Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 51B

[ariaadagio]

Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.

Feedback keeps me going a lot better than the show at this point.  Please?  I hate to beg, but, really, please?  :)  Because...  Did I mention the broken brain?

ETA: Thank you so much to my super beta readers, who really contribute so much behind the scenes to this story it isn't even funny.  I completely suck at hockey, but luckily SSSB provided excellent translation so that I could make Derek a believable hockey fan.  And SSBR was the one who thought Mark would be an awesome foil in this part, the idea of which actually got me excited enough to get started writing on this again after having so much trouble.  Thank you :)

~~~~~

Derek stared down at the chart in his hand as he took a deep, cleansing breath.  Dr. Bailey had loose, casual script that, unlike a lot of doctors he knew, was actually legible after about twenty seconds of intense concentration.  He forced his eyes to interpret and assemble until he felt like the tendons in his neck would snap, but everything coalesced on schedule.  Not delayed.  Twenty seconds.  Just like it always had.  He couldn't stop the little vocalized sigh that slipped out between his lips.  Relief.  Relief tore down his spine and reverberated through his body with a shiver of triumph.

And then it came to a crashing halt when he actually read, instead of just realized he could read.

Candy Kane.  Seriously?  He squinted at Dr. Bailey's writing and sighed.  Candy Krane.  That was a little more like it.  He looked up and saw the woman sitting on bed two.  She was a platinum blonde, and she looked exactly like a Barbie doll.  Exactly.  Complete with gaudy eye shadow, a clueless, vacant expression, a pencil-thick waist, and an explosion of breasts that had to be the cause of some major back problems.  Perhaps Candy Kane would have been more appropriate, after all.  Seriously...

A small trickle of blood snaked down Candy Krane's temple from behind her hairline.  She daintily held a small white tissue against her skin, but every few moments, she'd lift it away and frown, first at her manicured nails - two were chipped -- and then at the blood saturating the tissue.  Her voluptuous lips would quiver, she'd nip at herself, and the whole process would start again as she would put the tissue back against the wound.

Derek schooled his expression, trying to tuck his mirth away.  It wasn't really that funny.  She was bleeding.  Bleeding wasn't funny.  Despite her stupid name and her cartoonish features.  A vague, snarling whisper of thought wound behind his eyes.  Superficial hypocrite.  Walk.  Walk over and be a doctor.  Be a cocky, know-it-all surgeon.

He took three steps, only to flinch as a low, deep voice hissed in his ear, "Let me take this one, man.  Please?"  Another of Bailey's charts slammed into his field of view, making him twitch.  Mark pulled it away.  The skin around Mark's eyes ticked with apology, as if he suddenly realized that Derek might not be entirely okay with flashing colors and quick intrusions.  But he said nothing apologetic.  Only, "Trade me?"

"Hi," the woman said when she saw that Derek and Mark were approaching her.  Her face brightened, and her lips peeled back in what Derek could only classify as the ditziest expression of joy he'd ever seen.  "I'm Candy."  Her gaze lingered on Mark, who crossed his arms again in a stance far from intimidating.  It was more of a look-at-me, I-have-biceps-and-a-washboard-stomach pose.

Derek bit back on the little bit of bile that welled up in his mouth.

"You certainly are," Mark replied.

Derek rolled his eyes.  "You're kidding me."

"You have a woman, and your stitches suck," Mark stated.  "Take broken toe guy."

"I have a..." Derek spluttered.  Candy watched them with a nodding, understanding expression, as if the conversation was a deep, world-altering one.  Derek gripped the chart and flapped a useless palm in her direction.  "Mark, she's a patient!  And my stitches don't suck!"

"Everyone's stitches suck compared to mine," Mark said.  He smiled and stuck his hand out.  His fingers wrapped around hers, and she licked her lips.  "Candy, I'm Dr. Sloane, a world-renowned plastic surgeon," he said before gesturing lazily at Derek.  "You wouldn't want this guy messing with that perfect face.  Would you?"

"Perfect face?" Candy whispered, her expression dreamy as she leaned forward, her stare a captive victim of Mark, ladies' man.

