So some people might think I'm crazy to be starting another story with two on the go, but I actually started this one a long time ago, and, contrary to my other stories, I've got several chapters blocked, so my updates will actually be on time!

As you can tell from the summary, this story looks at all the moments that Derek mentions in his proposal. All are told from Meredith's perspective, and, while we saw some of them on the show, some of them are new. And the old ones have a different perspective with some extra stuff added in, I promise.

Please let me know what you think!

Come on

Come on

Put your hands into the fire

Into the Fire – Thirteen Senses

I don't understand why the Chief is blocking my way. It's so immature. I just want to go home. I don't want to wait for another elevator when there is a perfectly good one here. It's a free country; I should be able to take whichever elevator I want.

The other one finally arrives. I glare at the Chief suspiciously, wondering if I'm allowed to take it, or if he's just going to jump up and block me again. "Well go on," he says, gesturing to the empty elevator, as if he can't understand why I'm not taking it. I move towards the elevator slowly, unable to fight off the wariness. What was wrong with the other elevator?

The doors open, revealing Derek, adjusting his cuffs. He looks so different from earlier that I can almost forget that the last week even happened. Gone are the beard and the bloodshot eyes, without which the troubled look seems to disappear. He's transformed back into his confident, easy-going self.

He smiles at me, that charming McDreamy smile that makes every woman's heart melt. I've forgotten how much I miss it until I see it again: the sight of it makes me want to throw my arms around him and kiss him. "Hey. Come on in," he says.

The elevator is full of scans: CT scans, MRIs; they've all been plastered all over the walls. Derek smiles, so proud of his handiwork, and I have to admit, it is stunning. Now I can see why Richard was so adamant that I take the other elevator.

I know what this is. I know what he's doing here. I can hear my own words echoing in my head, words that I said to him only this morning: No Derek. Not like this.

He's going to propose. He's going to do it right this time.

The CTs are a nice touch; after all, had we not been working at the same hospital that fateful one-night stand would have remained exactly what it was, but I don't really understand why he would put up so many. As I take a closer look, however, I notice that they aren't just any old CT scans. They're all memorable ones; patients that Derek and I both worked on together, often under interesting circumstances. Realizing this makes everything mean so much more. Derek has really gone all out here; this is going to be the proposal of a lifetime.

He guides me over to the first scan. "This is a CT of Katie Bryce. Sixteen year-old female, subarachnoid aneurysm—"

"From a fall during rhythmic gymnastics. I remember." I can't help the smile on my face, remembering my very first case as an intern.

"Right. It was the first surgery we ever scrubbed in together on." Derek's expression is serious now. "Our first save."

I can't help it, I'm grinning like an idiot now. What a day that was. What a case. What a surgery. But as exciting as it all was, I can't help remembering how terrifying it was at first, when it seemed like everything was going wrong…

Sometime during S1 E1 – A Hard Day's Night

I couldn't believe it. My first day as an intern, my first shift on the job, and my patient had already coded, all because I had been too lazy to answer my pager quickly. Katie had almost died, Dr Shepherd refused to speak to me because he thought I was incompetent, Dr Bailey was pissed because she hadn't been paged right away, and, to top it all off, I had puked in the bushes in front of Cristina Yang, the most hard-core intern of the bunch. It was not shaping up to be a good first shift.

Given what had happened over the last couple of hours, I had decided that I would probably be best off trying to get some sleep. I resisted the urge to go down to the tunnels; all the others would be there, and they'd all be chatting about something or another. So I retreated instead to one of the empty gurneys outside Katie's room. I didn't dare wait in there for fear that Dr Shepherd would kick me off the case.

I'd been sitting there for the better part of twenty minutes, without any hope of getting to sleep. All I could think about was Katie and what could possibly be wrong with her. It wasn't epilepsy, and I was sure as hell it wasn't a brain tumour either, not when all her scans had been clean. Annoying as she was, she had almost died tonight because no one could figure out what was wrong with her, and because I had assumed that the 911 was just her being bored again.

The sound of Katie's door closing jerked me out of my thoughts. Dr Shepherd strode down the hall, his face tense but his expression unreadable. Hastily, I jumped off the gurney, hoping to redeem myself.

"Dr Shepherd, I know you're very busy, and I'm probably the last person you want to talk to," I began, jogging after him, refusing to believe that I actually doing this, that I was actually chasing Derek Shepherd, "but I wanted to apologize."

At this, Shepherd turned, looking somewhat distracted, but at least no longer ignoring me. As soon as he saw me however, his tense expression morphed into one of surprise. I was obviously not who he had been expecting to see. "Apologize?" he repeated, obviously confused.

Courage bolstered, I nodded. "I should have been paying better attention to Katie. I should have taken her condition more seriously, and not brushed her off as some pain-in-the-ass teenager."

I could have sworn a hint of a smile crossed his face—Katie's pain-in-the-ass behaviour obviously hadn't gone unnoticed—but it was replaced so quickly with a sigh, and a running of his hand through his hair that I couldn't be sure. "Just be faster next time, Dr Grey. I know Katie paged you 911 before just when she was bored; the nurse told me—and she shouldn't have paged you for something like that in the first place—but that doesn't mean that you can just disregard the next 911." Derek was obviously worn out by this whole Katie business; there was hardly any severity in his tone, instead, there was weariness, as if he were doing a perfunctory chore that he really hated.

