Author's Notes:
Thanks everybody for the really nice feedback! I'm so glad I haven't scared you off with the last author's note. Since I can't respond privately to people who are not signed in, I just wanted to add a public thank you to: RIPDerek, Patsy, Mecawa, Marie, Seriously, Merderluvr, Gem, Neb1223, Chloe, Kate, Emeline, Juli, and all my anonymous feedbackers. Hearing from you all made me smile, and I appreciated you taking the time to post comments. I read and appreciated every single one. If I've missed anybody in the list above, please accept my apologies - I love you guys!
Week ten.
She doesn't have any idea why she didn't notice this important issue creeping up on her, but when she sees Derek at the breakfast table on Sunday, said issue launches a sneak attack that leaves her flailing for a reason not to laugh out loud at him. The kids have already finished eating, and have planted themselves in front of the television to watch their morning cartoons with glazed looks, which leaves her alone with Derek. Leaves her alone to make her diaphragm ache trying not to giggle.
Derek's hair is a freaking disaster. Like Mount St. Helen's style. Come to think of it, he does look a little like his head is an exploding volcano, she thinks, squinting at him. The on-staff barber did a great job at keeping Derek's hair short while he was in rehab, but now that his hair has been allowed to grow out, it's clear to her that he doesn't have a clue how to manage it anymore.
"What?" he says when he sees her staring at him.
She bites her lip, and she keeps the laugh down with brute force of will, but she can't stop herself from smiling at the Mt. Shepherd eruption going on with his locks.
With a clink, he sets his spoon down in his empty cereal bowl. He frowns at her. "Did I did something funny?" he says, and she doesn't miss the razor edge of insecurity hovering in his tone.
She sucks down on her laughter with everything she's got, and she manages with a straight face, "Do you … um … like your hair like that?"
His frown deepens. "Like … what?"
"It's very .…" She splays both hands and makes a sweeping wax-on-wax-off gesture. "Voluminous." He doesn't seem to be getting what she's driving at. "Hang on," she says, and she gets up to take their dishes back to the sink. She nabs her purse off the center island and brings it back to the table with her. She pulls out her wallet and finds an old picture of him that she snapped with her phone when he came back to his trailer with a trout he caught. "Here," she says, and she foists the picture at him.
He takes the picture in his hands and stares at it for a long moment, not speaking. "I don't remember this," he says.
"That was something like eight years ago," she says. "Do you want your hair to look like that?"
He swallows, and he looks at her. "Do I?"
"Derek, if you want your hair like it is, now, that's fine," she says. Not fine. Not fine in the slightest. "But I will say Afros are way out of style."
He thinks for a long moment. "What is an Afro?" he says.
Meredith snorts. "The thing on the top of your head right now."
"An Afro is bad," he says.
Meredith nods. "Bad. Very, very bad."
He thumbs the picture. "And this is good?"
She nods.
He seems hesitant, but he's still looking at the picture when he says, "You like it like this?"
"Yes," Meredith says. "A lot. I think it's sexy."
That seems to make up his mind. "How do I do this?" he says.
She glances at the kids. The television has them engrossed. She thinks it's safe to give Derek a quick haircare lesson. "Come on," she says, and she leads him back to their bedroom, into the master bathroom. Derek follows after her, a curious look on his face.
It's not until she takes the time to look at Derek's sink that she realizes she might have bitten off more than she can chew. She's never had much reason to pay attention to what he keeps on his side of the vanity, before. She didn't touch any of his things while he was in rehab, except to pick out some basic toiletries for him, like shaving cream and shampoo, but he doesn't keep any of that in his "hair stuff" collection, which looks a bit like a city skyline lined up against the wall tiles. Now that she's looking more closely at said skyline, she swallows.
He has more hair products than she does. There's mousse. She knows mousse. She's all about the mousse. Her hair lies flat and lifeless without it. Oh, and hairspray. She's good with that. But Derek also has shaping cream, and pomade – what the hell is pomade? – and gel, and wax, and pre-style … stuff. There's even a disc-shaped container that reminds her of a shoe-polish tin, and it says clay on the top. But … clay? Derek uses clay? No, that can't be clay clay, like Play-doh clay. It's got to be some other kind of clay. Right? And, surely, he doesn't use all this stuff at once, does he?
