Hello!
I know I should be updating Holding You Together, but Thursday's episode put this whole idea in my head and I just couldn't let it go!
This is a one-shot set around/after 8x12, Hope for the Hopeless, and focuses on fixing the fact that Meredith is still not on Neuro where she belongs and a couple issues she and Derek I think are still carrying around with them.
Also, I apologize if I've made any medical errors. I'm not a doctor so all my medical knowledge is limited to my own medical experiences and what I've seen on the show, hahah.
Enjoy!
Shit.
Their patient was crashing and, at that precise moment, Derek had no idea what to do to make that stop.
"Dr. Shepherd, what do we do?" said the frantic voice next to him, effectively ripping him from his brief panicked daze.
"Suction."
"Dr. Shepherd…"
"Blunt tip needle, please."
"Derek, I-"
"Dr. Grey," he said forcefully. "Instead of questioning my judgment, I suggest you do as I say, when I say it. Or you can kindly leave my OR."
When the woman remained standing next to him, he wasted little time in continuing to save their fading patient.
"Okay, good. Hold this."
"I get the needle?" her voice shook with surprise and shock.
"If I stop what I'm doing, he'll die. So yes, Dr. Grey, you get the needle."
"But I'm just going in blind," she panicked. "What if I miss the tumor?"
"I'm right here to help you. And at this point we don't have choice."
With a shaking hand, she took the long needle being offered from the scrub nurse and stepped closer to the patient's exposed brain.
After 30 terrifyingly nerve wracking seconds, Derek verbally helped guide the needle out of the stabilizing patient.
"It worked," she sighed, breathless with relief. "It worked!" she laughed again, the high of their save catching up with her.
"That was great," Derek praised. "That was perfect, Meredith."
"What? Derek, are you okay?" Lexie asked, more confused than ever.
And, just like that, the illusion was shattered.
The dark brown hair sticking out of her scrub cap was supposed to lighter. The deep brown eyes peering over her surgical mask were supposed to bright green and sparkling with the same excitement he remembered from their very first save together.
The woman next to him was supposed to be Meredith.
"Derek….You know I'm Lexie, right? Your sister-in-law? I'm not Meredith."
"I'm sorry, I'm fine. Just a slip. Will you close?"
Without waiting for an answer, Derek set down his instruments and swiftly left, leaving Lexie and every other person in the OR staring on with varying looks of confusion and concern.
"Dude," Mark bellowed as he approached the nurse's station where Derek was currently filling out paperwork. "Bad time to say the wrong name, huh, man?" he teased.
"What are you talking about?" Derek groaned, not looking up from the chart he was working on.
"Your name slip in the OR. It's all over the floor. Some nurses are saying you started hallucinating and ran away."
"What?" This was just ridiculous.
"This hospital has a serious gossip problem," Derek said, growing more agitated by the second. "Nothing happened. So I called Lexie Meredith. People call people by the wrong name sometimes so stop trying to make it into something!"
"Okay, whoa!" Mark exclaimed, taking a step back and raising his hands up in defense. "I was just messing around with you."
Derek exasperatedly returned to the patient chart and Mark took a cautious step closer to his friend. Leaning against the counter, he stared intently at Derek.
"Alright, we don't normally do the 'let's talk about our feelings and emotions' conversations but, clearly, you're having some sort of mini crisis and as your friend and colleague, I can't let you walk away and practice medicine without talking this out."
"I'm fine, Mark. Everything's fine."
"Except you're not, Derek. Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue but how you're acting now suggests otherwise."
"What does it even matter?" he mumbled petulantly, returning to the chart.
"Do you just miss working with her?" Mark continued. "Cause I'd get it. She randomly up and leaves your service and now you miss working with her. It's cool. I know what it's like when your right-hand man…or woman in your case, leaves you. You get a rhythm; you get each other's moves down. I get it. I have such a relationship with Avery."
"That's magical, really. I hope you and Avery are very happy with each other."
"Come on, man. I'm trying to help you."
Derek set down his pen and let the desk support his tired body. He roughly rubbed his eyes before turning in defeat towards Mark.
