All Along The Watchtower – Part 1
Author's Notes:
WARNING. This begins as a very dark fic with a lot of angst, but I absolutely promise it brightens up if you stick with it. I wanted to take a really in-depth look at recovery from a shooting, and I didn't pull any punches. Though this fic certainly does contain a ton of MerDer, this is first and foremost a Derek-centric story, and Derek is put through hell in this, so he behaves accordingly. If you want happy-go-lucky S1 Derek, you won't really be seeing hints of him until chapter 20 or so, and if you want nothing but schmoopy, no-plot MerDer, you'll hate this. Please, be prepared. That being said, if you like to see characters and couples working through their issues together, this is the fic for you, and I promise, I don't put my toys away broken.
Consider yourself warned.
I hope you enjoy :)
Meredith Grey had never been an athlete in school. She'd been too busy making sure she didn't fit in with as many people as possible, assuming she showed up at all, to bother with something as inane as a varsity sport. But that was not to say she couldn't have been an athlete if she'd chosen. Given proper motivation, she could run. She could hit, too, though, with the disadvantage of her petite frame, she had to use tools provided by the environment to get the impact she wanted. Like, say, a door for leverage, and a well placed supply shelf for emphasis. Yes, Meredith Grey was a Boston-cultivated scrapper in the best sense of the word, and she hoped Cristina would forgive her for it.
She barely heard the sound of Cristina hitting the supply rack behind her and falling to the floor in a heap of graceless surprise. She didn't spare a glance to make sure her person was okay. She didn't spare guilt that she didn't spare a glance, either.
There was simply no time.
She swept her clammy skin against the cool metal of the door handle and pulled. The antiseptic-tinged air of the hospital outside their closet safe haven touched her lungs and gave her fuel exactly one time before she threw her body into hellbent flight.
She ran. Derek was close, technically, were she capable of real flight, and able to traverse the distance between her and him in a straight line, but she was not a bird, as much as she wanted to be in that moment. He was several long, winding hallways away when she considered the actual path she had to take, and the mere thought of all those floor tiles separating him from her made a sob catch in her throat.
She dared a glance toward the catwalk as she tore through the promenade. Quiet wind whispered against her ears, providing no distraction between each straining thud of her heart. The silent emptiness was utterly wrong in what was supposed to be the bustling, nerve center of this hospital, a place where thousands of medical professionals worked. It was wrong and strange, but the idea lasted perhaps a nanosecond in her brain before she caught a glimpse of him in the distance.
He moved. She saw him raise a knee before he flopped flat again like a landed trout, and though the quiet was strange, it did permit her to hear solid proof that he was alive, for now. He loosed a soft, upset displacement of air, not a scream or a sob or a moan, but something smashed between the three, borrowing jagged bits of each. Her heart wrenched at the unmistakable evidence of his pain.
He was alive, but he was hurt. Very hurt. How long did she have? Her brain didn't know what to do with the twisting combination of relief and blind panic.
"Derek," she shrieked across the void between them, "Hang on, I'm coming!" Like a birthday gift with a pretty bow and a card, she was giving any potential shooter a veritable GPS coordinate to her vulnerable body, and she knew it, but she didn't care. Derek made another noise of suffering, and she didn't care about anything else at all.
She ran. She ran until it seemed like every sinew in her calves and thighs was going to split apart and leave her unattached muscles sliding down her bones into a pile of goo. She ran until her lungs were going to burst, and her laboring heart begged her to stop.
Unless the wound was instantly mortal, which was often only the case with certain penetrating head shots, GSW victims typically had about 2-4 minutes of normal brain activity before bad things started to happen. Things like hypovolemic shock, hemorrhagic shock, or worse. Much worse. Derek had been shot in the upper right quadrant, which meant cardiogenic shock was also a possibility. If his heart was too damaged to pump blood, game over. If his lung was pierced, he would be drowning in his own fluids on top of that. And, without surgery, there would be nothing she could do but watch him leave her.
2-4 minutes. Minutes that were already ticking away.
The catwalk came into view as she rounded the corner. Her flip-flopping heart dropped into her stomach. He lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling while a pool of his blood crept out from underneath his body like the slow bloom of a rose. She couldn't tell if he was bleeding from the back, or if it was spilling over from the front. Bright, wet red smeared the right side of his shirt. Everywhere. Red.
He was still too far away for her to make an accurate assessment of the situation, but a shred of hope remained when she realized his hand was against the wound. If he had the presence of mind to apply pressure to his wound, surely that was a good sign. Surely.
She skidded to her knees beside him like a shortstop headed for home plate, ignoring the dull shock as her kneecaps bruised on impact with the floor. Her shoes slipped across the wet tiles. He stared at some point beyond her shoulder, and a little cough stuttered from his lips.
"No," he gurgled. His body twitched, and his labored breathing ratcheted into higher gear, as though he were trying to give his rebelling muscles a command to move, and they weren't listening. "Mr. Clark, no..." His fear was an icy sword down her spine. She'd never heard him terrified before, and she never cared to again.
"Derek," she said. "Derek, it's me. I'm here. Mr. Clark is gone."
She bit her lip as she started to triage. The hand she'd thought he had been using to apply pressure to the wound was just resting against his bloodstained shirt, as if he'd thought about attempting to stop the bleeding, but his brain hadn't quite translated the thought to action.
