I do not own Greys Anatomy or Private Practice. They belong to Shonda Rhimes..
This is my first fic, I'm co-writing with Marchingon
Give it a chance!
Prologue
What started out as a fairly normal day in Seattle finished off to be something all together out of the ordinary. But for just that morning,, it was a normal day within the halls of Seattle Grace Hospital. Doctors, nurses, patients, orderlies; all everywhere doing their usual things, except for Derek Meredith who were, at the moment, leaving the OR. They were upset, which in itself wasn't exactly out of the ordinary because they were Derek and Meredith, and it was but natural that they squander about the halls of the hospital bickering at each other. But they were upset, and everyone could see right through them.
"Derek…"
He was walking a few feet ahead of her, or really, striding. And he didn't turn to face her as she kept pace behind him.
"What do you want me to say? Do you want me to say I'm sorry? Because I am, sort of. But god, I didn't mean to do it!" Her voice was slightly raised, and the frustration was evident in her tone. She was running on 48 hours without sleep and only a cup of coffee every 3 to keep her standing, and she wasn't appreciating the way Derek was treating her.
That statement seemed to get to him, because the moment the words were let out, he stopped dead in his track abruptly, and turned to face her.
"You didn't mean to do it? Seriously?" he half-bellowed, drawing attention to the spectacle of them both. But he didn't quite care because he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You didn't mean to do it? Now, really, that makes me feel a whole lot better, like that's supposed to make things okay," he said, rolling his eyes sarcastically.
Meredith sighed, simultaneously running a hand through her hair and looking at him pleadingly. "Derek," she said quietly, not really comprehending what got him so worked up. "What's wrong with you?"
She had noticed he was pulling away from her for a time now, and although she couldn't say she knew of no reason why he would, she couldn't grasp why he was taking it out on her on a surgery.
Unfortunately, that question had triggered something more petulant in Derek, and stared at her incredulously.
"What's wrong with me? I cannot believe you have the audacity to ask me that. First off, a man just died on the table. Do you want to know why? Because I trusted you blindly. It was a simple procedure, but you very well had to screw it up. And here you are, asking my what's wrong with me? Like I shouldn't be affected by it? If any, you should be the one angry at yourself for screwing up. So I think the question here is what's wrong with you?
"You're a third year resident. Years of experience would have taught you how to do a simple procedure with ease. My god, even an intern could do it! But apparently, you of all people couldn't."
Meredith looked up at Derek's hard voice, the disappointment and frustration laced heavily in the manner with which he spoke to her. But she couldn't grasp why Derek was blaming her, why it was all her fault, why it was wrong to be uncaring. As doctors, you're programmed to dehumanize yourself, and she was merely defending herself.
"Get over it," she said petulantly. "The man came here and he was almost dead anyway."
A look of sheer disbelief crossed Derek's features. He couldn't quite comprehend that Meredith was being utterly immature about the situation. He huffed, knowing that if he continued on, he would engage himself in a tirade that would make a spectacle out of both of them.
He stared at her hard and intently, lowering his voice to try to retain the last bit of calm in his body. "You are behaving immaturely, Dr. Grey," he said coldly. "And I refuse to talk to you when you behave like this."
He turned his heel and started to walk away when he heard Meredith call behind him, and it was nothing short of severe tolerance that prevented him from hurling the nearest heavy object he could find.
"It's not like I want to talk to you when you act like this too, Dr. Shepherd," she called, emphasizing the formality. "You get too emotionally attached to your patients that when you lose them, you shut yourself out from the rest of the world, as if that makes things better. You think you're a god, Dr. Shepherd. But you're not. You're human. We're all human. And we all make mistakes. Even an ass like you."
With that, she walked away from him, leaving him with his jaw fallen ever so slightly in shock. It took a moment for him to regain his composure and walk swiftly to his office, where he locked the door the moment he was inside.
