She threw on her discarded clothes after collecting them from the floor, but found herself drawn back to the bed to watch him. Slumber had removed him from the world, and she found herself marveling at, discounting his breathing, how utterly still and quiet he was. She sat and watched him for a moment, enjoying that for once, the tables were turned, that she was the one staring with a quirky smile on her face while he slept instead of the other way around.
The sound of the paper delivery broke the spell. She heard the car drive by, followed by a rhythmic smacking as the driver threw papers out the window to each house up and down the street. It was late today. She glanced at the clock. 6 AM. Despite the fact that Derek's shift started in an hour, she decided to let him sleep, knowing that as soon as he opened his eyes, he was in for a world of misery.
She closed the window blinds to keep the light out. Light was like knives. She would do what she could, at least, to stop him from clawing his eyes out when he woke up. She brought out the bottle of ibuprofen from the private bathroom. She grabbed the half-empty glass of tap water from last night, rinsed it out, refilled it, and placed it on the nightstand on his side of the bed with the ibuprofen.
After taking one last glance at the darkened room, she wandered downstairs, blinking what remained of sleep from her eyes.
Izzie was scrambling some eggs. They hissed as she scraped at them with a spatula. A pot boiled on the burner across from the frying pan with the eggs, and a huge stack of toast sat on a plate in the center of the kitchen island. "Good morning," she said, looking up briefly from her task. "I'm leaving soon. I just wanted to whip something up for you guys. I threw together some soup, and toast, and eggs..." She ticked them off on her fingers, one, two, three. "Those were the only things I could think of that would be really easy on the stomach. Can you think of anything else? I couldn't think of anything else..."
Meredith shook her head. "Thanks, Izzie," she said as she pulled up a chair to the center island. "I think I'd totally starve without you around at this point."
Izzie smiled and shrugged. "I cook. It's my hobby. No big deal. Is Dr. Shepherd... Is he okay? You sounded okay toward the end last night."
Meredith blushed. "Sorry, I was a bit noisy, I think."
Izzie smiled. "Well, you didn't go all night, at least," she said. "I'm just glad I got Mark, I mean Dr. Sloane, out of the house before you two had at it. He stayed for coffee. He's actually kind of nice, outside of work. And hot. There's a lot of hotness there. Anyway, hello, that was surprising."
"The hotness?"
"The fact that he's nice. At work, he's an ass."
Meredith raised an eyebrow, but Izzie looked away, so she grabbed a piece of toast from the pile. She spread some of the fake butter on it from the tub that sat beside the plate. "Do you have any idea what happened last night?" Meredith asked, gracefully dodging the subject of Mark. She took a bite of toast. It melted in her mouth, and she sighed.
Izzie shrugged. "Not a clue. When the phone rang, I thought it would be you, but it was Mark, Dr. Sloane, wanting directions. Last I'd seen Dr. Shepherd, he was doing a hemispherectomy. I wandered through the gallery while he was closing."
Meredith nodded and took another bite.
"So, seriously, where were you yesterday?" Izzie asked.
Meredith looked down into her lap. "I was walking."
"Yeah, you mentioned that."
"Thatcher came by yesterday." She shrugged. If there was one definitive good thing about last night, it was that it had erased the crappiness of the day from her memory, if only for a while. "He sort of... dropped off my mother's urn."
"Oh."
"Hence the intense need for walking," Meredith said with a sigh.
"That's that ugly bottle on the dining room table, I take it."
"Yeah."
"I was wondering about that. So was Mark. He commented that it didn't match the décor at all. At least I didn't submit to curiosity and open it." Izzie snorted. Laughed. Giggled. Breathed hard. And then stopped. "Sorry, I have inappropriate reactions to stress."
"I'm not really sure what to do," Meredith said.
"Pick a pretty spot to spread the-"
"I mean about Derek," Meredith interrupted. "My feelings about my mother can just hop in the big, winding line."
"Oh," Izzie said. "Well, I'd start with trying to get him to eat something."
"Yeah, I guess."
Izzie glanced at her watch. "I have to run. Will you be all right?"
