So, this is what you call blatant therapy fic. In which I take everything that bothered me about the finale, and give myself exactly what I wanted instead. Yep. Very, very therapeutic. I'm feeling nice and healed now. A little. At least it's helped calm my need to rage about the post-it.
* * *
It took Mrs. O'Malley nine days to decide her youngest son had died.
On the first, a dark haired man named Dr. Shepherd came and talked to her with words she wasn't used to using. Words like EEG and brain function. And how there was none. But Mrs. O'Malley told her God that He couldn't take both her husband and son from her in the span of a year, and that she would wait for her miracle.
The doctor came back on the second day, but he came in street clothes in the evening with one of George's friends. Meredith. The one with the weary eyes like a cloudy day. He didn't say a word about how the ventilator was still running though Mrs. O'Malley worried he would. He just gave her a solemn smile and stood for a long time behind the chair Meredith had sunk into, his hands on her slender shoulders like his grip was the only thing keeping her from dissolving.
By the third day, George's friends still hadn't told Izzie. There was a debate, a hushed one with what was left of who they once were out in the hall, but Alex flat out refused it. She was barely stable as it was.
On the fourth, he spent all night sitting in George's room listening to the hum of the ventilator and saying a word to no one.
He told her himself come morning, and on the fifth, the dying wept for the dead. They wheeled her into his room, and she kissed his palm for hours while his brothers told him broken stories about camping and cars and other things she knew he didn't like.
It was the sixth day before Cristina remembered to ask Meredith about City Hall. She was shown a post-it instead. Is this a theme, she'd wanted to know. Planning on giving birth in an Office Depot one day? But Meredith's face had fallen faster than the rain, and so she'd squeezed her arm. And squeezed every last drop of sarcasm out of the one word that followed before it left her lips. Congratulations. She balanced the good and the bad on a scale, and it was starting to feel like every last smile counted.
The seventh morning broke with a haze of pink light and orange shadows and tears on Meredith's cheeks. For one beautiful, groggy moment, she pretended she didn't know why, and then she buried her face against Derek's chest and woke him by trying not to cry. He held her until she finally did, and when he went to find her a box of tissues, he called the hospital and gave his first surgery of the day to Weller. He switched off the alarm when she wasn't looking and held her for half an hour more, calling her his wife until she smiled as she cried like a thunderstorm with the sun still out.
On the eighth, it was Derek who woke her instead, shaking her back to consciousness and the black sweep of their bedroom at midnight. She was sweaty and streaked with fear, and her first words were that her palm itched. That it was burning. Dead fingers drawing on it. When he pressed it flat to his, she told him the story of 007. She didn't sleep the rest of the night, and the only thing that got her out of bed when the alarm finally rang was her husband struggling to do the same beside her.
And on the ninth day, Mrs. O'Malley touched her elbow and said to her please, would she bring the forms. It was time. Her baby boy was gone.
You couldn't wait your whole life for a miracle that wouldn't come.
* * *
It was Cristina who found him standing on the bridge staring out at Seattle like maybe there was something there. When she looked, the sky was empty.
"You're wife's in the scrub room," she offered as she stopped beside him, fingers gripping the railing like maybe there was something there. When she did, her hands felt empty.
He raised an eyebrow, humoring her comment with a half turn of his head. "Yes. She had a surgery this morning."
She gave him one of those looks he couldn't quite decipher, a distant cousin of the one he knew meant she thought he was an idiot. She tried again for Meredith's sake. Because something had changed in her friend, her sister, with a single scrap of blue paper, and it wasn't up to her anymore to keep the pieces held together when life called it all back up. The dark and twisty. When it hit Meredith's face like a cyclone, and something fell away behind her eyes.
"You should go to the scrub room," said Cristina. "Now. OR two."
He went without another word and found her hunched over the sink, knuckles white from gripping the edge. She didn't look up when he came in, didn't seem to so much as breathe until he stood close behind her and covered her hands with his.
"Tell me," he said, his voice quieter than the silence that smothered them.
"She asked. Uh, she asked me to—" She started to shake.
He spoke to her in whispers now. It was the only thing that got her to turn around. "What? Who asked you?"
"Mrs. O'Malley, she— They're taking George off the vent." The words tasted like asphalt and clinked against her teeth. "I'm supposed to bring her the forms."
