"What time?" he muttered gruffly, trying to force the siren song of dreaming away. Everything slogged around behind his eyes in a bitter, slow march. Thoughts seemed to come to him sluggishly. And functional movement took real focus.
"It's 10AM," the nurse replied as she checked his pulse and did a quick test of his eye movement with a penlight. She departed, leaving him staring dully ahead at the wall, which blurred as he let himself lose focus. Sleep already had its claws sunk deep within him, and his eyelids started to drift shut without much effort.
A doctor he didn't recognize walked in. "Good morning," the man said with a smile, and Derek worked to refocus. If only they would leave him alone to sleep, just for a few hours...
The doctor had a thick wash of shaggy blonde hair and a rosy cast that made him seem boyish, at least ten years younger than he probably actually was. He walked up to Derek's bed and pulled the chart from the holder stuck on the fake-wood paneling at the foot of it. "I'm Dr. Masden," he said. "I'll be supervising your case today since Dr. Zalkind's shift ended earlier."
"Okay," Derek replied, his voice thick and low with the ache of exhaustion. The tired thrum behind his eyes wouldn't go away, and he found himself wishing Dr. Masden would just get the hell out.
Dr. Masden scanned Derek's chart, frowning here, nodding there. "So, how are you feeling today? Any headache or dizziness?"
For a moment, Derek just stared, blank and speechless, and then finally after a few seconds, words came to him in slow succession. "No headache right now," he said. "I get dizzy if I try to move too much. Mostly, I'm just tired."
"Well, that's to be expected. Can you hold out your hand for me?"
No, he wanted to say. He blinked and forced his muscles to start cooperating. Slowly, he raised his hand and stared at it. The little label with his name and allergy status itched against his skin. At least they'd removed the heart monitor and the IV line earlier in the morning after the 'critical' period had passed. Both of those had really been starting to irritate him.
"Make a fist?"
He did.
"Extend again?"
His hand didn't start to shake until about a minute had passed. Derek dropped his hand back to his lap and stared at it while Dr. Masden wrote notes on his chart. It was probably... Derek blinked. For a minute, he couldn't think of it. Contusions. Yeah. He closed his eyes. Contusions would resolve on their own and the symptoms would fade... Eventually. Until then, he probably wasn't going to be doing any surgeries... He started to drift.
"Well, that's a vast improvement," Dr. Masden said, forcing Derek to slog once again back to wakefulness. "I imagine that will clear up as the bruising heals. Any blurred vision still?"
"No," Derek said.
"Can you read this?" Dr. Masden asked as he handed Derek a small pamphlet on some new medical treatment for sinus allergies.
Derek read from it, wincing at the effort it took just to concentrate on it. But it wasn't blurred. After a sentence or two, he paused, his place wandered, and he had to catch it again.
"Are you having trouble seeing the words, or is it more just the act of reading?" Dr. Masden prodded when Derek stuttered slowly into the third sentence.
"The latter..." Derek said.
"Well, it hasn't even been sixteen hours yet since you were brought in, and I'm guessing you're getting pretty exhausted with all the prodding. You'll probably be feeling really foggy for at least another day or two, given the severity of the concussion you received," Dr. Masden said. "I think we can release you tonight if this trend of improvement continues, provided you have somebody to watch you at home. I'd like to get a follow-up MRI and CT later in the afternoon, but so far I'm pleased with your progress."
Derek nodded, swallowing against the sudden lump that formed in his throat. Home would be good. Home away from all the poking, in a dark, clean bed where he could sleep without being constantly observed. He sniffed, trying to hold back his misery as the doctor launched into a long spiel that left him dizzy in the roar of words.
"For the next few months to a year, there's a good chance you'll continue to experience some symptoms of your concussion, along with additional problems. Headaches, nausea, fatigue, dizziness, bouts of blurred vision, decreased libido... You might feel a little 'slow', might find yourself misplacing things more often than you used to. There's also the potential for emotional problems such as anxiety, restlessness, depression, or aggression, among others. You might not have any of those symptoms, or you might run the gamut. Just keep in mind that it's all perfectly normal, particularly after such a severe concussion, and that it should resolve on its own eventually. I'm going to give you a pamphlet on post concussion syndrome to take home with you for reference. I definitely advise you to seek a follow-up appointment with a neurological specialist within a week or two, just to make sure nothing unexpected has cropped up."
Derek blinked against the onslaught. He knew all this stuff. He did. He'd recited the same thing to any number of patients. It still felt damning to hear from another individual, though.
