*~Handful of Eternity ~*
Happily Ever After isn't that easy
So, my newest story, which for once doesn't have a song as a title. Oh well. Pairings are MerDer, Maddison, and other canon couples.
"Long day," Derek commented as Meredith appeared in the lobby, shoulders heavy with tiredness but complimented by a smile at the prospect of their first official date.
"Yeah," she agreed as he looked up from his laptop and she became irrevocably caught up in the beautiful sky blue of his eyes. Sleep was begging her to succumb to its insistent clutches but the mere sight of Derek Shepherd ignited feelings inside her that made her think the 'thousand mile' crap might have some merit after all.
"Somewhere out there there's a steak with your name on it, and maybe a bottle of wine," he said with his trademark smile, and she lingered while he closed his laptop and gathered his things.
"This is why I keep you around," she joked.
"So we need to talk," he said. Talk. Talking never meant anything good, at least as far as Meredith knew. The second a man wanted to talk she started running full speed the other way.
"Wine first, talk later," she countered, hoping that alcohol would make the words flow easier.
"You trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me?" Derek asked and she rolled her eyes playfully as she recalled how they met. Not that one night stands were uncommon for her, but two month follow ups to them were.
"I think I like this rules thing," she said and he agreed as he helped her with her coat, sending shivers down her spine with the intoxicating scent of his cologne and the way his bluebell eyes focused on her, like she was the only person in the world despite that the hospital was teaming with frantic relatives and desperate patients.
Meredith never meant to fall in love with Derek, and she certainly never thought he'd take her out on a second date, and then a third, and finally a fourth, until she couldn't remember how many dates they'd been on because he was a permanent fixture in her life.
Six months into their relationship Meredith discovered she was pregnant. Derek had been on a lot of mysterious phone calls and faxes so when he walked into the bathroom, she attempted to conceal the little blue stick. But he sat on the floor, refusing to move until he coaxed it out of her, and when he finally did his smile was so wide, threatening to split his face in half, and he hugged her so tightly she realized she never wanted him to let go.
Madeline Emilia Shepherd was a textbook baby born in a perfectly normal pregnancy. Derek and Meredith told their friends and family (and the whole gossip-hungry hospital in general) when she reached twelve weeks; Derek felt her kicks right on time through Meredith's stretched, glowing skin. She occasionally scared him with her outbursts of emotion and demanded an unprecedented amount of sex during her second trimester.
Madeline was born around one o'clock on her due date, and put her mother through eight hours of grueling labor (Meredith swore it was more like forty) before emerging, eight pounds, 1 ounce, 20 inches with ten perfect fingers and toes. She reached all her milestones right on time, from walking to talking to smiling to potty training.
Later they say they should have known. It was a little bit too perfect, and they would have accepted a few flaws instead of the buildup and chaos that resulted instead.
~*~
Giggles erupt from the pale rose room on the left as Meredith stalks carefully through the halls, bones aching under periwinkle scrubs that have seen one too many shifts. She knows her daughter will refuse to get in the bath unless she plays this game, however, and as all she really wants to do is fall into bed, she continues her lion-prance down on the hall.
She carefully pushes open her daughter's room and is bathed in soft pink light as she pads across the cloud-colored carpet towards Madeline's giggles, which are coming from under the bed. She pretends for a minute to search on hands and knees for the little girl before latching on to flailing legs and tugging the small two-year-old from under the bed.
"Aw, Momma," Madeline laughs, still struggling, laughing, pale jade eyes opened wide. "You wasn't s'posed to catch me!"
"Well, it's time for the little … what are you again today?" she asks, because keeping track of the various characters her daughter selects to portray and changes once a day as well as the surgeries she needs to master is definitely less than simple.
"A baby lion," Madeline states as she pushes dark, tumbling curls out of her face with delicate cream hands. "And you're Awex."
"Alex?" Meredith repeats in confusion, because last time she checked the resident dating Izzie didn't in any way resemble an African animal.
"From Madagadar," Madeline clarifies, or attempts to clarify as Meredith cradles the two-year-old against her hip and heads for the bathroom.
"Madagascar," she realizes with a small chuckle as she sets her daughter on the soft, fish-shaped carpet that kept little feet from slipping on the tiled floor. Madeline wrinkles her nose at the sight of the bathtub, and, for a second, Meredith thinks she looks exactly like Derek, though in reality the little girl looks more like her, except for the hair. Her dark brown curls, the color of pure cocoa before it is diluted, are really the only thing she has from Derek, and even so they are lighter than her father's, with just a hint of Meredith's honey blonde.
Madeline lifts her arms resignedly over her head so Meredith can tug the embroidered dress over her head, and then settles herself near the sparkly octopus that squirts water as she runs the water for the bath and pours strawberry scented bubbles inside.
