Post 11x19

"Did you say it? 'I love you. I don't ever want to live without you. You changed my life.' Did you say it? Make a plan. Set a goal. Work toward it, but every now and then, look around; Drink it in 'cause this is it. It might all be gone tomorrow."

"No, he's not here, can I take the message for you?" Meredith asked the person on the other side of the line. "Okay, sure

Oh, I thought he was there

Okay, sure, no problem, okay thank you bye bye"
"What was it? Amelia asked Meredith.
"Nothing, just that was the white house calling, Derek never showed up at his meeting this morning" Meredith told her.
"Oh yeah?" Amelia uttered in surprise.
"I'm sure his flight got delayed or something" Meredith told her calmly.

Where was he though? Meredith looked at the notepad. "Derek?" was written on a piece of paper. He looked to Amelia in horror. Where was her husband?
"Do you think he has second thoughts about quitting his job?" Amelia wondered.
"No, he was determined to make it work. We are working on our marriage. He couldn't wait to be back. With the kids, with me. He said he'd be back in no time." Meredith nervously told Amelia who was standing on the other side of the counter.
"Don't worry Meredith, I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for this. Maybe he missed his flight, got held up at the airport in DC or had to collect a few items at his apartment, someone spilled coffee on his shirt and he had to get a new one. I'm sure he's fine, just call him." Amelia tried to calm her down.
"He probably is" Meredith said as Amelia walked away.

"Hey, you've reached Dr. Shepherd. Please leave a message" she heard when she called Derek's phone.

Where was he? Meredith knew she had to talk to someone so she made her way to the pediatric floor where she found Alex. "I'm a horrible person, six weeks ago I was afraid to visit him, I was afraid to visit him because I thought he wouldn't love me anymore, that he wouldn't be happy to see me." Meredith told him.
"Mer, what is going on?" Alex wondered. Derek had been back for a while now and they were happy as far as he knew, why would she tell him something like this now?
"Derek, he went to DC this morning, was supposed to have his last meeting with the White House and come back here. But he never got to the meeting and now I keep going to voice mail. What if something happened to him?" Meredith asked him
"Mer, Relax, I'm sure Derek is fine. I mean we survive a shooting, you survived a plane crash. What are the odds? Have you called him?" Alex tried to calm her down.
"I don't want to think about the odds, Alex. I beat the odds, every time: bomb, drowning, shooting, plane crash, super storm, I really don't want to think about the odds of everything happening to one person. Do you remember the day you ignored Izzie's DNR and revived her, the day George died? We promised each other that it would be forever. He promised me to remind me that I loved him every day when I'm old smelly and senile. I want that. He told me I had to stay here, to wait." Meredith admitted with a terrified look in her eyes.
"Mer, calm down I'm sure everything is fine. Just call him." Alex said calmly. "Call him."

"I thought DC was everything, and I was wrong. You. You, you're everything. I love you, and I'm not gonna stop loving you. Meredith, I can't live without you. I don't want to live without you. And I'm going to do everything in my power to prove it," he tells her.
"I can live without you," Meredith tells him in return. "But I don't want to. I don't ever want to."

She had to try again, maybe he was just driving somewhere with bad cell phone reception or his phone died. She should try his work phone she thought to herself. She grabbed her phone out of her white coat and dialed his number. Voicemail again. As she walked down the bridge that connects the two surgical units an intern bumped into yelling that there has been a plane crash. Plane crash. Images keep popping up in her head. Her sister crushed underneath the wreckage, Derek's hand trapped in debris, her and Cristina operating on Mark in the middle of nowhere, her screaming for her husband. 'Derek!' her fearful screams echoed in her mind. 'Derek!'

After a few seconds Meredith was taken back to reality as her pager went off. She ran to the ER as fast as she could. 'Derek! Derek!' a her own voice echoed in her mind. 'Lexie! Lexie!' the image of her sister popped up, no it was too late, they couldn't save her. It wasn't possible, but she had to go and save those people's lives. They had made it to the hospital! She ran through the halls as fast as she could. Interns, residents and attendings came to the ER from everywhere and there were several ambulances waiting to drop off patients outside. It would be a long stressful day full of surgeries. She had to pull herself together.
"They just keep coming" Bailey told her when Meredith arrived at the ER entrance waiting for another ambulance to arrive.