"This is all for hair?" Derek says, echoing her disbelief.
At least he's stupefied, too. Even though he's brain-damaged, that makes her feel better. "Um," she says. "Okay, I confess, I have no idea how the hell you used to do this, but … I'm sure we can figure it out!"
"Figure it out …," Derek parrots, tone dubious.
"Yes," Meredith says, nodding. "It'll be like … solving a puzzle!"
His body hitches, and she thinks he might have laughed at her just now. A little tiny hiccup of a laugh, but … a laugh. She narrows her eyes at him, but he doesn't give anything else away.
She closes her eyes and tries to watch Old Derek fixing his hair in her mind's eye, but … damn it. Nothing. Wait. She looks at the line of products and pulls one free. The bottle says something about anti-frizz on the surface. She remembers him using a bottle that was this shape. Anti-frizz seems logical. Derek has frizz.
Seriously, how hard can this be?
It's impossible. Pre-accident Derek was a rocket scientist for hair.
So far, they've gotten rid of Derek's Afro, but now they have a curly heap of grease on his head, and Meredith thinks that's not much better.
Derek's mother has no insight. He didn't discover hair care products until after he moved out.
Pomade is a no-go. She still doesn't know what pomade is.
"You're sure you don't remember how to do this even a little bit?" Meredith says, wincing at the mirror. They've gone from curly heap of grease to curly brick with a greasy finish.
Derek sighs. "No."
"Like not even one step in five?" she says.
His eyes are twinkling, and his lip twitches like he wants to smile. "No, Meredith."
Derek doesn't need mousse. Mousse just makes his Afro look bigger.
"I should get haircut," Derek says, sighing.
Meredith resists the urge to wail, "Noooooooooooo!" like all the cheesy movie heroines do when they find out something earth shattering and awful.
She refuses to give up, yet.
Sixty minutes of YouTube videos later, with a break to feed the kids lunch, she has some vague ideas about what the hell to do with Derek's stylistic mess, and she's figured out the pomade thing, too. Seriously, what a stupid product.
"Finally!" Meredith says, pumping her fist at the ceiling. The result isn't perfect, since he hasn't gotten a layered haircut in a while, but it's passing until she can drag him to a stylist. "Finally, we discover the super-secret combination!" Anti-frizz. She was right about the anti-frizz. But that's before blow-drying, and after the blow-drying, shaping clay is required. And, no, the clay is not actual clay.
He frowns at the mirror. "This is … so much … work."
"Yes," Meredith says, "but it's worth the effort."
He seems dubious about her assertion.
She closes the space between them, looks up at him through her eyelashes, and gives him a languid grin. "It means I can do this." She brushes her fingers through his hair; it's soft and touchable, and his curls are tamed into waves that don't catch on her nails.
His hair is long enough now that the sensation makes his eyelids dip, and he leans into the touch. "Hmm," he rumbles, the syllable a bass purr that makes her insides tighten.
Her grin widens as she makes a mental note. One of his favorite things before, still one of his favorite things, now. Fingers through his hair.
Hmm, indeed.
On Monday, when she drives Derek home from rehab, the air outside the car cabin is almost solid, it's so waterlogged. She hasn't noticed any rain today. Everything is wet. Like an overladen sponge. Fog coils in the air. And all she sees anywhere she looks is gray. Gray and drab, and as the sun sets, grayer and more drab, and any moment, black will slide across the world like a body bag and turn the horizon monochromatic.
She loves Seattle. How fresh the air is. How friendly the people are. The intense, verdant green of everything, begat by the gray and the rain. But every once in a while, the gray gets to her – the drabness, the wetness – and she doesn't see the green so much anymore. She feels blah.
"What's your favorite color?" she asks.
He thinks for a moment. "Should I have one?"
"Most people have a few that they really like," she says. "I like red."
"Red is your … fav … favorite," he says.
She nods.
"Why?" he says.
This question catches her off guard. She's not sure she's ever had to articulate why. "It's kind of a sexy, danger, here-I-am color. It pops out at you. It's hard to miss. It makes you stop and look."