She grabbed his shoulder and rolled him onto his side away from the growing puddle. He offered no resistance, submitting with a meek sort of unawareness that terrified her. She found no exit wound, but her palm came back slick with his blood. The back of his shirt was already saturated and sticky. She tried to make mental calculations about how much of his blood volume was on the floor instead of inside his body, but her hand started to shake, and math escaped her. As she resettled him on his back, she decided it was very bad, but it wasn't the worst it could be. The surface of the wound didn't bubble or hiss as he breathed, and he wasn't spitting up blood when he coughed. Those were good indications that his lungs were intact, and that it was just pain that made his breaths so short and stuttered.
Her brain cascaded through her limited options with desperation. Treat the shock. Stop the bleeding. She could at least do that. How? Apply pressure. Keep him warm. Keep him calm. Keep him talking, or at least awake. She had nothing to keep him warm with, but she could freaking keep him with her. She could.
"Derek, it's me. You're going to be fine," she told him as she pushed the heel of her palm against the hole in his chest.
"No," he said.
Another arctic chill swept through her. He didn't understand her, that was all. He was still frightened, and he was trying to get away from his attacker, and he was not in any way responding to her assessment that he would be fine.
"No," he repeated. The sound was pitiful and cut up at the end by a moan that made her heart throb.
She spared a glance at their surroundings, prepared to lay herself flat on top of him if it meant keeping Gary Clark away. She saw Cristina fly across the promenade, following the empty path that Meredith had taken moments before. There was no Gary Clark, though, and there was nobody else either.
There was nobody to help. Meredith had no blankets to wrap him with, and nothing but her hands to treat him with. A bucket of bright red, oxygen rich, arterial blood was stuck in his shirt and on the floor, not doing what it was supposed to – keeping him alive. A bullet had gone through his sternum, and was stuck somewhere in there, biting him with agony whenever he took a breath. Near his heart. Or in it, which would mean the only thing that was keeping him from stroking out and dying would be the fact that the bullet was acting as a stopper for an otherwise gaping, irreparable hole.
Her body started to shake as he made another sound of pain. It was just her and Cristina, and he was going to die. He was going to bleed to death in his own hospital, so close to salvation, and yet metaphorical miles away because some lady he didn't know had signed a DNR, and he had respected it, unlike her psychopath husband.
"Please," she begged him. "Please, don't die. Please, Derek. You can't leave me."
His stark, blue eyes were a shocking peal of lightning against the sea of red on the floor. He blinked, and she felt his blood-slicked fingers slip over top of hers.
"Meredith," he slurred, his voice thick, low, and labored. The music of her name falling from his lips made her dizzy. He sounded drunk. Oh, god. She had to keep him with her. She sandwiched his offered palm between her own as though it were the only thing keeping him breathing.
"Help is coming," she lied. "Don't die. Please, you don't get to die."
His chest pressed against her hand like a jackhammer as he panted, his body radiating all sorts of respiratory distress. She lifted her free hand and slapped his cheek. Hard. Anything. Anything to keep him focused. He didn't recoil with pain. Didn't flinch. He just sort of ate the motion with his face and stared like a headlight blinded deer at her.
"I'm serious," she said in her best Meredith-means-it voice. "Stay with me," she said. "Even breaths. You can do it. I know it hurts."
He wasn't listening. His breathing, laced with moans, remained a desperate pit fight for air despite pain. His gaze shifted away from her, his hand slipped loose, and the tenuous, rope line connection between him and her frayed. Ripped. Disintegrated. She wasn't getting through to him at all. She wasn't even sure if he still knew she was there. The loss ripped a path of devastation through her. Just like the bullet that had felled him.
Reality snapped into pinpoint focus. If she didn't get him back on an even keel with sentience, she was going to lose him. Forever. And she had nothing to help her but herself.
In that moment, the world fell away. The only thing there in the darkness was him. She knew that even if she never took his last name or walked with him down an aisle in a church somewhere, she was forever, irrevocably Mrs. Derek Shepherd. In fact, she'd endure the title for the rest of her life if it just meant he would keep breathing.
She didn't know what part of her brain hadn't been convinced yet after all the years of their moth-to-flame routine. She didn't know she'd needed any sort of nudge to prove the divine providence of it all. After all, she'd freaking come back from the dead for him. She didn't know anything in that moment except that the man dying under her palms was the lost piece of the universe that completed her soul.
In the grips of that realization, Meredith Grey began to bargain with god or whatever was up there that had seen fit to carelessly throw this man into the destructive path of her life. Derek had been tossed her way on a vulnerable night at Joe's bar, and had, for some reason, stayed for the ride. If I know you, I'll love you? she remembered saying incredulously, not realizing that in a mere few months, she would discover the irrefutable truth of the statement. Now, she knew him very well, he existed in her space as though he were the one simple fact in her chaos, and she loved him more than life.
She put her mental foot down. She refused to let this roller coaster stop at the gate.
She bargained for all she was worth. Give me a few minutes, she thought. Just a few more minutes. Send us up the hill again for another loop. We should at least get to enjoy one more shot at free fall.
Desperation burbled from her lips like a runaway brook. "Hold on, okay?" she babbled. "Hold on. I love you. Please, don't die." If you let him live, you can take whatever you want from me.
He started to fight her. Tried to push her away.
"Get out of here, Meredith, before he shoots you, too," he mumbled. She'd never been so elated in her life that he didn't want her around. It was working. He coughed, and the agony in his gaze speared her, but she held on.
One more loop. Maybe a corkscrew this time.
She rattled his shoulder. If you let him live, I promise to believe. "Do. Not. Die," she commanded as Cristina ran up behind her. "Do you understand?" she continued, yelling at him for all she was worth. "I can't live without you. If you die, I die."