"Get him into trauma 3 for further examination, Wilson" Meredith ordered the resident.
"There are arrhythmias. Page Pierce" Wilson told the nurse after she had examined the patient's heart. The patient was barely awake and seemed very groggy.
"Mr. Peterson, please listen to me, you've been in a plane crash. It seems like you suffered a cardiac tamponade , but you need to relax. We are going to examine you further now." Dr. Wilson told the patient as she looked at the ultrasound.
"There's too much free fluid in the abdomen, we need to get him into an OR." Meredith told the resident. "Page Dr. Bailey, I'm going to need more than two hands. It seems like multiple organs are affected here."
"I need to tell her I love her." The patient told Meredith.
"Calm down, Mr. Peterson." Meredith tried to explain, but as she started he fell unconscious and the monitors started beeping.
"Stay with me" Wilson yelled as she started a CPR. They were able to keep the patient alive for now, but they had to hurry and get him inside an OR before he would bleed out inside.

"You know those very lucky cheerful people, who have everything and when the fact that they have everything comes up they act very humble and they say I'm just so blessed. Those people, you just wanna punch those people in the face" Meredith told her sister.
Maggie nodded even though she never had been one of those, she knew that kind of people " Yeah I know those people"
"I'm one of those people now" Meredith told her with a smile on her face.
"Okay" Maggie said in surprise. She didn't know her sister well enough to know what this actually meant.
"This morning I was standing on my porch of my perfect house looking in the window" Meredith started to explain what she had observed this morning. She was drinking a cup of coffee from her favorite mug as he looked at all the beauty in her life. "… at my amazing perfect children and my amazing gorgeous husband on the way to my amazing job. And I thought to myself I have everything I ever wanted. I am just so blessed."
"I really wanna jumble up your face in right now" Maggie said after she had heard about what seemed to be the perfect morning.

Everyone in the hospital had been affected by the plane crash in one way or the other. For months Alex had lived with the guilt that a plane had crashed he was supposed to be on, that the person who had went in his stead had lost a leg, in fact he had cut off that leg. Callie still had to live with the consequences. She had lost her daughter's father, her best friend and her marriage. She had promised Arizona that she would keep her leg, but she had let her down. They were never able to overcome this loss of trust.
"There's gotta be some rule that people who have been in a plane crash can't work on one." Alex told Callie. "Meredith was freaking out because she couldn't get a hold of Derek. He was supposed to have a meeting at the White House this morning, but never made it. She doesn't have a clue where he is, I really don't think she should be in the inside of an OR, today. The memories will come up eventually."
"Yes, we have to get them out of the OR" Callie agreed thinking about Arizona. "I get someone to pull Meredith out of surgery, you take over Arizona's OR."

Meanwhile Maggie, Meredith and Dr. Bailey had brought the patient into the OR and tried to fix the bleeding and the cardiac tamponade. For a while Meredith seemed to be fine.
"Do you need to be replaced?" Dr. Bailey asked Meredith. Her former intern stood beside her and had started hyperventilating a minute ago. Realizing that she had assisted on this very procedure in the middle of the forest had caused another flashback. She saw Lexie under the wreckage and Derek, where was Derek?

"Are you okay, Grey?"
"Derek missed his meeting in DC and I haven't heard from him" Meredith told Miranda.
"He's fine, I'm sure he's fine. But we have to save this man's life. At 5 pm, if you haven't heard from him, you can panic" Dr. Bailey told her "Right now we have to save this patient's life. You can do this."
"I can't, Wilson take over for me" Meredith told her leaving the OR.

"You were freaking out, weren't you. Because of the plane crash" Maggie asked.
"and because of Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan and because Derek is missing. There was a plane crash and I don't know where he is." Meredith said looking into Maggie's eyes.
"Oh, yeah, there was a plane crash. I forgot about that" Maggie said realizing that she probably wasn't the person Meredith needed to talk to right now. "Meredith, cry if you want to cry, everything is going to be fine."

