Chapter 9 | Picket Fences and Shepherd Babies
Avoid, avoid, avoid. Her mind's most current mantra. She felt as if she'd been inducted to participate in an extensive game of hide and seek, this version including crouching and creeping into the most uncomfortable of hiding spots. It was silly and child's play to purposely avoid a man who was more than less dazed and confused over the situation at hand. However, she felt as though taking any chances of catching his eye in the corridor would only lead to a brutal outcome.
A splash of relief crept down her vertebrae once the sound of the women's bathroom door creaked closed behind her. She was completely certain Derek wouldn't go as far as barging into the women's sanctuary just to hunt her down for a measly chat. She was hopeful the rest of her colleagues would remain a busy cluster outside and refrain from needing a restroom break. Her sneakers squeaked against the tiles as she shuffled to the nearest mirror.
Meredith was subsequently still riding the coattails of her hangover. She had downed an aspirin and a Tylenol before escaping the security of her home, although, neither had been strong enough to evaporate the distant pound swelling in her brain. Besides the agonizing headache, she looked worse for wear. Dark circles hung low against her complexion, with hair thrown into a loose and ratty bun, which could be easily mistaken for a ponytail at this point. Normally her irises sparkled, or so she'd been told. The emerald jewels diluted to a fathomless dull grey. Had one night of drinking done this to her? In her defense, she'd had barely enough time to pull herself and Annabelle together after her chat with Cristina. She'd skipped on the shower and opted to forget any sort of makeup, not that she wore much anyhow.
She heaved a strenuous sigh and twisted the knob on the sink. Water began to rush out of the faucet beating down against the basin. Her slender fingers cupped a handful of icy water and she delicately splashed the wet refresher against her face. Droplets of moisture hung from her eyelashes, a few gliding down her pale cheekbones. Meredith blinked away the fatigue permeating her eyes. The cool water had washed the lethargy away somewhat and she felt ever so grateful for that. Albeit, it didn't erase the guilt caked across her internally. She couldn't escape Derek's clutches forever. The hospital was certainly a maze but it wasn't one hundred percent full proof of keeping her hidden from him. He was her boss's boss for Christ's sake.
Her knuckles became a pasty shade of white as her fingers gripped the edges of the sink. Her figure was shaking in anxiousness. Her secret was to uncoil sooner rather than later.
Meredith nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of the restrooms door cracking open. Her heart leaped frantically, only to slow itself once coming to the realization of who'd actually entered the women's bathroom. Izzie Stevens, a fellow intern in Meredith's group waltz into the vicinity with her head held high. If she'd noticed Meredith's brief freak out, she hadn't made it noticeable. The blonde simply stretched a grin and pranced to Meredith's proximity.
"Hey Mere!" She greeted cheerfully.
It was obvious Izzie was an optimist. She had almost everything going for her. Long golden tresses, large breasts, thin waist, perkiness, intelligence, and her will to find even the smallest glimmer of hope in dreary situations. She was past optimist. There wasn't a word descriptive enough to describe what Izzie Stevens was. Meredith almost envied the woman's happiness. She figures she'd grown up in a stable household with unconditionally loving parents, something Meredith had never had. Her mother's baby was the hospital and her surgeries, not her own flesh and blood. Meredith, as an only child, only had the company of a caretaker who's visits barely consisted of three spoke words. Did Izzie have any siblings? Perhaps. Meredith wasn't too sure, she and Izzie weren't the best of friends anyhow. She merely had assumptions about 'Dr. Model', but nothing to be positively confirmed.
"Hey." Meredith gulps a response. Her fingers loosen their grip on the porcelain perimeter of the restroom's sink. A milky-peach color beginning to brim her hands and knuckles as her steady hold dilutes. The tip of her tongue slides across her seemingly chapped lower lip, moistening them although licking the flesh only makes the problem worse. Meredith doesn't care.