Derek rolled his eyes.  "My stitches do not suck."

"Yes," Mark replied, ignoring him.  "Your eyes caught me from across the room."

She gasped, bouncing a little on the stretcher.  Her chest jiggled with her excitement.  "Really?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Mark," Derek said.

"Gentlemen!" Dr. Bailey snapped.

Mark didn't have the decency to look ashamed.  He grinned, a shrug sloughing off his massively emphasized shoulders.  He held out a palm for Ms. Krane's chart.  Derek glared for a long moment.

You're just upset she isn't drooling for McDreamy, a low, dangerous voice said.  Be a fucking doctor and stop moping about your fucking head trauma.  This is pathetic.

Broken.

Derek traded charts with Mark, trying to ignore the claw of defeat that wound around his heart.  Mark.  Always winning.  Always taking.  Always...

Derek Shepherd!  What are you doing out in this snow?

It was my idea, Mark had confessed.  We're making a snowman.  See?

"Enjoy your future syphilis," Derek added to Candy as he surrendered and turned to bed three, to the man Mark had so aptly named broken toe guy.

"Hello," Derek said as he left Mark to his wiles and approached an older, graying man, probably in his fifties.  "I'm Dr. Shepherd."  It felt good to be saying that again.  Dr. Shepherd.  Good.  The man stared at him with respect, not curiosity or expectation that something might be off.  That felt nice, too.

"Enrique Hernandez," the man said, a Spanish-lilt to his voice.  They shook hands, and Derek instructed him to lie back against the bed as Derek pulled up a rickety exam stool and sat down.

"So, how did this happen?" Derek asked.  He removed the man's sock and felt along the line of bone in the man's middle toe.  Definitely a fracture.  The skin where the toe connected to the foot had turned a blackish color, and he could feel a vague, hairline disconnect under the skin where a strong, straight line should have been.  Enrique winced as Derek's finger met a tender spot.

"Mi esposa," the man said, panting.  "My wife."

Derek raised an eyebrow, trying to ignore the shrieking giggle that erupted from Candy as Mark said something charming.  "Your wife broke your toe?"

"Oh, no, Dr. Shepherd," Enrique said.  "But she went shopping.  It was either kick her, or kick the bag full of basura she brought home.  And I would never kick my wife.  She buys muchos libros.  Books.  The bag was hard, I'm afraid."

Derek grinned as he leaned back.  "Well, Mr. Hernandez, your toe is definitely broken.  There's not much we can do for that except tape it up.  I would like to get an x-ray, though, just to make sure you haven't damaged your foot.  That's a little more serious.  You'd need a cast."

Derek scribbled the x-ray order and his signature on the chart.  That hadn't been so bad.  That had been...  Well...  That had been easy.  He swallowed thickly, marveling that his head didn't hurt, his eyes didn't feel like they were straining, and the endless feeling of being stared at and judged had receded in the wake of everything else.

Being a doctor.  It was a good feeling.  Even if he was only fixing broken toes.  Enrique Hernandez knew nothing about Dr. Derek Shepherd.  And so he didn't wonder why Derek had chosen his particularly unattractive, spikey haircut, or why a world-class neurosurgeon would be in a clinic, fixing busted toes, or why Derek's eyes lingered on his charts a few seconds longer than most doctors as he tried to fill them out coherently.

It was a nice feeling.  Anonymity.  Safety.

Dr. Derek Shepherd could be a doctor there, and it was...  Maybe it was okay.  Maybe.

The door at the end of the clinic slammed back against its hinges, and the tiled floor squeaked as frantic feet tore across it.  A blur the size of a person darted past, and the cool air buffeted Derek's hot skin as he flinched with the sudden movement, blinking, trying to soak it in and not look startled or out of place.

He was okay.  He was.  He was completely fine.  He breathed.  Fine.

"Where is the coyote?" Enrique said.

Derek turned to the man.  "What?"

Enrique made a dismissive gesture with his palm, a bemused expression making his thin mustache twitch with mirth.

The blur skidded to a stop next to Mark.  "Candy!" the blotchy-faced, brown-haired man shouted despite being barely three feet from his quarry.  "Candy, oh, thank god.  I was so worried."

