Looking for a Miracle

by DeniseSB

Summary: Mostly Derek's P.O.V. from the last parts of Drowning on Dry Land and through Some Kind of Miracle. Includes several added scenes, including a long discussion with Mark.

Summary: Mostly Derek's P.O.V. from the last parts of Season Three's Drowning on Dry Land and through Some Kind of Miracle, so spoilers are a major part of the story. Includes several added scenes, including a long discussion with Mark.

Disclaimer: I make no claim to any part of Grey's Anatomy (except the role of devoted fan) and will make no profit from any part of this story. Every single character mentioned in this story belongs to Shondaland, American Broadcasting Corporation, and any other corporate entity that has a stake in Grey's Anatomy. No copyright infringement whatsoever is intended.

Many thanks to Shonda Rimes for creating Grey's Anatomy, to the talented cast, staff, and crew who help her realize her vision, and to ABC for making it available on the public airwaves.

Looking for a Miracle

DeniseSB

Chapter 1

Shepherd, get out!

We need to save her life. You can't do this. We need to do this. Now go. Go.

Despite the Chief's order (and his own common sense) telling him it was time to leave the trauma room, it took Derek a few moments to come to his senses, stop giving useless orders, and admit that Meredith was in better hands than his own. He'd done what he could. Now it was time to let others take over. Even so, he paused for an all-too-brief moment to caress Meredith's face. Then, with a whispered "Thanks" and a brief clasp of the Chief's arm (to give reassurance? Or to get it?), he moved out to the hallway.

No longer consumed by his efforts to resuscitate Meredith, Derek felt . . . lost. Adrift. He leaned against the wall opposite the trauma room door, squatting down on his heels because his suddenly ebbing adrenaline level would no longer allow him to stand. Too exhausted to fight the chaotic instant replay of the last hour that his brain suddenly insisted on, he felt himself sinking under the images and sensations of the past half hour: that little girl's finger pointing out over the ocean with no sign of Meredith anywhere; the impossibly heavy, dead weight of her body as he'd brought her out of the water and over to the triage area; the icy blue chill of her skin, and, even worse, her lack of discernible vital signs as he performed CPR from the moment he put her on the gurney at the docks until he turned her over to Miranda Bailey here at Seattle Grace.

Now that he was alone, without the distraction of his rescue efforts, he could focus on what had really happened out there. No longer playing the cheerleader, he could admit to himself that the reactivity in her pupils he'd been babbling about in the trauma room probably had been really nothing more than a trick of the light. Admit that the odds of resuscitating Meredith were a longshot at best, given that he didn't even know how long she'd been in the water. Admit that maybe nothing he had done would make a difference. Admit that his promise to be her "knight in shining whatever" was a sham. Admit . . . the inadmissible--that he had failed, and that Meredith Grey, his Meredith, might die. Overwhelmed by guilt, horror, and his inability to do any more, he surrendered to his own dark wave of despair and wept.

The speed of the hospital gossip mill put the internet to shame. Despite the fact that they were dealing with a major disaster and everyone was working at top speed, within ten minutes, word had spread through Seattle Grace Hospital of Meredith's condition. Shocked and horrified, most of the employees would gladly have offered their assistance to the team working on the young intern. However, the current rush of casualties from the same ferryboat disaster that had been the indirect cause of Meredith's condition meant that they could offer only their prayers and good wishes for their colleague as they continued to treat the other victims.

Preston Burke, however, knew Meredith personally—not only as a colleague, but as his friend's girlfriend and his fiancée's "person" (whatever that meant). He asked a nurse to find out who was working on Meredith, and when he discovered that no cardiologist had been included on the team, he decided to offer his services. Fortunately, he had just finished repairing the chest wall of his current patient, so he asked the resident to close. Quickly scrubbing out, he hurried over toward Trauma One.

Upon seeing Derek crying in the hallway, he hesitated. Meredith might need his skills, but she was being worked on by a whole team of people who knew how to page him if they needed him. Derek, on the other hand, looked as if he might fall apart completely, and there was no one there taking care of him. He could spend at least a few minutes trying to help Derek get through whatever was going to happen next.

Preston wondered what he should say. As a doctor, Derek knew the odds against Meredith surviving this experience, let alone the even greater odds against a recovery without any lasting damage, so simple-minded rosy optimism most likely wouldn't be helpful. Should he offer to pray with him? Preston wasn't sure what spiritual beliefs Derek held, if any; and he didn't want to put Derek on the spot if prayer wasn't something he felt comfortable with. He gave a quick peek through the trauma room window in the hope that there was good news to report. Although there didn't seem to be any evidence as yet that the team was succeeding, he searched for something positive to say. "The Chief is working on her, man."

Preston's effort to reassure him that Meredith was in the best of hands was lost on Derek, since he'd stopped focusing on anything but his own fears and his desire to do something more to save her. Having been spoken to, however, did force Derek to pull himself together, if only to be able to say something in return to whatever it was that Preston had said. He raised his face from his hands, wiped his eyes, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "They threw me out."

Preston appreciated the desperate desire behind Derek's simple statement, knowing that he would have wanted to be in the room if Cristina were having a medical emergency, common sense and standard protocols be damned. Not that there was anything either of them could do about it. Or should do about it. Even so, complaining about what couldn't be done wasn't going to get either of them anywhere. Now they both needed to focus on what could be done. "What do you need?"

The question baffled Derek. What did he need? Meredith was the one in need. As he tried to make sense of the question, the obvious answer presented itself. Preston could go and help save Meredith. Preston would be an extra pair of hands, maybe the hands that would make the difference. It wasn't as good as going back in himself, but at least he could be there with Meredith by proxy. "I need you to go in there."

Preston understood. With another nod, he disappeared into the trauma room.

The thought that Preston's hands could be his hands, doing the things for Meredith he would be doing, helped—but not for long. It couldn't erase that last image Derek had of Meredith before he left her on the table—deeply blue, intensely cold, and absolutely still. Her resemblance to a corpse was too strong for Derek to ignore the possibility that that he hadn't gotten to her in time.

In time. No more time for Meredith. No more time with Meredith. These thoughts would be unimaginable if it weren't for the reality on the other side of the door. His thoughts turned to their all too recent estrangement and the insidious torture he'd inflicted on them both by trying to reconcile with his ex-wife. "I can't do this," he thought. "I tried living without her, and I couldn't do it. All those months with Addison, trying to make it work, and I couldn't. Every time we spoke, every time I even looked at her, I couldn't help remembering what we'd been like together. I couldn't help wanting her, needing to be with her. Everything else was just going through the motions. If only I'd been honest with everyone from the beginning. I hurt her—us—so badly."

Derek burned with shame and regret as he remembered how Meredith confronted him after she found out that he'd lied about Addison. She'd shown him how badly he'd hurt her by accusing him of using her as nothing more than a fling to get over his marriage. Even the way she phrased it had hurt—calling herself "the girl you screwed to get over being screwed." He hadn't understood until then that she could have thought of him as so shallow or herself as so . . . disposable. He let out a half-sob, half laugh as he remembered the words he'd used to try to convince her she was wrong, to tell her what she meant to him, what his life had been like before he met her. "You were like coming up for fresh air. I was drowning and you saved me."

"And you did, Meredith Grey, you did save me," he murmured. "I was drowning and you saved me." Somehow, it felt better to be talking to her than simply remembering her. "And now . . . now it's my turn to save you. Don't let all this be in vain," he pleaded. A phrase popped into his head from that morning's conversation. "Let me be your knight in shining whatever, just like I promised." He gave a watery smile as he replayed that morning's conversation in his mind. How typical of her to be fussing at him for fussing over her, accusing him of being overprotective. It was usually pretty easy to charm her into a good mood when she got like that. . . .

Derek inhaled sharply as he remembered the reason all the fussing started. Meredith had been lying motionless at the bottom of the filled bathtub when Derek walked in, so he pulled her up. Then, she'd been nothing but evasive when he'd pressed her for a reason. At the time, he'd wondered briefly if he should press harder, but then decided it was simply more of the same odd behavior Meredith had been exhibiting since her mother's last lucid day. Yes, Meredith was obviously wrestling with some issues, but Ellis Gray was vicious enough to give anyone a major case of the blues. All he needed to do was be patient and wait for it to pass. She'd snap out of it eventually. She always had before. Although . . . she'd never been this distant before, not even during their estrangement; he'd always known her attention was directed at him even while she was chasing him away. Now, he couldn't help but feel she was listening to her mother's voice even in their most intimate moments. And the similarity between how she had looked in the bathtub and on the gurney—could it be something more than a coincidence?

Derek felt himself becoming angry at the absurdity of it all. He slammed his right fist against the floor. "Fight, damn it!" he snapped sharply. "You don't belong underwater. There's no reason for you not to fight this. You're tougher than you think you are. I've seen it. The Meredith Grey I know is not a quitter."

Derek was startled to realize he'd spoken much louder than he'd intended. He looked around to see if anyone was staring at him and sighed in relief when he saw no heads popping into the hallway to check on him.

As the seconds ticked on in the empty corridor, Derek began to feel a little foolish about his outburst. There was no sense in letting his imagination run away with him. He looked around again to see if anyone was coming in. Aside from the interns he could see through the windowed doors at the end of the hallway, no one seemed to be around. He wondered why the interns weren't in the hallway with him, but was grateful for their restraint. He really wasn't in the mood to make conversation with Meredith's friends, even though he knew that were keeping watch for her, too. He enjoyed (mostly) spending time with them one on one when he was with Meredith, but as a group, they could be . . . lively—and definitely more than he was able to handle right now. He wondered who had told them to stay on the other side of the door. It couldn't have been Miranda; she'd been working on Meredith ever since they got to the hospital. So, one of the group must have said something to the others. Derek decided that it must have been O'Malley. Neither Yang nor Karev struck him as sensitive types, and he'd yet to spend any significant time with Stevens that didn't include at least one inappropriate comment—lately, usually at the O'Malleys's expense. The woman had absolutely no sense of appropriate boundaries. Yes, he'd have to do something nice for O'Malley when the crisis was over.

When the crisis was over. When would it be over? How would it be over? With a happy ending or . . . ? Inevitably as a pendulum returns to the starting point of its swing, Derek's focus swung back to the possibility of losing the woman whose life he cherished as his own. "Don't leave me, Meredith," he whispered brokenly as he stared at the Trauma One door. "I can't do this without you. Don't die. Please don't die." Eventually, both physical and emotional exhaustion forced Derek into a light stupor where his pleas became less conscious thought and more mantra, a merciful suspension of his capacity to dwell actively on his worst fears.

Author's Note: Derek and Mark discuss the past while waiting for word on Meredith's condition. References to Derek Shepherd's Catholicism in this and subsequent chapters are not based on any direct evidence from the show. They are an educated guess based on Patrick Dempsey's/Derek Shepherd's obvious Irish heritage, Derek's origins in New York, and the ubiquitous Irish Catholic presence in New York City's politics and culture.

Chapter 2

Mark Sloan walked toward Trauma One with trepidation, not knowing how Derek would react to his presence. Given the state of their relationship, it was entirely possible that Derek would simply ignore him, or worse, tell him to get the hell out of there. Even so, Mark knew that he at least had to try to offer support. If the rumors about Grey's condition were true, Derek had to be wild with grief and fear. There was no way that Mark would be able to turn his back on his "brother," if there was a chance that he'd be able to help.

Mark spotted Derek sitting on his heels opposite the Trauma One doorway and stood next to him. "Now what?" he wondered uneasily, noting his best friend's tear-stained face and swollen eyes. He was relieved that Derek seemed to have retained some measure of composure; he wasn't (wasn't any longer?) actively sobbing.

Mark watched Derek glance at him briefly and then return to staring at the door. When several moments had passed without an angry glare or an order to leave, the nervous plastic surgeon decided to take a chance that the silence was an invitation of sorts to stay. He hunkered down next to Derek, ready to listen, or talk, or "whatever" (as his favorite dirty mistress would say). He saw Derek try to respond to his presence; several times, it looked as if Derek was going to say something, but the words never actually made it past his lips. But that was okay. Mark didn't need words. He clasped Derek briefly on the arm, gratified to note that the muscles under his hand relaxed ever so slightly as he held on.

Derek barely noticed footsteps coming down the corridor until the footsteps stopped right next to him. He looked up to see Mark Sloan, former best friend/brother, current . . . whatever. He struggled for a few moments, trying to find something appropriate to say, but he was having trouble even thinking in words, let alone saying them. The next thing Derek knew was that Mark had clasped his arm. Somehow, that seemed . . . right, even comforting, to have his brother with him. Sure, there were reasons why it might not have been, but they didn't matter. Grudges weren't worth the energy it took to remember them at a time like this.

Slightly calmer from exhaustion as well as Mark's presence, Derek returned his attention to Trauma One. This time he focused on the team working on Meredith. Preston was right—Meredith couldn't have had a better team than Richard Webber and Miranda Bailey and himself working on her. He tried to stay focused on that picture, that one picture, because it represented hope. As long as the team was working on Meredith, there was a chance that she might live.

After some time had passed (five minutes? fifteen? fifty? It was hard to tell.), a circulating nurse entered Trauma One with saline bags. The open door gave Derek a glimpse inside, where he could see Meredith still lying on the table. He also saw Addison gazing at him with a look of infinite pity and concern.

Derek was stunned. Why was Addison looking at him that way? Better yet, why was she there at all? Meredith didn't need a neonatal surgeon. Why would they have paged her? Why. . . ?

The longer he thought about it, the more he became convinced that Addison had been paged not for Meredith, but for himself. The team thought she wasn't going to make it and wanted his ex-wife to be the one to break the news to him.

The blood drained from his face and his chest tightened. She was dying. Meredith was dying and he wasn't with her. He had to go in. Derek started scrambling for a headfirst dash into the trauma room, but paused as a momentary wave of dizziness passed over him.

Mark, who'd been staring at the floor, content to remain in the healing silence between them, was startled out of his thoughts by Derek's sudden lurch toward Trauma One. Fortunately, Derek's dizziness gave Mark an opportunity to grab him by the same arm he'd clasped in friendship only minutes earlier, stopping him while he was still on one knee. At first, he intended to ask Derek what was wrong and offer to help take care of it, but the intensity of Derek's glare made him think Derek had suddenly remembered why Mark had been persona non grata for the past year or so. The realization both saddened and angered him. "What do you think you're doing, Derek?" he barked.