He processes that for a minute. "What is mine?" he says. He winces. "Is mine. Is … was. Was mine?"
"You said you liked indigo," she says, and her heart aches a little, remembering that.
The days that followed, when Addison showed up, were a tragic, horrible mess. But that night, when he told her he liked indigo, when he showed her his trailer – she'll remember that night, always. And she'll remember the morning, too, when she woke up, walked out onto his deck wearing nothing but his t-shirt, and watched the deer grazing less than twenty yards away.
Good morning, he said in a soft voice as he handed her a steaming cup of coffee, and he sat down in the lawn chair next to hers. The deer paused. Raised their heads. Looked while they chewed on grass and twigs. But their hackles lowered when Derek didn't move again, and their heads dropped back to the ground after a minute.
Do you see this every morning? she said.
Hmm, yes, he said. And this.
What?
He gestured at the sky. Pinks and oranges replaced dusky hues. With all the puffy clouds reflecting light, the sun lit the sky on fire as it rose from the horizon, and Meredith watched, lips parted in awe. Oh, she said.
"What is … indigo?" Derek says, yanking her out of the memory.
Her heart squeezes at his question. She says, "It's a deep, intense blue."
"Why did I liked it?" he says.
She shrugs. "You know, I never asked."
He thinks for a minute. "I think green is my fav … favorite."
"Green?" she says, frowning. "Why the switch?"
"Your eyes are green," he says, and in that moment, the world feels much less gray.
Derek puts the kids to bed every night that week without encouragement. On Thursday, Meredith and Derek are curled up together on the couch. She's reading a silly romance novel she bought on a whim at the grocery store. He's flipping through magazines, looking at the pictures. He's been getting better at reading primer books, but toward the end of the day, he wants nothing to do with that kind of mental strain, so he limits his practicing to mornings.
Zola appears in the living room an hour after her bed time, rubbing her sleepy eyes. "Daddy, there's a monster."
"Monster?" he says.
"Can you make it go away?" Zola says.
Derek looks at Meredith, eyes creased with confusion. "What is …?"
"A scary, bad thing," Meredith explains. "But it's imaginary." She turns to Zola. "Zozo, there's no such thing as monsters."
But Derek puts down his magazine and ratchets to a standing position. He grabs his cane. "I can look," he says, and Meredith frowns. Did he not understand the part about monsters being imaginary? She puts her book down and follows him and Zola back to Zola's room.
"Where did you saw monster?" Derek says to Zola.
"Derek, they're not real," Meredith interjects. "There's nothing to see."
He glances at her with an unreadable expression, and she gets the distinct impression he's trying to project some kind of message at her, but she can't read him. Not even a little. And then he turns back to Zola, and she can't see his eyes to read, anyway. "Where?" he says.
"Under my bed," Zola says.
He drops to his knees, his tight grip making his cane wobble, and he looks into the small, dark gap between Zola's mattress and the floor. "Nothing here," he says, but of course there isn't. All Zola has under her bed are shoes.
"Really?" Zola says.
He nods. "Really." He gets to his feet with a bit of a struggle and sits on Zola's bed. She climbs onto the mattress and sits next to him. He glances at Meredith, but she still can't figure out what the hell he's doing, or why. She opts to sit down on his other side, though. To humor him. He sees things differently than she does, now. He calls the produce section at the grocery store pretty. Maybe, he sees this differently, too.
He hugs Zola. "Dark is … scary, sometime," he says.
"You get scared in the dark, too?" Zola says.
He shrugs. "Sometime. I .…" His mouth opens and closes. He swallows. He thinks. "The hospital," he says. "At night."
"Were there monsters at the hopspital?" Zola says.
He gives her a smile. "No, but … I … didn't knew … much word." He thinks. "Not know … know …." A pause. "Knowing. Not knowing is scary."
Meredith wraps her arms around him. She never thought of that before. Him in rehab. He had a private room, so he slept alone. In the dark. In a world that was new to him.