"Meredith asked you to watch out for me because she thinks I'm coming apart. But I'm fine, Alex, I don't need your help, in fact this hospital doesn't need your help." Arizona said as Alex walked into her OR. The emotions she had on the day of their plane crash boiled up inside her again. Alex was leaving for Hopkins and she had been mad at him, she had taken him off every case and she went on that plane instead of him. She had lost a leg and he was fine.
"No, Arizona, Callie told me to take over for you. You can't operate on victims of a plane crash. It's too much. Now let me finish here for you, talk to Meredith or go home, but calm down. You don't need to be here. I take over for you." Alex told her taking over.
"Alright, I'm going to find Meredith." Arizona told him.

"Are you nervous about resigning? Giving up your job isn't a small thing to do." Meredith observed how Derek was nervously looking for something on the living room table.
"Well it is in comparison to everything here - it is – Meredith I meet with the president's council in the morning, I hand them my final report, my official recommendation and then I'm done. I'll be home before you know it. It' good, it's time." He continued his search.
"Best wife ever." Derek told her with a smile on his face after Meredith had reached into his pocket and pulled out the government phone he had been looking for all over the living room. He kissed her on the cheek.
"I just wish you could stay or I could come with you or something" Meredith said truthfully. She didn't want to live another minute without him by her side
"I'll be back soon, you know that" Derek reassured her.
"Hm, I just feel like I just got you back and now you're going again and I just have to stay here" Meredith said.
"You're right, you do, you – have to stay here." Derek told her.
She smiled and nodded.
He smiled at her.
"Don't move – wait for me" he told her as he said good bye.
They shared one last passionate kiss
"I'll be back before you know it." He turned around and left.

"Why do these things keep happening?" Meredith asked herself loudly and started to cry "Horrible things keep happening and I keep going to voicemail."
"Meredith" Arizona came into the supply closet.
"Horrible horrible things keep happening to me." Meredith cried
"Where's Derek?" Meredith muttered to herself as flashbacks of her searching the forest came to her head "Derek! Derek!"
Arizona was unaware that he was in fact missing at the minute and thought Meredith was showing signs of PTSD. "Meredith, it's alright, he survived the crash, and everything is fine, everything is going to be fine." Arizona calmed Meredith down. She hugged her as she started to cry. They both cried for a while.
"You know, when I lost my leg, I thought it would be the end of the world, but then, when I lost Callie, it was a hundred times worse. But we need to keep going." Arizona said. "I was hurt, I cheated on her because I was hurt even though she was the one that put me back up, even though she was the one that saved my life, even though I love her"
"Derek cheated on me and I still love him. I would die without him." Meredith started to sob again.
"We need to keep going" Meredith nodded with tears in her eyes. "I'm going to check up on Bailey and Zola."
"We're okay, we survived, we are okay." Arizona told Meredith.
"We're okay." Meredith nodded.

"Okay, what do we want to promise each other?" Derek asked her as he held a bunch of blue post its in his hand.
"That you'll love me, even when you hate me." Meredith said.
"To love each other, even when we hate each other." Derek repeated as he wrote it down in tiny margins on the small post it. "No running. Ever. Nobody walks out. No matter what." He promised as Meredith sat down next to him on the bench.
"No running" Meredith repeated with a smile on her face.
"What else?" Derek asked his beautiful fiancé.
"That we'll take care of each other even when we're old and smelly and senile. And …" she hesitated for a moment facing the reality that their life together might not be happily ever after "… if I get Alzheimer and I forget you…"
"I will remind you who I am" Derek reassured her "everyday."
They looked at each other and smiled.
"To take care when old, senile and smelly" Derek said as he wrote down what they had promised each other. "This… is… forever"

"Arizona" she heard someone in the hall scream her name.
"Are you two okay?" Callie asked when she opened the supply closet door and saw Meredith and Arizona with tears in their eyes.
"We are fine" Meredith told her. "but I'm going to check on Zola and Bailey and let you two talk"

But Meredith had lost her husband too often, at least in her nightmares: he hit died in the ER after she had built the house of candles for him, he died on Cristina's table after the shooting or in the plane crash, he died wrapped around a telephone pole driving his car. She had lived through those moments over and over in her dreams. Amelia was wrong about that, she knew what it meant to lose the love of her life, she had lived through all those nightmares and she was afraid they would become reality.

Would she ever see him again?