Triad
Prologue
Derek Shepherd has never been gifted at making decisions. The blueberry muffin, or the bran? The maroon tie, or the navy? Froot Loops, or Lucky Charms?
And that's the easy decisions. He'll eat both the blueberry muffin and the bran, and have two bowls of cereal for breakfast. He'll wear the maroon tie this morning, and swap it for the navy later in the day. But what about the less superficial questions, the ones which affected more than just him? Which patient deserves the transplant more? Which surgery should take place first? Which sick person is the more important?
He's never been good at trusting his gut. Bad things happen when he does. He takes a wrong left turn on his way to Nancy's house in Connecticut and ends up in Nevada. He sets the oven on the wrong setting, and both his turkey and his kitchen end up burning. Bad things happen.
So he's unsure of what to do when, during his first anatomy lesson of med school at Columbia, he's partnered with a pretty redhead. She's smart and funny and has skipped three grades. She's polite and well-raised, and may well be one of the wittiest women he's ever met. He sees her smile and all he can think of is a way to make her smile again.
He wants to ask her out, and the only thing stopping him is his girlfriend.
Death is bright, feisty, wild and exciting. His love for her is feral and free and spontaneous and so many things he can't name, so different to the soft, gentle love he holds for her counterpart. She dyes her hair pink, a colour he detests (a childhood full of sisters and their girly cast-offs can do that to a man) yet he can't think of a colour which would suit her better, and there's nothing he'd love more than to spend all night listening to her tales of when she travelled the world.
Meredith is today. Addison is tomorrow.
When he's unable to choose between the house with the garden and the apartment with the balcony, Derek calls a friend and tells himself that if they answer, it's the house, and if they don't, it's the apartment. When he isn't sure whether or not to ask out a girl, he flips a coin.
This isn't as easy to flip a coin on. What if Meredith leaves him to continue her exploration of the world? What if Addison comes across a better man?
He consults with his best friend Mark, the first and one of the very few people to know his secret, and eventually decides to give each woman a test run. It somehow turns into three years, and he finds himself eloping with Meredith in Las Vegas on a whim. They argue over her reluctance to have children and his supposed nervousness regarding their marriage, and he finds himself in Addison's arms, proposing.
That runs him into a rut. Obviously, he loves each woman. But he can't marry Meredith and demand a divorce barely a week later (annulments are out now they've had consummated the marriage) and he can't propose to Addison and break it off just after they've announced it to everyone (almost everyone; everyone who isn't aware of his other marriage).
He knows for a fact that what he's doing illegal. He spends his entire (second) wedding day sweating anxiously and fidgeting, waiting for the moment somebody from law arrives and informs one of his wives of the sins he's committing. His only hope is that, since his and Meredith's marriage was an elopement, his marriage to Addison shall somehow manage to slip through the cracks.
He promises to himself it's just temporary. He'll choose one of them eventually, and when he does, that's when he'll tell them the truth. It'll be a year at the most, if even that.
Eleven years pass.
He flips a coin and ends up dropping and losing it before he can see his result. His friend doesn't answer the phone but calls him back minutes later, and he ends up buying both the house and the apartment, one to please each wife.