Then she sits there and watches the little being she and Derek created, pondering how things have turned out. It's not that she blames Madeline for the change that has slowly taken place between her and Derek since her birth, it's just that things changed between them with a child, became more about responsibility than romance. Now something is broken, something she's unsure how to fix. They live in the same house, kiss each other on the cheek, but it's all centered on Madeline.
"Weady?" Madeline asks, pulling her from her reverie, and she summons a smile and places her hands on the child's hips and eases her into the kingdom of iridescent bubbles. The child squeals as toenails painted Kelly green hit the water, but Meredith's frozen, and she can only sit there, holding her daughter above the water as Madeline screams and kicks, yelling, "Momma!" to no avail.
All Meredith can see is the delicate trail of lavender bruises down her daughter's spine.
By the time Derek's key emits a welcome jingle in the lock, Madeline is screaming at the top of her lungs, flailing in Meredith's arms as she tries to swaddle her in a Cinderella towel and restrain threatening tears at the same time.
It is times like these that she feels like she's a terrible mother. She knows she's not, but Madeline's shrieks do little to assuage lingering doubt.
"Shh," Derek coos to the little girl, lifting her from Meredith's arms and tucking her against his shoulder before helping Meredith herself to her feet. "Don't cry, Madie," he whispers, and she wrinkles her nose at the nickname. "I know, I know," he laughs, "If you had wanted her to be called Madie you would have named her that."
When she doesn't answer, his teasing smirk melts into frantic concern. "Mer? Meredith, what's wrong?"
Her only answer is to carefully tug the towel down Madeline's back so Derek can see the bruises with his own eyes. "No," he breathes, and she hates that his mind goes there immediately as well. "No, that can't be right … Madie, honey, can you tell Daddy where you got these bruises?"
"Wha boo-boos Dada?" she laughs, throwing a wide smile full of tiny pearly teeth over her shoulder.
When Derek's fingers skate over the bruises with increasing pressure, Madeline shrieks, and this is the only answer he needs. He has her in her footie pajamas within seconds and into her car seat within the same minute, while Meredith trails behind, feeling like she might vomit, trying to remember if praying worked the last time she tried.
Sometimes it sucks to be a doctor.
And when Arizona's sky blue eyes meet theirs over an exam table a few hours later, they know by the tears pooling around her irises that their worst fears have been realized. Madeline has cancer. Acute lymphocytic leukemia.
~*~
So they become those parents, the ones who everyone looks upon with pity, the ones who spend more time in the hospital than not, the ones who look desperate, starved for a drop of ethereal hope. And she hates it, the stares, the pitiful smiles, even offers of charity.
Meredith doesn't think she's ever seen anyone throw up so much, not when Sadie had food poisoning when they were in Europe, not herself when she carried Madeline through a harrowing first trimester. Tears mixed with stinging bile leave Madeline's body at an alarming rate, and she thinks if her daughter asks for it to "stop" one more time, she'll lose it.
Sparkling My Little Pony stickers do not make an IV any more pleasant. A button-up shirt doesn't completely hide a central line. And a silk Hermes scarf from Grandma Carolyn doesn't make a bald head acceptable for a two-year-old who wants to decorate her head with silk bows and glittering clips.
Radiation therapy to the brain (as Madeline had indications of the disease in her central nervous system) follows induction and consolidation chemotherapy, and Madeline returns home briefly, in a haze of strawberry ice cream and a new bed with rosy pink sheets, to celebrate her remission. She and Derek celebrate a second honeymoon phase with tequila laced kisses and dancing in the kitchen.
But when she feels tiny, tugging hands on her lopsided pajama top, she instantly feels something is off. It takes her a minute to remember that her daughter's pajamas were not red when she put her to bed the previous night, but a pale sunshiny yellow instead.
All the way to the hospital, Madeline's nose doesn't stop bleeding, and until they receive the formal diagnosis, Meredith doesn't stop hoping until they hear the formal diagnosis: relapse.
So she watches her child grow skeletally skinny as her prognosis worsens and chemo does little to help. They are told she needs a bone marrow transplant, but neither her, Derek, nor any of her fourteen cousins are a match. She's slipping through Meredith's fingers like moonlight that will be extinguished with the coming dawn.
They search for a matched unrelated donor, but are told Madeline has a type of tissue that is difficult to match. So they drag their feet around helplessly until one January Izzie bursts into the small hospital room, her chocolate eyes glowing briefly with excitement until they are obscured by her having to bend over to breathe.
"Merry … late …Christmas," she pants, although all they can see is her bent-over form in periwinkle scrubs. "We found Madeline a donor."
