Day Thirty
It's beautiful tonight.
Of all the things he has to think about, this is what comes to mind as he stands on the roof,breathing guilty lungfuls of air.
That it's beautiful tonight, velvet sky and pinprick stars, the first time it's not raining in a while, and that she won't get to see it.
That in the morning,she'll be gone.
Gone.
It sends a wave of numbness down his spine,seeping into his bones and settling in his stomach.
Gone.
How many times has he said that to a patients' family?
Gone.
It's never felt real, not until now; he's never felt the sucking emptiness of that word, the weight of its meaning.
It means never seeing her again, never hearing her voice, her laugh,never feeling her touch him again.
Which is so strange he almost laughs-or maybe he does, because Mark looks at him sideways.
"What?"
"Can you imagine it?" he asks Mark,and there's no need to specify what.
"Not really."
"Me neither."
"Sixteen years,Derek."
"I know,it doesn't feel-"
"Real?"
" 'It's real, all right. I just - I can't see it."
"Then maybe,"Mark says," It's not real."
Or maybe he said something else because right now his head feels like he worked a double shift with a hangover. And the flu.
..
It feels like a crap dream, like that one you used to have all the time, turning up naked in the OR and everyone stares but no one tells you except the patient when he wakes up. I feel like my patient is never waking up and it's never going to end, Red,tell me it's not real.
-Mark.
..
This is the longest I've gone without hearing from you,and it's ridiculous. I used to call you all the damn time,remember? We talked about now I'm losing my best friend and I have no one to talk to about it,which is wrong on so many levels; Addie,pinch me hard like you used to when we were little. Wake me up.
-Savvy.
..
"You look like shit."Archer says coolly.
"I always looked up to you," he grins,sliding onto the bench beside him.
"Shepherd,this isn't the time for wisecracking."
"Why not?"
He worried, momentarily,about Archer's fist, or his tongue,which is possibly worse,but he just looks tired.
"I thought grief came after the fact."
"I'm not grieving .There's no reason to. She'll make it."
"So stupid," he shakes his head."I told her not to marry you, but she never listens."
..
You never listen to me,not about the things that matter anyway. You can ignore me all you want,just be here so I can tell you things. I can't imagine not having you here,Addie,I'll be the only sane Montgomery left. Don't do that to me.
-Archer.
..
He drifts down the hall towards Bizzy's shrieks, grateful for the distraction from her children.
"She wants to what."
"Donate her body," Weiss explains, looking amused."To science."
"Lucky med students."Savvy says,and giggles nervously.
And then again,the sound sweet and unfamiliar in this soulless hallway,so he laughs with her,and Bizzy turns on him.
"Derek,what is this?Did you know about this?"
No. I didn't know her at all, apparently,because my Addie wouldn't have given up.
Given up.
She's giving up.
In all the years he has known Addison Forbes Montgomery (Shepherd) she has never given up.
Except now.
When it matters the most, when giving up means leaving him here alone with the knowledge he let her go without telling her what she was to him,leaving him here alone with their regrets and their mistakes, now she chooses to give up.
..
You were the one who told me I'm supposed to not give up till there's absolutely nothing that I can do. Doesn't that go for you too?
-Karev.
..
He broke her.
Not physically.
He broke her, the essence of what made her Addison,the woman they called Satan,and not lightly.
Every word, every cutting glance,every chilly elevator ride and every night spent at the hospital, they piled up until even she couldn't take it any more.
.
"Do you want me to stay, Derek?"
"I do", he answers with the words he said eleven years ago.
.
He let her stay, and for what?
So she could watch him watch Meredith,a threeway staring contest where no one made eye contact and the one to get caught was the loser.
So she could pin rings to her scrub top while his sat on the nightstand,an open taunt.
So she could feel the way he felt in his own bedroom in his own house in the city he'd lived in forever.
Alone.
He made her feel alone.
I'm lonely , Derek.
Guilt hurts. It tastes like tequila sliding down his throat, the tang of lime and the bite of the salt.
You blew me off for a bottle of tequila?
Wait. Who did he say that to?
But he feels like he needs this tonight and thinking is an abstract concept right now.