The first few months after he woke up, he looked at everything new like it might bite him. And he couldn't walk. And he couldn't communicate. He doesn't remember that part, but she can't imagine what that would feel like, in that kind of state, waking up alone in the dark.
They tuck Zola back into bed together. Both lean to kiss her on the forehead. But only Derek says, "Room is the same, light or dark."
And Zola takes this information into dreaming.
Derek's silent in the car all the way to Callie's house. Meredith pulls to the curb to park. "We're here!" trumpets Zola. "We're here!"
"Here, here, here!" Bailey adds, a bubbly mimicry.
Callie lives on a quiet, dark, narrow street. The warm glow of lights through the windows of her house paints bright squares on her lawn. Silhouettes shift beyond the pale curtains, and when Meredith pushes open her car door, she can hear muted laughter carrying through the air.
Derek stares into space through the windshield of the Jeep like he doesn't even realize they've arrived. He's dressed himself in threadbare jeans and an indigo-colored t-shirt, and between that and his now-tamed hair, he looks amazing. Amazing and preoccupied.
She reaches across the parking brake to squeeze his knee. "Derek, are you okay?"
He looks at her. Words don't arrive for a glacial span. "These are my friends," he says. A not-question question that makes her frown.
"Yes. I'll reintroduce you to all of them, though; don't worry." She pauses and lets him catch up. "You don't have to remember everybody."
"… Okay," he says.
She rubs his thigh. "Are you nervous?"
"Nervous," he parrots, the word without intonation.
She can't tell if he's asking for a word meaning, so she adds, "Um, worried."
"They know I … was … hurt," he says. Again, a question, but not a question.
She nods, eyes narrowing. She's not sure what he's fishing for, yet. She raises her palm to his hair and runs her fingers through it. She traces his craniotomy scar. His posture relaxes as she strokes him. "Yes, they know," she says.
For whatever reason, her answer seems to steel him a little. He swallows. "Okay."
He pulls on the door handle and gets out of the car before she can ask him anything else. She should have tried to figure out what was wrong with him before they left the house, but she didn't have much time to think when she got home. Even with Derek helping out by getting the kids into the car seats while she put on some clean, not-vomited-on clothes, they barely had time to drive to Callie's without being late.
Derek gets Bailey out of his car seat while Meredith frees Zola from hers. With the kids liberated, Derek walks to Meredith's side of the car. She stares at the doorway, swallowing. He might not want to admit he's nervous, but she is. Not just on his behalf, but on hers. She hasn't had a chance to socialize like this in over a year, and she misses it.
"You want to ring the bell?" she says to Derek when they get to the door. The kids collect like monkeys gibbering in the trees, though the trees, in this case, are four legs and a cane.
He peers at Meredith with an unreadable expression, and then he pushes his thumb into the doorbell button. Callie answers in moments. "Hey, you guys!" she says through the storm door, a huge smile lighting up her face when her gaze lands on Derek. She pushes the door open for them and waves them inside.
Callie drops to a crouch so she's eye level with Zola and Bailey, and she says, "The kids are playing in Sofia's room." She points to the long hallway beyond the foyer. "Just go straight back. You can't miss it." The kids need no encouragement, and have already run off before Meredith and Derek have done more than stamp their feet on the welcome mat to shake off any stray mud.
"Derek," Callie says as she rises to her feet, and Meredith thinks this is it.
The sink or swim moment. Meredith sat Callie, Miranda, Ben, Richard, and Catherine down in a conference room earlier today and gave them the Derek Interaction 101 crash course. Callie knows about pause. And about needing to use short sentences. And about not adding new information before Derek's done processing the information he's already got. And about trying not to tag team, trying to let him focus on one thing at a time. Meredith hopes, hopes, hopes this goes well. For Derek's sake.
"Derek, this is Callie," Meredith says.
He swallows. For a long moment, he doesn't speak, like he's so stuck he can't even get his mouth to move, let alone get his throat to eject a syllable. Meredith's heart twists as she thinks this whole socializing thing is going to crash and burn before they even get off the doormat.
But then he manages, "Hello," in a soft, willowy voice. Like he's scared or something. "Callie." Meredith puts her hand at the small of his back to let him know she's behind him.
