As We Know It
Derek sprinted through the lobby. My husband sprinted through the lobby. And he was delicious. His hair was perfectly coiffed, his sculpted muscles rippling under his scrubs, the color of his eyes set off by the navy cotton. Oh, he was perfect. And he was running in my direction.
There were only two things wrong with this picture.
He was running in my direction, yes. But his eyes weren't trained on me the way they should have been. He was focused on the stairwell door to the pit. I just happened to be standing in his way.
And to make matters worse, his strong arms, which had spent eleven years wrapped around my tall, lithe frame, were vice-like around Meredith's body.
I chuckled sardonically to myself - he was carrying her bridal-style, even while the gold of his wedding ring glinted under the florescent lights. The way he had carried me across the threshold of our room at The Plaza on our wedding night. Our wedding night... it seemed so trivial now. So pointless. He was carrying her the way that I was now more sure than ever that he would carry her on their wedding night. Because no matter what I said or did... I would never be the same. Never as good as her.
Tears were tracking down his cheeks and it was only then that I considered the possibility of her death. Was she? Surely I didn't want my colleague; my intern, to die? But would it be so bad if she did? He was so in love with her, my husband. And if she was gone... if she was gone, there would be no competition. I was always second-best in his eyes. And if she was gone... if she was gone...
No. I couldn't think like that. I wasn't allowed to want her dead. I wasn't allowed to wish someone dead. Derek passed by me, and I gripped his bicep - the one that curled to support Meredith's legs. I didn't allow myself to think about how many times that spot on his arm had come into contact with Meredith's body. How many times her tongue had flicked over his skin. How many times her teeth had sunk into his flesh, nipping gently, and eliciting a low groan from the back of his throat. How many times her hands had gripped his taut muscle as he hovered over her, pounding relentlessly... I had to stop this.
"Is she alive?" I forced myself to ask. He just kept running, taking his eyes from his destination only long enough to glance down at her face every once in a while. And that's when I knew it wasn't all about sex for him, as I had suspected for so long. His eyes did not rake over her body, taking inventory of all the wounds, the scars that would mar the perfection that was his mistress – my mind curled in an ugly snarl around the word. He looked only at her face. And twisted pain shot across his own features every time he saw that she still wasn't awake. Or was she dead? I could practically see the gears turning in his head; calculating how long she'd been under, and the neurosurgeon in him coming out and determining the possibilities. Concussion. Hematoma. Hemorrhaging. Or was she dead?
I wrenched myself from Addison's suffocating embrace. From my wife's suffocating embrace. The bomb went off, and I left her. I didn't have a choice. It wasn't a conscious decision. Because I'm sure, given my history, had it been a conscious decision, that I would have done the "safe" thing again. I would have stayed with my wife. My wife... I pondered the word.
I knew this was the end. The end of everything I'd known for ten years. Sure, it was eleven years of marriage. But the last year... it tested everything I'd ever known. But ten years. A decade. Of going home to her, of making love to (having sex with) her. It wasn't making love anymore. She was just... there. There, and expecting me in her bed. So I went. But ten years. And this was the end.
But I couldn't bring myself to care. Because downstairs... I had to see it to believe it. I knew she was holding the bomb. I knew there was an explosion. But it wouldn't fit together in my head. The bomb that Meredith was holding exploded. Logically, Meredith had exploded, too. But I couldn't make it... go. I couldn't put it into a phrase. I couldn't sequence my thoughts into a coherent observation.
The elevator is taking too long, I finally realized. The first thought that broke through the buzzing in my head was that the elevator was too damn slow. Essentially that I had to get to her faster. One thought at a time. I redirected my momentum to the staircase, taking the steps two at a time.
Finally - finally - I reached the OR hallway. Or at least it seemed like a finally. It really couldn't have been more than a solid minute. The air was hazy with debris and something... red. The walls, spattered with... red. No, not red. Pink. Pink mist. I swallowed, hard.
No.
No, it couldn't be true. She wasn't gone. She was not gone. I could feel her... I reached out for her in my mind and felt her. Her spiritual hand grabbed mine, and my spiritual finger grazed her spiritual wrist. She had a (spiritual) pulse.
Unless... my mind was racing now. The mental block, the buzzing, from less than 120 seconds prior was far gone. Maybe she's still "with me" in spirit? I thought wildly, as my bright eyes strained to see through the dusk of the hallway. Maybe it was a sign that her spirit had moved on. Her spirit was still alive. But her body wasn't. I wasn't? I didn't believe in this spirit crap. But Meredith brought it out in me. The desperation. The need to know.
That's when I saw her. She lay on the floor, in her entirety. Not pink mist. Then who was the pink mist? I didn't care. Meredith was still connected at all of her limbs. Whether her heart was still beating or not? Whether blood still flowed through her veins? A different question entirely.