..
I need a drink if I'm going to sit through what no parents should ever have to see, but all I want is a vodka tonic and no one makes them like you. It's just one of the things I'll miss. I won't say goodbye,Kitten,not 's time still.
-William Montgomery.
..
"You're drunk,"Naomi accuses.
"Not enough," he says,and then guilt comes back up his throat tasting worse than before.
His head pounds in time with the beeps of the monitors and he wants to smash every fucking one of them.
"Take a break, honey," his mother suggests.
"Don't need to." he glowers,and Amy stops her from following him.
"Don't be a dick," she snaps behind him in the men's room.
"Men's room,Amy." he croaks,bloodshot eyes meeting hers in the mirror.
"You're here."she retorts.
He'd like to punch her, he thinks, rattle her skinny shoulders till she screams.
Better yet,he'd like to punch the mirror,blacken the same blue eyes that are boring into his back, until blood runs down his wrists.
Put the ice on your hand.
He didn't want it,didn't need it. What good would her comfort do when she was the one who hurt him?
He doesn't need her.
She doesn't want him.
Why is she dragging this out?
Stop being an adulterous bitch.
Described her perfectly.
He knows her; she'll hang on to the end, claw him on her way out.
Draw blood, leave scars.
On his skin, on his heart.
Right now, in this moment,he hates her.
He wishes it would just end already.
"Can't you do something." he snarls at Nelson , and power runs through his veins as the man cowers.
"There's nothing left to try,you know that." Amy says, and he wonders when it got to the point that his ex-junkie sister became his voice of reason.
..
I used to look up to you,I thought I wanted to be you when I grew up. I admired you. But now I think you're giving up too soon. You're not fighting, Addie,and you always said to never settle for second best. What you're doing isn't even second best. You're hurting him. And everyone here. I'm not allowed to be mad at you but really Addison I thought you could do better.
-Amelia.
..
"You're angry." she says simply, looking somewhere over his shoulder. "I used to be to."
"You? Why?"
"I don't know... at myself, I guess.I couldn't save him."
He feels some of the white-hot rage fade away." Amy..."
"I know, I know. But maybe," and her eyes are squirrel-bright, the same shade as his and full of life like they used to be. So long ago."Just maybe, if I had screamed-"
If you had let me scream.
"-he might still be, you know. Here ."
"You couldn't have done anything ." he says lamely, so many people have said it to him.
About his father. About Amy,that long-ago night. About Addie,now.
It's never been true.
"I know that. And you do,too, but you were angry too. You saw it too. The gun and the shot and the blood and the fucking brains on the floor,Derek,you saw it too; there's a reason we grow neurosurgeons like weeds."
We.
They're still family. They're all here, Kath and Nancy and Liz and their mother.
Sam and Naomi, Archer and the Captain and Bizzy and Savvy and Weiss and Bailey and Richard and Adele.
Mark.
"You knew."
He knows too,now. She's been here a month,her chart an open invitation to anyone who is so inclined.
He let his eyes skate numbly over the clinical terms of her betrayal, and it didn't feel like anything in the face of what was happening,but now,now,with hours left on the clock he's got blinkers on; tunnel vision, he's single minded and focuses on one thing at a time and anything that's not about whats happening in two hours is fair game,so now he lets himself feel the rage burning through him.
"I knew."
About the baby, neither of them says it, but they're on the same page.
They always are.
"And about the-"
"Yeah."
"And you didn't tell me."
"It was her story to tell."
"Cut the crap. Was she at least happy about it?"
.
Not now,Derek.
There's still time,Derek.
I ...please, I'm just not ready.
Do you think it would have been different? If you'd had kids?
.
"No."
It might have felt better,less of a betrayal, if it had at least made her it hadn't been for nothing.
"I was, though." but his slate eyes are black with pain,grief,god knows what, and it extinguishes whatever was blazing through his mind.
"How'd we get here,Mark?"
"No idea."
They sit together on the bench but three feet apart,not because they're men but because there's a third of them missing, cold air blowing through the gap between them.
It feels off balance, wrong.
He'll never get used to this.
..