"She didn't just leave," Derek sighed. "It was her idea, but after the trial I told her I couldn't trust her at work. For the sake of our marriage she took herself off my service and I've missed her ever since."
"Well everything's good with you guys now though, right? Ever since you got Zola back, you guy's seem to be doing fantastic."
"We are. It's been perfect actually," Derek insisted. "Except when it comes to work. When she stopped being on my service, we stopped talking about Neuro and eventually we just stopped really talking about work. I don't talk to her about cases and, even though I know she's struggling, she doesn't talk to me about how hard finding another specialty has been."
"Okay but, you're the one with the issue, Derek. If you didn't want to talk about work and haven't shown any sign of wanted that to change, why would you expect her to make the first move? She's the one trying to fix what she did to you."
"I don't know. I don't think I expected her to. I just didn't realize how good I had it until she was gone. And I didn't realize how much I'd really miss her until recently."
"Well what are you waiting for? Tell her you want her back."
"What if we get in that OR and everything comes back? What if I really can't trust her?"
"But what if you can?" Mark countered. "I'm not saying that you should go find her and tell her to declare Neuro. Just work together; One case," he shrugged knowingly. "See how it goes."
Before Derek could respond, he was interrupted by the shrill beeping of a pager causing both doctors to check the device attached to their waste bands.
"It's mine," Mark confirmed. Before heading off to the location he was needed, Mark gave Derek one more knowing look.
"Just go talk to her, Derek."
And with that he turned and jogged down the hospital corridor, leaving Derek with a lot to contemplate.
Later that night, Meredith sat on an unoccupied gurney in a quiet hallway, absent mindedly swinging her legs back and forth. And she had never been more thankful for the quiet calm she was able to find as a place to wait until her pager went off to let her know her patient's post-op labs were ready.
All day people were telling her what she should specialize in, most people opting to put their vote in for General.
No one really seemed to get that their very reasons why she should pick General surgery were all the reasons why she didn't want to. Her mother's medical legacy be damned, Ellis Grey was the last person Meredith wanted to be like.
If she had her mother's talent: amazing. As far as she was concerned, she could go be talented in a specialty where her mother's ghost wouldn't be constantly haunting her.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to will away the dull throbbing headache she could feel coming on. Before she had time to look up, she could feel someone approaching.
Meredith tiredly lifted her head in order to face the person currently intruding on her much needed alone time. Fully prepared to tell her intruder to leave her be, the words caught in her throat upon seeing the equally tired face of her husband.
"Hey," she greeted softly, a small genuine smile breaking out across her face.
"Hey there," Derek answered back, taking a seat beside her on the gurney.
After he settled himself, Meredith's exhausted body sagged into Derek's as she rested her head on his shoulder. Anticipating her actions, he adjusted accordingly by wrapping an arm around her and placing a loving kiss on the top of her head.
"How's your day been?" he murmured into her soft hair.
"Long," she answered with a sigh.
In that moment, he was thankful for their current sitting positions. This way she couldn't see him cringe at her answer. Not long ago, her answer would have been longer than one word. Despite her tired state, she would have whipped her head up so she could recount every exciting detail of the surgeries she'd scrubbed in on that day. She would have gone on for the next hour (outside factors permitting) with her eyes bright and dancing. Or he wouldn't have even needed to ask her because he'd been right beside her the whole time.
"How are you?" Meredith asked, raising her head. "Are you okay?" The concern was evident in her face.
"How much have you heard?" Derek countered with a suspicious look.
"Not anything I'm sure is actually true," she chuckled, slightly extracting herself from is embrace to face him.
Her face turned slightly serious. "So, are you okay?"
"I am."
"You want to tell me what happened?" she nudged.
"I'm actually more interested to hear what you heard. I've overheard a couple versions. I'm curious as to what version you got."
"Just something about hallucinations and you freaking out at Lexie. Ya know, just the usual hospital gossip."
He waited a little longer, sensing there was more.
"Lexie may have also stopped by and mentioned she was worried about you," Meredith reluctantly confessed.