Derek, on the other hand, was infuriated at this latest attempt by a colleague to keep him away from Meredith. He just barely resisted the urge to knock Mark out of the way. "What do you think you're doing?" he spat back. "Didn't you see the look on Addison's face? She's dying! Meredith's dying! I have to get in there!" Derek continued trying to pull his arm back with another glare that let Mark know exactly what he planned to do if said arm was not released immediately.

Mark noted Derek's whitened face and shallow breaths with concern and wondered if he shouldn't force Derek to sit back down and put his head between his knees—or maybe take him into another trauma room and start treating him for neurogenic shock. Too bad he couldn't loosen his grip on Derek long enough to check his pulse. Given his best friend's dive into icy Elliot Bay, the time he'd spent doing continuous CPR all the way back to the hospital, the emotional stress he was under, and his current physical symptoms, it made sense. On the other hand, anyone fighting this hard to get away probably wasn't in any immediate danger from shock.

So, on to the next problem—keeping Derek from bursting in on the team working on Meredith. While Mark hadn't seen Addison's face, he was willing to credit Derek's interpretation of her expression. If Meredith was dying, as now seemed likely, he didn't want Derek to blame himself for distracting the team and somehow retroactively blaming himself for her death. Hell, even if Meredith wasn't dying, it sounded like it was pretty grim in there. The last thing the team needed was a hysterical boyfriend in the room. "Think fast, Sloan," he told himself as he saw Derek's face darkening.

"Derek, wait! Listen to me. Do you trust Addison?"

Derek's expression turned from rage to befuddlement, and he blinked in confusion at the apparent non sequitur.

"Oh, shit!!!" Mark said to himself, aghast at his own insensitivity. Given that he was man who had helped to destroy Derek's marriage by sleeping with the aforementioned Addison, he was the last person on the planet who should mention "trust" and "Addison" in the same sentence while Derek was in the room. He hurriedly plunged ahead, hoping he could get through what he'd intended to say before Derek decided to slug him. Again.

"Look, you said yourself that Addison thinks Meredith is dying. If that were true, don't you think she'd be out here? Do you see her anywhere in this hallway?"

Derek stopped struggling to process Mark's words. They made sense, sort of. Addison wasn't out here with them yet. He stared at the Trauma One door, which stayed shut. Yeah, Mark made sense, even if Addison's presence didn't. He turned toward Mark without meeting his eyes. "I . . . I, uh. . . ."

Mark, sensing victory, loosened his grip Derek's arm. Thank goodness it looked as if he was actually getting through. "Think like a doctor, Derek. The last thing Meredith needs is her crazy boyfriend distracting the team trying to save her life."

Shamed by Mark's words, Derek slumped back against the wall. What was wrong with him? He knew the Chief had been right to throw him out. Why couldn't he control himself long enough to let them all do their jobs? His eyes filled up with tears again.

Mark looked at Derek uncomfortably. He hadn't meant to cause that kind of a reaction; he just wanted to keep Derek from trying to fight his way through the trauma team. "Hey," he called quietly, trying to get Derek's attention. Maybe he could distract him. "It's okay, buddy. No harm, no fou—"

The rest of what Mark was going to say got lost as he noticed Derek's complexion turning a nasty shade of green. "Uh-oh. Let's go," he said, regrabbing Derek's arm and pulling him up. Fortunately, Derek was able to cooperate and they got to a bathroom down the hall just in time.

Emptying the contents of his stomach didn't take much time, but Derek suffered through several additional rounds of dry heaves before he could straighten up. Mark waited patiently for Derek to finish while assessing him again for symptoms of shock. He did not like what he saw. By the time Derek was ready to wash up, Mark had decided to stick Derek on a gurney for treatment whether or not he liked it.

Derek straightened up from the sink. "Thanks, Mark," he said, looking him in the eye for the first time in many months. "Just . . . thanks."

Mark groaned inwardly. It somehow seemed beyond ironic that Derek was speaking to him nicely now that he was about to make Derek furious again. Mark started reconsidering his decision. "Uh . . . ."

Derek was puzzled at Mark's expression, but didn't let it bother him. "Let's head back to Trauma One. I don't want to miss anyone looking for me."

Mark hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged mentally. He could let things go a little longer as long as he got some cooperation from Derek. They walked back to their original spot and Derek leaned against the wall.

"Look, Derek, I need to go check on something. Can I trust you to sit down and not move from this spot until I come back?" he said intently.

"I don't need to sit down," Derek objected. "And I promise I won't go in to Meredith." He felt a little hurt that Mark felt he had to make his point about Trauma One. He'd learned his lesson.

Mark rubbed his face in frustration. He so did not want to do this. "Don't give me that crap, Derek. You'd probably fall over if that wall weren't holding you up. You're pale, diaphoretic, and vomiting—and I'm willing to bet my Fifth Avenue condo against that tin can you call a home that your pulse is racing faster than that ambulance screaming its way into the Pit." Sure enough, an ambulance siren was getting louder, indicating that yet more ferryboat crash victims were on their way in. "And the mood swings—you were getting ready to cry like a baby just because I reminded you of a little common sense!" Derek's eyebrows shot up at that, but he refrained from commenting.

"Now, you're going to park your ass on that floor before I leave, or I'm going to come back with a gurney and put you in restraints while I rehydrate you and stabilize your blood pressure. And you'll stay there until I'm satisfied you're all right. Have I made myself clear?"

Derek opened his mouth to object, but then closed it. He really did feel lousy, so sitting down wasn't such a bad idea. Besides, he recognized that look in Mark's eyes and knew better than to challenge it even in the best of times, which this definitely was not. He sat. "Will there be anything else, mother?" he asked mildly.

Mark snorted in a combination of irritation, amusement, and relief. It was good to see Derek with something approaching a grin. He hastily smothered his own grin and spoke gruffly. "Just give me five minutes, and I'll be right back."

Derek shook his head tiredly. The ambulance siren had reminded him that there was a Pit full of crash victims out there, and he had no right to monopolize another doctor's time in the middle of such a crisis. "No. You go do what you have to do and then go back to the Pit. I'll be fine." At the look on Mark's face, he added, "I'll be good. I won't go anywhere I'm not supposed to."

"You're not getting rid of me that easily," he demurred. "I'll be back."

As soon as Mark left, Derek leaned his head back against the wall. "Mark's right," he thought. "I have to think like a doctor. If I look anywhere near as bad as I feel, I'm lucky Mark hasn't already thrown me in a bed. I can't let that happen, yet. Mer might need me." A small voice in the back of his head asked whether that statement made sense, given his ban from the trauma room, but he resolutely ignored it. He could at least wait for her.

He wondered how long it had been since he'd left the trauma room. "What's taking so long that they can't even come out with a progress report? Don't they realize what it's like out here, not knowing what's going on?" He had a moment of sympathy for all the family members he'd kept waiting during surgeries and vowed to be better about sending out updates.

He felt the fear starting to come back and decided to ignore it, too. "O.K. Back to thinking like a doctor. What's going on in there? They probably started with cutting off her clothes (He winced at the notion of their friends and colleagues seeing a naked Meredith. Maybe it would be better to pretend they were working on an anonymous drowning victim.) and using warming blankets and heated saline IVs and humidified oxygen. Epi, atropine, and CPR. Invasive options— Pericardial and peritoneal warm water lavages. Dialysis, cardiopulmonary bypass. . . .

His musings were interrupted exactly eight minutes later by the return of Mark handing down an opened bottle of Lemon-Lime Gatorade, his favorite. "Drink it," Mark ordered peremptorily as he sat across from Derek. "I'm not letting you up until you finish the bottle."

Derek started feeling a little nettled. It wasn't that he wasn't grateful for the support. Given their present non-relationship, it was quite . . . decent of Mark to wait with him, but the high-handed act was getting a little old. Derek stared at the Gatorade. 'Did it ever occur to you," he asked ever-so-lightly, "that you're not someone who can give me orders?"

Mark raised an eyebrow at the edge in Derek's tone. On the one hand, it signaled that Derek was feeling better because he had enough presence of mind for resentment, however muted. On the other, he sadly realized, it meant that Derek had remembered the change in their relationship. Less than a year ago, Derek simply would have trusted Mark to take care of him.

Time to switch tactics. "Maybe not," he drawled with a grin. "But Meredith can. And if she were here, she'd tell you to drink up."

"Fair enough," Derek acknowledged with a nod and a twitch of the lip. They both knew how bossy the little intern could be when she put her mind to it. He sipped the sports drink cautiously, waiting to see if his stomach would accept it. It felt good, so he took a few swallows.

"Good work, Derek. Now I won't have to worry about my favorite dir— . . ." Derek's eyes narrowed and Mark hastily switched course, cursing himself for his slip. ". . . my favorite intern beating me up because I let you pass out in the hallway."

To fight or not to fight? Derek shook his head. He didn't need to have a confrontation with Mark now. Small talk was a better option. "You're smart to be afraid of Meredith," he commented casually. "She has the heart of a fighter. One time I had to hold her back from attacking Karev in the locker room."

"She took on Karev?" Mark laughed. "Good for her."

Derek smiled at the memory. "I told him to leave before I changed my mind and let her beat him to a pulp with her tiny, ineffectual fists."

"I hope he thanked you properly for saving his life," Mark intoned with mock solemnity.

Silence.

What could they talk about, they both wondered uneasily. Anything that wasn't about Meredith was either too trite or too explosive to be worth mentioning. Finally, Derek said, "Meredith has good people working on her. Did you know the Chief is in there? And Preston and Miranda?"

Mark, who had known this before he first entered the corridor, nodded his approval. "That's good news, Derek. She couldn't be in better hands."

More silence.

Derek was staring at the Gatorade bottle again. Mark stared at Derek, waiting uneasily for what might come next.

Derek took a long swallow while he contemplated his decision to keep things light. Maybe he didn't need a fight with Mark right now, but there were things he doubtless should have said a while ago, would have said a while ago, if it hadn't been for his decision not to talk to Mark ever again. But now, with Mark sitting there pretending to be his friend while insulting Meredith—well, certain clarifications had to be made.

"So," he said, staring at the remains of his drink, "Meredith is your favorite intern. That's a surprise. I thought Karev was your protégé." He was still speaking at normal volume, but his earlier tone had returned with a sharpened edge. Derek heard himself and shrugged internally. It was time to stop pretending this issue didn't lie between them.

Mark realized that he'd better come up with an explanation for his near faux pas, but Derek didn't wait for a response. Still staring at the bottle, he continued, "You see, I don't think she really is your favorite intern. I think you were about to call her something else."

Derek looked Mark in the face. "You were about to call her something else, weren't you, Mark?"

Mark nodded mutely, unsure how to respond.

Derek spoke tightly. "You see, I know what you used to call her. I know you told her that the two of you were part of some Dirty Mistress club. Didn't you, Mark?" By the time he got to the end of the sentence, Mark's name sounded more like a curse than a name.

"Derek—."

Uninterested in anything Mark had to say at that point, Derek rushed on, growing more passionate with each sentence. "Meredith is nothing like you. Or me. Meredith was never a dirty mistress. She didn't know about Addison because I didn't tell her. She was the one who broke things off with me when Addison showed up. She refused to go out with me until I agreed to get a divorce. She IS NOT and NEVER WILL BE a dirty mistress." Derek glared at Mark, waiting for an acknowledgment of what he'd just said.

"All right, I get it," Mark said, putting his hands up with the palms facing outward. "I wasn't trying to insult her. I was making a joke, trying to cheer her up. The kid was walking around with her chin dragging on the ground 24-7." He shrugged. "I figured she and I had something in common—she was pining for you, I was pining for Addison. Why wallow in misery? It was time to move on."

"By trying to get into her pants?" Derek interjected sharply.

Mark stared at him incredulously. "Come on, Derek. I didn't flirt with her any more seriously than I flirt with any other pretty woman. If I'd really wanted to 'get into her pants,' as you so elegantly put it, I would have been trying a lot harder."

Derek counted to ten inside his head, realized he still shouldn't talk, and concentrated on finishing the Gatorade—slowly—to give himself time to respond.

Mark concentrated on not fidgeting. "You've wanted this conversation ever since you got to Seattle," he thought to himself. "Be careful what you wish for." As the silence stretched on, he tried to convince himself that the timing of the discussion was acceptable, if not actually appropriate. Given Derek's absolute refusal to say more than a handful of words to him since he'd arrived in Seattle, his current willingness to talk about their estrangement was likely more about distracting himself from worrying about Meredith than about working things out between them. That was okay. No matter what happened to Meredith, they still needed to clear the air.

Derek carefully placed the empty bottle in his pocket and stood up. "So, what you're saying is, you weren't really trying to sleep with Meredith, but if you could have, you would have—in the name of cheering her up. What's the matter, Mark? Taking one woman away from me wasn't enough?"

Mark rose to his feet, too. "Hold on, Shepherd. There are a few things I'd like to say here." Mark knew there were things he had to apologize for—assuming Derek would listen—but he wasn't about to meekly swallow any and all accusations. He was tired of accepting all the blame for this mess.

"One—I've never needed to walk around looking for your leftovers. The first time I talked to Meredith—the time you sucker-punched me—I didn't even know she knew you, let alone that the two of you were an item. Two—I never tried to force her into anything; I was just trying to cheer her up. Have you forgotten that women like being complimented and feeling desirable? You sure as hell stopped doing that for Addison long before I came on the scene." Derek flinched at that one, but Mark plowed on. "Three—you and Meredith were supposedly over. You were back with your wife. Did you still have a right to tell me or anyone else not to date Meredith? Did you have a right to tell Meredith who she could date? She was a free woman; she was free to date me if she chose to. And four—" Mark paused, took a deep breath, and continued in a quieter but no less firm tone, "I never had a chance with Meredith because she was still head over heels in love with you and we both know it. So get over yourself."