Heaviness. That was all I could feel. My body was heavy. The mass of air pressing down on my body was heavy. My eyelids were heavy, and the darkness beneath them was heavy. Everything was heavy.
I knew I should wake up. I knew I should open my eyes and let whoever was there know that I was alive. I knew someone was there; I could feel them, their presence. Their heaviness - their spirit was dejected, beaten, trodden. But I didn't want to. It was probably Cristina, maybe Bailey. Or maybe Alex cared enough. Who knew? But I wanted it to be Derek. So the longer I stayed here - heavy - the longer I could pretend that Derek cared. That Derek was sitting there on the cold, heavy floor and not upstairs on a bench with his wife. That was a heavy thought. I didn't want to think heavy thoughts. I was too tired. So I went back, back to the light thoughts. The good thoughts. Derek, sitting there and caring. Caring for me.
Besides, everything else was just. So. Heavy.
I felt a touch, feather-light, on my neck. My pulse-point. Leave me alone, Cristina, my mind screamed. The noise was heavy. But the touch was light. So I called my mind off. It's all right, I told myself. Stop making it worse.
The touch became more forceful now. Desperate. Groping. And everything became lighter. My body became lighter, the mass of air on my body became lighter, my eyelids... lighter, and the darkness beneath them... sliced through the center by the white of... the ceiling? It would have to be. Why were my eyes opening?
Something dark passed through my limited field of vision. Cristina's hair, maybe? Bailey's? Too curly to be Bailey's. But too wavy to be Cristina's? Not kinky-curly enough...
"Meredith? Meredith, please. Please, I love you. Please..."
Derek.
The shock was heavy. The shock was too much. My eyes closed again.
I looked through the window as the crowd around Grey's bedside thinned. I'd stopped referring to her in my head by her first name. I hoped maybe if I distanced her from myself, I could distance her from my marriage. But Derek's behavior... not even his behavior, his presence alone at her bedside spoke volumes to the naïveté of my wish.
His behavior, too. The tears of relief at her respiration had not left his eyes, a sight that had me nearly gagging with the soap-opera feel of it. And his hand, grasping Meredith's - Grey's - like a lifeline of sorts.
I couldn't do it. She was Meredith. We shared too much - a man is always too much - to be able to distance myself from her. We both loved him, a bond that warranted a first-name-basis. But he only loved one of us back. And we all knew it wasn't me.
It was funny, when I thought about it enough. Well, not funny. Losing someone you love... it's never actually funny. But ironic. The second time in less than two hours that Derek and my "relationship" has struck me as ironic to the point of a self-loathing, mirthless exhalation, poorly disguised as a sigh, but meant to be a laugh of sorts. In med school, it'd been Derek chasing me. I hadn't wanted anything to do with the ex-band-geek, sporting a pathetic halo of fluffy black hair. Eventually, he'd dropped his sax off with his mother before coming back to school after the winter holidays, and Mark had showed him how to tame his hair. His self-esteem sky-rocketed; the entire school wanted him.
And he only wanted me.
Funny. It was funny, actually. A slightly louder laugh bubbled from my lips, earning a disapproving stare from the nurse manning the station during the afternoon shift. I quickly covered my mouth with my hand – left, the one that still bore my wedding ring – as I realized what it must have looked like, and turned my attention back to my husband and Meredith.
He was the only one left in the room now. Everyone else had long gone. He held her hand and stroked her forehead with the other, gazing down at her with love in his eyes. It was sad, really, how he didn't even try to hide it. I let out an involuntary sigh, and the noise caught his ear. Just as Meredith's eyes fell closed, he looked up and saw me through the glass.
I sank to my knees next to her body. She lay still, motionless... I was so afraid to think the word... lifeless. I couldn't move for a long moment. Couldn't let myself feel the stillness of her neck under my fingers. Couldn't make it official. I had to be able to deny it for just another moment.
I stared down at her face – so pale. Memories flashed through me, of a time when her cheeks flushed pink. When I called her beautiful, and she blushed deeply. When the almost-winter wind nipped at her smooth skin, turning it raw and chilled. When her body sensed the beginnings of a climax and the blood rushed to her upper chest and face – maybe the most beautiful sight of all, when she lost all control and simply writhed underneath me, screaming my name for all the world to hear.
Knowing that I couldn't put it off any longer, knowing that if she was alive, every second I sat here and pondered the intricacies of my existence was wasted time, I pressed a shaking finger softly to the spot on her neck that would normally throb with life. The spot where I would normally press kiss after soft, teasing kiss to rev her up to a fever pitch and start the frenzy. The spot that I was hoping would push back against my finger in retaliation.
Nothing.