Izzie's smile slowly fades into oblivion. Her head tilted at a forty-five degree angle. Her ponytail bounces along with her as she takes a step or two closer to Meredith's personal space bubble. She pops its protective shield, the simple flattening of her palm against the fabric of her pristine lab coat. "Is everything okay?" Her expression exerts seriousness. The contact was foreign to Meredith. The only times she'd been touched in such a way had been romantically with Derek. Her mother was as nurturing as a cactus and her short list of long term friends, including her fellow twisted sister Cristina, followed not too far behind. Izzie's question seemed more sincere than not and Meredith weighed the option of spilling her troubles to the blonde on her mental teeter totter.
Her thumb soothingly stroked Meredith's upper arm and, somehow, had managed to rid her body of the shakes. Fear bubbled nervously in the pit of her gut. "I-I think Annabelle's father is seeking to reappear in her life." Meredith murmurs. It was a half-hearted truth, but it was a start. Maybe Izzie's overwhelming optimism could magically create a solution for Meredith's jumbled conscious.
"Oh." The blonde replies solely. Meredith takes notice of the glossy tears sloshing against her waterline. Had she triggered something? "Well, isn't that a good thing? I mean isn't it good he wants to be apart of your child's life?"
Meredith huffs. Izzie wouldn't understand. She was Izzie for the love of God. Izzie probably grew up with smiley faced posters decorating her walls. She wasn't an adulterous whore who gets themselves knocked up by a random man in a foreign country. "Not really." Meredith says. "He didn't even know she existed until now. He just waltzes into her life, my life nearly four years after her birth and is going to pretend like it's nothing. Iz, this is a big deal. A huge deal! What if he tries to take my baby away from me?" Meredith's apprehensions and fears spill out of as she rambles her head away.
It wasn't only the guilt gnawing at her for keeping Derek's daughter away, but it was also the fear he might take Annabelle-Elise away from her. Derek held legal rights over this child. He could sweep her little baby girl away in the blink of an eye if he wanted to. He had more money, time, and experience to support her. He'd mentioned something early on about having four sisters, all girly with a ton of nieces. Derek knew how to raise a child. Meredith only had the little amount of practice she'd been given whilst playing with her baby-dolls at the adolescent age of five.
"At least he wants to try and be in your child's life, Meredith. My 'baby daddy' didn't even want mine to exist." Izzie confesses. Meredith blinked a cluster of times. Did Izzie just say she had a child? She'd never mentioned a baby before. In fact, she'd flat out told the entire group that she was single.
"I was in high school." She exclaims almost as if she could read Meredith's pondering mind. "I lived in a trailer park for the majority of my life. My biological dad ran off the moment I was born and it was just my mom and I for the most part. I got teased and picked on by other people at school because I wore the same shirt two days in a row. When I was sixteen, some sleaze-bag guy knocked me up and he told me to abort it. He left me and moved on to the next girl stupid enough to let him get into their pants while I was left alone pregnant. I decided to give her up for adoption. She deserved something better than a single teenage mom living in a trailer with her mother. It was when I gave Hannah up, I named her Hannah, that I decided I wanted to make something of myself. That if, in the future, I found a man that loved me enough to give me another child, I could support my baby." Izzie brushed the loose tears dangling down her cheeks with the back of her hand. She sniffled lightly and managed to pull a watery smile to her cheeks.
"I know you think I've lived some bright and shiny life, Meredith. Some people are just hiding their pain you know, to get through the day one step at a time. Everyone has a little dark and twisty whether they show it or not."
Meredith chewed her bottom lip frantically. Her stomach clenched as she concluded her accusations had been way off. Sure, Meredith hadn't had a mother or father around, perhaps she was luckier than she'd realized. "I'm sorry about your daughter, Iz." Meredith whispers, her own tears permeating her emerald orbs.
"Maybe you should just talk things out with your daughter's father." Izzie suggests. She rocks rhythmically on the balls of her feet, swaying to a perfect tempo.