"Steven!" she exclaimed.

Derek leaned forward on his stool.  It squeaked.  Mark glared at him.  "Oh, are you her husband?" Derek asked, unable to stop his voice from dipping somewhere low and goading and snarky.  A grin slipped across his face before he could stop it.  Mark was bigger.  But Derek had always considered himself wittier.  If Mark wanted to play with his bestest buddy again, he'd learn to take a few verbal knocks.

Mark was the ogre.  I stomp you!

Derek was the little cat with the sword and the boots.

Derek cringed when he realized the analogy he'd created.  Okay, maybe not entirely that much wittier.  Mark was smart, after all.  He was just...

Blunt.  He wasn't about finesse.

Steven blinked.  "Oh, no, sir, I'm her tennis instructor."

"Did you get this playing tennis?" Mark asked Candy, gesturing to the cut on her temple.

She opened her mouth to reply, but Steven answered for her despite his breathless gasping.  "No," he said.  "She got that from my trellis."

"Your trellis," Mark repeated slowly.

"Yes," Steven said, nodding.  "She had to climb out the window."  He turned toward her and pulled her manicured hand between his palms.  He kissed each knuckle like a badly acted Casanova.  "Are you okay, baby?  I was so worried when you fell."

"I'm fine," she assured him, bubbling and cheerful despite the blood still flowing freely down her face.  "It was only a few feet.  Did she see us?"

Derek snickered as Mark glowered and pulled a suture kit up next to his stool.  Candy and Steven made goggling, flirty, fish-eyes at each other.

"No, I don't think so.  I followed as soon as I could," Steven replied.

For a moment, Derek looked away.  For a moment.  "I'll find a nurse to take you to x-ray," he told Enrique as he scribbled some finalizing notes on his patient's chart.

He was happy.  Happy that he'd managed to be a doctor.  And happy that he'd managed a few jabs at Mark despite how unsettled and nervous he'd felt all day.  He wasn't just a useless, brain-damaged freak taking blows.  He was happy.  And possibly okay.

But then his false security disintegrated into a pile of eroded dust.  A blink.  That's all it took, and he was back to being that guy.  That guy with the broken head who couldn't think fast and couldn't handle changes with any amount of grace.

Broken, broken, broken.

First, Enrique's eyes widened.  Then, behind Derek's shoulder, Steve blurted a frantic, "Candy!"  The bed behind Derek started to squeak as something thrashed.

"Derek," Mark snapped.  "Derek, she's seizing."

"What!" Derek exclaimed as he turned to find Candy on her back, her limbs flailing spasmodically.

"Seizing!" Mark exclaimed.  Mark lowered the bed while he slung an arm across her chest to keep her from falling off the thin frame.

You're not supposed to do that, Derek thought vaguely.  You're not supposed to restrain a seizure victim.  He blinked, and the world froze into a muted series of distant thuds that could have been shouting.  Dr. Bailey and the nurses swarmed, and Steven wouldn't stop yelling, but Derek could barely hear any of it.

He stared at the thrashing woman on the stretcher.  Only moments ago, he'd been sniggering about her rack.  And her dumb expression.  And her stupid name.  And the fact that Mark found her attractive.  Mark found anything with a willingly receptive vagina attractive.  But now she was seizing.  She was seizing.  And it didn't...

"We need some..." Derek stuttered, but his mind blanked, and a malignant sort of tabula rasa settled into the cracks like a weed, wiping clean the slate he'd been building.  The progress he'd made toward normalcy bled out of his pores like sweat.  He blinked as his muscles started to shiver.  There was something.  She...  The drug name.  What was it?  It was simple.  Simple, simple, simple.  He scraped for it.  It was there, but all he saw was twitching limbs and snarls of perfect blond hair, tangling against Mark's grip.  Pheno.  Something.  "Some...  Uh."  Phenobarbital.

"Some Phenobarbital," Dr. Bailey interrupted.  "Stat."