"Actually," Arizona counters from the doorway as Derek and Meredith both stand, one Madeline's tiny, limp hands held in theirs, "we found her two."
~*~
Derek exits his OR at a full sprint after wresting off the gown-like cover he wears over his scrubs, sure that his perfectly styled curls are coming undone and willing to consider the look in his bluebell eyes might be frightening. Still, he disregards this and everything else around him – even the delicate crust of snow on the ground outside, the staff with eyes full of questions, the family of the man he just operated on. Karev will fill them in, he knows, and right now he can't think about anyone's family but his own.
Derek will learn to associate this very night with the uprooting of the simple life he's woven, with disturbance like ripples in a pond, with the return of a history he's banished so far from his mind, but he doesn't know it yet.
His daughter's bone marrow donors arrived that morning; they are being treated as family donors because they are friends of Nancy's.
He pulls the scrub cap from his head as he nears the conference room that serves as his destination. Through the glass walls, he glimpses, as he slows down from his run, two children with hands and noses pressed up against the glass, both with summer blonde hair like cornsilk. He pauses and grins at the little girl who is waving at him; she looks only a little older than Madeline and is wearing a mint green ruffled skirt his own daughter would die for. Beside her is her brother, dressed in khakis and a scarlet mockneck cable sweater.
Their dancing eyes, ice blue and twinkling, look too mischievous for angels, but he thinks he's never been grateful for anyone's conception, save of course his own daughter's. It's an awkward feeling to put into words but because these two kids are alive, his daughter will live too.
A baby tugs on the little girl's skirt, and she turns, blonde curls cascading increasingly slowly over her shoulder as his eyes follow her movement and the world gradually freezes around him. He's surprised his breath isn't misting out in front of him as it does on frostbitten days because if he's seeing what he thinks he is … if …
And he's running again, wrenching the door of the conference room open as he tells himself that waterfall of shimmering red hair does not belong to who he thinks it does. He throws it open and can only stare in agonizing, painful disbelief as the mother of his child, his ex-wife, and Richard regard him with surprise and incredulity.
It's so incredibly fucked up he can hardly breathe.
"Addison. What are you doing here?" it is only with a considerable amount of restraint that he keeps himself from using the harsher words that burn in up in his throat at the sight of her. She looks the same, a little older, still as gorgeous and regal as ever, but there's no doubt that the three children in the room are hers.
This is impossible.
"Well, you'd know if you bothered to answer any one of my phone calls," she quips, but he's pleased to see this has shaken her more than she's letting on, he can see her slender, perfectly manicured hands vibrating with shock and horror as she lifts the baby, holding her against her chest like a talisman against impulsiveness.
"What gave you the idea that I would ever want to speak to you again?" he hisses, fury lacing his voice as he glares, his face filled with as much contempt as he can muster.
"Maybe the fact that your daughter is sick, and Sommer and Brenner have leukocyte antigens that match Madeline's? Maybe it's that Madeline has one of the rarest combinations of HLA possible, and my children just happen to have the same one? But I don't know, Derek, why don't you explain it to me."
"Richard," Derek appeals, because he can't accept this, can't accept her, can't fathom that she has three children with someone that is not him. She shattered him, and in his mind, she doesn't deserve happiness.
"Your daughter is severely sick with leukemia, Derek, and we've been searching for a donor for months now," Richard says firmly in a voice containing disappointment, his muscled arms crossed.
"But -"
"Derek!" Meredith's voice cuts off the rest of his sentence like glass through vulnerable skin, "I don't know what the hell is going on here, or how you two know each other … but this is our daughter, Derek, our little girl! And she's … she's dying."
He sighs and reaches for her hand, which she offers reluctantly before settling her head against the hard plane of his stomach. "Of course I'm not going to let Madeline die, but I'd like to know … why the hell did it have to be you, of all people?" he addresses his ex-wife, watching as she flinches at his tone and digs snow white teeth into her bottom lip until she draws blood.
"Karma, I guess," a rough, sarcastic voice chuckles from behind him, and he doesn't need to turn to see who it is, turn to see his fallen brother, Cain to his Abel, to know.
"Mark's here?" he snarls at Addison, who is slumped in her seat, rubbing her temples, oblivious, in this minefield of shattered dreams they've resurrected, that the golden haired twins are tugging at her skirt.
Then it dawns on him, just as Addison whispers, "Mark is their father."
And before he can think, fury sends him over the edge and he turns and punches Mark with all the strength he possesses.
Thank you for reading! A review would really make my day! The outline for this story is pretty vague so I'm unsure how long it's going to be, but if you want more soon let me know ;). Next chapter will feature a little more backstory.