Derek shook his head at Mark's description of himself as the epitome of chivalry. Meredith's report of his behavior had painted a very different picture. Still, his account sounded so incredibly narcissistic, so . . . Markian . . . that if he and Addison had been back in New York listening to him speak this way about how he'd behaved toward some other woman, they would have laughed themselves silly about it after he left. But this wasn't New York; he and Addison were no longer together; and Mark's showing the same indifference to his feelings that he'd always shown to the feelings of others could no longer be laughed away. Funny how a person's perspective changes once he moves from bystander to victim.

Derek let out a short, bitter laugh. "You're incredible. You know that? You're really incredible." He turned, walked back to bathroom they'd been in earlier, and listened to the Gatorade bottle hit the trashcan with a satisfying clang. While he waited for Derek's return, Mark leaned back against the wall, folded his arms across his chest with his balled fists tucked under his arms, and tried to convince himself he was ready for what came next.

Derek stopped about three feet in front of him. "Do you have any idea of the hell you put me through this past year?" he asked abruptly. "And Meredith? And Addison? Both of Mark's eyebrows lifted at the mention of Addison, but he kept quiet.

"You have no idea. You have no idea of how I felt when I saw you and Addison together. Yes, I admit I treated Addison badly by ignoring her, by giving more attention to my job than to my wife, but, in my own defense, I didn't know how hurt she was. I didn't know. She hadn't even suggested couples' counseling, let alone demanded a divorce or even a separation. The first time I knew something was seriously wrong was when I found my wife and my best friend screwing each other in the bed I thought my wife shared only with me." Mark dropped his eyes.

"Should I have been aware of what she was feeling, anyway? Yes. I should have. But the other side is that she owed me honesty about what she was feeling and a chance to fix things before she decided to trash our marriage vows for a fling with you. And as for what you owed me. . . ." Derek's eyes welled up while he struggled with conflicting impulses—it would be so much easier to punch Mark again than to explain how much his betrayal had hurt. "You . . . you were my brother; the person who was supposed to watch my back and let me know when I was in trouble. Instead, you took advantage of my focus on my career to add another notch to your bedpost even though you knew it meant the destruction of my marriage."

Mark continued to stare at the floor, his thoughts roiling desperately. How could he explain how the routine flirting that couldn't possibly have meant anything because Addison was part of Derek-and-Addison turned into an affair that convinced him he'd finally found the love of his life? He couldn't.

Derek looked at Mark's downcast eyes and defensive posture and wondered whether the conversation was worth continuing. It wasn't as if there was anything Mark could say that would erase what had happened or convince Derek that their relationship could be healed. But, having started the conversation, he didn't know how to stop the bitterness from gushing to the surface.

"Do you know what I was doing here in Seattle? I was pretending that you and Addison didn't exist. I knew I'd have to take care of the legalities eventually, but in the meantime— You. Didn't. Exist. I pretended that I could have a fresh start. I needed a fresh start."

"And then you met Meredith and she became your fresh start," Mark said slowly, raising his eyes to meet Derek's gaze.

Derek nodded. At least Mark wasn't a total idiot. "But I didn't get that fresh start. Because two months after I left you both behind, two months after you convinced Addison to fall in love with you, you cheated on her—so she came running to find me because a distant but faithful husband was better than an exciting but unfaithful lover."

Mark listened with dismay to Derek's characterization of Addison and himself. He knew there was no way he could convince ever-faithful Derek that those one-night stands were nothing more a panicked reaction to the realization that he was on the verge of making a permanent commitment (something he understood only after his $400-an-hour psychiatrist explained it to him), but maybe he could redeem a bit of Addison's character in Derek's eyes. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "Don't sell Addison short, Derek. She really was still in love with you, no matter what she felt about me." That admission came hard. Mark swallowed the bile rising to the back of his throat as he remembered when he'd found out just how true that statement was—when Addison told him she'd aborted their baby because it was his and not Derek's.

"Forgive me if I find that hard to believe," Derek retorted.

Mark growled in frustration. Trust Preacher Derek to stick to a black-and-white view of people. "What more proof do you want?" he asked resentfully. "I asked her to stay. I begged her to stay after Webber called, but she insisted she needed to be with you."

Derek glared at him in exasperation. "Why would you expect her to stay after you cheated on her? Normal people don't put up with that kind of behavior."

Mark decided he'd had enough of serving as Derek's verbal punching bag. "I'm not discussing "normal" with you, Derek I-have-to-move-clear-across-the-country-because-my-wife-is-cheating-on-me Shepherd." he declared, pushing himself up from the wall and setting himself directly in front of Derek. "Addison was free to make her choices. She chose to be with me, and then she chose to be with you. It's not my fault she followed you here. And for the record," he added determinedly, "I didn't follow you here. I followed her here."

"Neither one of you belongs here," Derek snapped. "If you hadn't driven Addison away, she wouldn't have been so desperate for me to abandon Meredith for the sake of resurrecting a dead marriage."

Ouch. Derek had scored a major point, although Mark was in no mood to admit it. He'd already humiliated himself enough for one conversation. How many times would he be forced to admit that Derek had won the only competition that had ever meant anything real to either of them? Mark spoke more forcefully. "You're not getting it, Derek. Addison is her own woman. Neither one of us has ever been able to force her to do what she didn't want to do. She chose to be with me, and then she chose to be with you.

Derek wondered (not for the first time) how anyone with so little grasp of basic cause-and-effect had a high enough IQ to earn and keep a medical license. "You know what, Mark? I 'get' that I was a bad husband. I 'get' that I made Addison so miserable and so angry that she 'chose' to fall out of love with me and in love with you.

'What you're not 'getting' is that if you hadn't been there to provide an easy way out—to play at being her exciting new lover when she was feeling ignored by her distant old husband, she might have 'chosen' to try working things out with me instead of playing house with you." Derek folded his arms at the end of his speech, looking at Mark as if daring him to disagree.

Bull's-eye.

Mark opened his mouth and then hesitated. Was this when he was supposed to apologize? Damn Derek's stubbornness. Given the look on Derek's face, the odds that his apology would be rejected were high. Then again, what was his alternative? He wanted his brother back.

"Look, Derek," he began, consciously gentling his voice. "I don't know what to say here. I know I shouldn't have gotten involved with Addison. I shouldn't have flirted with her in the first place, and when she started telling me she was unhappy, I should have insisted that she talk to you instead. At first, I was just telling her to be patient, that you'd come around. I wanted to make her feel better. And then . . . ," Mark paused, hunting for an explanation that wouldn't make Derek any madder than he already was. "And then . . ." Mark looked at Derek and shrugged helplessly, "it got complicated. I'm sorry that you got hurt. I—we—never wanted to hurt you."

"He wanted to make her feel better," Derek scoffed to himself. "First Addison, then Meredith. Funny how I never realized what a humanitarian Mark is." If Derek were being honest, he would have admitted there was at least some truth to Mark's statements. But, if he were being honest, he'd have to admit that this conversation had very little to do with listening to Mark and everything to do with telling Mark the things he'd been bottling up since that night in New York. Even so—the apology helped.

Derek let his tone soften so that the regret and grief were allowed to mix with the anger. "Well, you did, Mark. You and Addison were the two most important people in my world, and you betrayed me. But this isn't about the flirting or what you did or didn't tell Addison. You've been flirting with Addison and every other female you've ever known ever since I first met you. In kindergarten. I don't think you know any other way to talk to them. Getting angry at you for flirting would be like getting angry at you for breathing."

Mark listened in confusion. If Derek wasn't mad about the flirting or what he'd said to Addison, then what was going on? He was angry only about the sex? Granted, that was a big "only," but Derek had always been into the "big picture"—more like a chick than a guy in that way. Focusing only on the sex just wasn't Derek.

Was Derek lying? Or was there more to the story? And did this mean his chance at reconciliation was better or worse than he had thought? Mark eyed Derek warily. "I don't know what you want me to say."

Derek considered the implied question briefly and discarded it. There was no prepared speech Mark had to stumble through in order to win forgiveness; no gesture grand or small that would suture Humpty-Dumpty's shell back together again. Mark's chance to speak had passed a long time ago.

"It's not so much the fact that you seduced my wife as—." Derek stopped short at Mark's "You've got to be kidding me" stare.

Derek flushed in embarrassment. "Okay. Yes. Yes, I am angry—beyond angry—that you had an affair with my wife. It was stupid to imply I'm not angry about it." He paused, trying to choose his words more carefully. This was even harder than he thought it was going to be.

Time to focus on the real question. "Why didn't you tell me I had turned into a lousy husband?" Derek asked in a deceptively mild tone, turning to face Mark. If it weren't for the set of his jaw and the narrowing of his eyes, you'd have thought he was discussing nothing of any more consequence than the weather. "When Addison first told you she was unhappy, before things got 'complicated'—why didn't you talk to me? You never had a problem with telling me to pull my head out of my ass before." Derek cocked his head, folded his arms, and leaned back against the wall, looking as if he had all the time in the world to wait for the answer.

Taken aback by such an obvious question, Mark froze. To his astonished dismay, he realized that he'd never even considered giving Derek the kind of warning he'd asked about—and deserved. Mark groaned inwardly as he realized Derek's perspective on what he'd done when he'd slept with Addison. It wasn't just that he'd broken the rule about going after another man's wife or girlfriend; he'd betrayed the trust they'd always had in each other. No wonder Derek hadn't wanted to forgive him. Guilt, shame, remorse, and humiliation chased each other across his face, warring for the predominant position as Derek watched and waited for a response.

Mark closed his eyes, trying to recreate how it happened so that he could at least try to give Derek an explanation. How had it started? Oh, yes—Addison complaining about Derek's long hours at the hospital coupled with her insistence that she shouldn't have to (in her words) "beg" Derek to spend more time with her; after eleven years of marriage, he should certainly be able to tell when she was unhappy. The two or three times he'd offered to talk to Derek for her, she'd firmly rejected his offers, claiming that time given out of guilt or as a bribe to avoid her anger wasn't worth taking.

Why had he respected her wish that he not talk to Derek? Had Addison already come to mean more to him than Derek by then? He wasn't sure. Probably. Was he sure that Addison meant what she said about not talking to Derek? Yes at the time, but not any more. Not after the transcontinental booty call that ended with several very painful hours of holding Addison as she sobbed out the story of her so-called marital reconciliation—knowing that Derek wanted to be with Meredith instead of her, knowing that he was staying with her only because she'd begged and guilted him into it. He remembered wondering then what would have happened if she'd swallowed her pride back in New York instead of waiting until everything fell apart.

Was he right to have respected her request for confidentiality? Or should he have violated her confidence anyway in the name of his relationship with Derek? Mark felt his stomach flip as an unwelcome thought intruded. Had Addison believed he would respect her request? Or had she expected that he would talk to Derek anyway because he and Derek were best friends, using him as a way to communicate with her husband without having to surrender her pride?

Mark felt as if the world had suddenly gone topsy-turvy. What would have happened if he'd spoken to Derek? Would the marriage have crumbled anyway? Or would Derek have found a way to reconnect with Addison? At that thought, Mark felt pain sharp enough to be physical. Never to have had sex Addie? Never to have known for even a moment that she loved him and wanted to be with him? Never to have even the hope that such a thing was possible? In that moment, he knew that he would do it all over again. The risk of losing his memories of the few months he and Addison had been able to spend together—and his hope of something more someday—was more than he was willing to gamble.

But oh, the cost. He'd been forced to trade one piece of his soul for another—along with the guilty knowledge that he'd caused heart-wrenching grief for the people he loved most. What could he possibly say to Derek, knowing what he knew about his own heart? He still remembered all those sacrament preparation classes Mamma Shepherd had insisted he and all the little Shepherds attend; he couldn't remember the catechism offering any possibility of absolution and forgiveness for a sin you weren't sorry for and had every intention of committing again if the opportunity presented itself. Somehow, Mark was pretty sure Derek would feel the same way Sr. Mary Ellen had on the subject. He remembered the picture Mamma Shepherd still had up in her living room of him and Derek in their matching First Communion suits with Derek's sisters surrounding them. What must she think of him now!

Derek watched the various emotions chase each other across his ex-best friend's face, imagining that he knew what Mark was thinking moment-by-moment. When his expression of remorse seemed to have settled in and Mark still made no effort to speak, Derek decided he'd waited long enough.

"The way I see it," continued Derek in that same mild, controlled tone—except that now it was edged in ice, "is that Addison was hurt and angry. She blamed me for her loneliness, so for her, not talking to me made a twisted kind of sense. And there you were, taking advantage of her vulnerability the very first chance you had."

"It wasn't like that," Mark protested weakly, not sure how far he was willing to go in exposing Addison's complicity in their affair—how astonished he'd been when Addison responded to one of his normal throwaway flirtatious lines with a comeback of her own too sultry to be ignored. Or how grateful he'd been that she initiated their first kiss. Or—no sense in going down that path and making Derek hate the both of them.

"Seriously, Mark?" Derek jibed, his anger breaking through. "You seriously expect me to believe that Addison fell in love with you without any seduction on your part?" Derek's disgust at Mark's presumed denial of responsibility was palpable.

It was time to tread carefully. "That's not what I said."

Derek leaned into Mark until their faces were inches from each other. He spoke with a vehemence made all the more effective by his lowered tone. "She told me she fell in love with you. You! A serial womanizer. She knew who you were. Are. Why would she believe she could have a real relationship with you, if you hadn't been feeding her a pack of lies?" He finished with a don't-insult-my-intelligence glare before turning around and leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed.

Mark was torn between delight that Addison had admitted she loved him, anger that Derek refused to see him as anything more than a manwhore, and desolation that the conversation hadn't accomplished anything beyond distracting Derek from Meredith's condition. There was no point in arguing about any of this; all they were doing was ripping the scabs off wounds that hadn't yet (and might never) heal. Mark felt weary with misery.

There was nothing left to say or do but offer Derek the best apology he could; he owed him that much. After that, well . . . the hell with trying to mend fences with someone whose only interest was in holding on to old grudges. Next time—if there ever was a next time—Derek could chase after him.

"Derek?"

Derek opened his eyes reluctantly. He'd reached his limit; all he wanted at this point was for Mark to stop talking. "What is it?" he asked tiredly.

Mark raised his hands with the palms outward in a pacifying gesture. "I don't want to fight," he said slowly. "I want to apologize."