"Yeah." Meredith concludes.
Maybe Izzie was right in this sense. Would Derek really want to be reeled through the ringer of a custody battle? She knows for a clear as day fact he'd want Annabelle in his life, even if it meant part time. Even being oblivious to the notion that he was her flesh and blood, he still showed a connection to her that she'd seen no one else hold. It doesn't eclipse or confirm that he'll be completely okay with her lying to him though. Even if she could create some valid excuse for ceasing to contact him in the first four years of his daughter's life, they'd been in personal contact for months now. Months she had carried this cynical secret in her back pocket.
On top of everything else, she can be sure this factor will ruin their chances for a bright and shiny family. The one with the white picket fence and curly haired babies running amuck. She'd only have the distant memories of their primary and only consummation when they'd conceived Annabelle, though their feelings at the time had been nothing more than tipsiness and buckets of lust rather than love. Although there had been their steamy kiss in the elevator and their blurry make out session on her couch, as well as the kiss in her kitchen, unfortunately, she's completely certain those memories will fade just as their budding romance had.
Meredith's fuzzy on the timing and she can't completely comprehend when or where it happened. But somehow, in the midst of their whirlwind relationship, she began to fall for him. She was falling for him as more than a lusty bonk or her daughter's daddy. She was falling for him as a man. Her heart constricts knowing it'll vanish in a second once she's cleansed her conscious to him.
It's silly, she's cognizant of the situation. She'd been the one to demolish their romance the moment he woke up next to her in bed earlier that week. Albeit, they'd agree perhaps one day the wheels on their partnership could begin to turn once she was ready. However, those plans will cease to exist Meredith figures.
Meredith releases a breath of air. Inhale, exhale. Her sight turns to Izzie who's still standing at a respectable distance, allowing Meredith to get her mixed feelings out and in the open. She feels better after the conversation convulsed between the two of them and she feels happier that now she's closer with the blonde than before. Perhaps once this mess is over she can find Izzie to have a shoulder to cry on. All things considered, Cristina will want to do nothing more than guzzle down bottles of tequila and numb any sort of humane feelings dwindling.
"Thank you." Meredith quips, wiping stray tears and snot from her face.
"No problem." Izzie responds sincerely. "Maybe once you've talked to your own 'baby daddy' we could meet for drinks or something and you tell me how it went?"
Meredith nods and manages to twitch her lip into a weak smile. She feels utterly defeated. Her hands press against the door and push it open, baring herself for the hell to come.
The only piece completely unsolved of her horribly long equation was when and where she'd break the news to Derek that he was a father. Acquitting the secret in the hospital seemed so impersonal. Who would desire to be told they're a daddy in a facility that exerts the stench of antibacterial soap and held captive multiples of sick and injured persons? She desperately racked her brain up, down, left, right, diagonally, sideways and so forth over the pending 'tell all.' Additional factors popped in and out of her cluttered mind, only to scramble with her decision even further. Was today the right day? Wherewould be the correct place to relinquish the information? What would Annabelle do knowing she had a father? Would Derek be upset? Would he fight her tooth and claw in a custody battle?
Her head was a bee hive swarming with potential notions and possibilities. Her brain swelled and thumped heavily which, this time, had nothing to do with her subsiding hangover from earlier that day. Why was this all such a challenge for her? Perhaps the guilt feeding at her like a famished bear is what made her more than apprehensive.
