"It's the nightmares that always seem to become reality"
"Those must be the papers… the papers you want me to sign to decide what to do with my husband. Now that he's head but not really dead. Do we ship him off to a long—term-care facility and cross our fingers and hope for tails and magic? Or do I pull the plug and behave as any sane doctor would. You want to talk about killing my husband? Give me the papers!"
The words have been seared into my brain since the moment I said them. Derek. Derek Christopher Shepherd, the love my life, the father of my children, the man who saved me in the Elliot Bay and the man who wanted to die when he was 110 years old in my arms. Derek is dead. It's been three months and I still find myself in a fog, a debilitating numbness. I didn't think one's heart could physically hurt, but mine does, all the time, every time I look at Zola and Bailey, every time I ride a Ferry Boat, every time I think of his child inside me. The one he so desperately wanted the morning he died. My heart hurts. Maybe I should've had Derek transferred to Grey-Sloan. I should've called Amy and his sisters before I pulled the plug, they'll blame me forever but it all just happened so fast. One minute Derek's telling me to wait for him and the next I'm standing next to his hospital bed realizing that these doctors didn't get the CT scan that was so obviously indicated. What if I had insisted he not go to DC yet? What if I let him come to work with me that morning so we could have a quickie, he would still be here!"
"Meredith—Meredith! Are you ready?"
I forget where I am for a minute as Dr. Bailey pulls me out of the internal repetitive monologue.
"You've been standing in front of the scrub sink for 15 minutes, are you sure you're ready? Technically it's a neuro procedure, you don't need to be in there."
"Bailey, it's a good case for me to start back on. The first time I scrubbed in on a Baclofen pump replacement was with you my third year. I can do this."
Dr. Bailey looks at me with sad eyes and sighs "Okay, but if you aren't ready, no one will hold it against you."
I don't say anything back. I just pull the ferry boat scrub cap over my hair and breathe. Thank goodness I'm wearing a mask so no one can see my lip quivering.
A Baclofen pump is used as a last resort for chronic pain. When no oral medication has worked, the pump can truly give people a second chance at life. Unfortunately, no amount of antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds in the world can take a way my pain. I survived near-drowning, a crazed gunman, a c-section in the dark, and even a plane crash but I can't get through this.
When he proposed to me in the elevator Derek had said, "when there's a crisis you don't freeze, you move forward. You get us all to move forward because you've seen worse. You've survived worse, and you know we'll survive too. But here I am barely making it through. The surgery went fine. Perfect in fact, until the anesthesiologist tried to wake up the patient. He wouldn't wake up. My heart starting racing, the panic attack was coming and all I could do was run, run out of the OR through the atrium, and out the front doors where I collapsed in the sun. The last noise I heard was the chief calling my name before I blacked out and my head hit the concrete.
