he kissed her cheek and held her close. He didn’t need to answer her. His embrace spoke enough to paint a picture worth a million words or more, and silence stole the moments away into its comforting keeping. He absently rubbed her arm with his hand. She watched him as he peered out the window, staring at the cerulean sky with a sort of longing, and she hoped the nurse would come soon with the wheelchair.
“I forgot,” she said as she pulled away. A spike of longing twanged down her spine like she was a plucked string of a violin. She grabbed the plastic bag from the table and handed it to him, resettling quickly against him with a sigh. “This is… This is for you. It’s not a scrub cap or anything, but I saw it in the gift shop while I was stretching my legs, and I thought you’d… I thought…”
She closed her eyes when the words wouldn’t come anymore, and a shiver of embarrassment coursed through her. What if he… This was a gift that he could easily take the wrong way. And it was the first gift she’d ever given him. It wasn’t romantic or meaningful like the scrub cap he’d bought her. It was practical. For him. Because the hair thing really bothered him, even though he took care not to say much about it. It really bothered him, and if she could fix it…
The bag crinkled. She watched his deft, surgeon’s hands as they searched the contents within. He pulled the bundle out, flicking the sticker tag with his fingers as he assessed the gift. It was a thin, cream-colored knit skullcap. The hospital had them in the gift shop for people undergoing chemotherapy primarily, but it also served in instances like this. It looked like the hats Alex liked to wear, close to the head, minimally intrusive, subtle.
“Thank you,” he said. He yanked at the tag, which came away from the cap without much effort, and he slipped it over his head, hiding the stitches, the scar, and his pale skin away from view.
“It’s okay?” she said. “I didn’t want... I mean, I’m sorry if…”
“Thank you, Mere,” he said, cutting her off with a gorgeous smile. The cap’s light color made him seem less tired, though the smile did more to that end. He straightened a little, and the overall effect was striking, even if it was small.
“Sure,” she said.
He ran his fingers over the edges, smoothing the cap against his scalp. “Well, I imagine it’s not The Hair, but…”
She grinned. “Very sexy,” she assured him. “Very hip or something. We should get you some bling.”
He blinked. “Some bling.”
“Totally,” she said, nodding. “You need some bling.”
“I’m a thirty-nine-year-old, brain-damaged neurosurgeon. Not Eminem.”
She laughed. “Definitely not Eminem.”
“Definitely not,” he replied with a smirk. “I’m happy, I have no rhythm, and I have no bling. Three strikes against any hopes of me being a rapper.”
She snorted, trying to contain the gurgle of laughter that threatened to erupt as she pictured him trying to do anything remotely coordinated like move to The Real Slim Shady, or some equally offensive song. Under normal circumstances, he was graceful, lithe, and athletic. His thin but muscled frame was perfect for outdoorsy things like hiking and camping, perfect for the exertion of wild sex or jogging. But music had a way of stripping the grace from the most graceful of souls, and aside from sexy slow-dancing, she couldn’t picture him as anything but an awkwardly flailing pile of limbs no matter what the music, no matter what the dance, whether it was hip-hop, the flamenco, or just the kind of writhing you did at a club, where you let the beat decide the motions for you. Derek was an arrogant individual. He flaunted it if there was even a chance he had it. If he didn’t dance in public, there was most likely a very good reason. A very good, beatless, flailing, hilarious reason. Instead of ribbing him, though, she latched onto the first thing he’d said and sighed as the mirth she’d found in the thoughts of him dancing settled into a hum of relaxed happiness. She kissed him softly on the lips. “You’re happy,” she purred.
“When I look at you?” he said. He caught her gaze with his unblinking, twinkling eyes. “Very.”
“Cheesy.”
He winked. “You love me for it.”
“I do. I really, really do.”
“I love you, too,” he said as she settled back against him.
She rubbed his arms, wishing she could just get them both out of there, away from everything. “Just a little longer, Derek. Abasi will be here any minute, I’m sure.”
He sighed against her, but it was an unhurried, relaxed gesture more than a perturbed one. His grip tightened around her. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Good.”