Please, please, please, god, she thought. And as the bargaining continued at an auction house pace, she brought him back from the brink.
For a moment, she stood in the hallway, staring. An orderly with blood on his uniform bumped her shoulder as he ran by, mumbling an apology as he went. She felt like she was frozen in the middle of a stage with a thousand people staring as the spotlight came down and lit up her face for scrutiny. She'd forgotten her lines. She didn't know what to do. The situation was beyond her capability to finesse her way out of because it was something she'd never experienced before. It was new and weird and uncomfortable.
It was awful.
The cardiac intensive care unit was a small, quiet, dimly lit ward, a stack of ten small rooms in a line with a heavily manned nurse station at each end. Billowing curtains with boring flower prints wrapped around the sides and back of each small cubicle in an attempt to give the patients privacy from their neighbors, but nothing covered the front of each room except transparent plastic plating. It was conducive to the constant monitoring heart patients required, but it also meant there was no slow preparation for what she would see inside. Just the instant shock of seeing Derek, sick and alone in the dark.
"I thought..." she said, blinking back tears in her eyes when she saw him for the first time after his chest had been closed. The nurse coming out of his room looked up at her. "I was told he asked for me?"
The nurse, a warm, older, heavyset woman with brown hair pulled back into a stark bun, squeezed Meredith's shoulder. "Yes, dear," she said. Her name tag identified her as Charlotte Kent. She looked frazzled and tired, but who could blame her? "He nodded when I asked him if he wanted to see you."
Meredith bit her lip, staring beyond Nurse Kent's shoulder. "He's..."
"Still waking up, Dr. Grey. He'll be pretty out of it for a while. Don't expect much."
"I know," Meredith said. Her voice cracked. "I know. I've done post-ops for hundreds of these. But it's..."
The woman's honey rich voice dipped low and soft. "Different when it's somebody you love?"
"Yeah. I..." Meredith wiped her face with the back of her palm. "How much is the ventilator still assisting?"
Charlotte smiled. "About 55%. He's almost ready to come off of it."
"55%," Meredith parroted. That meant for every breath he took on his own, the machine was forcing him to take another. "That's-"
"Extremely good at this stage," Charlotte said, cutting her off. "Dr. Shepherd is a healthy, vibrant man, who takes care of his body, and he'll be just fine. Why don't you go sit with him? He wants you there. I left a chair for you by his bed."
Meredith swallowed as she forced herself to move forward, one foot after the other until her hands came to rest against the cold steel bed railing. A sick, twisting lump formed in her throat, and butterflies played tennis in her innards. She didn't know what to do. The urge to crush him in an embrace was so strong she had to squeeze the railing until her knuckles hurt. She wanted to. She wanted to, but it would hurt him, and those two warring facts made her feel like barfing instead.
He was alive, and after the hours and hours of not knowing, all while his blood dried on her scrubs, she wanted to vomit.
"I'm here," she whispered, swallowing against bile. She wished that he would wake, just for a minute. Just so she could see. But she didn't dare ask it of him. If he wasn't ready to be awake, he wasn't ready. She started to shiver. Please, just for a minute, she begged him in silence.
He lay flat in a maze of tubes and wires and monitors. The ventilator mask cupped his pale lips and his nose and filled the quiet with a low hiss as it made him breathe. Though he wore a hospital gown, the ties over the shoulders had been undone, and the gown had been folded down to let his incision and the gunshot wound heal a bit in open air. A fuzzy blue thermal blanket covered him midway up the swell of his ribcage, and EKG leads cascaded over his exposed chest, some ending at sticky pads near his shoulders and under his nipples, others snaking under the blanket. A long, angry-looking incision, held together with Cristina's perfect stitching, bisected his chest and stopped several inches above the seam line of the blanket. Fat drainage tubes poked through his skin, one of them near his clavicle, another terminating somewhere below the blanket, probably high in his abdomen. An automated blood pressure cuff constricted around one arm and sighed as it released. An intravenous line dripped medication and hydrating fluids directly into his system via a catheter shunt in his other arm. A pulse oximeter held his middle finger hostage. A little plastic name tag encircled his wrist, proclaiming him to anyone who wanted to know: Derek Shepherd. Sulfa drug allergy. Another tube snaking out from underneath the blanket at the base of the bed ended in a small, clear bag to collect his urine. It seemed like no part of him remained inviolate.
His eyes opened halfway. The flash of his pupils as they adjusted under his dark lashes broke her into tiny bits. "Hi," she said. "Oh, god, hi." You're alive.
She leaned over the railing and touched his face. The sharp forest of his stubble rasped against her palm and brought out all her pent up worry in a deluge of unfettered emotion. Her lip quivered, and she made an ugly, wet sound with her throat.
"Hi," she repeated, feeling like a moron, but she couldn't stop touching him. She curled her fingers through his hair. It was disgruntled and greasy with old sweat and pain, but she didn't care. She felt the soft curve of cartilage that made his ear. The beeping heart monitor told her he was fine, and that his heart was working steadily, but she felt at his jugular anyway. The skin pounded against her fingertips. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. A joyous, unwavering timpani that she never wanted to end in a million years.
I want to die when I'm 110 years old, in your arms.
He didn't move and couldn't speak, but he didn't seem to mind her shaky, sob-y, graceless appraisal of his health. He watched her with a half-lidded, quiet gaze. She wanted to touch him everywhere, but it felt like nowhere was safe. She didn't want to hurt him, and he was so...
"Does it hurt?" she asked in a wispy voice. She didn't want him to say yes.