Hot anger swept down the back of his throat in place of the word he'd meant to offer.  Phenobarbital.  He knew that.  He knew it.  He knew it.  Why couldn't he think straight when he needed to think straight?  He blinked, his eyes starting to water as the woman's thrashing slowed, and she went into a post-epileptic, recovery state on her own.  Sluggish and sleepy and unresponsive.  That was normal.  At least she hadn't gone status epilepticus.  Cranial bleeds were nasty territory when seizures entered into the equation.

The nurses set up an intravenous line faster than he'd been able to think the simple word.  Phenobarbital.  That would keep her from any further seizing until they could figure out...  Figure out what?

What was going on?  She'd been lucid.  She'd been fine.  She'd had no indicators whatsoever, which is why he'd passed the clipboard off to Mark without much further protesting.  Let him have his Barbie doll.

Stupid.  Broken.  Idiot.

A warm hand gripped his shoulder.  "Derek?" Mark asked.

Derek flinched at the unexpected touch, swallowing.  Get with it.  Get with it.  Be a fucking doctor.  "Sir, can you describe the fall she took?" he asked Steven, who was hovering over his adulterous tennis student with a look of pure infatuation and nothing deeper.  He stroked her arm and whispered.

He looked up.  "She was only unconscious for a minute," he whispered.

"Unconscious!" Derek snapped.  "You could have mentioned that."

"She got up!" the man protested indignantly.  "I thought it was fine.  Rose was yelling at me, so I forgot."

"You forgot she lost consciousness," Derek replied with disbelief.  "You forgot?"

The man nodded.  "I was flustered.  She looked fine when I got here.  I thought...  I thought she was fine."

Derek leaned forward over the bed and peeled her eyelids back, checking her with the penlight he'd put in his pocket when he'd dressed.  One pupil was blown.  The other still responded to light.  That was good.  Well, better than it could have been.  Seizures.  A blown pupil.  A period of lucidity that quickly deteriorated.  A head wound on the temporal bone.  He knew this.  He knew it.  Mark and Dr. Bailey were staring at him.  He knew it.  He knew, he knew.  He sucked in a sharp, forceful breath and blew it out, trying not to see himself lying there, trembling like a leaf, stupefied and naked while a teary Meredith stood there, her palm covering her mouth as she struggled not to cry or throw up with distress.

He blinked.

Please stay with me, Derek.  I'm really scared.

"Well, she's not fine, sir," Derek snapped.  "She very likely has an acute epidural hematoma.  Send her to CT, right now."  The nurses nodded, and pulled the woman away in a flurry of squeaking wheels and rumbling movement.

He turned to Steven.  "How long ago since she fell?" he asked, trying to keep an iota of calm in the grips of his tone.

"I don't know," Steven said.  "A few hours?  It took a while to get here."

A few hours.  At least that meant the bleed wasn't explosive.  Then again, if it had been really bad, she'd be dead.  Who was he kidding?  Epidural bleeds were bad, regardless.  And they generally reached peak size in six to eight hours.  Which didn't leave them with a ton of time.  One in five.  That was the mortality truth he was looking at.

"She'll need emergency decompressive surgery immediately, or she's going to die," he stated bluntly.  Mean.  Why was he being mean?  He wasn't mean.  He had a great bedside manner.  Everyone loved Dr. Derek Shepherd.

Steven blinked.  "Die?"

"Yes.  Die," Derek said.  He turned.  "I'm going to go up to-"

"Derek," Mark said softly behind him.  You can't, his gaze said.  You can't do that.  Though he didn't utter the words.

A shiver tunneled down Derek's spine.  "Right," he said, deflating as the whoosh of adrenaline left him tired and achy and nauseated.  "Right.  Page Dr. Weller."

Dr. Bailey nodded.  "I'll just take Mr...."

"Zuckerman," Steven replied, his voice flat and blank.

Dr. Bailey nodded.  "I'll take Mr. Zuckerman to the waiting room."

"But she was fine," Steven stated, the barest ghost of himself remaining in his voice.  His lip quivered.  He blinked, and a spill of salty tears plastered his face.

