A/N: This is my version of what goes on inside Derek's head during 02x17 "As we know it (2)", when Meredith deems it a good idea to put her hand next to a live bomb inside a patient's body.
Enjoy!
"How's it going out there, Yang?", Derek asked without looking up when he heard her re-enter his OR.
After she had left without explanation, he had started getting worried. Staying here with a live bomb next door didn't bother him. He was a surgeon and he had a patient who would die if he left now, end of discussion. Not to mention the fact that it was Bailey's husband... But he was afraid for the part of his team that had stayed. Yes, it had been of their own free will, but nevertheless. He didn't want them to get in harm's way. And Dr Yang's wordless and hurried departure had indicated that she had seen or heard something bad...
"Everything's fine." Her answer was immediate and reassuring. Although something about it felt a little off. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.
"How's the girl with the bomb?" he asked, his eyes and the better part of his mind still fixed on the craniotomy in front of him.
"How's he doing?", the young woman asked instead of an answer. The evasion confused him. Yang usually answered any question instantly, just to prove that she could. Was she keeping something from him? But what? And why?
"He's almost there." He answered and moved his hand a little. "Suction", he commanded and a small tube appeared, ridding the tissue of the blood that made it impossible for him to see what he was doing. "Yeah, okay, great."
"You didn't answer my question, Yang." He quickly glanced in her direction. She was still standing near the door, unmoving. Something was not right, now he was sure of it. Cristina Yang never just stood in the middle of a room when there was a chance for her to assist at anything even remotely interesting. And the open skull of her resident's husband surely counted as fascinating at the very least.
"Sir?" she asked, pretending not to know what he was talking about.
"How is the girl with the bomb?" he repeated, emphasizing every word to make himself clear.
There was a relative silence for a few seconds, before suddenly:
"It's Meredith." Dr Yang sounded breathless. Derek's head snapped up, the patient beneath his fingers completely forgotten for the moment. He could feel shock flitting across his face which fortunately no one could see through the mask and glasses. He fixed his eyes on the woman before him, willing her to explain her statement in any other way. Any other than the only one, the obvious one, the impossible one. Because it just couldn't be. It was this young paramedic who had her hand stuck in a patient, unable to move because there was a bomb next to his heart that could go off at the tiniest movement. It was a stranger, and not Meredith. It couldn't be Meredith, because... how?
"The girl with the bomb is Meredith", Dr Yang repeated. His brain refused to process what the sentence meant. He could ignore his own life being at stake, he could still concentrate with his team's lives in danger but with Meredith's...
His thoughts started spiralling, tail spinning. The paramedic must have run off, there was no way they had sent her away while her hand was still needed to keep the patient alive. And to keep the bomb from exploding. So she must have panicked. And Meredith had probably taken her place. He could almost see her, one hand deep inside this man's chest and with that typical air of hers. This impulsiveness that sometimes left her wondering what she had just done. He had always loved seeing her like that. When she was confused by her own actions that had been born purely from intuition. It made her seem even more remarkable a woman than she already was.
But now... Now the chances of her never getting to confuse herself again were so high. Higher than of this ending well. He didn't want to think about it, he couldn't let himself think about it, he mustn't allow his thoughts to even attempt going that way.
Seconds passed and he was still standing motionlessly next to the gurney, facing Dr Yang, his eyes not really seeing her.
A sudden loud beeping noise catapulted him out of his stupor. The heart monitor. The aggressive sound managed to get him back into the here and now. He swivelled around, facing the patient again. His brain at the same time still paralyzed with fear for Meredith and cursing himself for getting distracted.
"We're losing him", he stated, quickly assessing the situation.
The typical, organized chaos of an emergency in the OR broke out.
"Okay, push one of epi." - "Thready pulse." - "Epi in." - "Nothing. Okay, give me a wet rag." - "Here." - "We're gonna have to roll him on three. When everybody's ready. Let's go. - "Right." - "Come on, we gotta go. We gotta go. Let's go!"
People were talking over one another, hectic action replaced the shocked silence from a few seconds before and there was no space to think about anything but the patient's survival. All that counted was to keep the man in front of them alive.
Only slowly did a cautious calm return to the scenery. The heart monitor's beeping became regular once more and Derek as well as the nurses were able to breathe again.