One moment, they rested in silence, the next, commotion tore down everything they’d built. She felt Derek tense underneath her, and his relaxed, what comes will come Zen attitude bled back into anxious wanting. Wanting to get away from all the interruptions.
“Hey, Shepherd,” Dr. Burke said as he burst into the room, “Do you-“
“Would you stop with the bachelor party plans?” Cristina snarled as she entered the room just behind him, interrupting Dr. Burke’s question. Her scrubs were rumpled and slept in, and her hair was clipped back in a loose, mangy ponytail that had seen better days. She looked like she’d seen about five minutes of an on-call room in the past thirty-six hours, and tiredness rolled from her frame, but the exhaustion seemed almost like a fuel that kept her words from halting, a little like tequila in the hands of Meredith.
The two of them came to a stop just inside the door, crossed their arms, and glared at each other.
“Cristina…” Dr. Burke said, his tone low, patronizing, and woeful.
“I told you,” Cristina said. “We’re not getting married unless we do it at City Hall like I said I wanted.” She gestured toward the bed, giving the first indication that she realized the room they’d wandered into was otherwise occupied. “Just him and Meredith. No one else. That means no Moms, flower girls, white dresses, or priests. I’m not doing it.”
“Why are you being so difficult?” Dr. Burke said.
“Hey, Cristina,” Meredith offered to the tension in the air, but the words fell apart like confetti and disappeared into the conversational pause like they hadn’t been uttered at all.
“Difficult?” Cristina demanded. She turned briefly to Meredith. “Hi,” she added gruffly, confirming that Meredith had, in fact, spoken, before turning back to Dr. Burke. Meredith sank back against Derek, trying to catch up with the whirlwind of fighting that had entered the room. “Difficult?” Cristina continued. “Difficult is you screwing around with my professional life to get me to do what you want in our personal life. I don’t appreciate being bullied or punished whenever I don’t fit your mold. You, Preston Burke, are difficult.”
Dr. Burke sighed again. His gaze drifted momentarily to Derek’s bed, considering. He turned back to Cristina and stiffened. “Cristina…” he said.
“No. No, we’re having this fight here. If we don’t have it now, we’re not having it at all. I’m done. And it’s not like she’s not going to hear about it later.”
“I’m feeling rather overlooked,” Derek commented, a smirk pasted on his face, though in the corners of his eyes, Meredith found clipped annoyance. Go away. Go away and leave me alone, for once. He’d had major disturbances in his room practically every day. Mark. Addison. Ellen. He didn’t need more, particularly if they weren’t even about him.
Cristina shrugged. “I was assuming the grapevine effect.”
“Cristina…” said Dr. Burke, which only incensed her further.
“Stop Cristinaing me!” Cristina snapped.
“Maybe you two need to chat in an on-call room, or something,” Meredith suggested quietly, her mind racing. She’d wanted Cristina to stand up for herself. She’d wanted Cristina to be sure she was getting some of what she wanted out of the deal, instead of letting Dr. Burke push, push, push her for things she didn’t want. But she hadn’t expected… Well, she hadn’t expected them to be fighting in Derek’s room, of all places.
For a moment, Dr. Burke stood still. The skin around his eyes ticked. His crossed arms tightened against his chest, and then he launched forward, spitting like an enraged lion or something. He gripped Cristina’s arms and shook her. “I have to push you!” he exclaimed.
“Excuse me?” Cristina said.
“Every step we’ve ever taken, I’ve had to push you,” he said. He started to pace. “You’re always happy later, but getting you there? It’s impossible. You don’t listen when I speak to you reasonably. What else am I supposed to do?”
“But I want to get married!” Cristina said.
Dr. Burke drew back. “You do…” he said, his arrested, quiet tone betraying just how flummoxed he was to his audience, though his face remained calm and collected. He was Preston Burke, and there was no fighting there.
“Yes! I told you I did. I just don’t want some frilly, girly affair. We’ll get enough of that when Meredith finally goes through with it.”
“Thanks, Cristina…” Meredith snapped.