I'll do anything. Anything. We'll move back to New York, you can take Chief. The Hamptons every weekend and I'll let you we could stay here,if you want,no more trout, no more fishing, we'll blow up the trailer, have a bonfire. I'll do anything you want. Please.
-Derek.
..
"You drive a hard bargain,Shepherd." Sam observes. "You wouldn't have had to if you took what she was offering in the first place."
He's always disliked his holier-than-thou attitude, and he seems to have a free pass lately; they all treat him like he's made of glass, so he has a go.
"Like you did with Naomi?"
That should take care of it.
He remembers his puppylike worship of Addison, his courtship of Naomi, the change in dynamic after he suddenly vanished off the surgical floor and turned up in Cardio.
"She's had this crush on him, like , forever, since the mixer before classes started...but she wouldn't do anything about it,so I may have dropped Sam a hint . Or two. " she says, leaning into him, post-finals high and vodka loosening her tongue and her hands.
"I had a crush on you too," he teases.
"Likewise."
"Shut up. You turned me down the first time I asked you out."
"And the second." she reminds him,giggling.
"Third time lucky." And he kisses her to prove it.
"They're cute together,aren't they?"
"And us?"
"We're not cute," she smirks against his mouth."We're perfect."
"It could have been me," Sam says,sounding -wistful? "It could have been us."
It's just that sort of day,the barriers are down and none of the rules apply, secrets are flying thick and fast as time slides away , slippery in their cluthching fingers, and someone is going to get hit.
It's probably him,though he can't really feel much at this point.
It's gray outside and Grey inside; she's standing there scrawling on a chart and he's too close to pretend he hasn't noticed, so he just keeps going.
"Derek."
It's like I was drowning,and you saved me. You were like coming up for fresh air.
Did he deserve saving?
Not this time.
"I'm sorry,"she says sincerely."For-everything."
"Me too."
There's a lot to be sorry about.
..
I'm sorry I was never the mother you needed. I did my best. You turned out brilliantly,just the same. I never imagined having to see my daughter die. Then again I never imagined having a daughter,but you were a good one.
-Bizzy.
..
I'm sorry we missed our chance.I'm sorry I wasn't braver.
-Sam.
..
I'm sorry I didn't get to know you better. We could have been close friends.
-Preston.
..
I'm sorry we didn't keep in touch. If I had known we wouldn't have the time, well,I wouldn't have let you ignore me. Addison,I don't care that he's in love with you or that he has been since ages ago in med school or that you knew and you pushed him to me anyway,I don't care we haven't spoken in a year and I don't care I didn't have a single idea what was going on with you. I'm sorry,and I want you back.I'm done saying goodbyes. You told me to go after what I want .Take charge. I am.
-Naomi.
..
It's heavy, like a wet blanket, weighing on him until he sinks exhausted into the chair beside her.
Sorry is an empty hollow word, so common, but it makes him feel leaden with - what?
It just feels like something cold and heavy in his stomach.
"Derek,please, just for a while .You'll feel better."his mother begs,and he can't bear to deny her one more thing so he leans his head against chilled glass and closes his eyes but sleep hovers elusively, like so many other things.
When he opens his eyes he sees himself in the glass and when he closes them he sees her through different glass, rain-fogged and tearstained,begging him to let her into their home and he's not sure which is worse but he might not get to see her at all pretty soon so he keeps his eyes shut.
Voices, all around him murmuring, whispering, soft scratch of pen on paper,beeping, the sting of antiseptic and the scrunch of sterile wrappers.
He sees vivid ocean eyes behind smudged goggles,smells formalin and hears the beginning of forever,he sees red hair and he smells lilies and he hears I do, he sees long legs and the wrong hands, he smells the wrong kind of scotch and he hears the door slam shut behind him.
He slammed it shut on his whole life,really.
He's never been alone; five kids in three bedrooms, college flatmates, Mark, Addison.
He wasn't alone here, even in Seattle; he chose the land for how isolated it was. Quiet.
And still he wasn't alone because she kept him up at night, tortured thoughts of where she might be. Who she might be with.
Her voice in his inbox until he stopped opening the messages. Her face in his wallet. A ponytail holder on the floor of the car.
