Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and plots belong to ABC and Shonda Rhimes. I own nothing. Enjoy.

Meredith and Derek are looking forward to a break from all the drama after an eventful first year at Seattle Grace. But on the first day of their vacation they discover that the events keep coming even if you desperately wish to ignore them. Follow the original Grey's couple on their journey through medical America. This is a MerDer AU story, all changes to the original plot are explained.

Chapter 1 - Prologue: As We Know It

"What did I do? What did I do? What did I do?" Meredith whispered to herself as she stood in the OR, her hand in a body cavity keeping it from bleeding out and holding live unexploded ammo steady. She didn't know why she did it but as soon as the paramedic started freaking out pulling her hand out off the body, she reflexively placed her hand inside instead. In a split second she had decided what she needed to do. Unlike her, the other OR occupants reacted as one would expect – throwing themselves on the ground to protect themselves from a very possible explosion.

Now she was stuck, stuck where the danger was, stuck in an OR without any potential surgery, stuck where she might die, just because she reacted before she had the time to think about the potential consequences.

"You realize how stupid that was?" enquired Dylan, the bomb squad guy as she had dubbed him. He was an intimidating and cold man and if Meredith was honest she didn't like his attitude. She knew that this was a highly stressful situation for everyone involved. He and his team got called to the hospital after they discovered that their patient had accidently shot himself with a homemade bazooka, that failed to explode.

"It was. Incredible stupid, Mer." Cristina agreed as she ventilated the patient with an ambu-bag looking at her concernedly.

"Okay, you know when you don't need to be made fun of? Like when you have your hand inside a body that's got a bomb in it and a stranger is valcro-ing a flak jacket to your boobs." Meredith shot back, being totally aware of what she just did.

"You have a sense of irony." Dylan said as he fixed the last piece of Velcro to her jacket, that would only offer minimal protection would the bomb explode right under her.

"Only when things are really ironic." Meredith rolled her eyes looking at her person pointedly. "I had a feeling, Cristina."

Meredith had woken up with a really bad feeling this morning that she couldn't shake. Deciding the best would be to stay home and to wait for it to pass, Meredith had stayed in bed. Since Derek had been on call that night and had an early surgery, George and Izzy had called in Cristina as reinforcement to kick her out of bed.

"Not a word to Derek. There is no need for him to know. He has Bailey's husband on the table."

"What do you expect I should do then, lie to him?"

"No, just don't tell him it's me."

Dr. Burke reentered his OR, bringing the conversation between the two friends to an halt. After a silent fight between the odd couple Burke ended up kicking Cristina out of the OR.

While Meredith was stuck with the patient getting instructed by the bomb squad about what would be happening the entire hospital was in a panicked state. Most of the surgical staff had evacuated the OR floors, some of them had gone home, others stayed and waited for updates. Critical patients had been transferred to different hospitals, while others had left voluntarily. Richard Webber had all hands full trying to manage this unique situation to his best abilities, bringing him to the limit of his emotional state. Everyone wanted something: information, instructions, statements, ORs and all he tried to do was preventing this situation to go from bad to worse.

"Where is the head of the bomb squad. I need to speak him now." Richard yelled out of his makeshift office, after finally receiving the hospital's blue prints and with that more bad news.

"Stop it." Meredith said, watching the two concerned men talking to each other at the OR entrance. Dylan just came back after talking with the Chief and was now updating Burke about the newest developments at hand. Both of them glancing at Meredith as if she was about to die. "I am not a patient. You are looking at me the way we look at patients. Like I'll freak our any minute. I am not going to freak out. So whatever it is, just tell me straight out."

"The hospital's main oxygen line runs directly under this room." Burke finally told her, in a solemn tone.

"Okay." Meredith said, still watching the men, that she had spent way too much time with already, when the man she actually wanted to be with was half way down the hall. "Not okay. Well, I need one of you to tell me what this means exactly. Because I think I know what this means, but I tend to be 'glass half empty' these days, so I won't trust what I think it means. Because What I think this means is that the entire hospital could blow up, which is just crazy." Meredith finished breathing heavily starting to freak out.

"Meredith, all it means is that we have to move." Dylan told her, apparently he hadn't got so far with Burke, who was looking at him strangely.

"Move?" Meredith exclaimed, "Let me get that straight. I can't wiggle me fingers, because I could shift the ammo and you want me to move to a different OR? While I stay completely still? This is insane."

"This is our best option."

"This is insane. You know that? Totally mental." Meredith exclaimed.

"You got this Grey?" Burke asked her.

"I got this, Sir. Let's do this." Meredith said more confidently after overcoming the initial shock.

In the OR down the hall Cristina was assisting Derek. She had been kicked out off Burke's OR earlier but instead of clearing the OR floor as he asked her to she had walked into the next best operating room. She just couldn't leave Burke behind, but more than that knowing that her stupid person was the one in immediate danger, in actual contact with an explosive device made her sick to her stomach. Over the next two hours she was silently assisting in Tucker's surgery while Derek was oblivious about how much the situation down the hall could and would affect him.

As they were nearing the end, Cristina saw movement through the small glass feature of the OR door.

"I am going to check how they are doing. I will be back." Cristina told Derek as she pulled off her gloves and mask exiting the room without giving her superior a chance to reply.