His eyelids lowered further, almost to the point of being closed, and he took a weak, sighing breath, unaided, pulling air through the ventilator tube without its assistance. His head moved almost imperceptibly side to side, and then he stilled. No, it didn't hurt.
Relief tore through her like a brush fire.
She snaked her hand underneath the blanket and felt his naked skin, felt the rise and fall of his ribs as he breathed. She traced his arm, mindful of the intravenous incision cut deep into his wrist vein, and found his hand. His fingers were not quite warm, which was a shock after sleeping next to him for years. He'd always been a furnace, warm and vital and solid. She gripped his palm, and he started to shiver. Little tremors just quivery enough to be noticeable raced along his skin like tiny aftershocks of the trauma his body had experienced.
"You're cold," she said. She didn't make it a question. He'd lost a lot of blood, so it wasn't exactly a surprise. She stood, reluctant to let his hand go, but forced herself away from him for a few seconds. She pulled a fresh blanket from the side cabinet by the bed and covered him. Even through two layers of thermal blankets, though, his feet felt like blocks of ice.
Her heart hurt. She bit her lip as he lay there, watching, still.
Helpless.
She yanked up the top sheet and both blankets at the foot of the bed and pushed them back, revealing more of the wire maze. The clear line of the catheter that spilled over the side of the bed was taped against his thigh and his calf and his ankle so he wouldn't pull it accidentally if he moved.
The only thing he had on under the covers aside from his loose hospital gown was a pair of pressure stockings, which were meant to keep the blood in his legs from clotting in his veins and causing thrombosis. The thin white leggings covered his thighs and calves and came to a stop at the mid-arch of his feet, which were otherwise bare, a function of the anesthesiologist needing to have a clear view of his toenails during his surgery. His toes were a fleshy blue color, a sure sign that his body did not have enough blood in it anymore to keep them warm on its own.
She pulled his left foot into her hands, feeling weepy at the chill that charged through her skin when she touched him, and pushed the pressure stocking back to his ankle. He offered no resistance, and at first, she found herself reluctant to do anything, as though she were holding a crackable egg in her hand and not a resilient, human limb made surprisingly heavy by the fact that he wasn't helping her at all. He probably couldn't, even if he wanted to.
Silence ticked.
He hadn't been shot in the foot, she forced herself to remember. She could touch his foot.
She rubbed the dime-sized callus underneath his pinky toe, felt the bones wobble under his skin as she massaged him. The callus was rough and hard and worn from countless miles in cross trainers and hiking boots and dress shoes, but she'd never felt anything so lovely in her life. His toes flexed, just a smidgen, and then he relaxed. He blinked, long and slow, and rested his eyelids at half mast. The ventilator shoved a breath through his torso, an ever-present reminder of his fragility.
She moved through each digit in slow succession, not proceeding to the next one until the skin of the present one started to feel more like skin and less like a cadaver in a fridge. She petted the under arch of his foot, pressing firmly to avoid tickling him. She couldn't recall the number of times she'd scraped her toenail against the skin there while they made love or by accident when she rolled during the night, and gotten kicked for her trouble. He would never admit it, but she knew he was sensitive there, which she'd always thought was kind of adorable. I'm not ticklish, he would always insist. She traced the long slender bones from his ankles to his toes, and then massaged life back into his Achilles tendon. When she finished, the foot was warm, and soft, and supple to the touch. She slid her fingers up his ankle, until they brushed the coarse, curly hairs peppering his leg.
Less than three hours ago, Jackson had convinced both her and Gary Clark that Derek was dead.
But he wasn't dead.
"Oh, god," she whispered, not caring that he was staring at her in drugged befuddlement. "God," she repeated, feeling horrible for it after she had spent all day promising to believe and all that crap. And she stood there. Holding his ankle. Sobbing quietly until the new-found warmth of his skin reminded her she was holding him. A human being. Her Derek. And he was hurt.
"Sorry," she told him. "I'm okay. I swear."
After replacing the pressure stocking with care, she moved to his right foot and repeated the slow process of restoring circulation underneath his skin. The next time she looked up at him, he'd fallen back into the oblivion of dreams.
"Thank you for not dying, Derek," she told her sleeping husband, and she settled onto the chair beside his bed to revel in the simple fact that he was lying there, breathing, he had beautiful ankles and calves, and he wasn't going to leave her because he'd promised he wouldn't. He'd promised, and she believed him.
She believed.
She listened as his body slowly started to recover from the shock of surgery and the effects of the muscular paralytics and other drugs in his bloodstream. More and more of his breaths were his own. The usage percentage on the ventilator dropped from 55% to 40% in the mere space of an hour. She watched as his eyes moved under his eyelids, telling her he rested and recuperated, deep in the grips of healthy REM sleep. His skin pinked up a bit, particularly his lips, and his feet stayed warmer on their own. The catheter bag began to fill with gold-colored fluid, too, a reassuring sign that his kidneys were functioning at a decent clip.
Nurse Charlotte had been right. Derek was strong and healthy.
Strong, healthy, and hers.
The next time he opened his eyes, she had the presence of mind to tell him, "Cristina got the bullet out. She fixed you. And Gary Clark is dead," just in case he was awake enough to worry about it. A stab of grief tore a runnel into her when he blinked out a fat pair of tears. Maybe she shouldn't have said anything, but she imagined wondering and not knowing, being as weak as he was, would have been a far worse kind of torture.