"Meredith." He brushed the hair back from her face and found her beautiful despite the dark circles running wild beneath her eyes. It was nothing but luck in a big game of Russian roulette, universe versus the lost souls, that had kept her safe and sent two of her friends straight to dying and dead. He kissed her harder than he should have with nurses on the other side of the window prepping the OR. "I can do it," he said, his lips still brushing against hers. "I'll bring her the forms."
"No. I, he's— He was my roommate. My family. He's George, Derek. I have to do it."
His fingers walked the side of her face, cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. "Are you sure?"
She sighed. "Not of much. But this, yeah. I am."
Meredith squeezed his hand before she walked away, and he stayed bent over the sink for a long time. Until Mark came in and stood beside him.
"You better not be trying to shanghai my OR."
Derek looked up. "What?"
Mark was grinning, and it felt as wrong as the laughter that had poured out of the television in the den the afternoon his mom told him his dad was dead. "I've got a facial reconstruction here in ten minutes," continued Mark, still far too content and pleased with the day. "Clear out."
Derek shook his head and gripped the sink that much harder. "They're taking O'Malley off the vent."
"Damn," said Mark, and Derek could finally breathe a little easier when the other man's tone plummeted straight to gravel and dust. "He was a good kid. Used to take care of Lexie a lot."
But the words buzzed around his head like bees and Derek didn't hear a thing. The edge of the sink was cold in his hands. Meredith had been colder still when he'd held her dead. His eyes grew moist, blurring the room and the OR beyond, and he breathed in sharply.
Mark cleared his throat. "You okay?"
"Karev asked me the other day. What if it was Meredith?"
"Hit by a bus?"
Derek sighed into the palms of his hands, scrubbing them over his face and up to pull on his hair. His scalp prickled with pain, and it was nice to finally feel a hurt that was inconsequential. He tugged a little harder.
"If she was the one—" Dying of cancer. The one with the tumor. But these were words he couldn't say. They lumped in his throat like a mouthful of food swallowed that was just too big. "If she was Stevens," he said at last. It was close as he could get.
"She's not, man," said Mark. "Your wife's fine."
"Right." His wife barely ate. She had nightmares more often than not on the rare occasions when she managed to sleep. And she cried more than he'd ever guessed she could. He laughed to himself, curling forward towards the sink again. It was a wheezy sound like he was crushing the air out of his lungs, and he didn't know where it came from. But it came and came until his cheeks were soaked.
Girlfriends drowned. They came out of the water half dead. Fathers were shot. A watch for a life, as if they weighed the same. Good Samaritans were hit by buses, and the bright, bubbly ones wasted away. He could feel the clouds roll in across his face.
When it finally stopped, he dragged his hand across his eyes while Mark pretended not to see. "Sometimes," he muttered. "Sometimes I just want to take her so far away from this place. But I could search the whole damn world, and—" He kicked at nothing, his shoe scuffing along the floor. "There's nowhere that's ever really safe."
Mark didn't try to contradict him, just stood there silently, and for the first time in a long while, Derek felt grateful to him.
He paused on his way out of the scrub room, saying, "You should find Lexie."
Mark frowned at him. "We're not exactly speaking—"
"Her friend is dead. If you love her, now's the time to find her."
* * *
She brought Mrs. O'Malley the forms that afternoon. Her two living sons had her sandwiched between them. They were broad and very tall, and it shrunk her down to the size of a pea.
Meredith stood on the far side of George's bed, watching while his mother signed away the last shell of his life. Her skin felt hot and cold, her palm was burning once again.
"Georgie, he—" Mrs. O'Malley's voice rattled like dry leaves. "He was always giving. He would've wanted to donate. His organs, I mean. Can that, can he do that?"
"Of course," said Meredith. "I'll let them know." She meant to go then, but she bent down instead, her fingers resting against his arm. It was still warm, and she had to remind herself that that meant nothing. "You're a hero, George," she whispered. Three tears splattered against his ruined cheek when she blinked. "I'm gonna miss you."
After she'd told the Chief and brought Mrs. O'Malley a second round of paperwork – forms from UNOS now – Meredith went and stood in front of her locker for a long time. She rummaged through the mess of her things to keep from looking at the post-it stuck to the back wall. Bright blue and covered in Derek's cramped handwriting and both their signatures. Normally, it made her smile. Today she looked for lost pens instead. Collected the spare change that had tumbled from her pockets. Found her birth control lying in a back corner and couldn't remember the last time she'd remembered to take it.