Things were going smoothly downhill, both for himself and his relationship with Meredith. That much he was sure of. But what he didn't get was why. He knew that after he divorced Addison, maybe even before, all he wanted was to be with Meredith, to get that perfect family with the while picket-fenced home, a minivan and a dog. He knew for sure he was looking forward to it, to being with her. But somewhere along the road, he gradually pulled away, as if his dreams didn't think too far off into the future, but merely what he wanted the next day to be like, or maybe even the evening to turn out.
His life was a mess. He thought that by now, at his age, he would've settled down and found stability in his life. But he was far from it. He lived in his girlfriend's apartment, with her friends. It was like a big sorority house day in and day out, and he couldn't find the quiet he'd been looking for. He'd broach the subject to Meredith, but she'd end the conversation saying that her friends needed her. If he were being immature, he would say that he needed her too. But what surprised him was that he didn't find it in himself to argue anymore. What's worse was that he recognized the feeling; these were the signs that should've told him his relationship with Addison was on the rocks.
But he shook his head and sat on the chair behind his desk, resting his elbow on the table and his face on his palm. It was moments like these that he would admit, at least to himself, that he was lost; that the plans he had made when he was young was nothing compared to the life he was currently living. He thought he was on the right track, when he married Addison that is. And then she cheated and he was too blinded by anger to realize what kind of derailment he was subjecting himself into. Because that was what he was, a derailed train. And all he needed was to get back on track.
However, deciding that this wasn't the time to worry about his personal life, he sighed and resigned himself to going over the chart of his dead patient. The one Meredith had killed, by the way. If there were anything he was going to do in a situation like this, it would be to bury himself in work over and over again until someone or other would pull him back to reality and make him see that there's life outside the hospital.
But because right now no one would disturb him in his cloistered office, he resolved to review his patient's chart. So he reached for it from where it lay on his desk and picked up. He was about to open it when he noticed something on his desk from where the chart had originally lay. The sensation that filled his body unnerved him, for what was on the desk was something both familiar and eerily so.
It was a picture of him and Addison on their wedding day, looking into each other's eyes and smiling, anticipating their future. They both looked so in love, so happy, and he couldn't help but think how naïve they had been that time. He gingerly picked the photo up, sighing as he did so.
Not only did he think Addison had thrown away all photos, but he was sure he had locked all of them up somewhere so he didn't have a painful reminder of what he used to have. But the picture was there now, resting between his fingers as he stared at it, his heart clenching. In his most honest of times, he would admit he missed his ex-wife, missed the comfort they once had and the dreams they once shared with each other.
But before he could act on it, before his mind could linger on the less than desirable thoughts pertaining to Addison, his pager beeped, signaling that once again, his personal life had to wait and give way for other people's lives to be saved.
In the meantime, whilst Derek was busy saving lives and blocking out that image of Addison and him on their wedding day, Meredith was busy rethinking her argument with Derek. In retrospect, she knew she was being irrational when she said the patient was almost dead anyway. Part of a doctor's oath is to save a patient, to try your best regardless of the situation. And she didn't keep her end of the bargain because she was way too stressed to deal with an even more stressed Derek. This being said, she realized she killed a patient because she couldn't be the bigger person and let Derek steam off.
She wasn't blind. If any, she was very sensitive to the fact that Derek hadn't been himself in quite a while. And although she would try her best to keep the spark aglow in their relationship, she had to admit that the effort was tiresome, sometimes even futile. Derek had a mind of his own and she couldn't force him to be someone he wasn't.
At any rate, however, because she was feeling like a lousy doctor and she really just needed one problem solved by the end of the night, she resigned herself to trying to make it up to Derek.
She found him two hours after their fight, exiting an OR, and she grabbed it as an opportunity to make amends.
"Hey," she greeted, a slight smile on her face. But she was nervous, and her hands dug into her scrub pants unsurely.
He looked up and nodded. "Hey yourself."
She kept pace with him as he studied a chart. "I just wanted to say… I'm really sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to say the things I said. I didn't… I didn't mean for the guy to die."