"Yeah."
"Call me if you need help... with something," Izzie said as she walked out the door, closing it softly behind her.
Meredith started a load of dishes while she waited. When the clock had reached 7AM and Derek still hadn't woken up, Meredith called in sick for him. He finally stumbled downstairs at noon, after she'd done the laundry, dusted, and washed the windows.
He looked awful. He'd managed to throw on his boxers and a wrinkled t-shirt, but they hung at awkward angles against him, making him appear unkempt, sort of windswept. His hair stuck out in twisty streaks of wayward curl. Dark circles clung to the skin under his eyes. Stubble dusted his pores. His skin looked bleached of life.
"Good morning," she said. He gave her a bleary glare that said better than any words could ever say that it was not morning and it was not good. But bad afternoon had never seemed like a suitable greeting, at least not for anything Hallmark. She shushed and let him grow accustomed to the fact that he was alive, not sleeping, and miserable in general.
He winced, moving stiff and stilted as he shuffled past the entryway and on to the fridge. He pulled out a carton of orange juice, tipped it back, and chugged. Straight from the lip of the carton. His Adam's apple rippled along his throat as he took hearty swallow after hearty swallow. Little bits of juice dribbled down from the corners of mouth, down his throat, spattered onto his shirt. Finally, he stopped for air, panting, and put the juice back into the fridge with a wobbly, shaky grip. He wiped his mouth off with a paper towel, and then he shambled back to the kitchen table where he collapsed into the seat with a groan. He folded over and laid his head on the table with a great, heaving sigh.
"Stop the carousel," he mumbled, eyes closed.
Meredith pulled her chair over. "Did you take the ibuprofen I left out?"
"First thing," he said. He heaved a great, shuddering breath and opened his eyes, which was followed promptly by a wince. He let his eyes slide shut again.
"You're sick today, by the way," Meredith said.
He jerked in his seat, an ironic, irritated chuckle ratcheting out of him. "Understatement," he replied.
"I mean I called you in sick. I hope you don't mind."
"Oh," he said. "No, I don't mind."
"So, what happened?" she asked, pulling up a chair across from him.
"Mark bodily removed me from my office."
Meredith raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"I followed him to the bar. After that, it's fuzzy. Did he drive me home?"
"But why did you go out with Mark? I thought you hated Mark."
"Hell if I know," he said with a shrug.
"Well, Izzie made some soup for you. Let me heat it up."
He groaned.
"What?" she asked. "Still nauseated?"
He nodded.
"Derek, I'm really getting concerned. You have to eat..."
"I'll try," he said through gritted teeth, his voice grating, low-pitched. He curled up into a sitting position, looking utterly wiped. He squinted at her.
She reheated the pot on the stove, letting the burner do the work. After it began to steam, she poured some of the soup into a bowl and brought it to him, sitting back down across from him to offer moral support. "If you can do juice, you can do soup. There's hardly any difference," she said, reasoning for her sake more than for his.
He stared at the bowl for a long moment, his face went three shades paler, and he pushed it away.
"Derek," she said.
He shook his head. "No, no, just give me a moment." He pulled the bowl back.
He worked his way up to it slowly, finally taking a bite long after it had cooled off, and steam had stopped spiraling up from its surface. He chewed at the bite of vegetable like it was a piece of rubber, swallowed dramatically, and sat there, staring at the bowl as if he were debating the inner mysteries of the universe in relation to soup. He tried another bite after several minutes. And another. He stopped at four.
"Want some eggs? Or some toast?" she asked.
He shook his head and pushed the bowl of soup away.
"You don't feel dehydrated, do you?" she asked. She leaned across the table and put the back of her hand on his forehead. He didn't feel sick to her, at least not feverish. But if he wasn't sick...
"No," he said.
"Still nauseated?"
"No," he said with a shrug. "Just not hungry."
"Well, humor me and finish it, Derek. You're scaring me. You're really, truly scaring me."