Meredith caught her reflection in the glass window parallel to her body. She'd been standing solo near the ambulance bay, donning a yellow trauma gown in hopes of a surgical case to soar in. After dwindling in the damp wind for twenty minutes or so, she'd began to pace back and forth repetitively. Her normally tamed and wavy honey-blonde tresses were a wreck, to put lightly. Her hair was the representation of a warped birds nest to put it kindly. Meredith is hopeful the billowing dusks of wind beating her locks had been a major participant in destroying her already rumpled hairdo. Albeit, Mother Nature can't be to blame on the heavy circles engraved against her under eyes. Sure, she'd been lacking on the sleep thing as she was a surgical intern and a mother nonetheless. Unfortunately, she's reluctant to recall a time her under eye circles had been so rough. Her complexion is pasty and foul to the naked eye. She couldn't possibly spill the dark and twisty secret to Derek under such circumstances. She'd at least need to be showered and well rested before confronting him. At least she'd be wiping her conscious' slate clean with a bountiful slumber.
Just as her black converse began to trudge back toward the hospitals automatic entry way into the E.R. , a siren screeched against Meredith's eardrum from a seemingly close proximity. She whirled around, her poorly executed ponytail whipping her cheek. A swarm of vaguely familiar residents and interns piled outside, including her own resident, Dr. Bailey.
"Grey.", pipes Bailey in her usual demanding and sarcastic tone. "What the hell are you doing standing out here in the trauma bay? I thought I ordered you to be on SCUT?" Meredith pays careful attention to the way the black woman brisks her palms together. She assumes it's an attempt to create friction and hither forth a tad bit of warmth.
Meredith rocks against the balls of her heels whilst patiently waiting for the incoming patient. "I finished delivering all the labs you assigned me too." She confesses. She excludes the portion of her day she spent breaking down in the women's restroom pondering over how she'd tell the head of neurosurgery he'd managed to fill her womb back in Europe. "So I decided to wait for an incoming trauma, Dr. Bailey."
She mumbles something Meredith can't interpret and shoots her a death glare. "Grey, you know good and well when you finish one task, you come to ask me for another. All of you goddamn interns are a herd of wild fools, thinking you run this hospital with your gossip and shenanigans. I said it before and I'll say it again, you're grunts, nobodies, you and the rest of your surgery hungry friends are at the bottom of the surgical food chain! You don't make any decisions on your own until you've earned that privilege, you got that?"
"Yes, Dr. Bailey." Meredith had almost been expecting her mentor's excruciating bravado. "Is there something you want me to do?" Meredith finds herself physically and mentally drained and it hasn't even passed noon. She's reluctant to start a war with her seemingly peeved resident anyhow.
Before Bailey can utter something cynically bruising to the mentality of her awaiting intern, the ambulance rushes in with an ear wrenching siren. "Quit your rambling, Grey." She mutters. "Get over here." A weight descends from Meredith's chest as Bailey dismisses the snowballing argument. She's completely positive her nerves couldn't handle another issue to top off the cherry on her spoiled ice cream sundae.
A herd of paramedics bolt from the back exit of the ambulance, shouting in what Meredith assumes to be a young girls diagnosis. "Female, six or seven years of age, seeming to have been beaten with a golf club!" One shouts. The woman's words are coherent and comprehendible to the human brain. However, the convulsions are muffled and slurred to Meredith's as her feet feel frozen to the cement. Her throat feels congested with a clot of concrete. Most often, abusive cases never seemed to harm Meredith in the slightest. She lived in the twenty-first century, and understood that human beings could be cruel and malicious creatures. She understood that very clear. Albeit, a child abuse case was hitting too close to home for her and no matter how determined her brain was to pry her scuffed shoes from the ground step by step, her heart deciphered otherwise.
"Dr. Grey!" Bailey's harsh bravado snapped Meredith away from her delusional state. Her eyelids fluttered several times though it didn't replenish her state of wellbeing. She felt sluggish almost as if the world around her was maneuvering in slow motion. She twisted her neck to the far right, catching a glimpse of Derek rush to the occasion. He wasn't decked out in the repetitive yellow trauma gown everyone else seemed to be donning. He simply wore his pristine white lab coat over his navy scrubs. Of course, his raven mane was coifed to perfection. The grueling wind whooshing his dark curls in several directions. A light patter of rain stormed from the heavy grey clouds eclipsing the earlier baby blue sky. Droplets began to sputter around the team of doctors huddled around the frail little girl. Meredith wasn't even willing to shield herself from the Seattle weather, finally scurrying off to the scene at hand.