He never really left her.
That's what he tells himself,anyway,to fight the suffocating loneliness.
"What were you going to do,exactly, if she hadn't been fool enough to turn up in Seattle?" Archer asks with dull curiousity.
"I don't know." he says,honest and ashamed.
"What will you do now?" he asks, taking her hand and setting it down again, as pointless a gesture as he feels.
"I don't know."
"What do you know?" and he doesn't sound mad,just annoyed.
He knows that he can't go on,after.
He knows that he'll do it anyway. She never did like a quitter.
Maybe he'll move back to Manhattan. He had a life there, a life where most of the memories were happy and the ghosts are friendly.
He met her there, they became doctors there, it's where they married and built hopes and spun dreams .
Seattle is where he lost her in the literal sense of the word, where he threw those hopes and dreams away and watched himself change into something unrecognisable.
He'll go back, yes, that's what she would have wanted.
He'll open a practice like she wanted to, with Mark and Helen and Naomi if she'll come-there's nothing keeping her in LA just like there's nothing keeping him here- and it'll be a little wrong because she won't be there, but she always wanted to do it.
He'll give the Hamptons to Nancy , someone with family,fill the empty rooms with pounding feet and pealing laughs, let them live out the dreams he had.
He'll remember Sunday dinner and every birthday and graduation and recital. He'll take weekends off-although what he'll do, he has no idea- and he'll go on.
Because she's not going to make it. Thirty minutes is enough for a lot of things,but not enough to right a decade of wrongs and it's not enough to cram a lifetime of memories into and it's not enough for a miracle.
He can go on,because he knows what it's like to be be loved. He knows what it's like to care about someone and have them feel the same about you. He knows it feels good,and the memories will carry him for a long time to come.
It'll take a long time for it to be light again,and maybe it'll always be a little dark somewhere, but he can go on because someday it'll be that way again,when he sees her wherever she's off to. He'll see her again,and until that time comes he'll just have to make the best of it,because she would have wanted it.
They're all crying now,fingers laced together,heads on shoulders, bodies packed tight in the tiny room and the clock is too fast it has to be too fast and there's an unfamiliar nurse and they're saying things to him and he realises he's been speaking out loud but he's not embarrassed because it's true and he's signing something and Weiss is hugging him and Mark's hand is on his shoulder and someone's sobbing, it doesn't take long -shouldn't it take longer? Like it mattered more? - and hands pulling at his sleeve but their mouths move soundlessly and he's driving , somewhere, away,just away,like he did a year ago and then...then this happened and he wonders what will happen this time but it can't be worse can it and then he's away,somewhere.
..
I don't think I'm the one who should be writing this but I didn't, before, and no one else can, right now,and it's stupid,actually. You're gone now. I should have said it whatever. It was a beautiful story,and it needs an ending.
A better one, but this is what we got. Tragic really, but then again when do we get what we want? It wasn't his fault,that's what they said. None of us were in the ER,we were here. Saying goodbye. It was fast,not like yours. A semi. Quick,not neat, but no suffering. Was it supposed to happen? Maybe everything is supposed to happen and it's already planned , and we just don't know it. Maybe sometimes we miss things by the skin of our teeth and sometimes we hit them head on. Maybe nobody knows where we might end up . Pretty sure no one saw this coming. I sure didn't. I'm not sure of anything anymore because after this, literally anything could happen. I'm not sure why I'm writing, anyway, I could just speak but there's something weird about speaking down here.I get this feeling like it should be of respect, maybe. He loved you. I'm getting to the point, now. I'll make it quick because I'm going to cry now. I deserve to get to cry. He loved you,so much that he put a continent between you when he thought you didn't want him anymore. I think-might be a little presumptuous here but hear me out- that I reminded him of you. You were dark and twisty too,just a little. I hope you get to be shiny and bright now,and that he does too. Goodbye.
-Meredith.
..
The End
I don't like this chapter. You don't have to either. I just wanted to try it out, because Shondaland miracles are just too good to be believable and I wanted to see what happens otherwise. Please don't hate me.And feel free to curse in the reviews!