She quietly took off a week and flew out to New York on a 747 to go to the funeral, purposely taking the flight two hours after Mark who was going too. At the old chapel she sat in the back, wearing dark sunglasses and hiding behind tall men in suits so that Nancy, the one member of his family that she had met, would not recognize her. No one knew she was there, save him.
After the cemetery had cleared, she went up to the fresh mound of earth and dropped a single flower on top of it. She was never one for tradition, but somehow it felt right. She then went to a bar and got so drunk that she could barely tell the bartender which hotel she was staying at. A bellman half carried her to her room, and it was after he had opened her door and propelled her in, murmuring a quiet: ⌠Good night, miss,■ that she sank to the floor and began to sob.
Her keening became animal-like as she drew her dress up over her head and buried herself in darkness, wailing until she passed out.
No one in Seattle would ever know about that. They would only see the dedicated surgeon who moved out of the townhouse and into his trailer, leaving the house to Izzie and Alex and eventually Izzie and her husband. Their family grew, and the townhouse was sold, but she did not care. She spent her evenings on a sofa, solitary on the land that should have held their dream house, a liquor bottle clenched in her small fist.
No one saw anything but the perfect surgeries, the youngest head of Neurosurgery the hospital had ever seen. This was all she let anyone see. They thought she was simply engrossed in her work; that it was genetic. They were stung by her shutting them out; particularly the one who had once been her person, but eventually she was the only one left.
The heart surgeon and his wife to Sacramento; a plastic surgeon turned OB-GYN to Providence. One left to raise her children. Her person went to become a feared attending at a teaching hospital in Manhattan. But she stayed; because she could not leave him. Not again.
Her patients said there was something mysterious about her. She was gentle, had a good bedside manner, but her eyes were sad. The interns said she was demanding. The nurses that had been there for years, they knew of him, but they could not know that at every moment his name was repeating in her head.
She did not plan to do it. She accepted her existence, alone, with his memory. Wearing his shirts that had been left in the trailer and passing out to dull the pain. But then there was the box that someone had put in the closet unbeknownst to her. The metal was heavy in her tiny hand. She▓d never held one before.
She thought of him; in the same room. In a similar shirt. Thinking the same thoughts. She did not tremble. Did not waver. Her mouth formed his name.
When her person, visiting and hoping to try once more to knock some sense into her, found her there was only her body, wrapped in one of his shirts, and hundreds of pieces of paper; all covered in the same word: Derek. Derek. Derek.
A/N Yet another that wouldn't let me sleep til I'd wrote it. I have a feeling it'll be a lot of one-shots this summer since I'm going to Europe in July. Check out the new Grey's fic archive www(dot)ten-blade(dot)com!