The tears that had been building in my eyes, obstructing my vision in exponential variations, overflowed and stained the soft fabric of my scrubs.
They seemed so inconsequential in the moment. Scrubs... why did they exist? What were they worth, really, when Meredith was gone? I felt the need to tear them off my body. I felt the need to tear the entire building to shreds. None of it mattered. I didn't care about any of it. This planet didn't have Meredith on it anymore, and I wanted to go to one that did.
But then it happened.
Barely, maybe just a need-driven reaction in my brain. A mirage. A parting gift – was I dying? Literally dying of a broken heart? Was this God that my mother always spoke of sending me one last consolation prize; the fleeting feeling of Meredith's blood pulsing through her veins. So close to the epidermis that the human finger can feel the movement...
Not willing to believe it, to trick myself and to get my hopes up, I pressed my finger once more to that special spot, this time with more force.
Again. This time with a little more power, a little more drive. It was sluggish, yes. Much slower than it should be. But it was there. And as I stared, disbelieving, at the tiny movement of Meredith's smooth, creamy skin outward from her neck, it started to grow a little stronger.
I thought, maybe for a moment, that her eyes started to open. Please, I prayed silently to a God that I hadn't believed existed since my father's death. I know you probably don't like me very much, seeing as I don't believe you exist. But please, she's the love of my life. I promise I'll man up. I'll get a divorce. I'll do anything. But don't let her die... I started to spill more tears as her eyes fell shut again – but then, who knew if they were even opened in the first place? But who cared about her eyes? Because in this moment, her neck was pulsating gently with warm, circulating blood.
I stood hastily and scooped her into my arms – bridal-style, the irony not entirely escaping me, even in my slightly inebriated state – and sprinted up the stairs I had just so hurriedly descended, and took them again two at a time.
White. Everything was so white... and sterile. It seemed somehow familiar... but I couldn't think for the life of me how. Whenever I got close, my head started to pound...
Concussion, I realized, my medical school training finally paying off in "everyday life". That is, if one could count getting knocked back by a bomb blast everyday life. Bomb blast... concussion... putting the pieces together, I realized that I was in the hospital as a patient for what would now be the third time: tonsillectomy, broken arm, and now this. So that was why everything was so... white.
Derek.
His hair... his voice... it had to have been a weird, near-death-experience dream. Sighing, I forced my eyes open a little wider. Unlike before, I had to face the music. I was no longer that poor intern who lay almost dead on the floor of the OR hallway. I wasn't in danger of dying anymore, and I was expected to do things, and say things, and not mope around at the prospect of my married "boyfriend" not wanting to stick around for all the dark and twisty.
Nobody knew I still felt that strongly except Cristina. And nobody ever would, if I had anything to do with it. Because it was shameful, loving a married man.
Bailey, Alex, George, Izzie, Cristina, Burke, Richard stood in a semi-circle around the foot of my bed. No Derek.
While not surprised, I was at the very least tremendously disappointed. He was married, but I always felt like if I ever almost-died, that he might be there. I wondered briefly where he and Addison were – they didn't seem to be the types to go hook up in a linen closet. But it barely mattered, considering that I really didn't expect Addison here. She hated me, I knew, and for good reason. But it didn't matter. We both loved him. But he only loved one of us back. And we all knew it wasn't me... or he would be here.
Bailey was the first to notice my new, awake state, and she let out a happy breath accompanied by a rare smile. "I see you're awake," she drawled. I expected a half-joke about not slacking off and getting to my stack of unauthorized charts, but didn't get one. In fact, before anybody could continue the conversation, I felt the relief of a weight I hadn't noticed was present from the mattress next to me.
Derek.
He picked his head up from the imprint of his forehead on the stiff mattress, the dent where his sizable nose must have been pressed testifying to the sheer length of time that I had been out. I realized with a jolt that my tiny hand was wrapped tightly in the warmth of his.
Had I missed something?
I didn't want to leave. I'd been here for more than an hour, not saying a word as everyone congratulated her on winning the battle with the bomb. And slowly, they'd all filtered out of the room.
They all had lives to live. Places to go, people to see, things to do. But my life... she was lying on the hard hospital bed, her blessedly warm hand gripped in mine. I didn't want to go live my life. My life involved being married, being off-limits. And I found that I really didn't want to go back to that. I couldn't. It wasn't a choice, wasn't a matter of the safe choice or the right choice. It was a matter or life or death.
Neither of us had acknowledged the strange, forbidden intimacy of our position. It just felt... right, somehow. I was forbidden. She still saw herself as a "dirty mistress". And I knew how long it would take to convince her that I never saw her like that. But we were so meant for each other... her hand fit perfectly in mine. And I knew that if I were to cuddle up to her on the bed and spoon her close, her frame would fit perfectly with mine. And if I were to thrust, slowly, gently into her...
