Meredith woke and felt alone. She sensed people around her, but yet her body was cold and her heart ached. She opened her eyes and was surprised to find they weren't met by striking blue ones. Instead, she saw Cristina, Mark, and Lexie all eating lunch in her room. She would've been comforted, but the utter lack of Derek made her uneasy.
"Where's Derek?" She asked, getting the trio of surgeon's attention. Cristina set her tray of food down and walked over to Meredith's bed, placing her hand on top of her friend's reassuringly.
"He got pulled into an emergency surgery. He should be out soon-" Meredith cut her off.
"I need him." She said shakily. Cristina sighed, placing one of her hands on Meredith's face.
"This surgery is important to him. He's been with this patient for two months, and she just started coding out of nowhere. It's only a hemorrhage, he'll be here soon." Cristina assured her.
"I need someone to hold me. I'm going to have a panic attack and I need someone to hold me if he's not here." Meredith said calmly. She heard her mother's voice in her head getting louder and louder and she knew it wouldn't be long until she was plunged into hysteria.
Cristina exchanged a worried look with Mark and Lexie, who both shot up from their seats and rushed over a moment later. Meredith felt tears jump to her eyes as words echoed through her mind. She wanted Derek. She wanted the comfort and safety that he brought her, but she knew that surgery was important to him. So she sat and begged the horrible words to stop, but they didn't.
When she finally let the tears fall from her eyes, it was Cristina who climbed onto the bed next to her. The intern wrapped her arms around her friend and rubbed her back, shushing her softly and whispering lightly in an attempt to calm her down.
"Make her stop... make it stop... it hurts..." Meredith cried suddenly. Cristina pulled back slightly to look up at the two other surgeons in the room, her expression filled with concern. Mark was the only one that noticed when Meredith's eyes rolled back into her head. He shouted at Cristina to get off the bed just in time, as the blonde surgeon began shaking and thrashing violently just as her feet hit the ground.
"She's seizing!" He called out, jumping onto the bed and holding his girlfriend's sister down. She continued to violently shake and he heard Lexie sobbing behind him, but focused instead on stopping Meredith from hurting herself.
"Page Shepherd. We need to get her to C.T. and figure out what's wrong. I'll bet these aren't just panic attacks." Mark said to Cristina, who was frozen staring at her best friend thrashing in her hospital bed. She shook herself out of the trance and followed the order, paging Derek 9-1-1 and getting the bed ready for transport.
Meredith finally stopped shaking and all three doctors let out sighs of relief as the blonde surgeon came to. She looked up at the man on top of her, effectively crushing her tiny frame, very confused.
Just then, Derek rushed into the room, severely out of breath. His eyes widened as he saw Mark holding his girlfriend down and Cristina preparing to push the bed out of the room.
"What... the hell... happened?" He asked, still trying to get his breathing under control. Mark carefully removed himself from the bed, comforting a still distressed Lexie as soon as his feet hit the ground.
"We thought she was having another panic attack, but then she started seizing. We're taking her down to CT to find the source." Cristina explained. Meredith looked around the room hazily, breathing heavily with her eyes only barely open. She saw Derek and relaxed, her hand reaching out to him instinctively. He took it as they began to roll the bed out of the room, placing his other hand on her face and wiping the tears from her cheeks.
XxXxX
Derek had almost finished closing his patient from her hemorrhage repair when a pager went off. The scrub nurse looked at it and then looked back up at him worriedly.
"It's yours, Dr. Shepherd. 9-1-1." She informed. He sighed.
"Just give me... one second..." he said, focused only on his sutures.
"Doctor Shepherd..." The nurse sounded concerned and he looked up. "I think you want to take this page. It's Doctor Grey." She said. Before anyone could even breathe, he was gone. Out the door and down the hallway faster than anyone had seen him run before. He didn't stop until he was in her room and staring into her eyes.
"What... the hell... happened?"
XxXxX
Derek sat anxiously in the CT control room, staring at the screen and waiting for the scans to come up. He let out a loud sigh of relief when they finally loaded onto the screen.
"There's no bleeding, she's clear." He whispered to himself, still in slight disbelief. Cristina walked into the room and saw that scans had loaded.
"What is it?" She asked. Derek smiled and shook his head.
"She's fine. The seizure must have just been because of the trauma to her head and because she was breathing so hard. Her brain probably wasn't getting much oxygen." He explained. Cristina let out a huge sigh.
