All Along The Watchtower Chapter 10, a grey's anatomy fanfic

All Along The Watchtower - Part 10

Author's Notes:

A few orders of business before you read.

Thank you so very much to everyone who has taken the time to post feedback, as always. You guys are what makes this story enjoyable to share. And thank you, thank you, thank you, as ever, for my diligent, wonderful, stupendous beta-readers.

I'm participating in the Dempsey Challenge this year on October 2, and 3. I'll be walking the 10k with several friends. Please see details on my livejournal (tag: tdc2010) to find out how you can win a chance to have me write a short story just for you. You can reach my livejournal by viewing my author profile and going to my linked homepage. Thank you in advance!

Warning! Chapter 10 is rated M for both sexual and violent content that some of you may find disturbing. Extreme caution before proceeding.

The Cayenne rumbled as Meredith navigated one-handed through the almost-sunshine, a peculiar dichotomy of gloomy and brilliant that Derek had long ago dubbed Seattle-sunshine. The clouds had dispersed somewhat, leaving solid, bright rays cascading to the earth in haphazard clumps. Thick patches of light cast moving shadows through the tree branches, and the car cabin vacillated between dim and dark.

She rested her right hand on his knit gray warmups over his left thigh. She'd told him flip-flops and shorts would be okay if he wanted, but he chilled easily since his surgery, and he'd declined, incurious, in his misery, about the strange statement. The air conditioner vents whispered cool, soothing, freon-laced air across his skin, but he felt far from soothed.

The car cabin vibrated with atonal bedlam. The tinny tinkle of the piano riffs from Carry On Wayward Son emanated from the speakers. "Once I rose above the noise and confusion, just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion," Meredith sang, her tone several notes off of the actual score. He closed his eyes, clutching the pillow she'd given him against his chest. His head throbbed in time with the clash of cymbals.

Meredith hated his taste in music. He disliked hers, though he wouldn't label the feeling as any sort of rabid aversion. There wasn't much music he refused to listen to aside from rap and twangy, woe-to-the-world country. Regardless, they'd found a compromise with one of Seattle's classic rock stations, something they could both enjoy in equal measure. The problem, though, was that she liked to sing along with songs she knew when she was in a good mood, and she was in a good mood today.

Since they'd reunited for the final time, their lives had settled into blissful routine. They'd started commuting together when their shifts matched up. He'd heard her butcher everything from I Fought The Law to Poker Face. He usually didn't protest. Their commute was short, and even if the noises emerging from her mouth were a wretched cacophony, he still found her cute to watch. Her eyes and nose scrunched when she sang notes that were far too soprano for her, and she hunkered down in her seat and bobbed her head like some sort of turkey fowl when she tried to approach the bass registers that had been denied to her by evolution.

He usually didn't protest, except he usually didn't feel like shit, either. Time crept forward second by eternal second. He watched the road through heavy, gummy eyelashes, breathing through parted lips. A trickle of fluid drained down his throat as he leaned back. Everything swam around his head.

Derek sniffed, pulling air through his clogged nasal passages. He clutched the pillow as she tapped the steering wheel and tried to follow Brad Delp into the stratosphere of More Than A Feeling. Her hand on his thigh patted out a rhythm that may have fit with the percussion four songs ago, but seemed more like beatless flailing, now.

"I closed my eyes, and she slipped awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay," Meredith sang, her syllables cracking with the strain, and she made her scrunch-face. She babied the Cayenne through a right turn, but despite her measure of care, the car seesawed on its axles, and he couldn't help the twisted gasp that skipped from his lips as pain drove deep. The noise lost itself in the tidal waves of rock and roil, and Meredith didn't look over or seem to notice.

He tried to give himself support with the pillow, but he already held it with so much force that his arms had started to ache on top of everything else. Discomfort made him pant. He couldn't escape. On top of the constant hurt, his chest felt full and wet and sore when he breathed. He'd been fighting the urge to cough for what seemed like eternity.

Are you okay for a longish drive? she'd asked that morning.