(Except she could.)
Nine days ago. Izzie's wedding. The last time they'd been together and happy. Any of them. All of them. She tossed the case back into her locker, too tired to figure out how to play catch up. She could try again tomorrow.
It didn't matter anyway. It had been nine days since he'd held her for anything more than crying.
She smeared the tears across her face and took the post-it with her when she left.
* * *
Derek sat in his office, spread out thin over too much paperwork. When the door pushed open without a knock, he knew it was her before he looked up.
"Hey," he said softly, setting down his pen. She was trembling a little, crushed up against the wall. "What is it? Mer, what's wrong?"
He had to say her name three times before he got his answer.
"His mother signed," she said at last. "They're doing it now."
Derek pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes and breathed. "Okay—" He pushed back from his desk. "Do you want to go say goodbye? Be there with him?"
"I already did."
She'd stopped shaking, but she stood too stiffly, every bone in her body seeming locked up in pillars of grief. He went to her then, scooping her up like she was weightless. A feather that could float away if it got half the chance. He held her tighter so it wouldn't happen and dropped back down into his chair with her in his lap.
Only then did she start to relax.
"Mrs. O'Malley," she breathed, and even that was hard to say. When Derek hummed into her hair, she forced herself to keep going. "I've already said goodbye because she, well, she asked for it to be just her and her sons when he finally—" The end of that sentence wasn't one she wanted to taste, and so she smashed her nose against his collarbone and mumbled past it and onto other things, "They did this barely a year ago. With his dad. I think it's, for her, a lot of—"
"A lot of memories," he finished for her, and he stroked her hair when he felt the collar of his lab coat start to grow damp.
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
They were silent for a long time and then she turned her head, wiping her face dry on the shoulder of his scrubs. "George doesn't have a wife."
"No," he agreed. "Dr. Torres still seems to be taking it pretty hard though."
She slid from his lap quickly enough that he almost thought she was angry. "I'm not talking about George and Callie."
"You're not?"
"No. George doesn't have a wife."
"And?"
"And you do."
He placed his hands on her knees. "A beautiful one," he said. She was the only reason he ever even smiled these days.
"Derek," she said sharply. "That's not my point."
He frowned. "Care to clarify a little here?"
She waved a hand through the air, glaring at him. "I brought his mother the forms. To stop life support. And give away his organs." She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and pushed a scrap of paper into his hand. "Because he doesn't have a wife."
Derek looked down at the square of blue, their vows sticking to his palm. "Meredith—"
"Bad things happen. All the time. When you least expect it."
"I know."
"They could happen to us," she continued. "I could be the next George, all mangled inside and stuck on a vent. The next one with organs up for donation, which I'd want to give away, by the way. Just so you know."
"Meredith, please." Derek grabbed her hand. Her words put rocks in his stomach, filled him up like a landfill with the sort of nightmares that belonged to the dark. "Neither of us is dying."
"No. Listen to me," she said. "This is important. Because do you know who'd be signing my form? If it was me? I mean, it should be you. You're, you're the other half of my life. The only one who should be signing anything is you."
"Yeah," he said quietly, rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand.
"But it wouldn't be!" she said, pulling away from him, leaving his palm feeling empty. "They'd have to ask, I don't know, Lexie. Or Thatcher." She spit the name out like it had burnt her tongue. "And they'd ask your mom instead of me, and maybe that, maybe that's what you want but—"
"No," he said with a shake of his head. "I'd want you to decide. Only you. You're my wife."
"Except no one else would see it that way! No one would care, or if they did care, that still wouldn't change a thing, Derek. We have to get it signed." She whirled around in the cramped space between his desk and his chair and began yanking open all the drawers. He scooted back to keep her from taking off his knee. "Where is it?"
"What?"
"The marriage license. The one we got for the church. You still have it, right?"
"Um, yeah. Don't know why I wouldn't. Check the third drawer."
She found it tucked away behind a stack of timecards for his staff. "Okay. Got it." She straightened up again and stuck the post-it note onto the license. "Okay," she said again. "Okay. We need to go."
"Right now?" asked Derek frowning at her, at how frantic she'd become. "Don't you want to find Cristina and Alex? Izzie? The four of you should spend some time together today. I'll get Richard to give us the afternoon off tomorrow, and we can finally go to City Hall if that's what you want."
"No," she snapped. "That's not what I want. We need to do this right now. No waiting. You could get hit by a bus on your way home tonight. Or I could."