"What for?" Derek couldn't believe he'd let himself get suckered into this conversation. There was no point in talking to someone he planned to ignore for the rest of his days.

"For all of it. I'm. . . . Derek, please!" he interjected as Derek turned away. "Five minutes, please. Then you can say whatever you want or just pretend I'm not here and I won't bother you."

Another five minutes and Mark would leave him alone? That sounded just fine. Even more than fine. Now that the initial sugar rush from the Gatorade was wearing off, Derek was reminded that there were limits to his endurance. Returning to his vigil outside Trauma One would be a definite improvement—not only would he be immediately available to hear any news about Meredith, he would also be able sit down and conserve his energy. Still leaning with his back against the wall, Derek faced Mark head-on and folded his arms. Then he looked at his watch. "You've got exactly five minutes. Go."

Mark shoved his hands into his pockets to disguise the fact that they were trembling and drew a deep breath. "Man up, Sloan," he said to himself. "These may be the last words Derek ever hears from you, so make them good."

"I'm sorry for all of it," he started, wondering if the words would be easier or harder to get out if Derek were looking at him instead of his watch. "I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry I hurt Addison. I'm sorry I blew up the lives we had back in New York. I'm sorry . . . ." Mark drew another deep breath, remembering how insistent Addison had been on leaving him. "I'm sorry I messed things up with Addison so badly that your life here in Seattle got messed up, too. I'm sorry I hurt you again . . . , and I'm sorry I hurt Meredith, too. You guys didn't deserve that."

You could have heard a surgical cap fall in the silence that reigned after Mark finished speaking. He waited for Derek to respond, but after an interminably long minute wherein Derek seemed content simply to stare at his watch, he decided to push. "Well?"

"You've got another two minutes and fifty-five seconds. Is there anything else you want to say?" ask Derek coldly.

"No," Mark answered shortly, starting to feel foolish as Derek still refused to take his eyes off the watch. "I want you to look at me, damn it! And I want to hear what you have to say."

Derek's eyebrows rose in surprise as he complied with Mark's demand for eye contact. "What did you expect? I've said all I intended to say." At Mark's dumbfounded expression, he added, "Seriously."

"So that's it? No response to my apology?" Derek's lack of a reaction stung; Mark had been expecting at least an insult, if not a lecture. "Is St. Derek the Perfect too high and mighty to speak to this lowly sinner?"

Derek looked at Mark steadily, weighing his options once again. While he desperately wanted the conversation to be over, he could see that Mark was genuinely hurting and genuinely trying to make a connection with him—and had been for some time. Reluctantly, Derek admitted to himself that he owed Mark an explanation for his refusal to let him back into his life. "You think this is about moral superiority? It's not."

Startled but pleased that Derek was talking him, Mark still couldn't help giving Derek a don't-insult-my-intelligence look of his own at that statement.

"It's not," Derek repeated quietly. "At least, not the way you're implying. The three of us—you, me, Addison—we messed up. We hurt each other. But Meredith—she hadn't hurt anyone, and I still dragged her into our mess. My mess. The first thing I did was lie to her about being married. And then . . . ," Derek's face twisted into a wry, self-mocking smile. ". . . after I chose my cheating wife over my innocent girlfriend, I couldn't let her go. I kept following her, insisting that we could still be friends even when she wanted to have nothing to do with me." He shook his head in disbelief at the narrowness of his focus on his own needs back then. "Richard and Miranda told me how much I was hurting her—Yang, too—and I still pursued her." He paused. "I kept telling myself I was trying to be there for her, but . . . ."

The silence stretched on as Derek stared out into space, clearly lost in painful memory. Eventually, he started speaking again, but so quietly that Mark didn't know whether Derek was talking to him or had simply forgotten he was still there. "I got so angry when she tried to move on—as if I had a right to keep her from seeing other men while I was going home to Addison every night. I was a selfish bastard who wanted it both ways." His voice started to waver. "It's a miracle she was willing to talk to me again, let alone forgive me."

Mark wrestled with jealousy and self-pity as he listened to Derek's confession. "It's not fair!" he thought. "Derek messes up and women throw themselves at him. I mess up and I turn into an Untouchable."

"Hey, Derek," Mark asked thickly, "why is it that Addison and Meredith can forgive you, but you and Addison can't forgive me?"

Derek pondered Mark's question. Part of it was just absurd—did Mark really think that that his adulterous homewrecking/friendshipwrecking tour de force was equivalent to his relationship Meredith?

On the other hand—was he being a hypocrite by accepting forgiveness for his own misdeeds while insisting that Mark's actions were unforgivable? Maybe. Derek reluctantly tried to imagine treating Mark as a friend again, but found that he couldn't. Friendship requires trust; Mark's actions in New York and Seattle had shown repeatedly that any concern Mark might have had for Derek's (or Addison's) well-being ran a distant second to satisfying his every momentary whim. The Mark he used to call his brother bore no resemblance to the man standing before him.

Derek's face, even his posture became more guarded as he pondered what he would say. No matter what he said, the rest of this conversation was not going to be easy. He didn't want to be unnecessarily hurtful; he recognized that Mark had done his best to be supportive for the past . . . however long they'd been stuck there. On the other hand, he didn't want to give Mark any false hope about the restoration of their relationship.

I can't speak for Addison," he began, running one hand through his salt-stiffened hair. "I can only tell you that I don't trust you. And that I don't intend to make the mistake of trusting you ever again."

Mark nodded slowly as he took the answer in. He had to admit there was fairness in it, too, much to his chagrin. He'd broken Derek's trust, and he'd do it again so long as Addison was the prize. But did that mean their entire relationship had to be destroyed?

"I miss you."

Derek took a deep breath. Mark's simple statement made him think about what cutting Mark out of his life had meant. In many ways, it had been harder to accept the loss of Mark than it had been to accept the loss of Addison. The last few years of his marriage were marked by increasing distance between himself and Addison. On the other hand, his relationship with Mark had (he'd thought) remained unchanged. The fact that they'd been family-by-choice (the rest of the Shepherd family having followed Derek's lead) gave their relationship the best of both worlds. No disagreements about the lifestyles they adopted, no fights about disappointed expectations, no lies to maintain carefully created fictions about who they were and what they meant to each other—they were just there for each other. Carefully suppressed memories of happier times tried to edge their way to the forefront of his consciousness until Derek reminded himself of the reason for their ending. Yes, they had unquestioningly been there for each other—until Mark decided to chase after his wife. Sorrow turned into anger. The old Mark was gone, and this imposter had no right to claim his place.

"I miss the you that you used to be," Derek returned in clipped tones and moved toward Trauma One to check on Meredith's progress. The conversation was over.

Mark stayed where he was, debating whether he should leave. It was clear that Derek no longer welcomed his company. "Maybe he hadn't welcomed it at all," whispered a miserable little voice in the back of his brain. He was more than tempted to start treating ferryboat crash victims, both as a distraction and as a desire to feel useful to someone, but he couldn't shake the conviction that Derek needed watching. Sensing that they both needed some space, he settled himself by the opposite set of swinging doors, giving them both room for their respective vigils.

Chapter 3

Derek headed toward Trauma One, telling himself that he was only going to peek in the door's window to look for an update on Meredith's condition. At the last second, however, he decided against it. He knew he couldn't trust himself not to barge in if it looked . . . if it looked. . . . "O.K., we're not going there," he decided. His mind then tracked to the next nearest distraction, his conversation with Mark, and he suppressed that line of thought even faster.

"Think like a doctor, think like a doctor," he chanted to himself. "The team is doing good things in there. What are they? Warming blankets, heated saline IVs, and humidified oxygen. Epi, atropine, and CPR. Invasive options—Pericardial and peritoneal warm water lavage. Dialysis. . . ." Unfortunately, Derek found that imagining the steps that the Trauma Team was taking just made the urge to look even stronger.

The urge to be useful returned a hundredfold, becoming almost a compulsion. His exhaustion only partially masked by a burst of nervous energy, Derek began pacing—partly because he simply couldn't stay still and partly to distract himself from heading into Trauma One. "What can I do to help? What?" He decided to begin reviewing what he knew of the accident to see if he could spot any helpful details that he might have overlooked in the rush to get Meredith to the hospital as quickly as possible.

He quickly concluded for the umpteenth time that he couldn't estimate how long Meredith had been underwater since he didn't know how long it had taken that little girl to find him once Meredith had gone down. He reviewed the scene in his mind once again, forcing down the nightmarish surrealism that threatened to send him into another emotional tailspin. He thought it might have been a half hour or so between their last conversation (about getting married, of all things!) and his dive into Elliot Bay, but he couldn't be sure. His only other clue was seeing Meredith's jacket on one of the crash victims, but had no idea how long it had been since she had treated that patient, or even if that had been that last patient she'd treated before disappearing.

How did she end up in the water, anyway? Now that he thought about it, it seemed . . . inexplicable. There were no patients there . . . no collapsed walkway . . . not even any fallen debris to trip over. So how did Meredith end up in the water? Derek swore in frustration that the little girl who'd led him to Meredith had been too traumatized to tell him what had happened and then felt ashamed immediately afterward. If it hadn't been for that little girl, Meredith probably would still be in the water, would probably already be—no, he wasn't going to go there.

Derek rubbed his face and shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Exhaustion was making it harder to think even if he still felt too wired to stop pacing. Back to the mantra. "Think like a doctor." He wasn't going to be allowed into Trauma One, so . . . it was time to concentrate on what needed to be done once she was revived. The thought stopped him in his tracks.

Brain damage! The commonest complication from near-drowning was brain damage. Why hadn't he thought of it earlier? He thought of former patients who'd nearly drowned and how limited his ability had been to help them. Suddenly, his inability to estimate how long Meredith had been underwater took on new aspects of horror. What if they were able to revive her and . . . Meredith was no longer Meredith?

"Don't go there!" he ordered himself firmly. There was no need to fear the worst. Elliot Bay was frigid at this time of year; that article from last year's New England Journal of Medicine talked about drowning victims that had been revived after four hours of resuscitation efforts with no permanent neurological damage when the body temperature was low enough. And, thank goodness, Meredith had been blue enough to pose as Nancy's Smurfette doll.

Of course, such events never would have rated a mention in the New England Journal of Medicine if they weren't so rare. . . .

Derek was distracted from his efforts to dredge the details of the article from his memory by the sight of Addison exiting Trauma One. The look on her face frightened him, but he had to know what was going on. He hurried over to her as Mark approached from the opposite direction. "Tell me," he demanded.

Addison decided to stick to a recitation of the facts. "Her temp's still only 86. There's no heartbeat. We're hoping once she warms up—."

"I wanna go in there," Derek broke in. He'd figure out some way to monitor her brain function once he got in there. He was a neurosurgeon, damn it.

"No," she said immediately, having already anticipated his reaction. Derek wouldn't be Derek without his knight in shining armor complex.

Derek remained fixed on getting Addison's permission to enter Trauma One, conveniently forgetting that she wasn't the person who had banished him. "There's a risk of brain damage. I need to go in there. Let me go in there."

"Derek, you can't," Addison told him gently. "Not for Meredith, not for anybody. You're in no shape." Her heart ached for him, for both him and Meredith—but he had to be stopped from making an already difficult task impossible, for everyone's sake.

Derek stared at her in disbelief, unable to come up with a coherent response; physical and emotional exhaustion had finally taken over his ability to process what was happening. He knew only that he needed to be needed, needed something to focus on besides his fears—without a goal to serve as a distraction, he was lost.

Addison flashed a look at Mark that half pleaded and half commanded, "Take care of him." Although some part of her wanted to stay and offer comfort, she knew she still had to speak to the interns and then get back to her Jane Doe. She'd spent too much time in the trauma room already.

Mark, who'd come close enough to listen but not close enough to get in the middle of the conversation, found both Addison and Derek looking at him. Addison's look was easy enough to interpret, but Derek's—Derek looked like he didn't quite know what he was asking for.

Mark gave Addison a flicker of an eyelid, which she took as her cue to move on. Mark assessed Derek briefly. A gurney was still an option, but it made more sense to try getting Derek out of the vicinity first. He needed to clean up and get something to eat in his system anyway, so that should be the first priority.

"It's time to go, Derek," he said soothingly. "You heard Addison. Her temperature is only 86 degrees. It's going to take at least a couple of hours for them to warm her up. You have time to take a shower and get something to eat."

"But Meredith needs me," Derek objected despairingly, as if he'd given up hope that someone would believe him.

"Der, right now the Chief is taking care of Meredith. And so are Burke and Bailey and the rest of the team," Mark continued in that same soothing tone, achieving an almost hypnotic effect. "Meredith will need you later, but she'll need you washed up and rested. First, you'll take a shower, and then we can go to the cafeteria. C'mon, buddy." Mark slung an arm around Derek's shoulders, hoping to get him into the attendings' locker room before he realized what was happening, but no such luck. Derek stiffened, resisting Mark's effort to move him.

Mark considered his options. Knocking Derek out and carrying him upstairs would probably be the easiest, given his condition, but he doubted Addison had included it as an option when she asked him to take care of her—their—ex-whatever.

Reasoning with him hadn't worked; maybe confrontation would. "Look, Derek," he said sternly, turning him around by his shoulder. "Right now you smell like salt water and diesel fuel—and whatever else you picked up in the harbor. You need a long, hot shower with plenty of soap and shampoo. Will you take care of it yourself, or should I order a couple of nurses to do it for you?

"But—"

"No buts, Derek," Mark interrupted firmly, ignoring the panic and anger written all over Derek's face. "If Meredith needs you, they'll page you. If you're that worried about missing a page while you're in the shower, I'll baby-sit your pager until you get out. Let's go."

As the two men glared at each other, Mark wondered if he'd have to ask the Chief for help in getting Derek upstairs. Derek, meanwhile, was battling not only his own (admittedly irrational) belief that staying near Meredith would afford him some opportunity to be of use to her, but also his reluctance to admit that Mark was right. Finally, some combination of reason and exhaustion convinced him to surrender.

Let's go," he muttered, heading for the swinging doors.

True to his word, Mark stayed while Derek showered, carefully ignoring any sobbing sounds coming from the shower stalls. By the time Derek emerged, calmer if not happier, Mark had already laid out his regular clothes and put away the jacket that had been brought in from the accident scene by one of the EMS crews.