Derek glanced into the side view mirror. The gun pointed at his face, and his tormenter grinned. "Yes, Dr. Shepherd," said Gary Clark. "Are you okay for a longish drive?"

Derek pressed his forehead against the cool glass and let his eyes drift shut. The constant jarring had started out tolerable, but now even the lulls between jostles left him stuck in a solid vise of ache. Her shrill wailing jammed icepicks into his eardrums. He swallowed against a roll of nausea. With his eyes closed, the earth spun around his head. In addition to the fuzzy cotton of his painkillers crowding his brain, the fluid in his sinuses had been replaced by a tennis ball vying for space in his skull.

Are you okay for a longish drive? she'd asked within moments of him waking. His eyelashes had stuck together like they'd been glued. He'd wiped away grit, swallowed, and peered at her groggily from his contorted position over the arm of the chair in their bedroom. When he'd shrugged, he hadn't really had a good concept of Meredith's idea of longish. He'd been thinking maybe a half hour. Not this. Not eternity.

He'd stumbled into the shower that morning, and he'd stayed there an extra fifteen minutes because the steamy air had let him breathe. Finally. Air. But then the heat had made him lightheaded and dizzy, and his choice had been to faint or be finished. He'd eaten two bowls of flavorless Raisin Bran for breakfast, and then she'd stuffed him into his car, all bright and bubbly and bouncing. He hadn't seen her this animated or happy in weeks. Since before he'd been shot. And he'd let himself get swept up in her excitement.

My first day off, she'd said as she'd helped him climb into the front seat, grunting with the effort of supporting his weight. And I have a surprise for you.

Much more fun to listen to than the discouraging messages his body parts had been sending him. Stop. Derek, stop it. We're getting sick. We're getting sick, and we really don't want to be in a car for a long time. Please? Be nice? Maybe just sleep today? Haven't you abused us enough lately?

His eyes watered and pricked with tears as his wits approached their ends.

He peeled his eyelids back, only to see Gary Clark grinning at him, as if to say, "Look at what I did! Look at all the havoc I've wrought. Poor, depressed, stressed-out Derek let his immune system go belly-up."

"Stop it," Derek croaked. To her. To Gary Clark. To himself. He didn't know. "Please, stop," he repeated, unable to take it anymore. He sniffed. Snot bubbled in his nose, and he couldn't breathe. Air crackled in his lungs, impeded by fluid. He wouldn't fucking cough. He would not.

One more, Dr. Shepherd. Just one more.

Meredith's singing ceased, and her supernova of excitement collapsed. Guilt pressed against his consciousness, even as he shuddered with the sheer relief of silence. His body swayed to the left, toward Meredith, as she pulled off the road onto the right shoulder. She turned off the car's engine, and he stared, helpless, scratchy eyes watering, at the cracked pavement to the left and rocks and bushes and overhanging trees to the right.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she said. She squeezed his thigh.

"Nothing's wrong," he said.

"Liar, liar, pants on fire," said Gary Clark as he sneered in the mirror.

The silence stretched as Meredith stared at Derek, undeterred. He heard himself wheezing as he watched his foggy breaths claw along the glass window. His nose ran. Snot crawled down the skin of his upper lip, creeping and slow, and there was no surreptitious way to fix himself. He inhaled. The increase in pressure made his head feel like it was splitting open, and the frothing sound of his breath, bubbling deep in his nasal cavity, embossed everything on an embarrassing neon sign for her.

Derek. Sick. See the lump in the passenger seat for details.

She brushed his forehead with the back of her palm. He didn't push her away or move or do much of anything. "You're hot," she said.

"I know," he said. "So are you."

Her lip curled with a hint of amusement, but then worry doused her expression with a frown. "I think you have a slight fever," she clarified. She petted his face, her fingers twisting through a wayward curl. Her lip quivered, and her gaze seemed watery.

"I'm not sick."

"You sound awful, Derek."

"Thank you for finally noticing," he snapped. He hugged the pillow and curled against the door, away from her. The air conditioner rushed.

"I thought..." She sniffled. "I thought you were doing the mopey thing this morning. You've been gloomy and monosyllabic all week. I didn't know you were getting sick. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Derek."