"Thank god!"
XxXxX
Hours later, Derek got a phone call from the board and took it in the hallway, leaving Cristina, Mark, and Lexie with Meredith.
When he finally reentered the room, his face was full of worry. Meredith sat up in her bed.
"The board said that they can't hold Ellis much longer without more testimony from you. They need you to talk to them, and soon." He said. Meredith sighed.
"Fine. Let's go." She said. The doctors in the room helped her into a wheelchair and transferred her to a mobile I.V. Before long, they were on their way to the conference room where the board had been assembled already.
"If you get uncomfortable or feel like you're going to have a panic attack, tell me. We can take a break any time you need." Derek said softly to her as he pushed the chair through the door into the conference room.
All of the members of the board looked up upon their entrance, with the head, Jennings, sitting at the end of the table.
"Dr. Grey. So glad you could join us." He announced, gesturing for her to sit at the other end of the table. Derek wheeled her chair over to the empty space and positioned it at the table, locking the wheels and moving to sit down next to her.
"Oh, Dr. Shepherd, I'm afraid we can't have you in here during the meeting. I'm sorry, we can't bend the rules, even for this situation." One of the board members spoke. He looked at Meredith, asking her with his eyes if she would be okay without him. She nodded, but he could tell she would be much more comfortable if she were there. Despite this, he turned and placed a gentle kiss on top of her head, leaning down and whispering in her ear.
"If you get uncomfortable, speak up. Don't be afraid, you can do this. You're strong, don't forget that. I love you." He whispered softly. She kissed his cheek just before he stood up.
"I love you too." She smiled weakly at him as he left the room. As soon as the door was closed, Derek sunk down the wall to the floor just outside in the hallway, hoping to hear some of what was happening. He sighed when he couldn't hear anything and looked up at Cristina, who had been waiting outside.
"The wouldn't let you sit in with them?" She asked, annoyed. He shook his head.
"I'm getting coffee. I'll bring you some, if you want." She offered. He nodded, not daring to look up at her and let her see the worry in his eyes. Instead, he stared at the ground, his arms folded on top of his knees and his forehead resting on his forearms.
"Um, I'm going to take Lexie and find somewhere to sleep. It's been a long day, and we both need to rest. I suggest you think about doing the same." Mark informed him. Derek shook his head.
"I can sleep later. Good luck, though." He said quietly, his gaze still trained on the ground. He heard two sets of footsteps retreating away from him and he was alone.
His loneliness didn't last long, as a few minutes later, a single set of footsteps approached him and sat down beside him. He didn't need to look up to know who it was.
"I have nothing to say to you." He said bitterly.
"Yeah, Okay." Alex Karev answered.
"You shouldn't even be here." Derek spat.
"She's my friend. One of the only people who actually cares about me. I'm not gonna leave her, even if you're mad at me." Alex defended. Derek sighed.
"Well, you weren't so friendly and caring with that needle, were you?" He accused. Alex groaned quietly under his breath.
"It was a sedative. You know as well as I do that she could have ripped the bandages off of her head or caused serious damage to her brain from that thrashing. You also know that if she had ripped those bandages off, her brain would have been exposed and she could easily have had permanent and irreversible damage to all different aspects of her life. I did the same thing I would've done with any other patient, I sedated her to avoid the risk of injury." Alex half-shouted. Derek shook his head.
"If you'd been using your brain, you would've used the IV to inject the sedative instead of climbing on top of her and stabbing a syringe into her arm." The neurosurgeon countered.
"Injecting the sedative directly through her arm sent the drug directly to her bloodstream and to her brain, which let the effects set in much faster than IV meds." Alex defended calmly. Derek let out a dissatisfied huff and shook his head.
"I have coffee!" Cristina called cheerfully from down the hallway. The smile on her face faded when she noticed the palpable tension between the two doctors.
"Oh, yeah, you two alone together is a bad idea. Evil Spawn, scooch." She said, sitting between the two surgeons and handing Derek his coffee.
"Sorry, I didn't expect you to actually show up or I would have gotten you some." She shrugged. Alex scoffed softly and shrugged.
"Whatever."
It's my birthday!! Yay!! It's actually almost midnight so its almost over... at least I spent the last couple hours of my birthday writing. :D
The next chapter will be up within the next couple days so look out for it! 3
Kisses!
-E