"How did you get into my locker?" asked Derek.

Mark grinned. "You've been using the same combination since junior high. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure it out."

Derek grunted in irritation.

Mark immediately took on a more business-like tone. "As soon as you're dressed, we'll go down to the cafeteria. Assuming you can keep your food down, I'll leave you alone after that."

Derek thought about telling Mark to leave him alone immediately, but decided the energy outlay wasn't worth it. He hadn't won a single one of these confrontations so far, so fighting was only going to delay the inevitable. Besides, now that he'd finally torn himself away from Trauma One he couldn't bear the thought of returning. The cafeteria was as good a place as any to wait for news.

Another bottle of Gatorade, a banana, and a half-serving of yogurt later, Derek was free. Mark left to do rounds not only on Plastics, but to take a quick look in on the other departments whose attendings had been pulled to take care of crash victims.

Derek wandered aimlessly around the hospital for a while, finally winding up in the waiting room of Miranda's new clinic. Shorn of his scrubs and his lab coat and barred from the one room in the hospital he longed to be, he thought he might feel less out of his depth among with other friends and family members waiting for word on their loved ones.

Derek sat down with a sigh, hoping he'd found a refuge with some degree of anonymity. At the very least, no one here would be badgering him about his coping skills or showering with glances of pity that made him want to scream at their assumption of the worst possible outcome. In the clinic, he could hope and fear in relative peace.

No sooner had he sat down, than a man sitting in a chair near to his asked him, "Who are you here for?"

"What?" asked Derek, startled. So much for peace and quiet.

The speaker was a middle-aged man with a kindly face. He spoke quietly, his tone sounding as if he were making small talk. "I'm waitin' on my wife. Car hit her. Can you believe that? On the ferry? She was run over on the ferry." He grimaced. "They haven't said much. It's hard as hell to get any of these people to talk to you."

The incognito surgeon recognized the underlying tone of desperation lying beneath the man's gentle façade. He needed someone to talk to. Derek probably would have needed the same thing if he hadn't been hounded by Mark for the past hour or so. "Yeah, I'm a . . . ." he began, but then thought better of it. If he identified himself as a doctor, this man might expect him to pull strings to get information on his wife's condition; or even worse, expect him to go back and start treating patients. He switched gears. "My girlfriend was there, too. And I don't know," he confessed. "I don't know what's going to happen."

The man's face showed he shared Derek's feeling of helplessness. "It's out of our hands. Except the doctors know.

Derek couldn't help but smile at the irony of that statement. "Yeah." How often had he traded on that presumption of medical omniscience to encourage patients and their loved ones facing a difficult procedure all the while knowing the odds were not in their favor? Never had he felt like less of an authority, never had be believed less in the power of medicine to accomplish a miracle than he did right now—and never had he needed that belief more. "Yeah" he repeated, unwilling to disillusion either of them.

"What's her name?" asked the man gently.

"Meredith," replied Derek, an unbidden smile lighting up his face. For that moment the blue-faced near corpse he'd left in Trauma One was replaced with an image of Meredith as he usually thought of her—smiling, smiling at him because he was smiling at her.

Still speaking quietly, the man offered, "I'll put her in my prayers."

Derek was moved by the man's offer, touched that he could offer such kindness when he had to be consumed with his own worry and grief. "Thanks."

As Derek thought about it, he realized that he could do more than thank the man for his offer; he could pray, too. He leaned forward and looked down, trying to gather his thoughts, but was too distracted by all the noise. "I'd have better luck trying to pray in the middle of a three-ring circus," he thought despairingly.

Derek stood up. "You had a good idea. I'm going to go up to the hospital chapel and do some praying of my own. Would you like to come with me?"

He shook his head. "No, they told us to wait here, and I want them to be able to find me when there's news. But you go ahead. I'm sure it will be okay for you to go to the chapel; it's a public area. They keep it open 24-7." He smiled sadly. "I know because of my mother; she spent the last week of her life here. Ovarian cancer. I spent most of her naps in the chapel."

He shook his head as if to clear it. "If you see the chaplains, please tell Rabbi Cohen and Father Jenik hello from me. They were a big help to me and my family back then."

"No problem," Derek replied, nodding his acceptance of the commission. "And you are . . . ?"

The man gave an embarrassed chuckle and then held out his hand. "Kevin. Kevin Michaels."

"Derek Shepherd." He shook Ted's hand and then held on to it. "And your wife's name?"

A look of gratitude swept over Ted's face. "Renée."

"Renée Michaels." Derek gave his hand another firm shake before releasing it. "She'll be in my prayers."

"And your girlfriend Meredith's last name?"

"Grey. Meredith Grey. Thanks."

"You, too."

Chapter 4

Author's Note: Meredith's comment about people who wake other people up unnecessarily is a paraphrase of a quote from Robert Heinlein's Time Enough for Love.

Derek found the chapel easily enough once he consulted the directory in the lobby. Unfortunately, it did not prove to be the haven of peace he had hoped it would be. Because his religious practice had been limited for more years than he cared to remember to a perfunctory Christmas midnight mass he had attended for the sake of pleasing his mother, he felt rather awkward about asking God for favors. Once he'd apologized for his long absence from church and begged God to heal both Meredith and Renée, he wasn't sure what to do next. He didn't have a rosary, and even if he had, he wasn't sure he remembered how to pray it properly; the last time he'd prayed with a rosary was when Grandma Mahoney had asked them to gather for a family prayer meeting when she was in hospice. Finally, he recited an Our Father and a Hail Mary and left the chapel, hoping that Kevin Michaels was having an easier time getting through to heaven than he was.

The urge to be useful popped up again, but this time he knew better than to careen into Trauma One. As he pondered his options, he remembered that Meredith's mother, Ellis Grey, had been scheduled for surgery that day. Derek was sure Meredith would have wanted to spend time with her on that day despite their complicated relationship; the least he could do would be to keep Ellis company while he waited for word about her daughter. If she was lucid again (doubtful but possible), he might even have a few words with her about her relationship with her daughter.

Ellis was sleeping when Derek arrived; according to her chart, Mark had prescribed lorazepam for her agitation. With nothing else to do, Derek settled himself on the corner couch and waited for Ellis to wake.

As he waited, he thought back to when Meredith first told him about her mother's condition and how upset she'd been at the possibility that her mother could die alone. He'd held her in his arms while she cried herself into hyperventilating before she calmed down. At the time, he'd imagined Meredith and her mother had had a close relationship, and Meredith was crying over the loss of someone who had loved her very much. It wasn't until he and rest of Seattle Grace got to meet the lucid Ellis Grey that the truth had been revealed. Meredith had been crying for the loss of hope that her mother would ever love her.

His own encounter with the woman had been upsetting enough to make him withdraw from Meredith for a little bit while he processed Ellis's accusation that he had "happened" to her. Hearing the rest of the story—overhearing it, really—from a conversation between Christina and Meredith that evening had been horrifying.

They were at Joe's—Meredith, Christina, Preston, and himself—for drinks after having dinner at a Korean restaurant Preston had recently discovered. The girls were sitting in a booth nursing their drinks while Derek stood off to the side, just within earshot, waiting for Preston to return to their darts game. Meredith had been fairly subdued through dinner, but Derek ascribed her mood to the exhausting day she'd had with her mother.

"I apologize," said Christina abruptly.

Meredith lifted an eyebrow. "You? Apologize? This is a momentous occasion" she responded wryly. "Should I get out my cell phone and take a picture?"

Christina stared at her. "You say less than half a dozen words all evening and now you're snarking at me? Seriously? Cut the crap or I'll take it back," she threatened.

"Fine," Meredith shrugged. "I take it back. Now, do I get to hear what this is about, or do I simply accept the miracle and move on?" She stared into her empty shot glass, looking as if her mind had already taken her away from her surroundings.

Christina looked nervous. "Okay. Well." She took a deep breath. "It's about your Mom."

Meredith's widened eyes flew to Christina's face, but she remained silent and otherwise motionless.

"That crack I made this morning about falling in love with her. I, ummm . . . . Well, I shouldn't have. Not when she talks to you that way. I thought my mother was bad, but you win. The bad mother Olympics, that is."

Meredith's eyes filled with tears and she pursed her lips for a moment, visibly struggling for composure. "So," she said bitterly, "my mother told you what she thinks of me." Meredith stared into her shot glass again, wishing she'd asked Joe for a bottle instead of a shot of tequila.

"No. Yes. No. Well, not exactly." Christina paused again, shredding her napkin while she figured out what to say next. Meredith couldn't remember seeing the normally unflappable intern so perturbed, and she frowned. Anything that had Christina this nervous had to be bad news—and given the connection to her mother. . . . Meredith steeled herself for whatever was coming next.

"Your mother didn't tell me anything about you—directly, that is. But I was reviewing her chart before going in to check on her vitals and your mom got kinda loud while she was talking to you—not loud loud, but in kind of a carrying tone—" Christina broke off at this point because the blood had drained so quickly from Meredith's face that she was afraid her person was going to faint.

"Go on," Meredith ordered tightly.

Christina picked up the narrative, watching Meredith closely for a reaction. "I took her chart and stood outside the door so no one would walk in. But, Mer—the Chief had her put right outside the nurses' station so they could keep an eye on her at all times—and I think they heard, too." She waited for a reaction, but Meredith still seemed frozen. "Not everyone on the floor. Just the ones at the station," she babbled to break the silence. "Just Tyler, and Linda, and Debbie." Christina winced as she realized she'd mentioned Nurse Debbie, Seattle Grace's resident gossip columnist. "Way to go, idiot," she admonished herself.

Released from her suddenly nerveless fingers, Meredith's empty glass clattered on the table, unnoticed by either of them. By the time Christina had finished speaking, Meredith's face was buried in her hands. "Great! Just. Freakin'. Great!!" Meredith groaned. "The entire hospital now knows that my mother, Ellis Grey--." She paused. "No. My mother, THE Ellis Grey, surgeon extraordinaire, inventor of the Grey Method, has pronounced me absolutely, unremarkably ordinary." Meredith's voice, so full of self-loathing, broke on the last word, and she looked as if the rest of her wasn't far behind. She buried her face in her hands, taking deep, deep breaths.

Christina watched for this display for a few moments, but it unnerved her when it didn't stop. "Meredith. Meredith. Stop it. Stop it right now or I'm going to tell Joe no more tequila for you for the rest of the evening. In fact, I'll tell him no more alcohol for a week."

"Don't you dare," said Meredith, her voice muffled because she was still burying her face in her hands. "I cannot get through my mother's stay at Seattle Grace sober."

"Meredith. Put your hands down. Put down your hands now," Christina ordered.

Meredith put her hands down, revealing eyes that were wet but not overflowing. "Tequila," she remarked decisively. "Sometimes you have some wonderful ideas, Christina. This is one of them. I'm going to the bar and Joe is going to bring me tequila. Lots of it. Jose Cuervo and I are going to become good friends again." Meredith stood up. "Are you coming?"

"Wait," Christina said, grabbing Meredith's hand swiftly. "You don't think anyone took your mother the Alzheimer's patient seriously, do you?" she asked incredulously. "You're one of the best interns in the program. You're head and shoulders above everybody else. Except me." Christina was further unnerved by how hard Meredith's expression was growing, so she tried to make a joke. "Hey! I already told you that you won the worst mother Olympics. So there. You've beaten me at something. Be proud." She beamed a big, fake smile.

"Tequila. Now," Meredith said expressionlessly, as she swiveled on one heel and strode toward Joe. Christina stared for just a moment, then grabbed their purses and hurried after her.

The evening deteriorated swiftly from that point on. Shaken by what he'd heard, Derek had no focus left for the dart game once Preston returned. Besides, he couldn't tear his eyes away from Meredith and Christina at the bar—Meredith silently and methodically downing shot after shot while Christina made intermittent attempts at conversation. After very few rounds, Preston sensed Derek's distraction and mentioned an early surgery the next morning, suggesting that they call it a night. Derek quickly acquiesced, hoping he'd be able to help "Dark and Twisty" (Christina's words) talk about what had happened once he took her home.

The ride home had been difficult. Derek tried repeatedly to start a conversation, only to be met with either monosyllabic replies or silence. Once they got home, Meredith made it clear that she was looking for sex, not conversation, by practically attacking him in the hallway. Once he got her into the bedroom, she proved insatiable, insisting on repeatedly bringing him to climax. The sex would have been mind-blowing if it hadn't been so one-sided; Meredith seemed to be almost unaware of his touch in her single-minded insistence on giving him pleasure. Of course, he had tried to reciprocate, but she flatly turned down all his attempts. Eventually, however, he refused to participate in any further activity unless she allowed him to return at least some of the attention she'd given him. She relented—sort of. She allowed him to touch her; however, her claim of having orgasmed came so swiftly that Derek had trouble believing she was being truthful. When he tried to renew his attentions to her, she claimed exhaustion and shut off the light, turning her back to him and clinging to her edge of the mattress.

"And it's been like living with a—a ghost ever since," he reflected. "She speaks when spoken to, she reacts to what's going on—but unless I make her angry, I can't make a conversation last more than three or four sentences. I keep talking to her body but her spirit's not really there. She's hurting and I can't reach her. I don't know what to do. I don't know . . . ." Without even realizing it, Derek began crying again, tears running silently down his cheeks as he wrestled with his frustration at being unable to help Meredith and his finally acknowledged fear that her emotional state might make it harder for the trauma team to bring her back.

Once Derek acknowledged that he was afraid that Meredith's emotional state might complicate her ability to recover, ugly questions started creeping in. Why was Meredith lying in the bathtub like a corpse this morning? Was she trying to commit suicide? Or quasi-suicide, since she couldn't really commit suicide in the bathtub—her reflexes would have forced her up. Wasn't that right? Yes, that was right, but . . . shouldn't he have known something was wrong, really wrong?