I nodded, the shame threatening to drown me. I'd wanted to make such a good impression on my first day, and so far all I'd managed to do was almost kill my patient, and all because my boss was Derek Shepherd. Okay, maybe that was a little harsh—I probably would have been slow responding to Katie's page, and I might have frozen up a little bit at first when I saw Katie coding—but everything would have been infinitely easier had Derek Shepherd not been my boss. Or perhaps, more accurately, had I not slept with Derek Shepherd and then had him turn out to be my boss.

When I'd seen Katie's body bucking and seizing on that bed, all I could think about were those blue eyes, so full of disappointment. My ears had rung with all the things he would say, all the things he would do if he were here; if he knew that I hadn't been there right away. He was everywhere; every time I turned a corner, I half-hoped—and half-dreaded—that his would be the first face I'd see. And, of course, I couldn't stop thinking about the sex; the one-night stand that had become so much more than that. I wished I'd never slept with him, that way I wouldn't have to try so hard to block the image of him leaning over me, naked, lips inches away from mine. I would have to try so hard not to stare at those lips, and suppress the memories of what they felt like pressed against mine. "I'm sorry, Dr Shepherd. It won't happen again. I promise."

"Good." Derek still seemed distracted. I wanted to leave, to escape this awkward conversation, but at the same time, I craved Derek's presence like some kind of drug. "You really thought you were the last person that I would want to see right now?" He looked at me in amazement, and my heart skipped a beat.

"Well, after everything that happened with Katie…" I'm not the last person Derek would want to see right now? What does that mean? Well, he did ask you out, the little voice in the back of my head chided.

Derek just shook his head. "Believe me Meredith, you are far from the last person that I would want to see right now."

"Oh." I wasn't sure what to say. Was he flirting with me again? I had no idea, and his face was still so infuriatingly unreadable; all I could tell from it was that he needed to get a better night's sleep tonight. And why is he so tired? the little voice asked deviously. I cursed my subconscious. The last thing I needed right now was more inappropriate fantasies about my boss. I had to be the bigger person here.

Mercifully, my pager went off, ending the long awkward silence, and giving me an excuse to look away from those hypnotic blue eyes. "It's Dr Bailey. I have to go."

"Right." Derek nodded, as if woken from a dream. He still looked troubled; this Katie thing must really have been getting to him.

Thank God for Dr Bailey. I counted my blessings as I hurried off down the hall. If I had to spend one more moment with Derek Shepherd, I'd…well, I don't know what would have happened.

"Meredith!"

It was all I could do not to swear out loud as Derek called me back. You spoke too soon, the little voice gloated.

"I wanted to apologize for earlier. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. I was worried about Katie, and stressed because her condition is getting worse by the minute and I have no idea what is wrong, but I shouldn't have kicked you out like that. It wasn't your fault she was coding, and she probably would have coded even if you'd answered your page on time."

This took me by surprise. Most attendings didn't apologize for snapping at interns; they normally enjoyed terrorizing them. Maybe he feels bad because he had sex with you and then raked you over the coals, the little voice suggested. I ignored it. There had to be something that could be done to help Katie. Derek would kill himself with worry if they didn't find something quickly. And then there'd be no more sex for you. I could picture my subconscious smirking. "Shut up," I muttered.

"What?" Derek asked.

"Nothing," I replied hastily, cheeks flaming. "You know," I said, thinking quickly to recover from the embarrassment of having my boss hear me talking to myself, "maybe all you need is a second opinion. For Katie, I mean," I added quickly, seeing the look of confusion on Derek's face. "After all, two heads are better than one right?" And with that, I jogged away, hoping to God that I wouldn't have to cross paths with Dr Shepherd for the rest of the day.

The day hadn't gotten any better.

I had thought, after everything that had happened with Katie that things were bound to get better, but they had only gotten worse. Derek must have considered my suggestion, because he'd called all the interns into a meeting, telling them whoever could successfully diagnose Katie would get to scrub in on the surgery. So all of the interns had spent the whole day frantically trying to diagnose Katie in the hopes of getting in on an advanced procedure— everyone that is except me, which was why I'd teamed up with Cristina. Ours had been a foolproof plan: we diagnose the problem and Cristina scrubs in on the surgery. We even found the cause: Katie had a ruptured aneurysm that had caused a subarachnoid bleed. Everything had seemed to be working out perfectly, until Derek had picked me for the surgery. After that, Cristina stopped talking to me, George bombed his appendectomy, and I was left facing 5 hours in the OR with Derek Shepherd.

Because of everything that had happened, I couldn't have waited downstairs because Izzie and Cristina were down there; the on-call rooms were probably all in use—Bailey said the attendings normally took them—and I hadn't wanted to hang out in the locker room like some loser. So I'd wandered the halls for an hour or so and pretended I had somewhere to be every time people looked at me until it was finally time to go to the OR.

