"We can never be sure of our courage until we have faced danger." - La Rochefoucauld
Desperate times call for desperate measures. This phrase originates from the proverb "Desperate diseases must have desperate remedies." The meaning behind these two statements is the same: when you're faced with a hopeless situation, you'll take extraordinary measures to find a solution.
Until you're faced with a "desperate disease," you can't fully understand the concept. Most doctors will see a desperate disease at some point in their careers. The best doctors are courageous enough to go out of their comfort zone to find a cure for these diseases. They are willing to operate in conditions all other doctors consider "inoperable." Not everyone is brave enough to use desperate remedies. They're risky, but the best doctors are willing to take those risks if there's a slight possibility of saving their patient's life.
Exhibit A: Isobel Stevens.
Isobel "Izzie" Stevens was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic melanoma skin cancer. The cancer had already spread to her liver, skin, and brain. She was given a 5 percent chance of survival, meaning there was a 95 percent chance she would die. As humans, we like to know our chances of survival. After all, doesn't an approximate answer surpass no answer at all? When your doctor tells you have a 5 percent chance to live, you might think that's next to nothing. In reality, it means out of 100 people who have had the surgery, 5 people survived. Such a low chance of survival can cause a person to do crazy things. Izzy, for example, chose to get married, thinking she would be dead in a few days. In the end, she was one of the 5 percent who survived, then she left her husband and vanished without a trace. Later, she sent divorce papers and hasn't been heard from since.
When we're faced with a medical catastrophe, one of our first questions is "What are the chances I'll survive?" But the truth is, no doctor can tell you how long you're going to live. They can only give you estimates based on other people's stories. No two individuals are the same. We're all unique. There are medical miracles all the time. There have been patients who were given only six months to live, then turned around and lived another thirty years. Doctors can't give you a death sentence. That's not their job. They are merely the healers. Their job is to elongate patients' lives, not shorten them. Though, more often than not, whether a patient lives or dies is completely out of their control.
Statistics are unreliable, and often times we choose to avoid them. We don't want to accept the astounding numbers in front of us. Maybe that's why, according to a new research study by the Avon Foundation Research, 65 percent of parents don't talk to their children about sexual assault or domestic violence. The truths behind sexual assault are gruesome, and many parents don't know how to talk to bring it up to their children. How do you explain to your child that not all people are kind in the world? How do you tell a patient there's a chance they might not survive treatment? It's not exactly the same, but the concept is similar.
Avoidance is easy. Ignorance is blissful. If we don't talk about difficult issues, then it's like they don't exist. The unfortunate truth is, though, sexual assault is a very real issue that hundreds of thousands of people encounter each year, and it has affected millions in the United States alone. It is crucial we start talking. We can avoid it, and pretend it doesn't happen. That's always an option, the one many individuals choose, but it doesn't make it the right option.
Somewhere in America, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, a person is sexually assaulted every two minutes; 43 percent of rapes occur between the hours of 6 p.m. and 12 a.m., which represents only 25 percent of the day.
These are real statistics. They're not numbers pulled out of a hat like some statistics you might see. There's a quote that says, "99 percent of statistics are made up on the spot." Above are the one percent.
Life is full of choices in which you must decide upon every day. You can live in denial, or you can do something about it. You can choose to believe the author is a crazy psycho who needs therapy, or you can accept that she's done her research and knows what she's talking about. You can be courageous, or you can be a wimp. You can stay silent, or you can speak up and have your voice heard.
Desperate times call for desperate measures…
When Meredith woke, her head was pounding against her skull. The room felt like it was spinning. The cool air brushed against her body, and she shivered, soon realizing she was lying sideways on a bed. She wasn't alone. The man had one arm around her body, like Derek usually did when she woke, and ran his other hand down her nude body, resting finally on her butt. Meredith closed her eyes, thinking of all the times she'd spent in this very on-call room. So much had happened on this bed, and she knew that she wasn't the only person who had had sex on it. It was a hotspot among hospital staff.
"You're finally awake," the deep voice whispered in her ear. Her gut tightened as she felt nauseous. He ran his hand over her shoulder and carefully altered her body to face toward him, and she came face-to-face with him. He, too, was naked. She studied his face, which was just centimeters away from hers. His large brown orbs gazed cunningly into her. He gave her a closed-mouth smile. His face was rectangular, and he had a mole on the top of his forehead, just below his hairline. He stroked her soft hair, and murmured into her ear, "You're so beautiful without clothes on. I knew you would be."
She clenched her fist tightly and dug it into his stomach, but he only laughed. He rolled on top of her and smiled down at her.
"Please," she mouthed. "Let me go. Let me live. I have a family."