"The memory loss..." Dr. Masden continued. "That's another animal. Since it's caused by physical trauma and not psychological, there's really no treatment other than to wait and see. I've never seen a case where nothing at all came back, though it's possible you'll always have some gaps. Your older memories will probably be the first to return. You should start noticing some improvement soon."
Again, all stuff Derek knew already. And yet...
"Can I see my films from last night?" Derek asked.
"Pardon?"
"My films."
"Why?"
"I'm a neurosurgeon... I'd like to look at them."
"You are? I-- Well, I guess you know most of this stuff by rote already then. You could have stopped me earlier, you know," Dr. Masden said with a grin as he handed the films over.
"Turn the lights on?" Derek asked.
Dr. Masden walked over and flipped the lights on. Derek winced as the sudden illumination speared him. He felt tears forming, and he reflexively brought his hands over his eyes as he groaned. After a few moments, he forced his eyes open and shakily held the first film up. He stared for a long moment. At first, it flat out didn't make sense to him, and he swam through molasses trying to call up the skills to read it. Slowly, the image resolved, and he saw his brain, saw the portions of it that were lightly contused. Nothing else seemed abnormal. He thought about it until his head started to hurt a little, but he re-concluded that, no, nothing seemed abnormal. He brought the next film up. He stared as the mess came into focus and found the same contusions. Blinking, he tried to think deeper. Was there something he was missing? He just didn't know for sure. Nothing came to him. Normally, it should have been a snap. But he felt like he was lagging a few frames behind the world at large. Finally, he gave up and lowered the films.
Nothing. He'd been hoping there would be something obvious, something simple that was causing his memory loss. Something that the doctors here had missed because they just weren't trained to catch it. By their own admission, they didn't have a neurology department, and their doctors were only trained with the basics required to treat most mild traumas. The bruising was slight, just as they had said. The spots on his temporal lobes were in the right location to be messing around with his memory. But that sort of thing wasn't something that could just be fixed under the knife. It would have to resolve on its own, assuming it ever resolved at all. If the slam to his brain had been hard enough, it was possible, though extremely unlikely, that stuff just simply wouldn't come back to him.
That scared him more than a little. He wasn't even sure how much was missing yet.
He sighed and handed the films back to Dr. Masden. "You agree with my assessment?" Dr. Masden asked.
Derek nodded, sweeping his hands across his face in a tired gesture. "Yeah," he replied.
"Okay. We'll get new films later today and see if there's improvement or extra bleeding that could be causing issues. I'll be back later to check in," Dr. Masden said, and then he parted after switching off the light, plunging Derek into comfortable darkness again.
Derek sighed. His eyes slipped shut, and he drifted off, but in what seemed like less than a minute, a nurse was yelling at him to wake up again. He moaned and opened his eyes. "Look, I'm fine. Let me sleep," he snapped.
The nurse frowned. "We've been instructed to wake you every hour for the first twenty-four hours. I know you're probably getting cranky, but it's policy."
He sighed as the nurse once again checked his pulse, his eye movement, and then made sure that he still remembered he was Derek and that he was in a damned hospital. Really, it was obvious just from the bed. He ran his hands through his hair, but quickly drew them back into his lap when they started to shake violently.
"Where's my wallet?" he asked abruptly as he gave up on the notion of ever sleeping again.
The nurse looked at him oddly. "Your personal belongings should be in the drawer here. Let's see..." She moved to the desk and routed through the drawer. "Here we go," she said, pulling out a thin, black billfold.
"Thanks," he said, taking it from her with a trembling grasp.
After the nurse had left him, he opened it. His face stared back at him, slightly rougher, slightly more aged than he remembered, but only slightly. The address on the license said 613 Harper Lane. Seattle. He sighed in frustration. He didn't even know what Seattle looked like anymore, and supposedly, he lived there. Lived there with some woman he didn't know.
He closed his eyes and sighed. Addison. The last clear memory he had of her was her smiling at him in a distant, cold sort of way as he took another emergency call into the hospital, early, early in the morning. "See you at work," she'd whispered despondently as he'd thrown on some slacks and a shirt and dashed out. All he'd said was goodbye. He'd meant to apologize. But... Had he? Everything sort of faded after that. And memories were confusing to begin with. It wasn't like his whole life was a chronology in his head. Was that really the last thing he remembered, or was it just the last thing he could think of right that second?