"You're here." She cut off my train of thought with the simple acknowledgment of my presence.
"There's nowhere else I'd rather be." It was true. I couldn't imagine being anywhere else. All I wanted was to tell her the truth. All I could do was tell her the truth. It came spilling from my lips, uncontrollable, uncontainable. "Because Meredith Grey, you are the love of my life. I'm so sorry that it took this kind of event to scare me straight, but I've realized that I can't just live the comfortable life, being married to Addison and dreaming about you at night. So I'm leaving her. No matter what you say, I'm out. Because I can't stay in that marriage anymore, it's suffocating me. And I need to know if you'll be with me... if you'll accept my apology. Meredith please... give me another chance."
He... what? It was all so... fast. One minute, he's the married man who's hand in mine is giving me an ulcer. A minute before that, he's the married man that I love unconditionally and can't have. And the next minute... he's mine?
Do I dare think it, though? Is he really mine? Is this a concussion fever dream of sorts? Is he joking? He wouldn't, would he? He wouldn't play with my emotions that way. That's too mean, even for him, who'd played mercilessly with my emotions before... self-contradiction, was that another effect of the concussion?
It was a long moment before I realized that he was still standing there, staring at me gently, hopefully. His free hand stroked my forehead gently, his thumb leaving a tingling trail behind on the hyper-sensitive skin. His eyes were so blue... and his face looked to be tracked with recently shed tears.
That was all the confirmation I needed. He'd cared. He'd cried while I lay motionless before him. He didn't want me to die.
Pathetic, I know, but I needed an excuse.
"Yes," she promised. "Yes, Derek."
Her eyes filled almost instantly with emotional tears, but didn't spill over. The effect was glittering – her cat green eyes literally glimmered with love for... for me. I couldn't wrap my head around it.
I'd put her through the wringer. I'd been stalkerish, married, lying, backstabbing, forbidden. And now... and now... She loved me enough that she could forgive me for all that. She loved me enough to take what I said at face value. She loved me enough to listen to what I had to say regarding us, our relationship, without slapping me in the face.
She loved me enough to give me another chance.
Her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. Her face and body were covered with scratches and scrapes, physical representations of the ordeal she'd been put through today. The IV in her arm connected up to what seemed to be a million different wires, tubes, and vials. White was certainly not her color, it washed her out to no end.
But I'd never seen her more beautiful. Because she was alive.
She was alive. And she loved me.
I heard a soft sigh come from outside the room, and I whipped my head to see who had witnessed our tender, private moment. To my dismay, my wife stood guard through the watery glass. I bowed my head slightly and turned back to Meredith.
"I'm sorry, I need a minute." She didn't turn her head; she didn't need to. "I'm leaving her. I'm doing it now. We never got rid of the papers, I'm telling her I'm signing them as soon as I get home. But I'm not leaving until you do. God, I love you so much."
She simply stared at me, amusement twirking the corners of her mouth. "You're rambling."
"I know. I'm sorry. I love you, I'll be right back."
"I love you, too." And in that moment, I couldn't not kiss her. I knew the lips wouldn't be appropriate, especially with my wife standing right outside. So I settled for her forehead. "Right back."
"Addison," he said to me. And I heard it all in that one word. He didn't want me anymore. I wasn't the one for him anymore. He loved her. He wanted a divorce.
I thought I'd be sad. I expected anger, and sadness, and depression. But nothing had prepared me for this.
I hated myself. I hated myself for letting it get this far. I'd slept with Mark, I'd pushed him away. If I hadn't slept with Mark, he never would have come here. He never would have met her. My life would never have come to this. A divorce. I laughed internally. I never thought this would be me. The bitter old maid with the failed marriage under my belt. And I could have stopped all of this... we would be sitting at home, reading the New York Times, and my hot husband would be sitting across the table from me, shirtless, cheating on the crossword.
I hated him. He'd been weak, powerless, and without morals, unable to keep his hands off of her, unable to be faithful. It struck me how hypocritical that thought was, but I couldn't bring myself to care.
I hated her. Why couldn't she keep her paws off a married man? I know she didn't realize at first. I knew he'd been a filthy liar, and I hated him for that. But once she realized... couldn't she have disappeared into the woodwork like a good little mistress? I knew that was asking too much. I knew that I couldn't do anything about what had transpired. But it still threw me into a rage.
But what killed me was that I was mostly mad at myself. I was at fault here. And that killed me.
"Derek," I answered finally.
"I want a divorce." There it was.
"I know."
Derek walked back into the room. His eyes said it all. He was free.
"I love you," he said quietly.
"I know. I love you, too."
And finally, he lowered his lips to mine.