"Derek, it's so great to see you!" Callie says, not even batting an eyelash at the long, ominous pause, or the need for an introduction to somebody she's known for years. She twitches like she wants to step into his space and hug him, but she holds herself back. "Do you remember last time I saw you? You look so much better!"
Derek stares at Callie. His mouth opens and closes. He thinks, and Callie waits. "… N-no, I have no … remember," in that same bare, nervous tone. He winces at his mistake. He and his speech therapist have been working on remember versus memory for weeks, now, because it's one of his problem areas, but Meredith hasn't noticed any improvement. "M-mem. Memory."
Callie keeps on beaming. "Well, that's okay," she says with a dismissive gesture. "I'm sure I was boring company, anyway. Come on!"
Callie leads them into the living room, where Richard, Catherine, Maggie, Miranda, and Ben are sitting in a cozy ring around the coffee table. All of them but Richard sip from wine glasses – Catherine and Maggie have reds, and Miranda and Ben both have whites. Meredith's mom-ears pick up a distant giggle, but it's not Zola or Bailey. The room is warm and homey, and the air smells like baked goods. Derek's gaze flits to all the people in the room, and Meredith can't get over how intimidated he looks.
"Are you okay?" she whispers against his ear, quiet enough that only he'll be able to hear. "We can go if this is too much."
He gives her a minute shake of his head that looks almost like a shiver instead of a deliberate, "No."
She bites her lip. Her gut instinct is to grab his hand and yank him out of the house like the Secret Service whisking away a political figure under attack. But … in the end, him staying or not staying is up to him, so she tells her gut to shut up.
She gives him quick re-introductions with Ben and Catherine. Richard, Maggie, and Miranda, Derek knows already from rehab visits. He's following so far, and he seems okay. Not chatty. Nervous as crap. But not in trouble, either.
"Do you want some hors d'oeuvres?" Callie offers. She points at the tray on the coffee table, though she frowns when she notes that it's empty. "Or champagne?"
Derek blinks at the questions she's asked. People who haven't gotten to know him well since his accident wouldn't know what his expression means, but Meredith knows without even trying that Derek doesn't have any idea what Callie's just said. Hors d'oeuvres is a crazy word, and though Meredith's given him the rundown on liquor and beer, she hasn't talked about champagne, yet.
Unlike with Meredith, though, Derek doesn't ask for an explanation. He only says, "No," and he gives no outward hint that he has no idea what he's saying no to.
"I'll have a glass," Meredith says.
Once Meredith and Derek sit on the couch – a big red suede sectional – Callie flits off to the kitchen to grab a fresh tray of some stuffed mushrooms thing she's baked. Miranda sneaks out from underneath her husband's arm and moves over to the couch with Meredith and Derek. She sinks onto the empty cushion to Derek's left.
Miranda gives Derek a warm, welcoming smile. "I see you've figured out how to use mousse again," she says. The last time she visited Derek, he was still in rehab, and he needed a walker to walk. She stopped visiting when Derek came home to give him some adjustment time.
Derek brushes a hand through his hair and looks at his knees as red mottles his cheeks. "Mousse … mousse … no."
Miranda snorts. "Well, you figured out something else in your box of hair secrets then, I guess."
He takes a while to figure that one out. He has to close his eyes to think about it. The red on his cheeks deepens. "Meredith … likes it," he manages after a moment.
Another snort. "I'll bet she does."
"Hey," Meredith interjects. She points at Derek. He's tight as a tripwire. She hopes he'll relax when he sees that everybody here is a friend. "This was work, you know. We spent all of Sunday trying to figure out how the hell he used to do it."
Miranda rolls her eyes. "Of course, that'd be your priority."
"Have you ever heard of pomade?" Meredith says.
Miranda glances at Ben, whose hair can't be more than a few millimeters long, if that. "Does it look like my husband uses hair products?"
"Okay," Meredith concedes, "you have a point."
When conversation pauses, Derek struggles, but he says, "How … are you?"
"Missing your fool ass," Miranda replies.
He lets loose a soft, nervous-sounding chuckle, but his posture eases. Just a little. "My sister … not … fun … t-tease?"