When the hospital PA system crackled to life, Derek was out again, replenishing himself for another bout of wakefulness that was sure to happen later. Dr. Webber's deep, soothing baritone filled the air. "This is Dr. Richard Webber. For those of you who don't know, Chief of Surgery Derek Shepherd, among others, sustained life threatening injuries during the shooting rampage that occurred several hours ago. The Board of Directors has elected that I fill the position of Interim Chief of Surgery until such time as Dr. Shepherd is sufficiently recovered to resume his duties. I want to assure everyone that Mr. Clark has been taken care of, and it is now 100% safe to move about freely within the building," Chief Webber said.
"We have made arrangements for a full compliment of grief and trauma counselors to be available 24/7 in the surgery wing's conference rooms, and they are for use by any hospital staff or patient during this difficult time," Richard continued. "They are here to assist you, and I encourage you to visit any one of them when your time permits. No appointment is necessary. I would like to ask that any staff who are approached by a member of the press please forward the request to our PR department, and do not attempt to answer any questions. Please, do not approach the areas cordoned off with crime scene tape. Police are attempting to take statements from all available witnesses, and have set up a base of operations in the hospital cafeteria. The ER is currently closed to trauma. Overflow and new patients will be sent to Seattle Presbyterian, but all existing patients will continue to receive the best standard of care here at Seattle Grace. For assistance with the location of loved ones, additional administrative staff has been reallocated to the main reception area. I thank you for your patience and love in helping us deal with this horrible incident. Seattle Grace is a family, and we have lost a lot of members today. My prayers go out to all the affected families. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me through Patricia. Thank you."
A hiss of static and silence followed as Dr. Webber left the intercom. Meredith swallowed. Affected families. She stared at Derek's prone, unmoving form, realizing that the message was for them, among others. They were an affected family. He was her family.
His eyes opened for a third time in as many hours, and she leaned forward to kiss his forehead. She brushed a loose curl away from his face and smiled at him. "Hello again," she whispered. "I'm here."
For the first time after his surgery, he moved. His hand shifted under the blankets. He tried to speak, either despite the ventilator, or because he forgot all about it. No noise came out. She ran her fingers through his hair. "You're still on the ventilator," she told him. "It's all right."
Her family. She bit her lip and leaned closer, reading irritated distress in his gaze. He couldn't talk, and it was starting to bug him. He wanted to tell her something. Something...
Dread poured through her as her thoughts of family wandered to completion. He was her family. But what about his family? He wasn't alone in the world like she was. He had loved ones. In the chaos, she'd forgotten all about them. He had a mom. He had sisters. All those sisters had children and husbands. And any one of them could be watching the news that moment and see that Seattle Grace was a barely recovered war zone. They would be beside themselves. Her heart began to pound with worry when she realized there were at least a dozen people probably going through all the thoughts she'd cycled through when she'd been running toward his bleeding, broken body. Was he going to die? Was he dead already? They needed to know. She needed to call Carolyn.
But she wouldn't leave him, not if he wanted her to stay. She'd grab the first nurse that walked by and throw a phone number his or her way, but she wouldn't leave.
He stared at her, his expression vacant and glassy from all the drugs in his system, but pointed. At her. "Derek, do you want me to call your mother?" she asked as she rested her palm against his forehead. "I'm so sorry I forgot."
His silent gaze turned pleading. Yes. Call my mom. He blinked, and she kissed him, her mind settling as she gave it a new goal. "Okay. Okay, I'll call her right now. Is her number in your cell phone?"
Silly question. Of course the number was in his cell phone, which was in a box under the bed with the rest of the belongings they'd removed from his person before surgery. At least he didn't waste energy answering her query.
She stood, and he moved again. His arm shifted under the blanket. She watched as he strained at her, his fingers splayed and reaching for her like a man clawing for a life raft. "What is it?" she said, which was another stupid question. Yes or no. That was the extent of what he could communicate at the moment. Of their own volition, her feet moved her back toward the railing, and she watched him, confused, as he patted at her scrubs and his palm came to rest against her womb, trembling with the effort it required of him.
For a moment, she couldn't breathe. He couldn't possibly know about... He'd been out cold with his damaged heart exposed to open air when Cristina had announced to Gary Clark that Meredith was pregnant. He'd been...
Her stomach growled, the rumble of it audible even over the whir of the ventilator. His fingers flexed, and he got a loose grip on her scrubs. He pulled at her and heaved a breath that made him wince. That was when she realized he wasn't exactly aiming for her malfunctioning uterus, but he was too weak to get enough lift for his true target.
A sob fell from her lips. "I'll eat, too," she said. "I swear. And then I'll be back."
Like a switch had been flipped, he was done. Out. Gone. His hand relaxed, and he slumbered again. She moved his outstretched arm back under the comfort of the thermal blankets, and turned.
She only made it to the threshold before the shadow of a towering man stumbled into the way and stopped. He looked past her shoulders, his eyes red and puffy, and then he fell apart. "Oh, Jesus," he said, his voice thick and low with raw upset. "I spent all day fixing Karev, and the whole time Derek- I heard thirty minutes ago and raced back here."
Meredith stared at Mark. The harsh lighting in the hallway gave his face a gaunt, haunted cast. He looked like he hadn't slept in weeks and was barely on his feet. Which probably mirrored her own haggard appearance.
A nurse Meredith didn't know passed by, her shoes squeaking against the floor as she propelled herself down the hallway. The lights buzzed overhead with the faint crackle of fluorescence. Mark looked alone and tired and ready to fall down, an unstable island in the sea of empty space between Derek's door and the back wall.
"How could anyone ever do this?" Mark asked the universe, plaintive and desolate.