WHY was Meredith in the water? The thoughts were coming faster now, as was the panic. Meredith had been in the water far away from the ferry crash. The sidewalk hadn't collapsed, there was no debris that could have knocked her over, no other victims waiting to be rescued—what was she doing in the water? Could . . . could she have . . . ? His mind raced furiously, cataloging her behaviors of the past few days. Damn! What kind of doctor was he, that he couldn't recognize acute depression?! He should have done something. He could have made her talk to him if he tried harder. Or gotten a psych consult. Or convinced her to get a psych consult. Or—Derek shuddered in horror. Was he actually contemplating the possibility that Meredith had tried to commit suicide?

Derek shook his head vigorously from side to side. No, this was just crazy, he decided. There was no way Meredith would have just jumped in the water like that. Even if he couldn't be sure about the state of her emotions, he knew she would never have abandoned that little girl in the middle of a mass casualty scene. So, something must have pulled or knocked her into the water.

Another drowning victim? It was possible (and a much more attractive option than the alternative). He hadn't been looking for anyone else when he dived after Meredith; if she'd been unsuccessful in rescuing someone else, there very well could be a body there. The Coast Guard or some other emergency services crew would find it. Yes. That was the answer to the riddle.

But—if that was true—why wasn't the body close to Meredith? And why was she herself drowning so close to the shore? All it would have taken was swimming a few yards and she could have pulled herself to safety. The stairs were right there! After all, she'd already disappeared from the surface and he'd managed to find her and rescue her. How could she have been in danger of drowning from a rescue where she had to have seen a victim before diving in?

He hurriedly tried to make excuses. Meredith was a small person with very little body fat; she would have succumbed to the cold quicker than he did. Or maybe she hadn't slept well because of the situation with her mother and exhaustion caused her to overestimate her strength and she stayed out too long trying to bring the other person in. Or maybe she hit her head on floating debris and was knocked unconscious. It was possible. Any and all of those scenarios were possible.

Weren't they?

Derek could have satisfied himself with these possible explanations for Meredith's waterlogged state if it hadn't been for a persistent image of a naked, wet Meredith cavorting in the back of his mind, a remnant of a brisk autumn morning when they'd gone skinny-dipping in the lake on his property. Damned memory! The last thing he wanted to think about was Meredith's skill in the water. But . . . it had been a pleasant memory in other times, one that he had clung to when Addison indulged in her periodic rants about the trailer and the trout he cooked therein. With a sigh mixed of equal parts of pain and pleasure, he surrendered to the memory.

It had been a beautiful morning, although unusually cool for early September. After a decidedly grumpy rejection when he tried to interest Meredith in some early morning lovemaking, Derek quietly slipped out of the trailer to surprise her with some fresh-caught rainbow trout for breakfast. He had just finished reeling in his catch of the day when a sleepy-eyed Meredith showed up.

"What are you doing, Derek?" she yawned, slipping her arms around him from behind.

"Catching breakfast," he answered jauntily, enjoying the feel of Meredith leaning against him. He pressed his arms down on hers as the best approximation of a hug he could manage while unhooking his latest catch. "How would you like to help me clean this trout?"

Meredith yawned again before talking. "I just spent thirty-six hours on duty and then an evening—a very late evening, I might add—with you, and you want me to clean a fish? You," she poked a finger in his stomach for his impertinence, "have forgotten who you're talking to." She released her hold on him and ambled to a nearby rock, where she sat down and drew her legs up close to her chest for warmth.

"No, I haven't," was his cheerful reply. "I'm talking to the woman who thinks mornings should be made illegal." He smiled, thinking Meredith couldn't possibly look cuter or sexier than she did at that moment, huddled in his pajama top.

Meredith gave him a mock-glare through slitted eyelids. "That's not what I said. I said that waking someone up unnecessarily should not be a capital offence the first time."

"Then it's a good thing this was my first offence," he grinned. "I'd hate to think my girlfriend wanted to be my executioner."

Meredith closed her eyes against what Christina had christened the McDreamy smile. "Don't tempt me," she muttered.

"What was that?" he asked solicitously, still smiling.

"I need coffee," Meredith said, standing up. "I'll see you back at the trailer."

The sight of Meredith shuffling off, still grumbling under her breath about his inability to wake up in a reasonably uncheerful mood was more temptation than Derek could resist. "C'mon, Meredith. You don't need coffee. Just smell all this fresh air. Enjoy the sunshine and the birdsong. Let Mother Nature be your wake-up call."

Meredith looked at him suspiciously. "That comment better not mean you forgot to buy coffee, Dr. Shepherd—because if it did, then it's going to be long time before you bring me up here again."

Derek hurriedly ran through a mental list of errands he'd run the previous afternoon and sighed in relief. He was safe from uncaffeinated Meredith. "Would I do that to you?" he asked reproachfully.

Meredith's expression remained unchanged.

"Oh, ye of little faith. I stopped by the Roasteria and got your favorite beans.

Meredith's expression relaxed. "Okay, you're forgiven."

"For what?" he asked incredulously, trying hard to hide his smirk. "Catching, cleaning, and cooking breakfast?"

"For being cheerful." Meredith started walking back to the trailer. "I'll have a pot brewed by the time you're done. Behave, and I'll share it with you."

If he'd had half the brains a neurosurgeon should, he would have left well enough alone—Meredith's trek back to the trailer signaled her disinterest in further interaction. However, the relationship was young and they were still exploring each other's boundaries.

"Come on, Meredith. Keep me company while I clean the fish. Then, we can wash up with a swim in the lake. A naked swim. Skinny-dipping." He wiggled his eyebrows salaciously. Whatever had possessed Derek to say this had clearly bypassed the rational part of his brain. The water would be chilly, and he'd been looking forward to a hot shower in the trailer. But the look of disgust he knew would appear on Meredith's face was bait enough. Besides, it wasn't as if she was going to take him up on his offer.

Meredith refused even to turn around, although the grumbling got louder.

Time for a parting shot at her retreating back. "What's the matter, Meredith? Afraid of a little cold water first thing in the morning?" Not expecting a response, he began slicing open the trout as he chuckled at his own cleverness.

Unbeknownst to Derek, his girlfriend had turned around and was heading toward him at high speed; she had decided enough was enough. The next thing he knew, Meredith had popped up in his face so suddenly he almost cut himself instead of the trout.

"Afraid. You think I'm afraid. I'll show you how not afraid I am. I challenge you. I challenge you to a race to the opposite shore and back." Meredith was punctuating her challenge by repeatedly poking him in the chest. "And when I win, you will promise me a week of absolutely peaceful, not-cheerful-in-the-slightest, letting-me-sleep-as-late-as-I-want-to mornings."

Derek deposited the half-cleaned trout in the bucket, unsuccessfully trying to hide his smirk. Did tiny little Meredith truly think she could beat him in a race?

"You're smirking at me."

"No, I'm not," Derek claimed even as his smile got broader. "I'm just wondering what's in this challenge for me. What do I get when I win? Will you finish preparing breakfast?"

Meredith gave him a deadpan stare. "You want me to cook?"

Derek reconsidered. That was definitely a lose-lose proposition. He thought for a moment about the last bet they'd made—one he'd particularly enjoyed winning. "Hmmm. How about . . . the loser is the winner's love slave?"

"Done," said Meredith decisively. She was going to win not only a much–needed chance to catch up on some sleep, but also a chance to try out some interesting ideas from that article in Izzie's latest Cosmo. "Now strip," she ordered, shucking off her own clothes.

Within moments of the race's start, Derek realized he was in trouble. Meredith was capable of astonishing speed in the water, passing him on her way back when he'd swum only two-thirds of the distance. Even worse, she called out, "Keep up, old man" and then giggled when he tried to cheat by reversing direction as soon as she'd passed him—and still wasn't able to reach their starting point before she did.

Winning put Meredith in an extraordinarily good mood, so all promised penalties of imposed "non-cheerfulness" were waived. They felt nice and warm after their exercise, so they stayed in the water and played a game of tag that she also won, easily evading his attempts to touch an arm or a foot while she was able to score hits on far more interesting parts of his anatomy. After one "tag" in particular left him feeling warm in more ways than one, he accused her of being part dolphin in reference to a show they'd seen on the Nature channel a few days earlier. She responded with a series of ersatz whistles, clicks, and chirps that left him helpless with laughter. Once he recovered, she confessed that swimming was the only phys ed elective her mother would let her choose from middle school through college because it was the sport least likely to damage her hands.

Eventually, they made their way back to the trailer for brunch, where Derek realized he should have caught more fish. Ravenous from the unexpected exercise, they quickly devoured his catch, with Meredith taking the lion's share. He wound up eating a bowl of Muesli to make up for the virtually missed meal. Even so, he couldn't remember another trout that had ever tasted even half so good.

When they finally got around to washing up in the admittedly limited space offered in the trailer's shower stall, Derek got to show some athletic ability of his own, creating a maneuver Meredith forever after referred to as "that bendy thing you do in the shower."

Chapter 5

Author's NoteSome of the reasoning behind Derek's treatment of Ellis may be faulty, as my medical background consists of watching medical shows like Grey's Anatomy. Please forgive any errors.

A meal cart rattling through the hallway startled Derek out of his reverie. His smile faded quickly as he reviewed the grim facts. He had found Meredith floating in the water just a few yards from a concrete walkway with stairs. He'd been able to find her beneath the water and carry her to safety while she, the better swimmer, had been unable (?) to bring even herself to safety. No matter how many scenarios he concocted, he couldn't force it to make sense.

He hoped he was wrong. Oh, God, he hoped he was wrong. But if he wasn't—if she really had tried to end it all—then it was his fault. He loved Meredith. He loved Meredith and yet hadn't seen how troubled she was. He hadn't seen it.

"I'm an idiot," he thought bitterly. "Meredith warned me over and over again about her mother. I saw how panicked she was and I ignored her even after I'd had a taste of the woman's personality myself."

He could still hear Ellis' accusations. "An attending. A neurosurgeon. No wonder she's so unfocused. . . . I've seen men like you before. Threatened by a woman who's their equal. You just want someone to admire you. And you don't care about the damage you do to her along the way." He shook his head at Ellis' shortsightedness. How could her own mother not see that Meredith was far happier with him than without him?

"Damage her? The only time I ever damaged Meredith is when I left her," he fumed. "Now that we're together, I'm never going to leave her again. And if it takes the rest of our lives for me to convince her of that, then that's what I'm going to do."

Derek thought about what it must have been like for Meredith to grow up with no father and a mother unable to see any good in her, and he cringed. No wonder she was, in her words, "dark and twisty," ready to believe the worst about herself and about their relationship—so afraid to believe that he really loved her. "She's beautiful, so beautiful. And bossy, in a very cute way, although she can be fierce when she needs to be. And she has a terrific sense of humor—she gets my jokes. She gets me. She gets me like nobody else. She's the love of my life. What the hell could Ellis have done to her, said to her over the years to make such an incredible woman believe she's not worth loving?!" Derek seethed, thinking of the pain he'd seen in Meredith's eyes over the past couple of days.

Derek stared at Ellis, still peacefully asleep and unaware of the simmering volcano on the couch just a few feet away. "How can Meredith believe the rants of such an obviously twisted woman?" Derek wondered in exasperation even as he acknowledged the unfairness of the question. He began crying silently again, feeling guilty for his inability to make Meredith's pain go away—and by extension, prevent her attempt to drown herself. He should have known. He should have done something.

Ellis stirred slightly, showing that the lorazepam was wearing off. Derek hastily tried to quash his feelings so that he could deal with speaking to Ellis. His anger toward her was oh, so deserved—but he could hardly confront her with it. "You're here because Meredith can't be," he told himself. She loves her mother, no matter how badly she's been treated. When—if—when she gets better, she won't appreciate me yelling at that woman no matter how much she's earned it."

"Besides, she's a patient," he continued. "A patient, and I'm a doctor. Doctors don't beat up on patients, especially Alzheimer's patients. She wouldn't understand me even if I tried. So, no yelling. Absolutely no yelling." He looked at Ellis, trying to see her as a patient instead of the harridan who'd been haunting his imagination. His success was limited.

Ellis woke. Her eyes were bright and she seemed to show no lingering effects from the sedation. She looked around the room and spotted Derek. "Water. Get me some water," she ordered. There was no way to know whether she recognized him; he assumed she hadn't but felt that she had the right to order everyone around. On the other hand, the "request" was to be expected. Thirst was a predictable side effect of lorazepam.

"You're doing this for Meredith," Derek reminded himself as he nodded his acknowledgement of the order. He wiped his eyes as he walked to Ellis' bedside. Not trusting himself to speak, he poured a glass of water, inserted a flexible straw, and handed it to her. She focused immediately on her drink, like a small, hungry child who's been handed a bottle.

Derek saw her simpleminded concentration and tried to see her as the (mental) child she so clearly was at that moment. He even began stroking her hair as he would that of a small child, trying to summon some gentleness from his soul that would keep him from saying the words trying to batter their way through his teeth.

The best he could do was to put a tight rein on his tone.

Derek began by speaking softly, almost soothingly, once he'd used the stroking of her hair to force her head back so she was looking at him. "You broke her. You call her ordinary. You taught her time and time again that nothing she does ever is good enough. Every good thing Meredith is happened despite you." Ellis looked curious but uncomprehending.

Frustrated at his inability to make Ellis understand her culpability for Meredith's depression and perhaps-attempted suicide, he unconsciously let some of his anger bleed into his tone. "She may not survive this and that's on you." As his self control dropped, his volume rose. "That—is on you!" he snapped furiously. Although she didn't respond, Ellis was still focused on Derek's face with a look of intense concentration; if he hadn't known better, he could almost believe she'd been listening to him.

Addison was completing her own walk through the wards, checking for any emergent situations that normally would have been taken care of by the other attendings who were caught up in the rush of ferryboat crash victims when she heard Derek's voice coming from a patient's room. He sounded angry, so she rushed over.

When she got there, she could scarcely believe what she was seeing—her normally sunny-tempered (at least with patients) ex-husband berating a patient too altered to understand a word he was saying. Of course, Ellis Grey wasn't one of his favorite people—not after she'd savagely attacked Meredith. (Addison had heard the gossip about Ellis' attack on Meredith and hoped the stories had grown in the telling. If even a fraction of what she'd heard was true, it had been ugly.) Still, she thought with a mixture of pity and horror, she had to get him out of there ASAP. She called out his name, hoping he'd come out without making any more of a scene than he already had.