Derek looked up from the chart and met Meredith's unsure gaze. "Okay."
"I really do admire your work. You're a very capable surgeon, and you not being emotionally connected with your patients will take away who you are as a doctor. So I'm sorry. What I did was wrong and well… just… please believe me."
He stopped in his walking and turned to face her, looking into her eyes intently before nodding. "I suppose I believe you. I'm fine, okay? Don't worry about it." He managed a slight smile.
Meredith grinned, and nodded, exhaling as relief filled her body. "Okay. So… well… how about I make it up to you?"
Derek raised his brow, signaling for her to continue.
"You, me, at home… on the bed. Without clothes, preferably," she suggested, the wicked tinkle in her eye not lost on Derek.
He cleared his throat but figured that it would be a win-win situation on both ends anyway. "Tonight then," he said.
She kissed him chastely on the lips and skidded off happily whilst Derek watched her back until she disappeared around the corner. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. If he were honest, he'd admit that a certain picture and a certain redhead that had been plaguing his thoughts for the rest of the afternoon caused his indifference. So to satisfy his curiosity, he set off and looked for the only person he knew would answer his questions without judging him too much: Miranda Bailey.
He found her leaning against the nurses' station reviewing a chart. She seemed to be in a good mood.
"Dr. Bailey," he greeted, flashing her his signature McDreamy smile. "Do you have a minute?"
She raised her brow at him, the signature Nazi way and went back to look at her chart. "You have exactly one minute, starting now. Unless it's about a patient."
Her reply unfazed Derek. "It actually isn't about a patient."
"Then get a move on it. You have 50 seconds."
"You were in LA a few months ago, right?" he asked, unconsciously talking faster in fear of that 50-second rule. Even he was afraid, even the tiniest bit, of Miranda Bailey.
She turned to him and closed the chart with a snap. "Yes. But you already knew that. You're wasting my time, McDreamy. Spit it out. You have 40 seconds," she huffed, placing a hand on her hip to emphasize her point.
His hand seemed to sweat in a matter of milliseconds, and he had no choice but to blurt it out. "How's Addison?"
This seemed to surprise Bailey, catch her off guard. She looked steadily into Derek's eyes. "Why do you care?" she asked, narrowing her gaze.
"I… it's just…" he stuttered, mentally berating himself for coming up with no coherent thought.
Miranda sighed. "Addison is fine," she said, emphasizing the word and leaving it at that. She started to walk away hurriedly to the elevator.
"Just fine?" Derek called out after her.
She stopped in her track and turned to face Derek. "Just fine," she confirmed, nodding her head and walking away.
So that was it. She was fine. And then what? He sighed, walking aimlessly as he thought of the possibilities the word fine meant. Was she fine, meaning she was satisfied? Fine, meaning she was content even if she wasn't happy? Was she fine, with a man by her side? Was she fine, coping?
There were a million thoughts running through his brain, and he found himself at the cafeteria, sitting on one of the outdoor tables and trying to clear his brain.
"What's up?"
Derek looked up at the sound of Mark's voice hovering above him. He watched him take a seat next to him, looking concerned. "What?"
"Come on, man. We grew up together. I think I know when something's bothering you."
"Mark…"
"Just spit it out. Is it about surgery, or like, sex and whatever?"
Derek rolled his eyes. "I had a fight with Meredith."
Mark's face fell. Even after all this time, relationship problems just weren't his area of expertise. "Oh."
"We had a fight about a patient and I locked myself in my office. And of all the things that could possibly go wrong today, I found a picture of Addison and me on our wedding day. It shouldn't be affecting me, but I've been thinking about her, us, since this morning and I can't get her out of my head."
"Maybe you just miss her," Mark shrugged.
"I don't know. I mean, I'm trying not to think about it. I was so sure that I felt nothing for her. When she came here with Archer, I didn't feel anything particularly romantic towards her. But that picture… it made me wonder if she's moved on, if she's with someone in LA. And it made me wonder about just how happy I am with Meredith."