He clasped her hands in his and found them shaking. "No one's getting hit by a bus tonight."
"Don't even tell me that!" she cried. "George is dead, okay? He's really freaking dead. And Izzie's still trying real hard to join him too. We're finding someone to sign the damn thing, and we're finding them now. Please."
Derek stared at her for a moment. At the way her lip was caught beneath her teeth and trembling. At the breaths that rattled in and out of her. "Okay," he said at last. "We'll find someone now."
* * *
They found their someone in the hospital chapel dusting off the backs of the pews with a well worn rag. He was a short man, barely Meredith's height, with an abundance of wrinkles weighing down his brow. "Hello there," he said, when he caught sight of them. "What can I do for you? Or are you just here to pray?"
Meredith pursed her lips and turned from the chaplain to look at Derek. She didn't even know how to pray.
"Actually, uh." Derek reached down and took her hand in his. "Could you possibly sign a marriage license?"
The chaplain smiled at them, bushy white eyebrows rising straight up. "Well now, that's certainly not a request I get every day."
"We work here," stammered Meredith. "If that helps."
He glanced down at their scrubs and lab coats and nodded his head. "Yes. I guessed as much. You want to get married today?"
"Oh, no," she said. "We're already married."
The chaplain's smile morphed into a puzzled frown. "You're here for another couple?"
"No. Ah," Derek cleared his throat. "We're here for us. She means we're already married, um." He waved an uncertain hand around the room. "Spiritually, I guess you could say. Just not legally."
"I see," said the chaplain. He took a step towards them. "You have the license with you?"
"Yes," said Derek, holding it out to him. The post-it fluttered brightly on top.
"And it's been at least three days since it was issued?"
"More than that," said Meredith quickly. "But not too much more, I mean. It's been a good amount of days. Fourteen, I think. Maybe fifteen. We were told it was good for sixty though."
Derek squeezed her hand a little tighter, and she knew it meant she was supposed to breathe.
"Yes," said the chaplain. "That's right. Sixty days. And you have witnesses coming? You'll need two."
Meredith felt like she'd been punched in the gut, and she staggered back a step. "Shit. I mean crap. Or… You can't say either of those in a chapel, can you?" She grimaced at the chaplain before looking up at Derek, her eyes wide as dinner plates. "What are we gonna do?"
"It's fine, Mer. We can get witnesses."
"Right," she said a little breathlessly. "Right. There's lots of people in the hospital. It'll be fine." She turned on her heel, adding, "I'll go find two floor nurses or something. I'll be right back."
He reached out and grabbed her by the arm, tugging her back to him. "No," he said. "If we're going to do this, we're going to do it with the right people. Our people."
"But Cristina's working with Swender all day! And Mark, he— Doesn't he have surgeries and stuff? An entire department to run?"
Derek shrugged as if it didn't matter. "I'll page them," he said simply. "They'll come."
"But now, Derek? In an hour? Two? When? We have to do this now."
Derek turned to the chaplain with an apologetic smile. "Could you give us a moment?"
The older man nodded and moved away, resuming his dusting at the far end of the row of pews.
"Meredith," said Derek softly. He circled her waist with his hands and turned her to face him. She shook her head and glanced away, tears filling her eyes as she stared up at the smooth arch of the ceiling. "Meredith," he said again. "Look at me, please. You need to breathe."
"I'm breathing!" she choked out, wiping the back of her hand across her leaky eyes.
He bent forward so his forehead pressed against hers and cradled her head in his hands. "George is gone," he said. She hiccupped or sobbed in answer, he couldn't tell which, but the sound cut at his heart either way. "He's gone, yes. But that doesn't mean I'm going to go too. And it doesn't mean that we're going to spend every day racing against the next bad thing that's going to happen. This is our life together. That's a good thing, right?"
He felt her nod her head, their foreheads bumping.
"Then we're going to do this the right way," he said gently. "With our people. The ones that should see the start of our life together."
"But what if they're busy?"
"They're our people," he told her. "They'll come. Okay?"
She nodded slowly and finally seemed to breathe. "Get Cristina then."
"I know. I will."
* * *
They waited for the witnesses for twenty minutes after Derek paged them. Meredith lay on one of the pews, her head in his lap. The chaplain wandered back towards them, trying to determine what they'd like said.