What she saw made her even more sick then she already felt. Two bomb squad members where pushing the OR table slowly through the corridor. As the tiny wheels of the table turned Meredith moved alongside it in a snail pace her hand still in the patient. One of the guys was going over instructions while Meredith listened closely.

"What are you doing?" Cristina exclaimed.

"We are moving to a different OR – you know – in case we blow up. So that we don't take the entire hospital down with us." Meredith told her person honestly. Cristina just looked sad.

"Didn't Burke asked you to leave?" Dylan scowled.

"Where is he?" Cristina wanted to know.

"You should really go." Dylan persisted

"He is prepping the OR." Meredith told her the truth once again, much to Dylan's distaste.

"So he will never know, will he." Cristina argued.

"Tell me something Cristina."

"What?"

"Tell me something. Anything. Cristina I have my hand on live unexploded ammo. I am about to freak out and I really have to pee. Just tell me something."

Cristina went on to tell her person her dilemma of Burke telling sleeping her that he told her that he loved her and how she wasn't sure what to do. Calming Meredith down until she had to leave her alone when they finally made it to the OR door after what felt like an eternity. Reluctantly she went back to Derek's surgery, but when he asked her how Hannah the paramedic was doing she couldn't hold back and tell him the truth about Meredith's situation. The experienced neurosurgeon froze for a second, trying to digest the unexpected information he just learned. Just then Tucker's condition deteriorated sending his heart into arrhythmias, leaving no room for further questions about the happenings down the hall.

Meredith had successfully pulled the ammo as level as possible out of the patient, handing over the unexploded device to the bomb squad guy. For the first time in hours Meredith was free from any kind of responsibility and not in any immediate threat to her live. She watched as Dylan carried the bomb out of the room to where his colleague was waiting with the special box. For the first time today she should be able take a breath but couldn't. The OR - that normally provided so much comfort – all of the sudden constricted her ability to breath. She had to leave those four walls, leave this floor.

Meredith exited the room in a hurry, coming to an abrupt halt. She watched as Dylan carefully carried the device down the hall to its safe space, when all of the sudden everything slowed down. It happened in an instant, one second she was watching two guys walking down a hallway, the next second they were gone. Disappeared into nothingness. And before she could comprehend what just happened, the sound of the explosion and the shock wave hit her, throwing her several feet back into the hallway. Meredith flew trough he air, like she weighed nothing, before she came crashing to the floor with the full force of the explosion. She slid down the rubble covered hallway, hitting her head in the process, not only once but twice. Debris, shattered glass and red colored dust were still raining down on her body as she fought with consciousness until darkness took over.

The sound of the explosion was heard all through the hospital mobilizing people to see what happened on the surgical floor. In the other occupied OR on the floor, two people starred at each other with wide eyes, cold chills running down their spines. They were just able to stabilize Tucker and there was no way that Derek would be able to leave the OR even if that was what his body was telling him to do. Only the sound of the monitors where heard as Cristina and Derek shared this moment.

"Go." Derek whispered. "Make sure she is okay and don't leave her side. I'll be there as soon as I can." Derek pleaded, urging Cristina to check out what happened to Meredith.

Cristina left the OR in a hurry eager to find out what happened and afraid at what she would find when she turned the corner. The once sterile surgical hallway was unrecognizable, windows were blown, parts of the wall and ceiling were covering the floor, paper had caught fire while the entire air was tinted into a reddish light. The sight in front of Cristina was disturbing. A couple feet away Cristina could make a small figure in light blue scrubs.

"Meredith." Cristina breathed out as she checked her pulse, which was very noticeable. Her person was covered in cuts and bruises, the face covered in a mixture of blood and ash. It had been minutes since the bomb went off and Meredith's eyes fluttered open, looking in the concerned eyes of her person, her sight a little blurred by all the dirt.

"Meredith." Cristina breathed again. "Welcome back."

"They are gone." Meredith muttered silent tears escaping her eyes, leaving clean trails on her otherwise dirty face.

"I know."

After Cristina made sure, that there was nothing immediate wrong with her person, Izzy and her took Meredith into the intern looker room, helping her getting cleaned up to further assess her injuries. Meredith hadn't uttered a single word since her brief exchange with Cristina and kept crying silently. Her friends were keeping her up, both physically and emotionally as she let them do whatever they seemed necessary. This is how she found herself in an exam room getting her minor cuts cleaned and bigger ones stitched up.

An hour after the explosion Derek entered the room the chief had directed him to, being met by the saddest view of Meredith he had ever seen. Wrapping her in his arms, her floodgates opened dead sorrow shook her chest.

"It's okay. You are okay. I love you." Derek tried to sooth her, while Meredith sobbed into his chest.

"What happened?" He asked Cristina concernedly after several minutes of no responds from Meredith's side.

Cristina updated him about what she had pieced together about what happened and her person's condition. "When I got there, she was unconscious, but regained it pretty quickly. She hasn't said much. We just cleaned the cuts and got the bigger ones stitched up." she looked at the pair. "Call me of you need anything." With said the friends leaving the couple alone.

After what felt like hours Meredith finally calmed down enough for Derek to talk her into a quick neuro exam, to make sure the blow hasn't done any damage. After everything had checked out okay, Derek wanted her to have a CT to make sure she was 100% okay, which she vetoed, much to his dismay. Her head was pounding, which was expected after what happened today, but she didn't see the necessity, since everything checked out fine.

12/31/18 - Happy last day of 2018. Any input? Please let me know. Liked it? Follow for more.