Cristina rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You want the white dress and the doves and all that crap. I know you under that Ellis-poisoned exterior.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting white dresses and doves,” Derek said.
Everyone turned to him, considering.
“Not for me, damn it,” he added, his face reddening. “There’s definitely something wrong with that.”
Meredith swallowed, unprepared for the overwhelming turn of focus in the room from Dr. Burke and Cristina to her and Derek. “You want me in a white dress?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper as she wiped her face and stared at him.
She hadn’t really thought about it. What she’d want. What kind of wedding. She wasn’t even sure whether he was Catholic or Protestant or what. She was pretty sure he was some flavor of Christian. Well, he probably wasn’t Catholic. What with the divorce. But he celebrated Christmas, which, unless he was just one of those people who liked Christmas trees and Santa Claus and mistletoe for the hell of it without thinking about the underlying reason for the holiday, she could rule out pretty much everything without a bible containing the New Testament. Then again, he’d also never struck her as very spiritual, either. He loved the outdoors, but she’d always perceived that as more of an appreciation for the peace being close to nature brought him, not for any connection it might have offered him to whatever was out there that was bigger. It was one of those things they just hadn’t gotten around to talking about. It’d never been…
Well, it hadn’t been very important. Not to her. Not when she was such a faith-challenged mess. She wasn’t even sure what she was. She hadn’t been to church since… Never. Ellis hadn’t been a religious woman, and Sundays were a valuable day for work.
“Meredith, I want what you want,” he said softly, breaking her from her spiral of thoughts. “If it’s legal, I really don’t care.”
“But you like the idea of a white dress.”
“Meredith…”
“Shut up and stop deferring for once,” she snapped. “If what I wanted wasn’t a factor, you’d want to do the white wedding thing, wouldn’t you?”
She tried to picture herself walking down an aisle in a huge, airy church, a train of frilly, lacey white flowing after her. Bells would be ringing, and there’d be hundreds of people there, mostly because of Derek and his family. She didn’t have a big family. Four interns, and a budding relationship with a fake-mom. She shuddered. She wasn’t a frilly, lacey, white dress person, was she? That was a fairytale.
“Well, I…” Derek stammered, but she saw in his eyes what his tongue wouldn’t straighten out to say. Yes. Yes, he did. He wanted that.
Sometimes, fairytales were nice, a small, breathy whisper flitted through her head. She changed her focus, instead thinking of Derek standing up front in a tuxedo, smiling at her as she walked up to him and they gave each other the rest of their lives. He would wear a rose pinned on his pocket. She didn’t know why. It just seemed appropriate. And when he would smile and take her hand, the world would fall away, the church would fall away, everything would fall away, and the only thing she would care about would be the timbre of his breaths beside her, the soft, winding way he would recite his wedding vows, as though each word alone were an act of love. His vows would probably make her melt. He was a cheesy romantic. He’d do the cheesy, romantic vows thing. What would she write?
She didn’t know. She couldn’t even explain her favorite color without a paragraph of babble. Explaining whatever this was that she had with Derek? It seemed sort of like trying to cram the Iliad into a haiku.
“You’re both really disgusting, I hope you know,” Cristina said. “You’re going home in like two minutes. The sex can wait.”
Derek blinked first. Meredith swallowed and tore her gaze away. Had she really been staring that deeply? She… Heat flushed her cheeks and swept away as she recovered. Derek squeezed her shoulder. We’ll talk later, his gesture seemed to say. She nodded against him and sighed.
They would definitely need to talk later about this. Her brief flirtation with May and his mother’s gazebo was nowhere near the end. A pit of realization widened beneath her, and she clutched at Derek, trying to stay afloat in the sudden, drenching enormity of it. Definitely nowhere near the end. They had a lot of planning. A ton. A whole. Freaking. Ton.
“You actually want to get married?” Dr. Burke prodded, but his voice was like an echo against the roar. Meredith blinked.
“You okay?” Derek whispered.