He blinked against the memory of Addison, hooded with sleep, dejected at his departure. Sighing, he flipped further through the wallet, hissing in frustration when his hands started to shake badly enough that turning the pages was a war. It seemed like the shaking got worse the more he stressed. He paused for a minute, trying to relax, but that only made the exhaustion slip in again, and so he went back to work, routing through his life. He flipped through credit cards he didn't recognize, followed by an insurance card that detailed Seattle Grace's plan. He briefly paused to smile over the fact that he'd somehow become head of the neurosurgery department at Seattle Grace. That was a big step up from his private practice in New York, certainly much more prestigious. He fumbled past a ticket stub from his flight, supposedly yesterday, though he remembered none of it.
He paused on the last plastic sleeve. There was a small photograph tucked in it, one taken by one of those corny photo booth things often found at carnivals or in superstores. His older self and Meredith sat intertwined, looking at each other with euphoric grins plastered across their faces. His arm was wrapped possessively over her shoulder. And he looked so... blissful.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt like that.
Meredith, she'd said. It was a pretty name, and she had a pretty face. He hadn't really gotten a very good look at her the night before. His vision had still been spotty, and she'd been haggard with upset. Upset for him. It felt odd, knowing his injury had caused another person to become so distraught, another person he essentially didn't know anymore.
"Hey, you're awake!" Kathy said as she wandered into the room with a smile. "How are you feeling?"
Derek looked up sluggishly as he closed the billfold and put it on the stand beside the bed. A tall, thin, black-haired, blue-eyed blur slowly shimmered into a clear image of his youngest sister as his brain registered the change in view. "I've been better," he said.
"Meredith is at the house getting some sleep if you didn't know," Kathy said. "Poor thing. She was really shaken up. Rob is in the process of tracking down where the car got towed. Mom and everyone else are out getting breakfast. Oh, and I brought you a pair of John's pajamas. You're about the same size, though he has some extra spare tires that you haven't accumulated, what with your health kick that never dies."
He blinked at the deluge of words coming from his sister's lips. It took him a moment to catch up with it all. He sighed. "Oh," he replied lamely as she laid some red-checkered flannel pants at the foot of the bed. He leaned forward to grab them, but he regretted it in seconds as things started to swim in front of his eyes like a melting painting. He groaned and shut his eyes, trying to stop the spinning.
"You okay?" Kathy asked from far, far away.
"Dizzy," he muttered, swallowing against the painful lump forming in the back of his throat. The swirling feeling faded back into the roar with all the speed of a turtle as he held himself still, but it did at least recede. With every heartbeat, the turntable the room was on decelerated, until it hovered at a slow, moping crawl, refusing to go away completely.
He heard her move closer. She rubbed his shoulder. "Let me help you, Der," she said.
He opened his eyes and watched her motioning for him to slide off the bed. It seemed like the equivalent of a descent into the Grand Canyon. Possible, but immeasurably difficult. He pushed the sheets back and inched to the side of the bed. He swung his legs over, but he had to stop, stop and breathe. When he felt comfortable again, he stood up, only to moan in frustration. "I can't," he said, panting with misery as his head begged him to sit back down.
"It's okay. Lean on me," Kathy said as she shuffled around. She leaned down and he put his shaky hands on her shoulders, standing helplessly as she maneuvered down by his feet, pajama pants in tow.
"Left foot," she said.
It took him a moment, but he managed to lift his leg up off the floor enough for her to get the pajama leg around his ankle. He wished it would just end, just end so he could sink back onto the bed. He tried to save her from his weight, but trying versus actively connecting the thought with his muscles were vastly different things, the latter resulting in bitter failure, and he stayed resting on her, grip growing tighter and tighter as the world started to grow dim on him.
"Right foot," she commanded through the haze.
He complied somehow, a small groan pealing out of his throat as another sheet of dizziness wrapped around him in a suffocating veil. "I have to sit, Kathy," he gasped. "I-"
"Almost done," she said. She pulled up the pants. They slid up his skin until they loosely gripped his waist. He swayed, desperate, just waiting, waiting for her to say--
"Okay, sit."
He collapsed with a miserable sob. She fingered the ties on his gown and pulled them loose. He felt cool air slither against his skin as she removed the gown. He sucked in a breath.
"Arms," she said.
He raised his arms in front of him, and he was vaguely aware of the cool, clean shirt sliding over his head. It felt so much better than the flimsy gown. So much better, more secure... and yet, he was so miserable by the time Kathy was through, he couldn't really enjoy it. He collapsed back against the pillows, shaking, swallowing back the waves of vertigo.