Meredith watches, with intricate detail, as Derek vaguely examines the young adolescent. His right hand grips a white pen light, checking her dilation and responsiveness. He mumbles something to the petite girl lying helplessly on the black gurney. His hand brushes past her dark hair, stained with dried blood and sweat. "Everything is going to be just fine." Derek assures in an authoritative, yet, calming tone. "I'm Dr. Shepherd." He informs as the team of well trained physicians push through the E.R. doors.
"Dr. Grey, order an MRI please." Derek's request is a light buzz to Meredith's ringing eardrums. She merely nods lightly. Her body is on autopilot and manages to shuffle her feet to a nearby lab.
"She's ready, Dr. Shepherd." Meredith announces once the little girl has been tucked under a warm blanket. The machine hums with life once Derek's finger pushes the button. She descends back into the cylinder shaped object. The only true information gathered from the scene was that the girl had been beaten with a golf club. Her neighbor reported the incident to the police as she heard screaming and death worthy shrieks echoing from the nearby household. The girl's parents had escaped the scene but there was no shadow of a doubt in Meredith's mind that they were the ones who'd defiled their child.
Her stomach roils pondering over the simple notion of someone even laying a finger to Annabelle-Elise's soft flesh. She's surprised she hasn't mentally broken down on this case even if it were to be highly unprofessional of her as a doctor and an adult. How could someone be so foul to someone so innocent? The mental images creeping along her brain were graphic. The deafening sound of the metal pole striking across the soft skin sent chills down her vertebrae.
Meredith glances upward and catches Derek's indigo eyes through the transparent glass. He flashes her a small assuring grin. Somehow it makes her feel better in the midst of the tragic events surrounding her. She returns the gesture with a halfhearted smile. Her head is in a funny place to say the least. Only an hour or two ago she'd been fumbling with how she'd tell Derek and avoiding him at all costs. Now she stood only ten feet from him, communicating with secret smiles completely alone…well, with the exception of the sedated patient, of course.
The MRI beeps as an indication the scans have been printed. Meredith nods and pulls the youthful child forward. A nurse comes forth and lifts the now sleeping girl into a wheelchair to be taken back to her room. Meredith enters the examination room with Derek and glances at the computer screen holding the scans.
"What's the verdict?" She asks, although considering the size of the discolored spot on the screen, she can almost diagnose the problem herself.
Derek heaves a wet sigh and takes Meredith back for a moment. She doesn't miss the moisture gathered around the creases of his cerulean irises or the wet sound his throats makes when he clears his esophagus. Was he emotional over this case? She'd never seen Derek become unprofessional over a patient even if it were hitting close to home, such as the rape victim that had been checked in a month earlier. He exclaimed that the woman reminded him of his four sisters and that if he'd been in a coma, they'd all be here surrounding him.
"Dr. Shepherd?" Meredith murmurs. It's against code and, most definitely, against her avoidance rule she advocated for herself earlier that day, but she still stretches an arm around his back. Her fingers squeeze his clavicle tight in a reassuring manner.
"Sorry." He says, tugging himself away momentarily. "Sorry it's just... this poor little girl was almost brutally murdered to death by what we assume is her parents. I have nine nieces and five nephews. The thought of any of them being harmed like that is just..."
"Hitting a little too close to home?" Meredith chimes. He nods lightly. If only he knew he had a three, almost four year old daughter to equate in that scenario. Either or, Meredith can relate with him on some kind of spiritual level. She too had felt as if the wind were knocked out from beneath her whilst working with this case. "I get it, I mean with Annabelle and all." She adds.