"Nothing," said Meredith dreamily. Derek was winding his fingers through her hair, and if she pretended they were somewhere far away, things could almost seem okay. "Just the signatures. We already did our vows. That's why the post-it's there."
The chaplain looked down at the license and smiled. "I see. Well, you could always read them out loud if you wanted? Off the post-it?"
"No." They answered in unison, and Meredith shook her head, her hair rustling against Derek's scrubs. "Those are just for us."
Cristina arrived first, with tears on her face that she was pretending weren't there. She sat down in the pew beside them, shoving Meredith's feet out of the way to make room. "Hey," she said.
"Hey," mumbled Meredith.
"They're doing the harvest now."
"Oh. That's—" Derek's hand found hers and she gripped it. "That's good. I mean, George. He would've wanted to save as many people as he could."
"Yeah."
Meredith sighed and turned so her face was pressed to Derek's side. He held her like she might break if he let go. Cristina watched them out of the corner of her eye, wondering just when it had happened. When he'd gone from McDouche, the jerk she'd wanted to keep away from Meredith at all costs, to this. The one thing keeping her from falling apart when her friend lay dead in another room.
Mark came a few minutes later. "Sorry I'm late," he said. "Wanted to get a fresh lab coat for the occasion. What're we doing here? Finally making an honest woman out of Grey?"
Meredith rolled her eyes and sat back up. "Something like that."
They all gathered around the altar as if it was a table, license set out on top. "Just the signatures?" asked the chaplain, still seeming somewhat puzzled by the whole thing.
"Just the signatures," said Meredith firmly.
"You need to state your intent to marry."
"I told you," she said. "We're already married. We just—"
"Mer," said Derek, nudging her with his elbow. "Humor him."
"Fine," she said with an exasperated sigh. "We want to get married."
"We do," he agreed, trying and failing to keep from smirking at her tone.
"Alright then," said the chaplain. He offered a pen. "Bride and groom, go ahead and sign."
Meredith took it from him. The pen felt heavy in her hand, and she let it hover over the line waiting for her name. There was printed text. A very official looking seal. And their post-it pressed to the right hand corner. She licked her lips and gripped the pen tighter, suddenly feeling like she should say something first. "I—"
Derek nodded. "What?"
"I love you."
His smile reached his eyes for the first time that day. "I love you too," he said quietly. "In this really, really big way."
"Oh come on," groaned Cristina. "I'm sure you think it's big, but save the dirty talk for later, McDreamy."
Meredith snorted, ducking her head. "That wasn't dirty." She glanced at the chaplain, raising a hand in alarm and reiterating, "I promise it wasn't dirty. It was—"
She trailed off and turned to Derek, voice light with disbelief. "You remember? You remember what I said then?"
"Of course I remember."
She nodded, looking down at the marriage license again. With a deep breath, she placed her pen to the line and signed.
"Your turn," she said and handed the pen to Derek. His name went down beside hers, and then came the others added one by one until there were five. The sight of them there made something tremble deep inside her. "It's done," she whispered.
The chaplain was nodding. "You'll want to file this with the county clerk," he said, handing Derek back the signed license. "They'll send you the certificate by mail."
"But we're married, aren't we?" asked Meredith. "Right now?"
The chaplain smiled at her. "Yes. You're husband and wife." He looked back at Derek, adding, "I'd suggest you kiss her, but she was very adamant about just the signature."
"Signature and kissing," amended Meredith, and she leaned into her husband, snaking her hands through his hair. Mark was saying something that sounded like congratulations, and Cristina was smiling, but it all felt very far away. She just tugged on Derek's hair until he lowered his mouth to hers, and then everything else swept away because she was kissing him. Kissing him again like she had the last time she was his bride. It felt familiar and so very strange.
When they pulled apart, their friends were still there, still smiling. His hands were in her hair, and for one brief moment, it was impossible to feel sad.
"Remember this," she breathed against his lips. He kissed her again.
"Always."
* * *
They saw him for the last time after the harvest surgery. He'd been sewn up again and laid out very still. He wasn't George. Not really. She didn't know his face anymore. Mrs. O'Malley was weeping, held up on either side by her remaining sons. She stammered words about how they were all very kind. That she'd let them know about the funeral too.
He was taken away in a body bag. (And then there were four.)
Derek told Meredith he'd wait. To come find him in his office when she was ready, and so the four of them stayed a long time in Izzie's room. Alex was half sitting, half leaning on the bed beside his wife, a tentative arm wrapped round her shoulders. He was still afraid to hold her tight. Meredith and Cristina sat side by side, their chairs pulled close to the bed.