He closed his eyes and panted, staying very, very still.
"Do you want me to get the doctor?" Kathy asked.
"No," he whispered as everything slowly settled again. "This is normal."
When he opened his eyes, Kathy was sitting on a chair next to his bed, staring at him with a frown. "You really did a number on yourself, Der," she whispered.
He gripped the bridge of his nose and sighed as the back of his throat started to throb again. He swallowed. Felt his eyes watering. He blinked, blinked, blinked again, trying to make it all go away. "What's she like?" he asked.
"Who, Meredith?"
"Yeah."
Kathy shrugged. "I barely know her. This is the first time you've brought her out here."
"You mean this trip was to introduce her?" he asked, incredulous. A sliver of guilt slipped under his skin and twisted. He'd come to introduce this woman to his family, and now he only knew her name because she'd told him. She must feel so awful...
"Yeah," Kathy replied.
"I don't remember any of it, Kath... Please tell me what she's like... I need... I don't... Something..." His hands and other muscles started to tremble again. He pulled his arms across his chest, folding his hands up underneath his armpits, but it did nothing to hide the tremors as they shifted into his forearms and made his whole torso shake as the kinetic energy transferred around. Kathy narrowed her eyes at him, but she didn't comment.
"I'm sure she's wonderful," she replied.
"Then why do I get the feeling everyone hates her?" he asked. "I asked Mom and Nance earlier after she left, and all I got were noncommittal shrugs."
"You know they're the watchdogs, Der. You've been... kind of weird lately," Kathy said, swallowing. "They're just worried."
"Weird?"
"You just took off, Derek," she explained. "We didn't even know you'd moved until Addison finally told us when we tried to invite you two for brunch."
"I don't... It's all... I don't remember anything past..." he stuttered. "I'm not even really sure how much I'm missing..."
"Stop trying to force it. You're just upsetting yourself."
"Don't analyze me, Kath," he snapped.
"Well, don't toss me bait. You should rest, Der. You need it right now. And, hey. If you love her even half as much as she obviously loves you, well... You have nothing to worry about, because that's the kind of feeling that sort of forces things to work out."
He sighed and leaned back against the pillows. Somehow, that didn't comfort him, it just added indescribable pressure. What if this time around he felt differently? Then he'd be hurting an innocent woman. And then... Addison. Should he call her? He shouldn't... Not when they were obviously split up. But... He swallowed. His marriage was just gone. Poof. And he didn't remember a thing, not even the reason it had blown up. He'd been distant lately, yes... but work had been so crazy... and...
She'd cheated on him, Meredith had said. But Addison... Cheat? The thought made him feel sick and wasted and tired. He never would have imagined... He wondered how he'd found out. A nudge by a friend to open his eyes? Perhaps Mark had clued him in. Mark almost spent more time with Addison than he did. Or had he walked in on Addison and her new boyfriend in the act... His insides started to crawl.
"Did she really cheat on me?" Derek asked.
"By her own admission, yes," Kathy replied, deftly following his subject change.
He swallowed back nausea at thinking about it. He had to stop. Stop worrying about all this. There was an extremely good chance that this would all just go away soon, and his memories would pop back one by one. Why worry about what he couldn't remember, when it would surely just come back? He'd never seen retrograde amnesia this severe remain in somebody who wasn't already wall paste.
So, it would come back. And he would be in love again like he was supposed to be, and he wouldn't feel sick that Addison had cheated on him and his marriage had gone nuclear.
"Derek, stop worrying about it and sleep," Kathy prodded. It was as if she could read his mind.
He breathed against the thrum of worry and ache and exhaustion loitering in his skull, and he closed his eyes. "You try sleeping when they poke you every five minutes to make sure you can still spell your name," he grumbled. Fuzz started to grip the corners of his thoughts. Kathy chuckled softly somewhere in the background, background that, inch by sluggish inch, crept far away into the darkness. Suddenly he was falling, falling into nothingness, and he was gone.
It seemed like only a few moments had passed before the nurse yanked him back from sleep with a firm voice and that wretched penlight, starting the whole cycle again. Kathy sat with him through what had become the most annoying checkup routine ever. The nurse departed, and Derek couldn't stop the tears of frustration.
"I just want to sleep," he said, blinking away the misery.
"I know," Kathy replied.
His eyes drifted shut, and he was out again for a blessed fifty-nine minutes.