"We're just getting started, though. I can't stop now," he smirked, laughing and wrapping his grimy hands around her neck. "Now, shut up." She could barely breathe as he choked her throat. He locked her knees with his knees, and forced himself inside her. She tried to cry, but his grip was too tight around her neck. Her head started to buzz, flashes of light glared into her eyes, and she felt darkness succumbing her.
"Disappearances happen, pains go phantom. blood stops running, and people fade away. There's more I have to say, so much more, but I disappeared." - Season 3.16, Drowning on Dry Land
She was swimming, but then she stopped. She realized, her purpose in life was over. Perhaps, this was how it was supposed to end. She quit swimming. She quit fighting, and she allowed her body to sink. She watched as the light from above splattered against the water. She'd given up on life. She held her breath, her head went blank, and suddenly all was gone.
He released his hands from her neck, and she gasped for air; her lungs pounded in her rib cage as she regained consciousness. He'd finished, and laid next to her again.
"What am I going to do with you?" he whispered so calmly and eerily in her ear.
"Let me live," Meredith gasped, pleading; goose bumps crawled up her skin. She shivered. This wasn't like the time in the lake. She wasn't going to give up without a hard fight. She had so much to fight for, so much to live for now. You're not going to die, she told herself, she promised herself. She'd survived a plane crash, for God's sake. What about Zola? What about Derek?
"Why would I do that?" the man sneered. "You've seen my face, you know what I look like. What's going to stop you from going to the police? I can't have you doing that."
"Do you know what kind of miracle that it is that Derek is who he is? Do you know how rare it is that someone like him even exists? He's still an optimist. He still believes in true love and magic and… soul mates. He's waiting for you, and if you don't come back from this, you will change who he is," Denny DuQuette told her when she died, and he was right. Derek was her soul mate. She didn't realize it at the time. In fact, she didn't realize it for another year, when their clinical trial became a success. When suddenly the benefits outweighed the risk. When she realized life was too short to play games. She'd dated plenty of men, but none of them made feel like Derek did. He was the one, and that's when she realized, she couldn't live without him. It had taken her eons to fully trust him, but she fully believed that they were extraordinary together.
Without her, Derek would fall apart. They'd just gotten their lives together. Zola came into their lives, and everything was perfect. Their relationship had survived the worst, and then the plane crash happened. Lexie died, and then Mark died. Derek lost feeling in his hand and couldn't operate. He and Callie were still searching for a way to fix his hand, and Meredith believed that he would one day regain feeling and operate again. She had faith. She couldn't die, because Derek would be changed forever. He would lose all hope. He would probably never operate again.
"I'll do anything," Meredith begged. "Absolutely anything. Please, if you let me go, I'll go fall down the stairs. It'll look like I just tripped, and that'll explain the bruises. Nobody has to know about this, I promise."
Then, there was a loud beep that came from the floor. Someone had paged her.
He reached over her and dug into her pile of clothes on the floor. He'd found her phone and held it in his hand. His eyes stared intently on the phone screen.
"Well, well, looks like your hubby is paging you. What a shame," he shook his head and began messing with her phone. She reached to take it out of his hand, but he was fast to move it out of her reach.
"Please," she gasped, panting. "Just let me go. No one has to know. I'll never tell anyone."
"Damned right you wouldn't tell anyone, because you'd certainly regret it. You know, that's a lovely cabin in the woods your husband built for you. You know, he sounds like a great guy. Aren't you lucky a lucky girl?" He flashed her phone at her; a photo she'd taken of the house the day they moved in was on the screen. "If I do happen to let you go, and you tell, you'll regret it. You won't get to see your daughter go to kindergarten, graduate high school, get married..." He continued to scroll through her photos. "Aw, little Zola. She wouldn't want you to tell. Wouldn't want to hurt this precious innocent face, now would I? She's down in daycare right now, isn't she?"
Meredith clenched her lip with her teeth.
"Please, let me go. Reply to Derek and tell him I'm on my way," she growled, begging for her life. Sweat dripped down her face. She felt filthy. Dirty. Horrifyingly disgusting and violated. She just wanted to take a shower, but she knew she had to get back to work. Derek had paged her, and she knew he would worry if she didn't answer the page. She just couldn't let him see her like this.
"Put on your clothes," the man demanded, pushing her off the bed. He slid off the bed and began to dress himself. She quickly dressed herself. He grabbed her by the wrist, her phone still in his hand, and slowly walked over to the door. He unlocked the door and peeked outside. "We're clear." He dragged her into the empty hallway and headed near the stairway.
He kicked the back of her knees, and there she tumbled down the stairs. When she looked up, he was gone.