Silence kept them for a long time.
"Come on," said Izzie at last, plucking one of the many crumpled tissues from her lap and blowing her nose again. She was the only one crying. Meredith's tears felt lost somewhere deep inside her ribcage and she couldn't get them out. "Somebody say something," continued Izzie. "We can't just sit here like nothing's ever going to be the same again."
Cristina looked up. "We can," she said in a voice that was very hoarse. "That's what you do when people die."
"But George wouldn't want that," insisted Izzie. She scooped up another tissue and blew her nose again. "He'd want us to still be us. So somebody, please, for the love of god, say something."
Meredith sighed. "I got married today."
Izzie's eyes grew wide. "I thought you said you were already married."
"She was post-it married," offered Cristina.
"Post-it married? What does that even mean?"
"It means I was married. And now I'm married-married or whatever."
"Okay," said Izzie slowly, dragging the word out like she thought Meredith was crazy. But then she smiled and shrugged her rail thin shoulders. "Whatever makes you happy, Mer." She slumped back against the pillows again as if even speaking was draining, and Alex pulled her blankets up higher around her.
"Take it easy, Iz," he said softly. Her hand found his and their fingers locked.
"We have husbands," she said, looking down at their clasped hands and then back at Meredith. "We're wives." She laughed like dust clapped from a carpet. "Does that make us grown-ups now? Officially?"
Meredith smiled. "Something like that."
"Oh and what am I?" demanded Cristina, but she said it with a smile, and they all laughed. For a moment everything was warm, and something deep inside her, too sentimental to ever breathe word of to anyone, thought in that flicker of heat of Owen Hunt.
But when the laughter faded like smoke, the room was silent once again, and heavier still this time. The four of them looked at their feet like they'd find answers there.
"We could say stuff," muttered Alex at last. "About O'Malley." The tips of his ears tinged red when the three women with him all looked up. "Beats sitting here doing nothing," he added in a rush.
There was more silence like they were in a war against it and losing fast, but then Cristina spoke. "He was the heart in the elevator guy," she said. "That was good. I wanted to be the heart in the elevator guy."
"He was my best friend," said Izzie softly. "And official taste tester for everything I ever baked."
Meredith nodded, drawing her knees up to her chest. "He always used to let us sleep in his bed when we were sad. And he bought our tampons even though he said he wouldn't."
That made Izzie start to cry again, and Alex handed her a fresh wad of tissues. "You're dripping snot, babe," he said. She smiled weakly and took them from him. "He kicked my ass at trauma," he added, speaking over the sound of her blowing her nose. "And he helped balance out all the estrogen in here."
They laughed again, and this time it didn't fade away. The room stayed warm and it got easier, going round and round trading memories of George, mindless of the tear tracks down their cheeks until Meredith swore it felt as if he was almost in the room with them.
That he might come and poke his head in the doorway in just another minute. Maybe.
They stayed that way until the night nurse on Izzie's case came back for the third time and told them that she was very sorry, she'd heard all about Dr. O'Malley's passing, but visiting hours were long over and Dr. Stevens needed her sleep.
And then the walls turned cold again.
* * *
She called him from the locker room as she changed out of her scrubs, and he met her by the elevator to spare her the trip to his office. It was getting hard to lift her legs, and she stumbled often as they walked to his car, saved from sprawling to the pavement only by the arm he kept around her.
While he drove, she finally fell asleep, and when Derek pulled up in front of their house, he couldn't bear the thought of waking her. He carried her instead. Up the steps and into their dark house, up another flight and beyond their bedroom door. In the half light of the bedside lamp, fast asleep on top of the sheets, she didn't seem quite so weary.
She woke up again as he pulled off her boots.
"Derek?" she mumbled. "What time is it?"
"A little after ten," he said, setting her boots down by the dresser. "Shh, you can go back to sleep."
She shook her head and climbed out of bed. The smile she gave him was very sad. "I can't."
It felt bizarre to stand in the bathroom in bare feet and brush her teeth like this was some normal day. But she did. She washed her face and folded her clothes. Pulled out a long shirt to sleep in. Pretended that all the things she always did had somehow stayed the same. But Derek watched her carefully the entire time, and she could still feel her missing tears hiding out inside her lungs.