For a moment, Derek hesitated. Ellis really deserved this tongue-lashing even if she couldn't understand it—and oh, how he wanted to give it to her. Still, Addison was probably right to call him out. He turned and walked away, not noticing that Ellis' eyes were still following him as he left the room.

The fact that he was leaving Ellis' room didn't mean he had nothing left to say—and if he couldn't say it to her, he'd say it about her. As soon as he got to the doorway, he started. "That woman is—."

Addison cut him off. "She is a black hole, there is no question, but she can't help herself and she certainly can't fix Meredith."

This bit of logic would have been convincing, but it was unnecessary. Once Addison cut him off, Derek realized that Ellis was a secondary issue unworthy of consideration. His own guilt was the real issue. "It's my fault," he confessed, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Confused by the abrupt switch in mood, Addison watched him pace agitatedly in the small space by the nurses' station, looking as if he were about to either burst into tears or hyperventilate—or both. How like him, she thought, to assume he could control the universe so as to prevent Meredith's accident and then blame himself when it didn't work. "Don't—" she began.

Derek continued speaking as though she hadn't even spoken. The words poured out of him, as if he couldn't bear to keep his guilt to himself for another moment. "See, I knew what was going on and I wasn't there for her.

Addison's heart sank; she could see how badly her ex-husband was letting his fears overwhelm his reason. She decided to try again; on some level, Derek had to be rational enough to accept that he couldn't be by his girlfriend's side twenty-four hours a day. "You were human," she said, pleading with him to accept his limitations.

Derek realized what Addison didn't understand what he was saying, so he tried to be more specific even though it was getting harder to talk. "She was pulling away from me, and I just—I—I just. . . ." He had to stop talking or break into sobs. He concentrated on regaining both his breath and his self-control.

Addison frowned. This was not like Derek, to go from fearing something terrible—Meredith's death—to creating fantasies to make the reality even worse. Maybe she was misunderstanding what he was saying. "You . . . you think that she went in the water on purpose?" she asked doubtfully.

Derek nodded his assent, knowing he had to explain his reasoning. "She knows how to swim. She's a good swimmer." Derek stared at the floor, trying once again to suppress his sobs.

His grief has unhinged him, she thought. Let me see if I can make him see reason. "Derek, you don't know that she's—" Derek was still staring at the floor, so Addison took his face in both of her hands and forced him to look at her. She put every bit of faith she could into her words, trying to will him away from the despair that had distorted his judgment.

"No, you do not get to break down, you do not get to fall apart," she commanded. "Not when there is still a chance, and there still is a chance, Derek. OK?"

Derek pondered her words. They made sense. They didn't address the issue of his guilt, but they redirected his focus to the important issue. He didn't know yet whether Meredith had succeeded in her suicide attempt. He still might have a chance to make it up to her. "O.K.," he replied.

Addison's beeper sounded. She checked the message and then looked at him ruefully; they both knew she had to leave. She looked at him to see if she could leave him safely, and he nodded at her. He was under control again, at least for now. "O.K.," she acknowledged," clasping his arm and giving him a sad smile before leaving.

Derek settled back against a pillar. "What do I do now?" he wondered.

It was only moments later that Derek heard Ellis' cardiac monitor sounding an alarm and the nurses calling a Code Blue. Derek went with the nurses, wryly aware that he was probably the last doctor at Seattle Grace who should be working on this particular patient, but also knowing there were no other doctors immediately available. He ran the code, listening to a rundown of Ellis' vitals while he tubed her. Once he'd taken care of the immediate emergency, it was time to let her real doctor take over. "Did you page Dr. Burke?" he asked.

Nurse Tyler answered. "He's in Trauma doing cardiopulmonary bypass."

"On Meredith Grey?" Derek raised his head. This was the first piece of news he'd gotten on Meredith's progress in well over two hours.

"Yes, sir." Tyler confirmed solemnly. He knew what the information meant to Derek.

So, they still hadn't given up. This was good news, right? Resisting the urge to savor the moment, Derek forced his attention back to the patient before him. All they had to do was get her heart started again; he'd done this sort of thing many times before when covering the Pit during mass casualty events. He could do this. "All right. Let's push the atropine," he ordered.

When the atropine didn't work, Derek started CPR, surprised at the soreness in his arms until he realized that he'd already spent an hour performing the same exercise on Meredith earlier that day. Well, this time he was going to make sure it worked. Work again, that is. Because it worked on Meredith. She was going to regain consciousness soon, and he'd be damned before he'd tell her that he killed her mother. He glared at Ellis as if he suspected her of being perverse enough to choose to die that day just for the purpose of hurting him. Or Meredith. Or both of them. "This is not gonna happen today," he informed her. "You are not going to die on me today. Not today."

As if to contradict him, the cardiac monitor sounded a new alarm. Time to step up his game. "V-fib. Give me the paddles." Trusting the cardiac team to do its job, Derek didn't call out a voltage. He just waited for the gel to be put on the paddles, rubbed them together, put the paddles to her chest, and shouted, "Clear!"

What they were doing wasn't working. "Still V-fib," Derek noted—not that he had to. The alarm was still sounding. Time for another shock. "Charge to 300" he ordered. "Clear!"

Derek was afraid to try any further shocks. Ellis's brain hadn't been functioning well from the start, and he wasn't confident it (not to mention the rest of her body) could stand any more shocks. He'd switched back to CPR, but the monitors weren't telling him anything he wanted to hear. "Is the lidocaine in?" he asked.

"Yes," answered Tyler.

"Then hold the compressions," Derek ordered. Maybe what her body needed was a chance to catch up to everything that had been done to it. What time was it? A look at the clock told him that they'd been working on her for close to thirty minutes. The time was rapidly coming when he'd be forced to call the time of death if something didn't change soon. He probably should have handed Ellis over to another doctor—one who actually knew more about taking care of hearts than the kind of first aid an intern could pull off in the Pit. Damn!

Derek stared at the monitor. "Come on," he chanted under his breath. Come on, come on, come on, come on . . . ."

No change. "Page someone," he ordered as he resumed compressions. "Burke can't be the only doctor in this department."

It seemed like forever (and it damned near was) before Chaturvedi, a Cardio attending, joined them. He assessed their treatment plan while Derek continued to perform CPR. Chaturvedi listened intently while Derek outlined the steps he'd taken and then gave the chart a cursory glance. "What's next?" asked Derek, hoping against hope that the other doctor could pull a rabbit out of his hat—or the drug cabinet or the whatever. Chaturvedi shook his head from side to side. "How long has she been down?" he asked matter-of-factly, as if waiting for the last piece of the puzzle before making a decision. Derek's face crumpled. He recognized that tone of voice and lowered his head, staring at his hands as they performed compressions. He did not want to answer the question because he was sure he knew what Chaturvedi's next statement would be. "Forty-five minutes, doctor," answered Nurse Tyler after an uncomfortable silence. Chaturvedi studied the bowed head and shoulders of the other attending. Although the time of death should already have been called, the doctor obviously wasn't ready to give up. In other circumstances, he'd just call the time of death himself, but . . . he supposed it wouldn't hurt to let them try a little longer. It wasn't as if the patient could feel anything any more. "I'd give it another fifteen minutes. If nothing happens by then, call it." Raised eyebrows could be seen on all faces but one. Chaturvedi gave a brief shake of head to the cardiac team, telling them not to question his order.

Derek was reassured. Fifteen minutes! That must mean there was something else to try. He looked up with a relieved sigh. "So what else should we be doing?"

Chaturvedi frowned slightly. What else was there left to try? "Nothing else."

Derek faltered in his compressions. "Surely," he thought, "surely a cardiologist . . . ." But as he looked at Chaturvedi's face and then at the faces of the rest of the team, he realized they'd all been humoring him. Ellis was dead. He'd failed again.

"What should I have done differently?" he choked out.

"Nothing. Nothing at all," Chaturvedi hastened to reassure him. This patient's cardiac arrhythmia was so severe that only surgery could have saved her. Every heartbeat was Russian roulette." Derek turned away, not interested in the rest of the explanation.

As he walked out of the room, he heard Chaturvedi say, "Time of death, 15:38. Who was that doctor, and did anyone here realize he was working on a loved one? Why wasn't I . . . .?" The rest was lost as he rounded a corner.

Chapter 6

"Preston would have operated on Ellis this morning if it weren't for the crash. She'd still be alive. So, the ferryboat claims two Grey women as victims," he thought bitterly. "Maybe I'd better rethink my hobby."

Thinking of Meredith made him check his pager. Still no message. He did some quick calculations in his head. It had already been three-and-a-half hours since he brought Meredith out of the water. Four hours was the longest anyone had survived that kind of trauma. Another deadline he didn't want to face. He thought about checking on what was happening in Trauma One, but decided against it. If the team had wanted him there, they would have paged him. So, either they were still working on her and he wasn't welcome, or . . . there was no need to hurry for any other kind of information.

His pager beeped. Addison? Why . . . ? She probably just wanted to check up on him, he decided. Unless the page was from the Chief, Preston, or Miranda, he wasn't going to answer. Addison and Mark and everyone else could just . . . wait. He needed some time to compose himself. Derek decided the roof offered him his best chance at solitude, and he was right. Unless a patient was coming in by helicopter, the roof usually remained deserted. This was even likelier to be true on such a raw, windy day. He sat down in a far corner and looked at his watch. He was sure he hadn't taken Meredith out of the water any earlier than noon, so 4:00 p.m. had to be the latest that she could be revived. If he didn't get a page by then, it was all over.

He tried to stay calm by clearing his mind of all thought, using the second hand on his watch as a focal piece. However, exhaustion had robbed him of that level of discipline. Before long, he had dissolved into a jumble of tears and petitions—begging Meredith not to die, begging God not to let her die, and begging them both to forgive him for having failed her so utterly. He promised anything and everything he could think of, begging for one more chance to make things right.

Once he'd cried himself out, the weather helped to bring Derek back to his surroundings. He hadn't bothered to put on a coat, and his sweater wasn't enough protection against the damp wind. He checked his watch — 4:18 — and then his pager. Nothing.

So. Meredith was dead. They must not have paged him because they were refusing to admit the obvious—the way he had with Ellis.

He should go. He should go and say good-bye.

Derek was moving slowly toward the heliport elevator when his beeper sounded. It was Miranda. He was numbly surprised at that; he'd expected the Chief to be the one to break the bad news. But it didn't matter. He'd see them all downstairs, or he wouldn't.

The elevator ride was entirely too short for Derek's comfort. He forced himself, step by step, to move toward Trauma One, only to stop in bewilderment at the sight of the empty room. Had they taken her to the morgue so quickly? He stopped a passing nurse. "Where have they taken Dr. Grey?"

She smiled at him. "You haven't heard? She's been taken up to the third floor."

Derek wondered if he was hallucinating. There was no way Meredith could have survived for more than four hours . . . but third floor . . . that wasn't the morgue . . . patients were kept on the third floor . . . that meant . . . but how . . . .?" Derek shook his head, feeling like he was thinking underwater. It didn't make sense.

The nurse looked at him quizzically. He looked terrible, but that was to be expected. Not even Shepherd could be expected to pull off the renowned "McDreamy" look when he'd apparently been doing nothing but crying for the past few hours. But this—this was bizarre. Couldn't he even smile at the good news?

She didn't have long to wait before Derek realized that none of it had to make sense. What was important was that Meredith was alive! She was ALIVE! He laughed delightedly and then hugged the bemused nurse. "Where is she? What room number?" he asked, then laughed again when she shook her head from side to side and shrugged.

"That's okay. I'll call Dr. Bailey," he reassured her, heading toward the phone at the nurses' station. Then he reversed course, heading for the stairway. He decided it would be quicker to go up there and search for himself. Either he'd find Meredith, or he'd find Miranda. Or another wonderful, wonderful nurse with the room assignments. No matter what happened, he'd wind up in Meredith's room. Living Meredith's room. Living, breathing Meredith's room. By the time Derek had finished thinking all this, he was already up on the third floor and headed toward the nurses' station.

Before he could get there, Miranda intercepted him. "Now, Derek," she said nervously, wanting to explain why she'd kept him waiting until Meredith had been settled in her new room.

"How is she? Where is she? Where's Meredith?" he interrupted breathlessly, eyes darting to the various open doors.

Miranda sighed. Derek might not need an explanation for the delay, but he had to be calmed down before he went into the room or he was likely to cause a ruckus that was entirely against Meredith's best interests. "Derek," she said gently, waiting for him to focus on her. "Dr. Shepherd," she said, in her customary no-nonsense tone when he kept looking everywhere but at her. It worked. "Miranda, I have to see her. Please. Please, just tell me where she is," he pleaded.

"I'll take you to see her, but first you're gonna listen to me. We just spent over three hours pounding on that girl's chest and putting her through all kinds of procedures. Now, she's alive and she's talking, but she needs to rest. So what I want you to do is calm down. And clean up. You'll scare her looking like that, and the last thing she needs is to start worrying about you."

"But . . . ." he protested.

Miranda folded her arms and stared at him. "I'm your boss," he offered feebly.

"And your girlfriend is my patient." She stared at him, waiting for him to start moving. "Scoot! Go take care of business. I'll wait for you until you come back."

Derek continued to look at her with a woebegone expression. It would have worked on just about any other woman on the planet. It almost worked on Miranda.

Almost.

Her tone softened. "She's O.K., Derek. She's O.K. Go wash up. She's gonna be here when you get back."

Derek stared at his reflection in the men's room mirror, conceding that Miranda had a valid point. His eyes were still swollen from crying and the dust from the roof made his tear tracks visible. Also, his hair had been blown into a bird's nest. While Derek worked at making himself presentable, he thought about what Miranda had said. Meredith had been through an ordeal; grabbing her for hugs and kisses probably wasn't the best idea right now."It doesn't matter," he thought. "It doesn't matter. Right now, I'm going to celebrate the fact that she's alive and that I'm never going to let anything like this happen to her ever again."

He studied himself in the mirror. Cold water hadn't done much for the puffy eyes, but his face was clean, and his hair looked like it belonged on his head. It would have to do.