She didn't have an answer. But Derek was her family. Mark was Derek's family.
Meredith, you can't do nothing. She's your sister.
And?
And your family.
I'm not understanding.
She didn't know why it hadn't clicked before, but it did now. She collapsed against him and pulled her arms around Mark's slender waist. "He's going to be okay," she said. "I got to him in time."
"Got to him?"
"Gary Clark shot him on the catwalk. He was going to bleed out."
I'm not gonna die. I promise.
"Jesus," Mark said. He pulled back and looked at her, his eyes widening. "Shit. I... You knew about Karev, right?"
Meredith swallowed. She knew. She knew that Alex was not awake yet, that he was at Seattle Presbyterian on the critical list in their intensive care unit. She knew Lexie was probably sitting by his bedside, waiting, right that moment, much as Meredith had with Derek, except without the reassurance of knowing that he would wake up again in a little bit. Her heart broke, but she didn't have room for all the extra sharp pieces in her chest. There was just too much. She didn't have space for almost losing Derek, getting Derek back, watching him fake die, v-fib, and then recover, for losing a baby, and then dealing with Alex at the same time. "Lexie called me while they were closing up Derek." Her chest started to throb, and her breaths shortened. "Alex is really hurt. Worse than Derek, I think."
Her voice cracked like dry kindling, and she cried. She didn't know where it came from. The yo-yo of elation to desperate fear and back again all afternoon was wreaking havoc with her emotional sense of balance. She wasn't even particularly sad at the moment. And yet it all fell out of her anyway. Tears. Snot. Ugliness.
"Mark," she said. She gasped and hiccoughed, and he rubbed her back, which only made her cry more.
"Will you please sit with Derek?" she moaned against Mark's shirt. Her face stung, and his scrubs were soft and warm. She was such an ugly crier. Ugly and weak.
She was standing right outside Derek's room. If he woke up again, he would hear this crap, and he didn't need to hear this crap. He wasn't allowed to be upset right now. He had to heal. He'd promised her he wouldn't die. He'd held up his end of the bargain. He would be okay. But not if he was listening to her sob like a gutted, gasping fish who'd just suicidally leaped out of the fishbowl of his hospital room.
"I don't want him to be alone right now, and I need to call his mom," she said. "He wants me to call his mom. He wants me to call his mom, and I need to call her."
Mark stared at her like it wasn't even a real question, would he sit with Derek, but his grip didn't abate. "I called Mrs. Shepherd on the way back from Seattle Presbyterian. I told her I'd call her with an update as soon as possible. She said not to bother, that she'd be here on the first flight she can find with a seat, whether it's in pet cargo or first class."
"I didn't even think to call her," Meredith confessed. "I had plenty of time."
"If he's not dead because of you," Mark said, a wry smile crinkling his face, "I think she'll forgive you." He brushed her cheek with his thumb.
Meredith sighed. "Barely. He's not dead because of Cristina. She's the one who fixed him. And because he promised." You had to want to fight to live through a literal hole in your chest. "I'm..."
Just a bystander that begged the operator for another lap on the roller coaster.
Mark squeezed her shoulder. "Just go do what you need to do. I'll sit here."
She didn't realize how comforting the presence of Mark's big body was until he left her bereft. The chair by Derek's bedside squawked under Mark's weight. Derek's eyes opened at the noise, and Mark smiled.
"Hey, man," Mark said, loud and falsely boisterous, the way he seemed to live life in general, but she appreciated it at the moment. "I know Meredith is probably better company, but you're drugged, and she needs a shower or something, so you're stuck with me for a few hours."
She went to the cafeteria to grab a salad, but the crowd of police officers and throb of life and sobs there was incredible. Detectives sat at every table taking notes while streams of people babbled the details of their horrific experiences like polluted, dirty brooks expelling waste. Dr. Bailey slouched at one of the closer tables, tear tracks running down her face, her expression vacant. Meredith stared at the scene with a surgeon's detachment and backed away. A vending machine sandwich would have to suffice.
She went to her favorite back hallway. Her favorite spare hospital bed. She'd spent countless hours studying there with Cristina and with Alex. With Izzie and with George. She stopped cold when she saw a streak of dried blood at the doorway by the vending machine and the telltale spatter that marred the floor with rusty brown blotches all the way up the walk into the distance. Someone had been shot there, or ran through there while injured, or...
Something.
She couldn't bring herself to shove quarters into the machine.
The next vending machine she tried had only two sandwiches left. She didn't even care what kind, and she didn't check the date on them. She grabbed one and devoured it, feeling slightly sick after she took her last bite. Her stomach churned and roiled and threatened to throw it all back up, but by the time she made it to the bathroom, it had settled, leaving her shaky, and pretty sure she would never be hungry again.
She hit the showers by the locker room, staring at her naked body as steam billowed around her, and water sluiced down her skin. Her palms came to rest against her lower abdomen. She'd had a baby there, and now it was gone. She stared at her bellybutton sort of like she had with the cafeteria and its overflowing burble of police officers. Distant. Disinterested. Because she knew if she let herself feel, the results would be bad.
She rubbed her stomach. Shampoo ran down into her eyes as it bled from her hair. Her waterlogged fingertips puckered. She'd been host to a tiny person for a little while. Two weeks. Maybe three. She and Derek had made something really kind of great. All by accident. As if on cue, her stomach cramped. Just a little, and then it went quiet. She ran her index finger in a circle around her bellybutton.
All her resolutions not to feel dissolved in a pile of tears, but the shower washed them away.