Derek instinctively grins as Meredith mentions her daughter's name. The action is a furnace for her heart and the blood pumping through her veins. "The neighbor who called the authorities came by to visit. I think she mentioned the little girl's name being Lillian or something, and that she babysat her often. She thinks she's to blame because she always felt that the girl's parents were off but just never... never looked into it." Derek's hands trail down his face. A thick stubble already begins to grow against his cheeks even though it's only been a few hours since he last shaved.
"And now she has a huge subdural hematoma in her brain and if I don't operate in the next hour she could die. She could just fucking die." Meredith watches his palms slam across the desk. The echoing beam of his physical burden on the inanimate object rivets throughout the tiny exam room. She listens as he mumbles slurs of curses beneath his breath. His knuckles dilute to a pasty white as his fists clench. The action reminds her of the similar way she'd done her own hands earlier in the bathroom.
She strokes his spine up and down slowly, letting him cool himself down. "Would you like to scrub in?" The question throws her for a loop to say the least. Her plans to hide from him were definitely a bust. How was she to deny the chance of a surgery like this? One of the biggest brain bleeds her naked eye had ever come across?
"I shouldn't." Meredith goes against her hearts yearn. "I mean I'm just an intern and this is a complicated procedure I can't-"
"You will." He argues or, more so, tells her the fate of her upcoming future. "You will scrub in. Meredith, you've shown a lot of potential since arriving at Seattle Grace. I'm not just saying this because I'm into you or that I enjoy your presence. You're an outstanding intern and deserve to be taught something as extraordinary as you are. Now scrub in. I don't want any if's or but's about it. If this is about last night at the bar and you feel awkward, I get it, but I'd love if we could shove the personal affairs aside for only a moment and do this professionally. Okay?"
She nodded slowly. "Okay."
Meredith's head was rushing with adrenaline. She'd scrubbed in on a major procedure and it went extremely well! Her heart felt as if it were pumping on steroids considering the tempo of its beats were out of this world. An exuberant preen stretched from ear to ear against Meredith's plum cheeks. Surgery was an elixir for her that made even the worst of her days so much brighter. The O.R. turned her blood to fire, to say the least.
Derek was, more than less, a God in the operating room. She'd scrubbed in with him on simple procedures before. Unfortunately, those times she'd been asked to stand at a respectable distance to observe rather than participate. This time, however, this time she'd been up close to the action. His hands were steady as well as accurate. He was cool under pressure even when Lillian began to crash on the table. He'd stabilized her and finished up without a hitch. She'd even been able to grip the clamp in her own hands.
He waltzed into the scrub room just as he diminished his mask into the medical waste bin. He smiles at her and her insides flutter with happiness. "That, that was amazing." Meredith speaks as he begins to scrub away the remaining bits and pieces of his procedure.
Derek twists his neck in her general direction. He nods at her statement and lets his hazy grin linger across his expression. "You did great, Meredith." She's quick to notice he uses her first name rather than her professional one. Even when things hadn't been tense between them, he'd always referred to her as 'Dr. Grey' in the hospital. A fresh layer of goose coats her skin as her name rolls off his tongue like rich butter.
His compliment seeps into her skin and floods her mind. "You were great." She reciprocates truthfully. "I mean, you were some kind of God in there. I hope one day I can be that successful during a surgery." She's cognizant of the way she resembles an obsessed fan girl. Praising him like teenage girl to her all time favorite boy band. Mentally she's chortling at the thought of her bedroom plastered in posters of Derek. A personal shrine dedicated from his 'biggest fan.' Meredith giggles to herself and leans against the sink.
"I'm not God." He comments. His body stands parallels to her own. "What's going on in that pretty head of yours?" He gazes at her in a way that makes Meredith feel wanted. It's a major dejavu moment considering he's trapped her with the exact expression before only to cause her to fall victim like putty in his hands. She's completely sure his twinkling orbs of mystery and lust will be the death of her.
"My head is in a funny place right now, I guess." She quips lightly.