He was surprised to find himself a touch nervous when he presented himself for Miranda's inspection. Would he pass muster? She really only kept him waiting for five seconds or so, but that was four-and-a-half seconds for Derek to wonder if something awful had happened during his absence. Maybe they only thought Meredith was O.K. before, and now they knew better.

Miranda made him wait those extra four-and-a-half seconds, making sure he was in control of himself. Finally, she smiled her approval. "Room 3312, Dr. Shepherd."

The next thing Miranda knew, she was being enveloped in a bear hug. "Thank you, thank you," she heard Derek whisper relievedly into the top of her head.

"Just doing my job," she replied, her answer muffled by his chest. She would have hugged him back, but he had pinned her arms to her sides. Almost immediately, he released her and proceeded rapidly down the hallway.

"And don't keep her awake too long," she yelled after his retreating back. She thought about telling him not to stay too long, but decided not to waste her breath. After all, there were some things in this life that were beyond even Miranda Bailey.

He stopped at her doorway. How pale she looked. How pale and how . . . tiny. He had always enjoyed how petite she was, but now she looked almost swallowed up in a huge bed. She was sleeping. He debated going into the room and sitting by the bed, but he decided against it. Better to let her rest. Besides, he was perfectly okay at the doorway, just watching the slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathed on her own power. How terrified he had been that he'd never see that sight again. "Thank you," he whispered—to God? Fate? The trauma team? Meredith herself? The who mattered less than the fact that Meredith had been given back to him.

Eventually his thoughts returned to more earthbound matters. He'd have to remember to ask the Chief for time off to help Meredith through her recovery. That thought led him to wonder about the nature of Meredith's recovery. Of course, she'd need time off to recover from physical injuries; Meredith must have had almost four hours of CPR, warm-water lavages, cardiopulmonary bypass, a flood of ACLS drugs, and whatever else the trauma team might have thought to try. Given how long she'd been down, they must have gone through every warming procedure in the book to get her back. She had to be in a lot of pain—and probably not able to take anything stronger than ibuprofen for it until they were sure her respiration levels were strong enough to handle a major analgesic. Once she woke up, he'd check her chart and then ask Miranda about prescribing something if she needed it. Yeah, she was going to need at least a couple of weeks to recover from all this.

The thought of Meredith coming back to work made his heart skip a beat. Just how much brain function did Meredith have left? Miranda had assured him that Meredith was talking earlier, but hadn't said anything about her level of function. He thought about the cognitive tests he would run later on to determine whether she had retained all of her faculties. If the news was bad? He simply dismissed that thought; his nervous system had been overloaded too badly to handle the possibility of any more bad news. The hypothermia should have protected her brain, so they should be hearing only good news on that front. If the news was bad, they'd handle it when it had to be handled. He resolved not to do any neurological testing for now, not even a diagnostic question or two. "Sufficient unto the day," thought Derek, quoting one of his mother's favorite sayings in times of stress. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

He also resolved not to say anything about Ellis' death. Meredith had plenty of time to cope with that news later on, too. Time enough to cope. Time enough to heal. She'd get through this. They'd get through this. They would. He'd do whatever Meredith needed him to do to help her get better. She would get better. He believed this. He had to believe this, so he believed this. He would make her talk to him about whatever was bothering her, and she would get better.

With nothing else left to resolve or plan, Derek went back to counting her resps. Eventually, Meredith opened her eyes. It took only a moment or so for her to spot him. Once she did, he nodded and then smiled at her. What a relief to know that she recognized him.

"Hey," he greeted her softly.

"Hey," she answered.

Derek walked slowly toward Meredith and gave her a brief kiss. She sighed, grateful that he'd finally made it to her bedside. There was so much she wanted to tell him. Derek, too, sighed. There was so much he wanted to say to her, too—some of it quite painful. He wanted to tell her he'd be there for her, that he'd help her through whatever she was going through, but he didn't know how to say it without bringing up her attempted suicide.

"Meredith—" Derek began, but Meredith didn't wait for him to finish.

"My mother's dead, isn't she?" she asked softly. She had a vivid memory of a conversation with her mother and wasn't sure whether it was a ketamine neurotransmitter-induced dream born of her near-death experience or simply wishful thinking. Or real. But knowing whether her mother had actually died might help to narrow the possibilities.

Derek was taken aback. That was the last topic he had intended to bring up. Or expected Meredith to bring up. How could he explain to her what he had done? Or, more properly in this case, failed to do. Still, he owed her the truth. "Yes," he whispered. Meredith whispered back "It's O.K." She paused. "I think." She sounded as if she were trying the idea on for size.

Derek hunkered down so that he and Meredith were at eye level. He wanted to offer her emotional support, and this was as close as he could get to her. She looked him straight in the eye, but he wasn't sure what she was looking for.

"I think it's O.K." she said, a little more firmly this time. After a few more moments, she asked, "Do you know how it happened?"

Derek took one of her hands into his steeled himself for his confession. "Her surgery was pushed back because of the ferryboat crash. She went into V-fib around 2:30. The cardiac team and I worked on her for forty-five minutes or so, but we were unable to re-establish her heartbeat. Mer, honey, we did everything . . . ." Meredith surprised Derek by pulling his hand up to her mouth and kissing it. "Thank you," she said as she smiled at him. Derek frowned in confusion.

"Mom was afraid of dying alone. When we were getting ready to put her in Roseridge, she asked only two things of me. The first was that I not let anyone know what had happened to her. The second was that I keep visiting her. She knew she was dying, and she didn't want to die alone." She kissed his hand again and then caressed it with both her hands. ""You were there for her when I couldn't be. You made sure she didn't die alone."

Derek felt a wave of relief wash over him. Not only was Meredith not upset at him about her mother's death, she was actually comforted because he had been the last physician working on her. "I'm glad I could help," he replied softly, squeezing her hand gently.

They spent the next couple of minutes in a comfortable silence. Derek wondered how long he would have before Miranda came back to check on her when he realized that he hadn't seen any of the interns since he'd gotten to the third floor. "What happened to your fellow interns?" he asked. "I'm surprised I didn't have to fight my way through them to get here."

Meredith gave a small grin. "Bailey let them bring me up and get me settled. Then she said that anyone who wasn't out in ten minutes wouldn't get another surgery for a month."

Derek grinned back. Trust Miranda to find a threat that would work on all of them, even Yang. "That's our Nazi," he commented. "How did Christina take it?"

"She wasn't happy. None of them were, but she had less reason than the others to complain. We talked while I was still downstairs. Did you know she and Burke are engaged?"

They indulged in small talk. Meredith kept up her end of the conversation at first, but it didn't take long for her to run out of energy. Soon after she had finished updating Derek on her conversations with each of the interns, she started dozing.

Derek settled himself into a corner chair to wait for the next time she woke up. Despite his promise to himself not to act like a diagnostician, Derek was cheered by the fact that she was holding a lucid conversation and that her short-term memory seemed to be intact. He was also impressed by Miranda's thoughtfulness in clearing the interns out of the way so that he could be alone with Meredith. Within minutes, exhaustion caught up with him, too, and he started drifting off.

Fifteen minutes later, Miranda came in. Derek opened his eyes and immediately rose to his feet; he wanted to be sure he didn't miss anything. "Nice to see that you're behaving yourself," she greeted him. Derek raised an eyebrow but otherwise didn't respond.

Miranda continued on to the bed, where she studied the readings, paying particular attention to the pulse-ox meter. Finally, she touched Meredith's shoulder. "Sorry to wake you up, Grey, but I need to ask you a couple of questions before I give you any pain meds. How are you feeling?

It took Meredith a little longer to wake up, and she frowned as she did so. Actually focusing on her pains made them hurt worse than they had before. "Sleepy," responded Meredith. "And ouchy." She knew she should be more specific, but she was still on her way to becoming fully lucid. Then something caught her attention. "Did you say pain meds?"

"Yes, I said pain meds. Did you think we were going to let you suffer all night?" Miranda took another look at the pulse-ox reading. "How's your breathing?" "Fine," answered Meredith. "Except my chest hurts when I do it." "Mmm," acknowledged Miranda noncommittally. She looked at Derek. "Dr. Shepherd, have you noticed any problems with Dr. Grey's respirations?"

"No, she's been breathing quite beautifully ever since I got here," he said as he walked over to the bedside. He smiled broadly. "Actually, she's been downright gorgeous about it."

"Derek!" she protested feebly, a faint blush rising in her cheeks. "Dr. Bailey is asking for a medical assessment, not a compliment."

"Yes, Dr. Grey, thank you for clarifying the incredibly obvious for your doctor-boyfriend," Miranda said dryly as she scribbled some notes. She really was amused rather than angry, but she had an image to maintain. "Don't make me take back what I said about you behaving yourself," she mock-warned Derek. The unrepentant doctor-boyfriend shrugged and grinned. The color in Meredith's cheeks was reward enough.

Miranda returned her attention to Meredith. "Since you, your boyfriend, and the machines are all in agreement about your breathing, you can have this," she said, taking a syringe out of her pocket and injecting something into the IV line."What is it?" Meredith asked.

"Never you mind," answered Miranda, surprising them both."Dr. Bailey," began Derek, only to be cut off.

"Uh-uh. Neither one of you is a doctor tonight. Patient," she said, pointing at Meredith. "Boyfriend of patient," she said, pointing at Derek. "It's time for both of you—it's time for all three of us—to get some rest." She smiled for the first time in many hours. "Welcome back, Meredith."

"Thank you, Dr. Bailey."

"Are you coming, Dr. Shepherd?" Miranda asked. "Meredith needs her sleep, you know." She knew the odds on getting him out of the room were low, but she had to try.

"No, I think I'll stay just a little while longer," he lied, hoping Miranda wouldn't see through him. While he knew his status as an attending allowed him to be in the hospital at any hour he chose, he wouldn't put it past Miranda to banish him from the room if she thought it was in Meredith's best interest.

Miranda looked at him, knowing that he was lying. Still, the man was behaving himself—and they both looked like they could use each other's company. She was just about to wish them both a good-night and leave when Meredith piped up.

"Dr. Bailey? Can Derek stay with me tonight?"

Miranda stared at Meredith with an intensity that would have made even the Chief squirm. "Dr. Grey," she lectured, "Family and friends are supposed to leave patient rooms when visiting hours are over. I am not responsible for a breach of hospital regulations that occurs when I am not on the premises. I am, however, responsible for seeing that my orders are carried out. Now, do you really want to ask me whether your boyfriend can spend the night?" She looked at them both pointedly, only to see identical smiles.

"No, Dr. Bailey. Good night, Dr. Bailey," said Meredith.

"Sorry to have troubled you, Miranda. Have a good night. And thank you," added Derek.

"You, too," she responded wryly before walking out. A passing orderly heard her muttering something about interns who never knew when to shut up.

"So, you can stay," Meredith said with a smile.

"So I heard," replied Derek. "That took bravery, asking your resident to break the rules for you. I'm impressed." He caressed her cheek. "Do you want me to bring the chair next to the bed?"

"No. I want you to get in the bed with me."

Derek smiled. "That would be nice, wouldn't it?" He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

Meredith looked at him quizzically. She couldn't understand why he was treating her request as hypothetical.

Derek's reaction to Meredith's expression progressed from confusion to conviction she was making a joke to dismay. "Meredith, you can't be serious. I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't hurt me. Come," Meredith insisted, shifting herself slowly to the other side of the bed.

"Meredith!" he protested. "This is crazy. You're 'ouchy;' you said so yourself. The last thing you need is me crowding you in a hospital bed." Meredith stopped moving. "I'll put the chair right next to the bed," he said, suiting the action to the word. "We can hold hands all night if you want."

Meredith sighed wistfully. She knew full well the arguments against doing this—and if she hadn't, the message she was getting from her ribcage would have reminded her. She didn't care. After today's scare, she needed "more than a whiff" of Derek. She needed to feel his arms around her, his breath tickling the back of her neck, his body heat taking away the last of the chill that still seemed to be with her no matter what the thermometer said. "I always sleep better when you're with me" she offered, hoping the reason would convince him.

This was a bad idea. Such a bad idea. He was supposed to be helping her heal. She should be lying on her back with room to move, not scrunched into a small portion of the mattress to make room for him. "Meredith, just lie down for now. I promise I'll stay in bed with you for as long as you like as soon as I can take you home. Please. You'll feel better once the medication kicks in, I promise."

Meredith just looked up at him, letting her eyes do her pleading for her.

Derek groaned internally. But how could he say no? With a sigh, he put the chair back in the corner and then oh, so carefully eased himself into the bed.Meredith smiled her thanks at him before she turned on her side. Once he was spooning her, she wanted to kiss him, but it would have hurt too much to turn around for a face to face kiss. She waited until he put his hands on hers and then brought his fingers to her lips for another kiss. "Thanks."

Derek responded with a kiss of his own to the back of her neck. "You're welcome. Now, go to sleep."

About five seconds of careful squirming while trying to find a comfortable position convinced Meredith that: A) A comfortable position probably didn't exist when your chest hurt as much as hers did, and B) it hurt too much to even try finding something that probably didn't exist when your chest hurt as much as hers did. She settled for snuggling a little closer to Derek and then holding still in an effort to wait out the pain. Feeling his chest against her back felt astonishingly comforting; she leaned against him, relaxing in the warmth he offered. Despite the pain, it was almost like being safe at home. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Derek said, kissing the back of her neck again. "Sleep! Now!"

"You're awfully bossy, Derek," Meredith complained mildly.

"That's because I'm your boss."

"Ha, ha."

Derek stayed spooned against Meredith until the sound of her breathing told him she'd finally fallen asleep. Once that happened, he moved back just an inch or two—just enough to give them both breathing room. His mini-nap had, unfortunately, given his brain a new lease on wakefulness. He stared into the darkness, wondering how he was going to help Meredith get better when she didn't want to help herself. If he couldn't even convince her to lie in bed comfortably when she was obviously in pain, how was he going to persuade her to engage in the even more difficult process of opening up about her feelings? Hadn't he been trying for days to get her to talk to him? He'd been complaining about it to Preston just that morning; he'd said it had been like living with a ghost. He shivered.

Derek knew he loved Meredith enough to spend the rest of his life letting her know how extraordinary she was to him and how lost he would be without her. He was willing to do whatever he had to do to make her know this, but—was love enough?