Dr. Bailey soothed him, rubbing his back as they walked away, leaving Derek and Mark in the empty space where the bed had been.  The space where, twenty minutes ago, Mark had been flirting with a vacuous Barbie doll, and Derek had been pleased he could deal with a fucking broken toe.

Can you speak at all?  Please, Derek.  Say anything.  Anything, please.

"Derek?" Mark prodded.

For a moment, Derek stood, still and quiet, shivering like a volcano getting ready to explode.  He clenched his fists until his knuckles hurt.  He couldn't do this.  Everything was loud, and bright, and fast, and he'd been slow for more than eight weeks, and he couldn't do this.  He couldn't.

His throat hurt.  He inhaled deeply through his nose.  And then he left.  Left the clinic.  He couldn't stand there and have a nervous breakdown in the middle of the fucking room.  People probably already thought the world of him.  Phenobarbital.  Fee-no-bar-bit-all.  It wasn't fucking hard to say.  He'd fucking stumbled all over it.

He slammed his palm against the door, making it into the hallway before the world blurred.  He was sick.  And he hated it.  And he couldn't think.  He was so tired of not being able to think.  He almost would have preferred a tremor, or some sort of wrecked coordination issue that would make him stumble about like a fool.  He could see those.  It would be understandable that he was still not okay if he could just see something wrong with himself.  Some visible reminder that he was cut up and not fine.  Some visible reminder that would let his coworkers know that he wasn't a moron.  He was just hurt.

A dry, ironic laugh ripped out from his lips.

He told his patients and their families all the time to take it easy.  To not get frustrated.  Just because they couldn't see the injury didn't mean it wasn't there.

What a fucking joke.

Don't get frustrated.

A goddamned joke.

He leaned his forehead against the wall and breathed, sucking down the scent of paint and cleaner and paper.  His fingers slipped along the surface.  There was nothing to grab onto and claw.  Nothing at all.  The world around him moved.  Fast.  Behind him, he could hear the sounds of the hospital.  Keyboards clacking.  Voices.  Heart monitors.  Footsteps.  Wheels.  It all moved so fast.

A large, warm presence filled the space behind him, wordless, breathing.  A hand gripped his shoulder and squeezed.  Firm.  Full of life and support and things he'd missed since he'd left New York.  The man behind Derek wasn't the man who'd screwed Addison in Derek's marital bed.  He was the friend and the brother Derek had grown up with.  And it made Derek hurt inside.  This was the Mark he missed.

Well, I'm grounded.

For what?

For having the bright idea of taking you outside to build a snowman.

I'm sorry.

No, you're not.  But it's okay.

"People are so fucking stupid, Mark," he said, his voice quivering with all the crap he wasn't letting loose.  All the stuff that was twisting his vocal cords into knots.  "That woman should have been in the ER.  Not the clinic.  And if you hadn't been so busy flirting with her, you know, you might have gotten a decent medical history."

"Derek, she had a little scrape on her temple, and she was completely lucid," Mark replied, no bite in his tone.  No defensive snapping.  "She had absolutely no indicators until she passed out and seized.  I worked with you for years.  I know a little about brains, too.  It was nobody's fault."

Derek sighed.  He leaned into the wall and breathed, low and loud.  "I know.  I know.  I..."

"Derek, don't take this wrong, man," Mark said.  "But I don't think you do know."

Derek leaned into the wall and sighed, unwilling to turn around.  He held his eyes shut, reveling in the darkness behind his eyelashes and the skin of his eyelids.  If he lifted his head, things started to spark, but if he dipped against the wall, things were...  Not okay.  But better.  Nausea toiled in the back of his throat.  What the hell was he doing?

"I need to take a break," he admitted softly.  His voice sounded warbley and paper-thin.  Like a crepe streamer trying not to succumb to a blast of hurricane wind.

"Okay," Mark said.  No judgment.  No condemnation.  In that moment, Dr. Derek Shepherd was Dr. Derek Shepherd.  And there was nothing fake or optimistic about it.  It was just true.  Because Mark?  Mark had always been good at that.  Not judging.  Derek had never thought much about it before.  "Do you--" Mark began.