Derek's forefinger and thumb trace her jaw. They pinch her chin softly and tilt her head upward. "Hmm." She doesn't know what to make of his soft noise. In the actuality of this complicated moment, he leans his soft lips against hers. Their mouths move in a sensual dance together. His tongue reluctantly pushes into her cavern and toys with her own feisty tongue. They push and slide against one another, lost in the enticing trance of their mouths love making.
The moment his fingers find the hem of her scrubs waistband, she jolts. Her senses are sprinting on overdrive and she knows that if she lets this continue, she'll wind back up in the same place she began. "Stop." She breathes against his swollen lips, even if her core chooses the latter. "We can't... I can't..." Meredith divulges breathless. The kiss hadn't been nearly as passionate as the few others they'd shared. Albeit, it had meant all the same and somehow she couldn't withhold the steamy tears from clogging her tear ducts as she came to the realization this would be their last intimate moment.
"Meredith." His palm gropes her cheek. His thumb brushes over the cinnamon freckles splotched against her flesh. "Please, if this is about the bar and the woman I was with. I promise she's just a friend I wouldn't, I wouldn't, do that to you." Desperation is heavy against his voice box.
"It's not about the woman, Derek."
"Then what is it?" He pleaded. "What is it Meredith? It's so obvious we have this connection, this thing between us! I know it's there…I know it is… I just... why can't you see it?"
Meredith sniffles. Her vision is skewed as glossy tears eclipse over her emerald eyes. The guilt feeding at her has reached its maximum breaching point. She can't keep herself glued together anymore. She can't continue to stare him straight in the eye and lie about the life they'd created together. She can't start a relationship with a man who deserves to know the truth. She just can't lie anymore.
Her hand presses to his chest. Slivers of raven chest hair peep from the V of his scrubs collar. The tips of her finger pads stroke the soft hair peeking out. "Because you're going to resent me for a lifetime." She croaks. It feels inappropriate to release the demons swirling around her in a scrub room. She's probably a sight for sore eyes to say the least. She's lethargic and all around exhausted both mentally and physically.
"What, what do you mean?" Sobs rack Meredith's lithe frame. Her small arms quake and her body shivers. Derek's arms wrap her like a Christmas present. His tangy fragrance brushes her nostrils. Old spice, antibacterial soap and sterile medical supplies. A combination of all the things she'd wanted to avoid while breaking the news. Perfection was a myth at this point. "Shh..." he soothed across her golden locks. "Breathe."
She glances up at him. Probably flush faced and swollen eyed. It doesn't matter. Her slender fingers stroke the forest of stubble growing across his Adam's apple. "Four years ago in Europe we screwed like bunnies, remember?" He nods slowly although Meredith's completely convinced he's still oblivious to her accusations. "I've been keeping something from you. Something I should have told you the minute I saw you in this hospital. I'm an awful, cynical person for lying and stuffing things away but I just... I just didn't know how to say what I needed to say."
"Meredith, what's going on? Tell me, I can handle it." He confesses with a serious look. By the way he's glancing at her she can spot the worry in his eyes. He's squeezing her tautly and the reaffirmation helps with it all.
"Annabelle-Elise is your little girl. Congratulations Derek, you're a daddy to a beautiful baby."
AHAHAHA FINALLY! I finally got Meredith to spill her guts! Writing this chapter was actually so much easier than I thought it would be. I honestly rolled right through it without a single complication which was so nice for a change.
I want to give my outstanding beta a shoutout once more for editing and helping me with this chapter! She's done a marvelous job at critiquing and the constructive criticism was just what I needed! So if you're curious as to why this is one of my better chapters, please thank vballr217!
I don't have much to say in this authors note other than the fact that next chapter will be told from a different point of view and that I hope this was worth the wait! Your reviews and favorites are truly the inspiration for chapters and I'd love if you'd provide me with some! What can I say I'm a whore for feedback!
Thank you all again for reading, you're amazing!