Derek said he'd picked me because he thought I was talented, not because I had slept with him, and I should have been thrilled to have the opportunity to scrub in on a major procedure on my first shift, but I still hadn't been able to help feeling bad about taking the surgery. I had promised it to Cristina.

But now, having seen the surgery, I was having difficulty feeling any kind of guilt at all. Cristina certainly wouldn't have had she been in my shoes, and besides, she was speaking to me now. Sort of.

It had been a long forty-eight hours, and I was more than ready to go home. My feet hurt, my neck hurt, my eyes burned, and I was more exhausted than I could ever remember being, and not just physically exhausted but mentally as well. All I wanted was to go home, have a long, hot bath, and go to bed, but I couldn't just yet. With a groan, I remembered having promised my mother that I would go and visit her after my first shift. Not that she would remember anyways, but I still felt bad for not going. This would have been a big deal to her. Besides, I had decided to keep the house, and since it was still technically her house, she should know. So as all the other interns were chatting and complaining about their first shift and saying how nice it was going to be to go home and sleep, I packed my things in silence and headed out to the elevators, trying to mentally wake myself up enough to be able to drive to the nursing home and tell my mother all about my first day as a surgical intern.

The elevator doors opened and I suppressed a groan. Derek Shepherd was leaning against the railing at the back of the elevator. Had I not been so tired, I would have taken the stairs. The last thing I wanted was an elevator ride with my entirely too attractive boss, who I'd already slept with.

Derek glanced up and that McDreamy smile flashed across his face as he saw me. I felt my heart flutter. Oh God. This was going to be the longest elevator ride of my life.

I figured it was better to say nothing. I would just stand at the front of the elevator, minding my own business, until it was time to get off. Thankfully, Derek wasn't going to the lobby. He was still in his scrubs and I was glad he wasn't going home just yet; otherwise he probably would have walked me to my car.

"Heading out, Meredith?" So much for minding my own business.

"Yeah." I kept my eyes firmly focused on the elevator doors in front of me. If I turned and looked at him, it was all over.

"Pretty exciting first shift, huh?" I could hear the smile in his voice. Even picturing that smile made my heart beat a little faster. You should just go out with him, that little voice at the back of my mind whined. Then you can enjoy that smile…and more. I tried hard to ignore it. I was not going out with Derek Shepherd. That was not happening again.

"It was all right," I replied, trying to keep the smile off my face and failing.

"You know," Derek began, and I could tell from the overly friendly, slightly suggestive tone that whatever he was going to say was definitely going to be inappropriate, "Watching you in that OR was a huge turn on."

"Dr Shepherd!" I exclaimed, trying to preserve some sense of dignity, though at the same time slightly flattered that he'd noticed. "That's inappropriate. Besides, I wasn't doing anything in the OR. I was just observing," I added, turning to face him.

Derek smiled. "You're just so cute in scrubs."

"Dr Shepherd—"

"Is that all you can say to me? Dr Shepherd?" Derek teased, eyes twinkling with a wicked mirth that made me want to shove him up against the back of the elevator and kiss him until we were both senseless, which was not going to help the current situation.

"No," I replied indignantly, trying very hard to think about Katie's surgery and not the very sexy surgeon standing behind me telling me he thought I looked cute in scrubs, which were possibly the most unflattering things in the world. Izzie had remarked that they were probably made that way to discourage office romances. If so, they must have made some fatal design flaw with mine. Either that, or Derek was just crazy. "I just—this is inappropriate."

"So you've said. Have dinner with me, Meredith."

"No." I turned away, unable to keep my cool while looking at him.

"Why not? I'm a nice guy, Meredith."

"You're my boss, that's why. It's not professional! And besides, I'm not attracted to you." I adjusted the strap of my bag and glanced at the floor display. The tiny number three was illuminated. Seriously? We'd only travelled two floors? This had to be the slowest elevator I'd ever ridden.

"It didn't seem that way two nights ago," Derek said, coming up behind me. I could feel his breath on my ear. Involuntary shivers travelled up and down my spine. "You seemed to be pretty attracted to me then."

"I was drunk," I replied stubbornly.

"Which is why I think we should try this again when we're not inebriated," Derek murmured into my hair, hands rising to touch my hips. His fingers skimmed lightly underneath the hem of my blouse, feather-light touch leaving a trail of tingling skin in its wake. I was finding it incredibly hard to pay attention to anything.

My breath hitched. "No." I tried, and failed, to sound cold and detached. My voice came out strangled and breathless instead. The rational part of my brain reminded me that I was not going down this road. I already had a hard enough time of it being Ellis Grey's daughter. I was not going to be the intern who was sleeping with her attending. The irrational part of my brain—which currently held the majority—had other ideas.

Thankfully, the elevator doors opened before Derek could cause me to lose complete control.

"I believe this is your stop, Dr Shepherd," I said as coolly as I could muster.

"Unfortunately," Derek agreed, brushing past me. My skin tingled like a live wire where we touched. "Until next time, Dr Grey."

I breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator doors closed. I had a plan: stay as far away from Derek Shepherd as possible. I couldn't afford to get involved with someone right now, and besides, the feelings I had were dangerous. I was playing with fire, and I couldn't risk getting burned.