"Did she now?" Derek mumbled.
"She didn't tell me what happed, just that you were acting a little odd."
"I suppose you could say that…"
He wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her everything he and Marked talked about. He just didn't know how.
"Derek," Meredith prodded gently. "I'm starting to actually get worried here. Please talk to me…"
"I called Lexie by your name in the OR today," he confessed in a rushed tone. For a moment, neither knew what to say until Derek decided to continue, "The last few weeks, it's become all too easy for my mind to trick itself into thinking you were the one next to me in the OR. I mean, both of you are Dr. Grey and it's not like we can or should take our eyes off the open patient on the table."
Meredith still didn't really know what to say to all this. So she did the only thing she could think of: stare straight ahead and just let Derek keep talking.
"I miss you," he finally admitted. "I miss talking to you about my day. I miss spending my day in the OR with you. I miss teaching you. I miss your capability, your excitement. I just miss you, Meredith."
"We agreed," she managed in a strangled whisper. "We agreed it had to be this way so we could stay together."
"I know," Derek persisted. "But-"
"I'm not going to pretend I've enjoyed floating around without a specialty or that I haven't missed you either. But I'd rather still have you and our family than the career I thought I'd have."
At her words, Derek wanted nothing more than to just kiss her right there. Unfortunately, reasoning kicked in and he decided that they should probably actually talk before the kissing started.
"Meredith, you'll always have me. I'm not going anywhere."
He reached up to push a stray lock of hair behind her ear and caressed her cheek lovingly.
"We did need this professional break from each other. Or rather, I needed it. And as far as getting past the trial and moving towards forgiveness, I don't think I would have gotten there without it. But what I'm attempting to say is that I want to try to go back to where we were before."
"So what exactly are you saying here, Derek? Because I've spent the last few months just trying not to make you stop looking at me with pure and utter disdain and pretty much never talking about work seemed to be the only thing that helped."
"I know I've been difficult these past few mo-"
"No!" Meredith interrupted immediately. "It's my own fault. I get that. You don't need to explain or apologize or whatever."
"That doesn't mean you deserved everything I blamed you for. Messing with that trial may have screwed up a lot but not everything that went wrong since then has been your fault and that's how I was treating you."
She couldn't dispute what Derek had just confessed to so she opted for silence instead.
"What I'm trying to ask you, is that I want to know if you want to try working together again. Just one case. One simple consult just to try again. I want to try again."
He held her hand between them and studied her face with anticipation and longing while she continued to look out at the dim hallway.
"You said you couldn't trust me, Derek. How can we work together well if you don't trust me?"
"I've had a lot of time to get perspective and move on. I know why you did it. And even if I don't agree with what you did, I understand it. I know you're sorry for how it hurt me." He emphasized his words with a gentle squeeze of her hand.
"I think working together is the next step in moving forward. Trust is earned. How are you supposed to try to regain it if I never give you the chance?" he reasoned.
Meredith remained silent for the next minute, thinking over her husband's words and running all sorts of scenarios through her head. All the while Derek patiently watched her, keeping her hand in his. He held his breath and waited for her to speak as she finally turned to look at him.
"It can't be like last time, like it was during my surgery. That wasn't good for anybody, least of all the patient. Until we can really get back to being a team, I'm not going in an OR with you," she stated definitively.
"But you'll work with me? Derek questioned urgently. "You'll try?"
"Of course, I will."
Derek finally let himself take her in his arms and kiss her like he'd been longing to since he sat down.
When they finally pulled away, both feeling lighter than they had in ages, Meredith's pager conveniently went off.
"I didn't think you were on call tonight," Derek trailed off, confused.
"I'm not, I just have labs to get to Bailey and then I can go."
"Good." He punctuated the word with another kiss. "I'll get Zola from day-care, we'll meet you in the lobby, and we'll all head home."
"Perfect," she decided with a smile that somehow managed to light up her whole face.
"I love you, Mer," he stated so simply, one hand still stroking her cheek.
"I know." And she did. "I love you, too."
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