"No," Derek said.  "I don't need help."

He forced himself off the wall, wiping at his face and bloodshot eyes with his hands.  He ripped his fingers through his hair and tried to straighten up, tried to look at the hallway again.  Colors.  Everything was so colorful.  And loud.  And awful.

"You know, Derek..." Mark said as Derek started to walk.  "Addison.  We're going on a real date this Saturday."

"What?"

"She knows I lied," Mark clarified.

Derek didn't look at him.  "Oh."

"Look, man, my point is?  You fix what you can.  It's not everything, but that doesn't make you powerless," Mark said.  "And I'm...  Thanks.  For talking to her."

"I didn't talk to her," Derek protested.

"Right, man," Mark said with a knowing smirk.  "Because I told so many people about that."

"I didn't," Derek said.  "You're just transparent.  I'm sure she figured it out."

Mark let it go, though the expression on his face remained unchanged.  He knew.  "I'll finish up broken toe guy for you," he said.  "You wanted him sent to x-ray, right?"

"Yeah," Derek answered, his voice quiet.  "Thank you."

"No problem," said Mark.  He turned on his heels and slipped back into the clinic without further words of wisdom, leaving Derek alone and shaky in the hallway.

Derek didn't know how he made it to his office.  He closed the door behind himself and shut the lights off.  He couldn't see the cards and the streamers and the balloons if the lights were off.  He collapsed at his desk and sighed, trying to stop trembling, but it didn't work.  He felt awful.  And overloaded.  And sick.  And slow.  And he just...

His fingers found the phone in the darkness.  He pushed the numbers from memory, wincing as the sharp, bleeping sounds pierced the silence.  He could remember lots of things when he wasn't trying to force it.  When it wasn't critical.  When he just wanted...

He sighed as he listened to the call go through, and then he hung up, letting his head fall down onto the desk.  He gripped his arms around his stomach and sighed.  His eyes fell shut, turning muzzy, vague darkness into midnight black.  And he rested, trying to stop the churning and failing.

A soft knock struck the door.  One.  Two.  Three, four, five.  The noise hit his ears like a jackhammer in the silence, and he cringed.  The door opened.  A slice of light fell into the room, illuminating his haven.

"Derek?" Meredith whispered.  "I got your page.  Are you..."  She gasped.  He imagined that was the part where she actually focused on the pathetic form of him, plastered against his desk.  His head was throbbing, and he wanted to throw up.  Her feet shuffled across the floor like a whisper of promise.  "Oh," she said, her voice deep and low.  "The tuning fork thing again?"  Her fingers slipped around his shoulders and chased down his back.

"It got bad," he muttered.

For a long moment, she was silent.  The warmth of her fingers lifted away.  He winced as he listened to her pull a chair across his floor.  Then her body shimmied next to his, and he was in her grasp.  "It's okay," she soothed.  "The first day was bound to be like this."

"It got bad," he repeated, sobbing as his mouth found the crook of her neck and he inhaled her.  Her fingers tunneled through his hair, and he sighed as she shushed him and rubbed his back like a wave.

"It was bad for me, too," she confessed.  "The first day.  When I...  You know.  It gets better.  People look at you funny.  But you're fine.  Right?  You swear you're fine.  But nobody thinks you're fine.  I cried in the closet when nobody was looking."

"You never told me," he whispered.

"We weren't us back then," she said.  "We were weird pod people who were fine with the fact that I died.  Except, really?  It was our first day back.  And we weren't fine."

"We weren't fine," he agreed.

He closed his eyes and rested against her in the darkness, letting her toiling fingers soothe him.  She breathed softly next to his ear, her chin resting against his temple, and she petted him, silent, close, heart beating like a thunderstorm so close to his ear.  He sucked in a shaky breath, and another, not bothering to wipe away the spillage from his eyes.

The sickness twisting in his gut slowed to a bleating, dying twirl of unhealthiness, and then receded, leaving him feeling quivery and hollow and spent.  They were in a bubble.  A safe, warm bubble that wrapped around him, told him he was still breathing, still alive.  That was a huge victory.  Breathing.  Being alive.  Her calm stroked him, and he felt the tension fleeing, sinew by aching sinew, until he was a pile of breathing and alive, and that was it.  He didn't have thoughts, let alone worries.  She was soft and warm and his, except he was completely hers.  But that was okay.