She made her peace with it as she sat against the cold tile and let the water stream down. Her heart didn't even have the opportunity to remain broken, because Derek was okay. Derek was okay, and she didn't have much energy for anything else at the moment. His piece of her soul remained intact and functional and warm and whole. And that was enough.
The water chilled. She started to shiver. She turned the water off and sat in the cold dripping shower for a long march of minutes.
She stood, pausing to let the world settle as her vision blacked out from the elevation change. She toweled off. She dressed in methodical silence, threw her towel in the hospital laundry bin, and made her way back to his room without bothering to dry her hair or put on any makeup or anything. It didn't matter. He knew what she looked like without any of that crap on, and somehow, bothering with makeup after he'd been shot in the chest seemed silly. Worrying about a collection of cells that she'd hosted for less than a month and had only known about for less than twelve hours seemed silly. She would be sad, but there was too much to be grateful for, and that was okay.
Derek was okay.
Mark looked up as she shuffled through the door. "Hey, welcome back," he said. "I was just telling Derek that I am a way better candidate for temporary chief than Richard. Don't you think?"
"I plead the fifth," she said, a small laugh searing her throat.
"Whatever," Mark said as he stood and offered her the chair. "I think he should lobby with the Board for me."
She glanced past Mark's shoulder to see Derek awake and looking somewhere sort of centered on Mark, but not quite. His eyes didn't twinkle like they usually did when Mark was making stupid jokes, but she was happy to settle for awake and sort of looking around, and Mark didn't seem concerned.
Then she realized that Derek was off the ventilator. There was no obtrusive tube jammed down his throat. No hulking thing covering his mouth. Just a lightweight, clear oxygen mask cupped over his nose and lips.
The sight of Derek, awake, breathing unassisted by anything but his own vibrant will to be alive, pulled at her like an inescapable gravity well. She sank into the chair beside his bed.
"When?" she gasped.
Mark stood beside her. "Charlotte took it out about thirty minutes ago. He's a bit stoned, but he's doing really well, considering."
The oxygen mask covering Derek's lips fogged as he muttered something underneath. The soft, tenor hum of his vocal cords at work made her smile, even though he'd only managed a syllable or two, even though she had no idea what he'd said. Because he'd said something, which was even better than just breathing. Better by far.
"Don't worry," Mark said with a grin. He gave the bedside railing a playful slap. "You'll be singing horribly again by sunup, I'll bet." He turned, placing a warm hand on her shoulder. "I'm going to go grab a shower myself. Then I'll be back."
She vaguely heard his shoes against the floor as he left, but it was a peripheral sort of thing, lost to the eclipse of Derek. Breathing. Sort of speaking.
"Hi," she said. "You're doing really great!"
When he rolled his gaze to her, she came to realize Mark's slightly stoned assessment was a bit off. A lot off. Derek was on a lot of painkillers. A lot. A dump truck full. Mountains of them. He didn't seem to have much motor control at all, and though his gaze did eventually find her, it took the most lackadaisical path she'd ever seen. No wonder he didn't hurt. He was on a Technicolor trip in la la land made possible only by a close sister of heroin.
A fist closed around her chest and squeezed, but she ignored it. He was alive.
He pulled the mask down to his chin, where it rested in the crook of his neck. His grip was weak and pawing, made with awkward fingers that he didn't quite seem to know how to operate after having his brain disconnected from his muscles for so long. His hand lay discarded, still clasped over the cup of the mask as though he didn't have the energy to move it again. Vapors curled from the lip of the mask, and he breathed noisily.
After a moment of preparation, he croaked at her, "How are you?"
A bark of disbelief skipped from her lips. "I'm not even sure where it's safe to touch you, and you want to know how I am? Me?"
"Won' hurt me," he slurred, his voice a bare thread of sound against the quiet. "'M on good stuff."
"Excellent stuff," she agreed, wiping tears away. It was all right. She didn't want him to feel. He deserved some peace.
"Love you," he said.
She bit her lip, leaning forward to brush his face with her palm. "You should leave the mask on," she said, her voice breaking. "God, I love you, too. I love you, Derek. I saw him shoot you, and I thought you were going to die, but you didn't. You didn't die, and now you're here. Breathing. And talking. And being alive to tell me that you love me. It's perfect, but you need to put the mask back on, because if you keep talking, I'll never want you to stop even though it's got to be killing your throat. Plus, your pulse oximeter is going to start whining soon because there's no way you're getting enough air on your own yet."
His eyelids drooped, and he stared at her like he'd arrived at his own private nirvana. "Y'babble a lot," he said. He fell asleep between one blink and the next. Like he had originally planned to open his eyes again, but his brain had received a busy line signal when it tried, and he didn't have the energy to hit redial.
Even when she pulled his hand away from the oxygen mask and resettled the mask over his nose and mouth, he didn't wake up, and she was unable to stop herself from staring as she watched him inhale and exhale. All on his own. The disconnected ventilator had been turned off, and it rested underneath his heart monitor. Unused. Done.
She let him ride the lull for minutes upon minutes, marveling at the wondrous process of his respiration. His soft sighs were a gift greater than any kidney-in-a-jar or diamond or even a house on his land for just the two of them. Better than any promise or heartfelt declaration. He was alive. She pulled his hand through the side rail of the bed and held it. She stroked his thumb and the lines of his palm, keeping him safe and close while he slept.
When Nurse Kent returned an hour later, she frowned apologetically, carrying one of the special heart-shaped pillows they gave to recent bypass patients to hold onto while they coughed. "He needs to start clearing his lungs," she said.