"Okay."
"My point is… I've believed for so long that I stopped loving her," he said, his voice worried.
Mark cleared his throat. "Okay. Well. I think that seeing the picture just made you remember the good times you had together. Plus you found it at the most inconvenient time, right after a fight with Meredith. You're probably just over thinking it. So don't worry and just… it'll pass."
"You know, man. I really wish you were right. We were so happy back then, so happy that I can tell you how it feels. I remember it and I remember how light I felt with her."
Mark looked at him sympathetically, but before he could answer respond, Derek's pager beeped and he had to be whisked off to surgery once again.
Four hours had passed and Derek found himself arriving home, where his post-it wife was expecting him. He was still wondering about Addison, about what she was doing right now, if she was happy, and essentially things he shouldn't even be thinking about. He couldn't get her out of his mind, so he tried to concentrate on Meredith, hoping it would put things back to normal.
The moment he opened the front door, he was greeted by Meredith attacking him with a long and sensual kiss that lasted until they were up the stairs and in their bedroom. He gave in to her soft lips and reveled in the feeling of being with her.
"I love you," Meredith said breathily between kisses. "And I'm sorry for today."
Derek nodded. "Make-up sex?"
"Hell yes! I miss being with you."
He smiled. "Okay. It's just that… I'm pretty exhausted from today, you know?" He tried to assuage the fall by kissing her gently.
Meredith pouted. "Come on, Derek. It wouldn't take too much time, but it'll take away the stress."
He had to laugh at this, so he nodded and carried her to the bed. They took off each other's clothes and started grinding and kissing and sucking, Meredith on top so that Derek wouldn't be too tired. They were in the middle of the deed when Meredith noticed that Derek was hardly moving, only trying to keep awake to appease her.
"Der… come on. I know you said you were tired but I'm doing all the work here."
He sighed. "Addison, I love you. But I told you I was tired," he said between yawns.
Meredith stopped abruptly, her eyes widening as she got off from on top of Derek. "What did you just call me?"
Derek opened his eyes in confusion. "What? What do you mean?"
She raised her brow at him. "You just called me Addison," she stated, her voice rising.
He sat up, really now knowing what Meredith was talking about. "What? No, I didn't," he answered defensively. Besides, even if he did, it wasn't intentional.
"Yes you did," Meredith insisted, her voice weary but angry. "Just… please leave. Get out. I don't know, but it's obvious you were thinking about her. I mean, come on! It's been four freakin' years since you got divorced, and still you think about her. And now… now you're calling me by her name? Get out. "
He tried to explain, but really, there was nothing to explain because he couldn't deny that he was thinking of a certain redhead, possibly for the rest of the day. "Mer… why don't you let me explain?"
"Explain? There's nothing to explain, Derek. I thought you were mad, tired, but when we're having sex, make-up sex at that, and you call me Addison, that's not something I'm going to take lightly! We were having sex, although my we I may very well just mean me, and I was doing all the work, and then you spring this on me? No, Derek. There's nothing to explain! What? Are you cheating on me? Are you off seeing her?"
"Meredith! Would you listen to yourself? You think I'm cheating on you with someone who's 400 miles from here, in a different city, in LA, while I'm always at work? When I'm not at work. I'm with you! I don't have to tell you that she doesn't mean anything to me anymore. You should know that by now. I just had a hard day at work, and you know that better than anyone else. So don't go about saying these things! I know you're tired, but god, this isn't justifiable!"
Meredith rolled her eyes. "You do not get to bring the patient into this! I thought we were over that? Apparently, you're not. So please, appease my confusion and just leave. Get out of here."
Derek sighed, knowing there was no other choice but to do so. So he grabbed his clothes and dresses himself, running a hand through his hair unsurely. "I'm leaving, but only because you're asking me to."
When she didn't answer, he merely walked out of the door and left.
Please tell me what you think!
