First of all, I'm sure many of you received a notification (or two) yesterday that I'd updated this story, and found nothing. This is my first story, and I was unsuccessfully trying to post this chapter…..thank you to CileSuns92 for helping me out!

Thanks for all the reviews, favourites and follows!

Now that I know what I'm doing, hopefully the wait between chapters won't be as long this time. Also, I had planned on this story having 3 chapters, but now I think there will be 4, just so you know.

Also, the way I have surgeons being paged later on in this chapter is likely inaccurate, as I don't know how that is done in real life. But I think this method works for this story.

Enjoy!

Meredith awoke to someone tickling her face. Zola was giggling, clearly enjoying the rare treat of sleeping in her mommy and daddy's bed. Meredith glanced at the clock, and noticed that Derek's flight was supposed to leave in 15 minutes. He should have boarded by now. She grabbed her phone, and there hadn't been any calls. She wasn't worried—she would be worried if he delayed calling her when the plane landed. She'd make sure he was alive, and then kill him dead if he did that. But she couldn't help wondering why he hadn't called, he had promised. He may have broken his promise that he'd work less to spend time with the kids, but this wasn't a promise he would break. She was sure of it.

Instead of staring at her phone willing it to ring, she diverted her attention to Zola and Bailey, who were wide awake and wanting food.

She had showered the night before, so that she wouldn't have to leave her children unattended this morning. Although, she knew she would have to do that the next few days. Meredith got breakfast ready for Zola, and Bailey, anxiously checking her phone and making sure the volume was on.

Finally, it rang.

"Derek?"

"Hey, sorry it took me so long to call you. This place is so busy, I just got to my gate. I don't know where everyone is going at this hour"

"Are you boarding soon?"

"Yeah, they just called the first group, so I'll be on in a few minutes."

"Alright. Thanks for calling, even though you're in a rush"

"I promised didn't I?"

Meredith smiled. He was so charming, even over the phone. "Do you have a second to say bye to Zo?"

"Oh, I always have a second for Zo"

Meredith held the phone by Zola's ear.

"Zola, say hi to your daddy, he's on his way to the see the president!"

Zola was always so excited to talk to her parents on the phone. "Hi daddy! Bailey and me are havin' breffast!"

"You are, are you? Is it yummy?"

"Yeah!" Zola said, quite exuberantly.

"I'll talk to you tonight, okay Zo? I love you"

"Lub you too daddy"

Meredith and Derek had decided not to tell Zola that Derek was going on a plane. They weren't sure how much she recalled from the plane crash one year earlier, but they knew she did remember it. After all, her parents were missing for days. She had been terrified, so understandably, she would have memories. Derek and Meredith knew that Zola had been looked after by everyone that hadn't been on the plane, mainly Dr. Bailey and Richard. They felt that Zola likely heard the word "plane" quite a bit during that week, and their little girl was brilliant. Derek and Meredith strongly felt that she might associate the word "plane" with her mommy and daddy disappearing. After the crash, they had explained that something happened, and mommy and daddy took a while to come back, and they had made sure Zola knew they would never leave her on purpose.

Understandably, after the plane crash, Zola had been much more clingy and cried more often than she had before. For weeks, Meredith and Derek had made sure one of them visited her in daycare every few hours. But Zola adjusted quite well, considering the long separation. She didn't seem to have any long-term effects.

But Meredith and Derek did not want her to deal with the fear that Derek's plane would crash. She was way too young to worry about something like that.

The worrying was left to Zola's mommy.

"So, you'll call me when you land?"

"Of course"

"How long is your flight?"

"5hrs and 20 minutes. So, I'll call you around 2:30. But planes get delayed all the time okay? It might a little while after that" Derek had gone over the flight time and his entire itinerary with her the night before. In fact, it was on the counter right in front of her as he was talking to her. But he knew she needed to hear it from him.

"Okay" She didn't want to be the one to end the conversation. Her heart was starting to pound in her chest, she wanted to somehow stop him from getting on that plane. But also, she didn't want Zola or Bailey to worry, so she turned away from them as she composed herself.

"I will be fine, Mer. I'll call you sometime between 2:20 and 3, depending when we land. My flight number is on the itinerary sheet. You can check online and see if my plane is delayed or not. I don't want you to worry"

"Well, I worry. Deal with it"

Derek smiled. He loved when she told him to "deal with it".

"I love you, Mer"

"I love you too. I'll talk to you in 5 ½ hours"

"That's my girl. Bye"

"Bye"

Normally, a person would end this conversation with "have a safe flight". But Meredith didn't feel that was appropriate for this conversation. If he didn't have a safe flight, she would be a wreck in a million little pieces, but telling him to have a safe flight wouldn't help at all. Plus, she'd heard "have a safe flight" right after getting on the plane to go to Boise.

"Daddy gone?" Zola asked, putting her last bite of cheerios in her mouth.

"Yeah, lovebug. He's on his way. He'll talk to us when he gets there. Are you all done?"

"Yes mama"

"Okay, let's get you and your brother ready to go"

Meredith had gotten the kids ready on her own a few times before, when Derek was on call, or had to go in early. But more often than not, he was doing it by himself. She hadn't gotten the routine of getting two small children out the door yet. But, Zola was very helpful. She was so proud of how Zola was maturing.

After dropping the kids off at daycare (tear free), Meredith went about her day. She tried to keep herself busy, because if she let herself think too much about where Derek was right now, she wasn't sure how well she would be able to do her job. She already checked her phone obsessively, trying to will the clock forwards.

She had lunch with Zola and Bailey at daycare, which was a perfect distraction. Her children made every day better.

It was 2:10pm. Meredith had checked online (more times than she would admit), and Derek's plane was on track. It was supposed to land in 10 minutes. She had gotten a couple of pages for surgeries in the last few minutes, but she wasn't first on call, so she would only have to take them if the first surgeon wasn't available. Normally, she would have jumped on the surgeries, before the first on-call surgeon had a chance to respond. But right now, she knew she would not have her complete focus on her patient. Her mind would be with Derek, in that plane, and watching her phone until it rang. She could not be a surgeon right now.

At 2:35, the phone finally rang. Meredith felt as though she'd been staring at the phone for hours and hours.

"Hello?" She answered on the first ring.

"Hi. I'm here. Everything's fine"

She let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding "Thank goodness"

"I told you so"

"Hmm…you did. How was the flight?"

"It was good. I'm glad it's over" He'd been scared too. She knew he was scared, he just wasn't as quick to talk about it.

"Me too"

"How's your day going?"

"Alright. Much better now. Everyone probably thinks I'm really absent minded, since I've been worrying about you"

"Well that's another reason I'm glad the flight is over. I don't like when you worry"

"You get on a plane, and I guarantee I will worry.

"How were the kids this morning?"

"Good, Zola's very helpful. She's such a big girl"

"She is. I may have told her she had to be a big help to you, or else I wouldn't bring home a present for her"

"Derek!"

"What? It's working isn't it?"

"I…you're just…such a guy"

"I thought you liked that about me"

"Oh I do…" Meredith's pager went off again. The first surgeon on call was unavailable, they were paging her now. "Derek, I just got paged for a surgery. The other surgeon got called away. I'll talk to you tonight?"

"Yeah, text me when you get home. We'll face time"

"Great. I love you. Have fun exploring D.C."

"Oh I'll be having a nap now, exploring can wait. I love you too"

"Bye"

"Bye"

Meredith was thanking her lucky stars that she had been pulled into surgery after Derek's call. She was happy now, that Derek was fine, her kids were happy, and she was heading into a surgery. Everything seemed brighter.

Meredith had no idea what was awaiting her when she went home that night.