Meredith's grip on his palm tightened. "Can't it wait?" Meredith asked. "Please?"
The nurse shook her head, and placed her hand against Derek's shoulder. "Dr. Shepherd. I need you to wake up now," Charlotte said in a commanding voice.
He opened his eyes, confusion and disorientation evident in his gaze. She checked his vitals and his pupil response while she talked at him, explaining what she was seeing and doing as she did so. She didn't need to explain much, since Derek already knew what it all was for.
She handed him the pillow. He took it with weak, shaky fingers.
"I want you to hold onto this pillow as tightly as you can, and then cough," the nurse said. "It'll clear your lungs, and reduce the chances of post-operative pneumonia. Okay? When you're ready."
Meredith bit her lip. He was too stoned to be thinking straight about how bad this was going to be, or too confident in how stoned he already was, or he would have hesitated more.
The results were immediate and torturous for her to watch. Air chuffed out of his mouth. All things considered, it was a weak cough. Barely in the realm of coughing, and more so in the territory of heavy, forced breathing, but devastating all the same. His breath clipped off into a weak, upset cry of pain, muffled by the oxygen mask, but not unlike what she'd heard from the promenade when he'd been busy dying on catwalk. His eyes watered, and tears spread down his face, but what was worse was that the sudden agony made him breathe hard and fast, more so than his recently broken sternum was willing to put up with, and the cycle devolved into a vicious stream of unending pain.
The nurse encouraged him, told him to hold onto the pillow as tightly as he could, but by the end of the wave, he lay against the bed, spent and pain-hazed, shaking, and looking like if this meant living, he wanted to die no matter what he'd promised.
Nurse Charlotte gabbed at him with enthusiasm, assured him that he'd done a great job and wouldn't have to do it again for a while. He remained silent, either unwilling or unable to speak again. The nurse took the heart pillow and stashed it beside his bed, again telling him how great he'd done, and then she left them alone in her destructive wake.
"It's okay," Meredith whispered. "You'll feel better in a minute. Please." Please, feel better.
He found the willpower to move his hand, and she watched as he tapped the button that would give him more morphine with bloodless, shaky fingers. Then he tapped it again. And again. He stopped after the sixth click, but whether it was because he was satisfied with the results or because he'd given up on ever receiving enough to make him feel better, she didn't know. She glanced at the IV and noticed there was nothing left for him in the dispensary, though the last little bit that remained dripped down the tube as she watched.
The crushing silence killed her. He'd been too willing to speak despite the discomfort before, and now he wasn't saying a word, which meant bad, horrible things. "I'm sorry," she soothed. If it hurt him to talk, she would go to hell for him to stay mute. She stroked his cheek, and on a whim, decided no amount of him being breakable right now would stop her from climbing into the bed with him.
She needed to feel him against her, and maybe, just maybe, her body would help him. He could use the warmth, if nothing else, and if it was truly a bad thing to do, Charlotte could yell at her later.
Meredith folded her petite body between the length of him and the railing, careful as though she were dealing with a china doll not to jar him or rest her weight on any part of him. Dodging all the monitors and wires was a feat, but she managed after a close call with one of the drainage tubes. He didn't move as she melded herself around him and propped her chin against her wrist against her elbow. She stared at the lines of his forehead, deep runnels of pain carved into his skin. The fog of his tortured exhales buffeted the oxygen mask.
He seemed stuck in that place, in agony, unable to move or speak, for eons. A stretch of time well beyond reasonable and delving into cruel and unusual passed, taking moment after moment hostage. She never wanted Charlotte to come back. Not ever.
"It's okay," she whispered against his ear, caressed his temples. Anything to help him.
After what seemed like years, he moved his head and looked at her. His stoned, blue eyes tore holes into her, and his fingertips brushed the fine hairs on her arm like a whisper against flesh.
"'M fine," he mumbled behind the mask, his voice weaker and a lot more lackluster than before, but when she was a mere inches away from his face, she had no trouble hearing him. "Good 's new inafeweeks," he said.
She knew it would be quite a bit more than a few weeks, but it was a beautiful lie, and she let him swindle her with it voluntarily. Take me for a ride, Derek. "Promise?" she begged.
His sigh fogged up the mask. "Promised I wouldn' die, didn' I?"
She kissed him where his nose met his forehead and lingered there, hovering, wanting. His eyes closed, and he lay there, still like death, but alive. Alive. A breath carried his mind away from her, and his body started to relax out of the pain. His face tilted into her body, slowly at first, gaining momentum as his consciousness lost traction, but at the last moment before free fall, he forced his eyes open and stared.
"'K now?" he said.
He was such a big, dumb, self-sacrificing idiot, she decided with a sob that was a laugh. "Shut up, and go to sleep, Derek. I'm okay."
She hadn't even finished the sentence when she realized he'd already obeyed. Every muscle loosened, and the suffering left his face like a tide escaping back to the sea.
She didn't move for hours, allowing herself to linger in his fib, to pretend it was any night, that he was fine, that this was their marital bed, and that he was spent, resting against satin sheets after he'd loved her for a thousand, endless sighs, resting for no other reason than she'd worn him out with pleasure. The idyllic fantasy washed the backs of her eyelids in color and warmth and light, and she basked. He was completely fine. It was the sort of hyperbole she needed right now.
"Lay your head, man," she told the sleeping piece of her soul, borrowing a quote from one of her favorite books. "It's a long time 'til dawn."
Derek was okay. Would be okay. But a little bit of extra fantasizing never hurt.
**Quote used is from Diana Gabaldon's outstanding Outlander series.