He looked at her, and his gaze collapsed under a hood of shame. His shoulders slumped. His whole posture wilted like a starving flower, which she hadn't thought was possible, given how curled over he'd already been. "I'm sorry," he said. He pulled the bowl back toward him and finished it, taking slow, deliberate bites.
"Thank you," she said.
He pushed the empty bowl away and settled his head back on the table with a sigh.
Fidgeting, she watched him in silence for several minutes. Until the worry began to dribble over the edge of its simmering pot, until she just couldn't take it anymore. Why wasn't he talking? What was going on?
"So what's with the mopey thing?" she asked. "Come on, Derek. Give me something to work with here."
He shook his head and groaned. "Meredith, the room is spinning, I'm trying to keep this stuff down, and my head feels like it's been cracked in two and made into paste. Can we just not talk right now?"
"I thought you said you didn't feel sick."
"I didn't before. Can we please, please, just not talk right now?" He started to rub his temples with his index and middle fingers in long, slow circles. "Please, Mere, I'm begging."
But she watched him, sitting there, suffering, and she couldn't stop the tumble of words that shoved and stumbled out of her mouth. "Damn it, Derek," she snapped. "If not now, when? You keep pushing me away. I just want to help you. I know this has something to do with me, that this is my fault. If you'd just tell me, maybe we could work through it together."
He winced, looked like he was trying to melt away from her, but something in her had snapped, and it just didn't take the hint to stop, that stopping would be good.
"You know," she continued. "Together. Like we technically are, except we really aren't most of the time. Because, if you've noticed, we suck at talking. And I'm tired of it. I'm tired, Derek."
He stared. For a moment, just a moment, she'd thought she'd gotten through his thick Neanderthal cranium. But the moment burst into pieces when he blinked, raised his hands to his mouth, and bolted. She stood there, astonished at his sudden absence, an absence that remained like a ghost in the room.
At first, she thought he had fled from her, her words, her presence. And then she heard the upstairs toilet flush. Guilt slammed into her as though she were the nail and it were the hammer striking her with a whack, whack, whack. She chased after him, breathless, ran up the steps, knocked on the closed bathroom door, frantic, upset.
"Derek, I'm sorry," she said, her voice wobbling about like a toddler just learning to walk. Her lower lip trembled. Damn it. Damn it, damn it. She wasn't going to...
The door opened. He looked at her, hanging on the door handle, eyes glassy, skin blushed and feverish. "It's not your fault, Mere," he said. He stumbled forward, stumbled into her. She reached up to steady him, and he stood there, swaying.
"Yes it is," she said, her eyes pricking up with tears. Damn it. Damn it, she was crying. She hated crying. "I yelled. I yelled when you asked me not to. I'm trying not to be a nag. I'm trying. I am."
He pulled her into an embrace. "Shhh. It's not your fault at all, Mere. I'm just... I can't... I can't talk about this right now. Talking about it makes it worse. And I know that you want to. I know that you want to talk about it. And it kills me that I can't, but I-- I just... When I look at you..." His voice cracked, broke, shattered. She looked up and saw his eyes were watering, red. "When I..." He swallowed. "I'm just not ready," he said.
"And not talking makes it better?" She sniffled, taking refuge against his chest, listening to him breathe in and out. Things would be okay. They would be, she assured herself. But for the first time since her accident, she wasn't quite so sure. This Derek, this unhappy, sick, moping Derek... She didn't understand him. She wanted to, but she didn't. She didn't know how to fix it. And her heart ached for him.
He didn't answer. He held her. Rocked her back and forth, there in the doorframe. His hands ran through her hair.
"Do you need to go to the hospital?" she asked, reaching up to wipe away the stinging tears from her face. Her skin felt dry and cracked where the moisture evaporated. "You're going to get dehydrated and malnourished if you keep this up."
"I'm fine, Mere," he assured her.
You're not fine! You're anything but fine! And I'm scared... That was what she wanted to say. She didn't. She swallowed back the thick lump that formed in her throat. "Will you try to eat some more? I won't yell. I won't even watch."
"I'll try some toast," he said. "But only if you eat with me."
"Okay."
They walked downstairs together.