“Yes!” Cristina said. “And if you’d get your arrogant head out of your ass long enough to listen to what I’ve been saying, you’d know that.”
“Well, if you’d stop trying to punish me all the time for loving you, I’d stop pushing you!” Dr. Burke said.
“Yeah,” Meredith replied, low and throaty against his skin as she leaned to kiss his jaw line. “Just had a whoa moment… Thing. Whoa. Good whoa, though. Totally good.”
Derek nodded, and hugged her tighter.
“Fine!” Cristina said.
“Fine!” Dr. Burke said.
Dr. Burke and Cristina would have been almost nose-to-nose, were it not for the height difference. As it were, Cristina stood, glaring, inches from Dr. Burke’s chest, looking up to him, but not seeming at all like she was looking up. She glared, glared, glared him down, and he wilted into a slouch.
“And I want it in September,” she said.
He bristled again. “What? Why?”
“Why?” Cristina said. “Because all the kiddies are back in their state-run prisons where they belong and surgeries will be at an all-time low? Or, maybe, because I don’t want to get married the day after my test! That was the worst date choice ever.” She let loose a breath that puffed the stray pieces of her hair away from her forehead, and her whole body seemed to deflate. She looked at the floor, shuffling her feet in an uncharacteristic, unconfident gesture. “And I like September,” she added in a lower, softer voice. Her eyes watered, and she looked up at him. Her lower lip started to tremble.
“Well, okay then,” Dr. Burke said.
“Yeah,” replied Cristina. She blinked, and the water in her eyes spilled over.
“September,” Dr. Burke said. He stepped into her embrace and pulled her close.
“Yeah,” Cristina whispered.
They shared a long, deep, understanding look. Cristina peered back over her shoulder, her eyes snapping wide with a sort of, “Holy hell, what did I just do?” bit of freak out, but then it slipped away. She wiped her face, sniffling.
“Rain check on that bachelor party,” Dr. Burke said, not taking his eyes from Cristina.
“Okay,” Derek replied.
And then Cristina and Dr. Burke left. They stepped out of the room. Burke’s fingers sought Cristina’s loosely, though he didn’t drag her, and they disappeared from sight in the direction of… Well, there were on-call rooms. His office. Maybe they were going to chat a little more reasonably. It didn’t matter. Meredith blinked as the air around her and Derek seemed to empty. Dr. Burke had sort of an imposing presence, and when he left, it was like replacing a fire with a void. She clutched at Derek’s shirt, relishing the comfort of having him close. What she felt for Derek she likened to fire, but Derek himself? Her rock.
“That was…” Derek began in the silence that followed.
Meredith inhaled. “Whoa.”
“Yeah,” Derek said. “I guess I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to do that, then.”
“Do what?”
“Make it through a bachelor party where I wouldn’t even be allowed to drink anything alcoholic because of all the stuff I’m on, and then somehow stand through a wedding ceremony and reception,” he said, a wry, bitter smile tearing across his features. He raised his hands to his head in a jerky motion, like he wanted to claw his fingers through hair he didn’t have. His fingertips slipped against the cap, and he yanked his hands away. A subtle shiver ran through him from his shoulders to his feet, and he sighed, clutching at her.
“Are you okay, Derek?” she said, worried that the yelling had gotten him more riled than she’d realized. She frowned, realizing she’d sort of put him on the spot with the wedding dress questions, forced his involvement.
He swallowed thickly, leaning back against the pillow. “I’m fine,” he said.
“Okay,” she whispered, not entirely convinced as he resumed staring at the window.
“I want to go home,” he said.
She frowned. “I know. Maybe I should go get--”
“No,” he said. He sighed softly. His eyelids drooped shut for a long, suffering, tired moment before he opened them again, too wide, like he was forcing his eyelids apart.
She stood, slipping out of his arms with woeful regret at ceasing contact, but a fresh determination. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll walk. Your mother signed everything. Everyone here took a freaking Hippocratic oath. What are they going to do to us if we walk?”
He laughed softly and pushed himself into a full sitting position. His muscles shook a little, but he seemed game enough to try. “All right.”