"You want to get something to eat?" she whispered after a long, long time.  "It's lunchtime.  Sort of.  And you should...  You should try to eat something.  You'll feel better.  I think."

"Okay," he said.  His voice was barely recognizable, dark and low and tired.  Strained, but...  So much better.

He untangled himself from her, thumping against the desk as he propped himself up into a standing position that sent the room spinning around him like a top.  He blinked as his head adjusted to the change in elevation.  Maybe he was a little hungry.  Low blood sugar.

"I'd offer you mine," she said.  "But all I've got is one of your crappy granola bars."

"They're not crappy," he replied with a frown.  "They're healthy.  There's a difference.  But they're not lunch, Meredith."

She shrugged.  "I'm not a freaking chef, Derek.  Healthy.  Crappy.  They should be synonyms.  Nothing worth eating is healthy.  But it was either granola or skip."

He rubbed her back.  "You make a shameful doctor, Mere.  Just shameful."

"If I stroke out or blow up a hundred pounds, then we'll talk, buster," she replied.  She slapped his stomach lightly.  "Until then, you've got nothing aside from your sexiness as legs to stand on."

He didn't have much of an argument for that.  She was thin.  Almost too thin.  He gave her a weak smile as they left his office.  She kept her palms flat against his waist, walking with him in a vaguely backward thing reminiscent of when they'd gone shopping for the dinner for her stepmother.  He smiled at the warmth, feeling so much better.  The hallway had receded to its normal ugly peaches and whites.  Noises weren't so sharp and painful.

They found a table in the corner of the cafeteria away from prying eyes and settled down with salads.  She'd gotten one for herself after only mild argument that she wasn't hungry, and that anything other than ceasar salad was healthy, and therefore bad.  He'd grabbed plenty of packets of fat-filled, gloppy Ranch dressing for her, which had seemed to appease her.

She cradled her chin on her palms and watched him, eyes sparkling.

"What?" he said, smiling as he shoveled a forkful of salad into his mouth.  The lettuce wasn't crunchy, or in any way tasty.  But it was food, and he didn't feel sick.  Which was good.

She shrugged.  "I'm glad you paged me.  I sort of thought you might not."

"I feel better," he replied, honest.

"I can tell," she said, a smile caressing her lips.

Derek jerked in surprise when a third tray slammed down next to him.  He looked up, startled, as Dr. Weller settled into the seat next to him.  His heart wrenched, and for a moment, he thought he would lose everything again, but it settled.  He was with Meredith.  The cafeteria was buzzing.  But nobody was staring at him or judging or whispering about his fucked up head.

He was okay.

"Ms. Krane will be fine," Dr. Weller said without preamble.  "I got everything cleaned up with a burrhole.  It barely took an hour.  Nice save with the epidural hematoma diagnosis.  If that had been some intern in the clinic, it would have taken at least an extra hour to figure out what was wrong.  And she would be dead.  Most new people miss that lucidity indicator."

Dr. Weller picked up his plastic utensil packet and tore it open with his teeth.  His gold watch glinted in the light.  No hi.  No how are you.  No welcome back.  It was if Derek had never left.  They were just two colleagues discussing a case.

Derek stared at Dr. Weller, swallowing thickly around his bite of salad.  "Oh.  Um.  No problem," he said, his voice fluttering awkwardly.  He cleared his throat.  "She's in recovery?"

"Yep," Dr. Weller said as he drove his plastic fork into his plate of spaghetti.  The food made a gross, mushy sound.  Hospital food wasn't the most delectable.  "So, did you catch the game last night?" Dr. Weller asked, moving with nonchalant ease onto simpler subjects.

Derek frowned as he let his brain shift gears.  Hockey.  He could do hockey.  He'd watched the game with rabid interest last night.  It was pre-season.  Teams were figuring out where they stood with all the fucking new rules.  Bettman, the commissioner, had really jerked the NHL into disarray.  "Too many penalties," Derek judged.  "It slowed the game down.  And the refs were very obviously biased Bostonians."