To breathe and to think. The moment he didn't need all his concentration for the patient at hand anymore, Derek couldn't help but feel the shock about what Dr Yang had said coming back full force.
Shock accompanied by worry and a certain kind of frustration. It somehow seemed typical for Meredith to get herself into the worst possible situation. And typical for him to half lose his mind over it.
Derek closed his eyes for a split second. He had to concentrate on the patient beneath his fingers. And he had to stop thinking about Meredith. He was a married man who had promised to try save his marriage and who had vowed to himself that he wouldn't make it any harder than it already was, neither on Meredith nor on himself.
And it was hard enough as it was already. He couldn't recall ever doing something as difficult as breaking up with her, as choosing Addison over her, had been. Only his moral principles had kept him going through with it... And to hold firm. He still spent almost every waking hour attempting to get her out of his head. But no matter how hard he tried, she always managed to sneak back into his thoughts and seeing her every day didn't help at all. Seeing her laughing with the other interns, standing next to her in the elevator or watching her trying to answer a question during the rounds. It was impossible to forget her, whatever he tried and however much he worked on forgiving Addison for what she had done to him. Or at least forgetting it.
He only ever got his mind to himself again when he was fishing or when he was in the OR with neither of the women near him.
But today, not even this short time of peace was granted to him. Today, Meredith had to put her hand in the thoracic cavity of a man, next to live ammunition that could devastate the whole OR in a split second. He couldn't help but be worried sick.
He mentally shook his head. He had to concentrate! He couldn't call himself a good surgeon if he wasn't able to ban everything but the patient before him from his mind. He took a deep breath and focused again. It was Tucker Jones laying there, his head open, on the gurney in front of him. Bailey's husband. He better got him fixed up if he planned on living through the next day and not being killed at first sight by the small but incredibly fierce woman. Because that was what would happen. Bailey would be onto him the instant she saw him if he messed up now.
In that moment, everything went to hell. An earsplitting sound filled the room and the ground beneath his feet shook. It was lucky he hadn't had his hands near the open lying brain or he accidentally could've killed the man.
But he didn't care about the what-ifs right now. He didn't care about anything else but what that sound had meant. It had been an explosion, unmistakably. The explosion. The explosion he had dreaded, had feared would come. The explosion that meant the ammunition had gone off after all. Probably tearing everything in close proximity to shreds. Including...
"Meredith", he breathed. When he looked up, he could see the same panic that threatened to overwhelm him clouding Dr Yang's eyes. She stared at the wall in the direction the detonation had come from, unmoving but obviously wanting nothing more than to run out there, looking for Meredith. Pretty much like he himself did. He wanted to be there, to see that she miraculously had survived, that he hadn't just lost the woman he loved.
"Dr Shepherd?" The female voice barely managed to penetrate the chaotic swirl of thoughts inside his mind.
"Dr Shepherd!" The voice sounded again, fiercer this time. He forced himself to look up, searching for the person who had spoken. It was a nurse standing next to him, her eyes darting from the patient to the monitor showing his vitals and back again. Luckily, Tucker was still stable, despite the additional stress his body had had to put up with.
For the umpteenth time this day Derek shook his head trying to clear it.
"Yes, I'm sorry." He gave himself a split second to decide what to do next. "Dr Yang, go out there and look if you can help. But be careful!" He wanted to tell her to come back once she knew how bad it was and report to him but he didn't dare. Once she had left the room he would have to focus entirely on the patient. And he wouldn't be able to do that if he was waiting for her returning with news.
She nodded curtly at his order and turned on the spot but he could see how grateful she was as she fled the room, barely caring to shed the once sterile clothing. He envied her.
With all his might he pulled his eyes away from the door she had just walked through and concentrated on Tucker again. It cost him all he had left but he managed to shove everything else aside and focus on the one thing he could do right now. The one thing he had to do. His job.
A/N: I wrote this quite a while ago (two years, maybe) but never published it. When I came across it on my computer again, I thought, what the hell, why not just upload it. It may not be not one of my finer works, but since I took the time to write it, I could just as well put it up here. Maybe there is even one person, somewhere, who likes it.
Two more chapters to go...