"No one is as fun to tease as you are," Miranda replies after a brief pause to figure out what he means.
Meredith smiles as the chatter continues, and though he's being a bit clingy, Derek relaxes beside her. Freaking finally. Everybody's great about meeting Derek's social needs. They're careful to approach him one-on-one, and nobody talks too fast or too long for him to keep up with, and people keep their volume to a sedate murmur. The willowy quality to Derek's tone drips away one word at a time. Meredith thinks this worked out after all, despite her initial concerns. Derek was ready for this.
The one problem Meredith didn't anticipate is that when one sits seven experienced surgeons in a room, seven experienced surgeons who all work together, the overall conversation is bound to shift toward work. Toward surgery. Two hours into the night, Miranda and Richard regale the room with the tale of their recent patient, a man who managed to impale himself on a no-parking sign in a rather gruesome skateboard accident, and Meredith realizes Derek hasn't said a word in ages. When she glances at him, he's staring into space like he's slipped into a fugue.
He doesn't understand a word they're saying anymore, she realizes, and he's checked himself out of the room rather than draw attention to his confusion. She squeezes his shoulder, and he blinks out of his spatial communion to glance at her. "You okay?" she whispers against his ear.
He gives her a faint smile and ignores her question. "You love … your work."
She nods. "I do."
His gaze trails to Richard, who's saying crazy things like peritoneal cavity and pleural space. Derek looks away and fixates on his knees, and Meredith frowns. This all must be gibberish to him. Beyond the first thirty minutes or so, when people were saying hi to him, talking to him about things a bit more on his current level, nothing about this gathering engages him. He's not deriving any enjoyment from this.
"Do you want to go?" she says. "We can go home."
"No," he says. "You have … fun." She's not sure if he intends this to be an observation or an imperative. He gives her a smile that doesn't meet his eyes, and he rises to his feet. His weight presses down on his cane. "I will check kids," he says. And he limps away, way more off-balance than he should be. She wonders what he's been cranking his brain on that's got him so tired.
The kids conk out in the back seat on the way home, leaving Meredith and Derek in silence.
"What are you thinking?" she says, trying to break into the shell he's erected around himself since Callie's get-together.
He swallows. "I used to like … doing this."
"Going to dinner parties?" she says.
He shakes his head. "What … you do," he says. "Surgery."
"Yes," she says. They've talked about this before, but things have never gotten more specific than him acknowledging he fixed brains. "Do you remember any of that?"
"Yes," he says. He touches the side of his head. The craniotomy scar. "This? I did this. Not … not for me. But .…"
"Yeah," she says, smiling. "You were what's called a neurosurgeon."
He nods. "I remember this word," he says. "You tell me," he says. A wince. "Told. Told me."
Meredith nods. She reaches. Squeezes his shoulder. He's getting tired, and all the things he finds difficult – conjugations, function words – slip back into prominence.
He stares at the darkness beyond the car window. The Jeep's motor hums in the silence. "This friends we see." He pauses with his eyes shut for a moment. "They all do this."
"Surgery?" she says.
He nods. "Yes."
"They're all surgeons," she says, frowning. "Why?"
"Why … what?" he says.
"Why do you ask if they're all surgeons?"
He's silent for a long time. "Do I have … friend … not surgeon?"
She bites her lip. She doesn't know that much about his personal life in Manhattan. Addison was a touchy subject between them for years, so Meredith never pried, and he never offered, and by the time Addison wasn't a touchy subject, the newness of their relationship, the thrill of new discoveries, the curiosity … that was gone, and she never pried then, either, as a result.
A lump forms in her throat. She can't ever ask him about his life in Manhattan, because it's all gone, she realizes. She missed her chance.
"Meredith?" he says.
"You don't have any that I know about," Meredith says, torn from her reverie.
"Oh," he says, and she doesn't miss the wistfulness in his tone.
She swallows as the lump in her throat gets bigger. "Do you not like them anymore? Callie and Richard and Miranda?"
He looks at his lap. "What do we talk about?"
She realizes what he's getting at, now. What he can't articulate. He doesn't dislike them, no. But he has no common ground with them anymore, either.