"Even if the Rangers could have stayed out of the penalty box, it wouldn't have saved them," Dr. Weller said.  "The Bruins are going places this year, man.  I know it."

Derek snorted.  "Not likely."

Dr. Weller rolled his eyes.  "Please," he said.  "The Bruins don't need referees to save them.  The Rangers can't win on their own."

"Bullshit," Derek snapped.  "If the refs weren't blind, the game would never have gone into OT.  All those holding calls?  Ridiculous."

"Well, the Bruins weren't holding."  Dr. Weller smirked.

"Neither were the Rangers!" Derek protested, slamming his fork down.  Really, that game had been such bullshit.  The refs had been a bunch of power tripping, Boston-loving bastards.  "And the NHL does not need shootouts.  What the hell was wrong with a tie?  Or even OT?"

"Shootouts sell," Dr. Weller said with a shrug.  "And you wouldn't mind so much if you'd won."

"I would, too, mind!  It's the principle of the thing," Derek said.  "But if Jagr plays well this year, and they can adjust to the new rules, this could be our year."

Meredith coughed lightly, and Derek finally had the presence of mind to remember the love of his life was at the table with them.  "Was that English?" she said, her eyes wide.  "Who are you, and what have you done with Derek?"

"Oh, man," Dr. Weller said.  "He hasn't gotten you into hockey yet?  You should take her to a game, Derek."

"A game," Meredith said flatly.  "A hockey game?"

"Yes," Derek said.  "It's that sport with sticks and a puck.  There's ice involved.  I was watching it yesterday."

Meredith shrugged.  "I know you were watching it yesterday.  You did the guy thing."

"The what thing?"

"The guy thing.  The thing where you forget about me."

"I didn't forget about you," he protested.

"Fine," she snorted.  "What did I say when you started spitting at the television?"

"I wasn't spitting," he said.  "I was...  Observing.  That the refs sucked."

Dr. Weller choked on a forkful of food.  He washed it down with a gulping chug of his tea.

"Observing," she replied, her eyes sparkling.  "Right.  What did I say?"

"You said something?"

"Exactly," she said.

He blinked as intense guilt ripped through him.  He really hadn't...  When Meredith spoke, he listened.  All the time.  That was his thing.  Right?  She got annoyed at him for it.  For always remembering what she said down to the tiniest detail and intonation.  Then again, she hadn't lived with him in a small trailer, unable to escape the television before.  Being ignored in a small space was a lot different than being ignored in a house, where there was plenty of other stuff to do.

"Sorry," he muttered.

She shrugged, a smile puckering her lips.  "No, no.  Go on.  You're cute when you're vehement."

"Cute," he said.  "I'm cute?"

"Mmm," she purred.  "Very."

Dr. Weller laughed.  "I should introduce you to my wife, Melinda.  You two can commiserate while we observe next time."  He gave the word observe air quotes as he leaned back in his chair.

Derek folded his arms, but Meredith laughed instead.  "You know, I think I'd rather just learn the rules and observe with you."  She also gave the word air quotes.

Dr. Weller raised an eyebrow.  "If you don't want her, Derek, I'll take her."

"No," Derek replied.  "She's definitely mine."

Meredith grinned.  "No, you're mine."

"I suppose that's true," he admitted.  "The next game is on ESPN on Friday.  I'll talk you through it."

"Okay," she replied.

Derek grinned, leaning back in his chair.  Meredith grinned back.  Dr. Weller took a slurp of his tea.  "Well," Dr. Weller said, shoving his chair back.  "I have to run.  But I have some charts to run by you later, Derek.  And a really weird case I want your opinion on."

"Stop by my office," Derek said.

"Will do," Dr. Weller said over his shoulder as he departed.

"Meredith?" Derek said.

She leaned forward.  "Yes, Derek?"

"Will you help me clean out all the goddamned balloons in my office?  Dr. Weller will need a place to sit."