She said nothing until the lights were out, and then the silence suddenly felt very loud. "George is dead." She told him and the darkness. She told herself.
"I know," said Derek. His face was a breath away from hers, but she could only see the outline like a shadow. Meredith pressed her palm to his cheek and tried not to think of the numbers that had been drawn there.
007
She shivered, and he pulled her to him. "I slept with him once."
"I know," he said again.
"He used to live right down the hall."
Derek nodded his head. "I know."
"And one time," she stammered. The words were hard to get out, like grit or rocks, something blocked deep in her throat. "One time I—"
Derek ran his palm slowly up and down her back. "What?" he asked. "One time, what?"
She tried again. "One time he told me I had to choose between him or my dog, and I, god, I almost chose the dog." The words came out in a wail, the lost tears sent free like an avalanche, and Derek rolled her swiftly into his arms as she started to cry.
"Shh," he murmured, rocking her against him. "You were a good friend to him, Mer. Don't ever think you weren't." His tears found their way into her hair, and he held her that much tighter. "You're the one who realized who he was. You gave everyone the chance to say goodbye."
She nodded and moaned against his chest something that might have been yes, but then her tears doubled, turned messy and unhinged. It was all he could do to hold her while she soaked his shirt through to his skin and endlessly murmur her name.
* * *
The kiss came after Meredith had stopped sobbing but before her tears had dried. She turned her head and found his mouth in the darkness, skin slick and sliding against his.
"I married you again today," she whispered, and her fingers touched the stubble on his chin.
"You did."
Her life had been suddenly reduced to a deep, pulling need to touch her body to his, to feel his heart thump as irreversible proof that they both still breathed the same air. Her lips found the crook of his neck; and his fingers, her back.
Derek smoothed his hands down to grip her thighs, and when Meredith writhed against him, he flipped them over. Took her beneath him. He pushed up her sleep shirt, and she spread her legs wide.
She clung to him like the world was about to give way to a void of black dust and ashes. He filled the space deep inside her where all the lost tears had hid. Filled her up with something very light, bright like the morning that had to come.
She glowed in his arms and she was breathing. "We're not dead."
"No," said Derek and he loomed above her, pushing deep inside his wife. "We're alive."
* * *
A week later, Mrs. O'Malley buried her youngest son. A crowd from the hospital came, and for an afternoon, the world was very black. The sky stayed gray.
On the first day after the funeral, Mrs. O'Malley stayed in bed all day.
She only got up that second afternoon because her doorbell rang again and again, a woman she recognized as one of George's teachers from the hospital standing stubbornly on the other side. I'm Miranda, the visitor informed her when she walked inside, arms full to bursting with several paper bags. She spilled their contents across the kitchen table. Bright cards and photographs. Long letters written out by hand. Thank you notes from some of his patients, she explained. They were kept on file at the hospital, but they belong here now. It was the first time since she got the call about the accident that Mrs. O'Malley smiled.
Even on the third day, Meredith kept expecting to run into George every time she rounded a corner. She wandered up to the nursery the way they had when they were interns, but it wasn't the same without him there.
Early that fourth morning, Izzie found herself half wishing her tumor would come back if it could be George she saw instead. She'd like to talk to him again. Just one last time.
But on the fourth day, Alex bought his wife a real ring. The look on his face when he gave it to her bowled her over with a wave of guilt that made it hard to breathe, and even though she wasn't seeing things, she prayed all the way down to CT that her next scan would be clean.
It was the fifth afternoon after the funeral when Derek found their marriage certificate in the mailbox. The post-it had all but lost its stickiness, and so they attached it with a staple this time. Meredith propped it up against her kidney in a jar on the table beside their bed. Married, she said.
On the sixth day, Izzie walked by herself for the first time since her surgery – all the way down the hall and back. And for a little while, the four of them found something to smile about again.
Meredith was ill that seventh morning, and Derek made her stay home from work. She felt weak and nauseas, but she stumbled down the hall on unsteady feet and spent most of the day in her empty house sitting on the floor of what once was George's room.
On the eighth, it was still hard to say his name, but Cristina went to dinner with Owen and managed once. It was kind of an important part to the story of the heart in the elevator guy.
And on the ninth day, when Meredith woke up sick for the third morning in a row, Derek went out and bought his wife a pregnancy test. Together, they watched both lines turn blue.
* * *
Nine months later, their son was born to the bright sunlight of a Thursday morning.
They named him George.