He couldn't look at her as she wiped away tears. He hadn't meant to be nasty, he just...

She sighed. "I never should have taken you on such a long trip this early. This was stupid. It was a stupid, stupid plan." Her fingers squeezed his pant leg, and then flattened out into soft, reassuring strokes, and he closed his eyes against the torrential desire to yell or hit something or do anything but sit in this car and feel like he was dying. She shouldn't be sobbing because she'd taken him on a fucking car trip. Would this ever end?

"I'm not sick," he said. "I'll be okay."

"You have a slight fever," she said. "This could be pneumon-"

"I'm not fucking sick!" he said, but his voice chose that moment to give out, and the last word came out a hoarse, breathy squeak.

"Okay," Meredith said, her voice soft. She stroked his thigh. "Okay, I'm sorry."

A car drove past them, and the Cayenne swayed as the air disturbed by the passing vehicle buffeted it. Derek let his lips part, and he panted, more wheezing than anything else, but he needed air, and his nose was fast becoming a dead end for oxygen. Gary Clark smiled at him from the mirror, almost gleeful. Frustration bolstered by exhaustion and pain coiled in Derek's gut. He tried to breathe. Congestion thickened in his chest, and the effort of being angry didn't seem very attractive after about three or four seconds. He funneled what was left into determination. This could not be happening to him.

"So," Derek said. He sniffed, and he blinked, and he tried to make a show of looking ready to go again. He fumbled with his seat belt, and he resettled the pillow. "What's this surprise?"

He glanced at her and frowned. He'd apparently said something very wrong. She bit her lip, and her concerned gaze deepened into outright, unmitigated worry, like he'd just inadvertently admitted he had the plague or something.

"You mean you haven't guessed it yet?" she said. She stared, her gaze piercing.

"I don't..." he stuttered, and then he looked. Outside. He stared out the windshield down the long, winding road. A double yellow line bisected two lanes. Tall trees surrounded them on both sides, low, weeping boughs hanging over the road to form a makeshift, verdant cavern. His hand tightened against the door handle as recognition overcame confusion. In a few miles, there would be a break in the trees that housed a small gravel lot with a market place and a drugstore and a gas station. Beyond that, after several more miles, the road would turn off into obscurity. The elevation would rise. The road would climb out of the solid clot of trees, higher, higher, and then, "My land."

"I figured it would be good for you," she said. "You can stretch out on the dock and snooze in the sort-of sunshine. And the contractors-"

"My land," he repeated.

"Yeah."

"Keep going."

She sighed. "Derek, the last road isn't paved. That's why I brought the pillow for you. And you look really, really-"

"Please," he said. "Please, Meredith. Please, I want to see my lake. Please."

Embarrassment made him shake, but he couldn't stop begging. His land.

He realized, if she wanted to, there wasn't much he could do to stop her from taking him home. He couldn't drive. Through exhausting repetition, he'd built his stamina back up to the point where he could manage two twenty-minute walks a day, or once around Meredith's hilly block without throwing up in the foyer at the end. He could climb the stairs in their house in about five minutes. And he'd discovered two days ago that he could sleep on his side for very short periods of time. His list of can-dos had grown, but was still woefully short. He had no doubt she could manhandle him against his will if she felt she needed to. She'd already demonstrated time and time again that her physical strength far exceeded his own at the moment.

But he thought of the water as it crashed around his body. The way Meredith lay on the dock in her small red bikini, sunning. The perfection of the soft earth and the tall grass and the way the wind blew across the reeds with a low, soothing whistle. The ducks that churned the choppy water with their tiny feet as they swum by in a flock of feathers and happy chatter.

Reflective water spread out like rippled glass before his eyes.

His land.

I can do whatever I want in here.

He hadn't seen it in weeks.

"Please," he said.

The tormented look on her face crumpled. "Okay," she said. "Okay, I'm... Will you let me take a look at you first?"

"Why?"

"Because if you're dying of influenza or pneumonia, I'd at least like to know, even if you don't care."

"But I'm fine," he said. "I'm not sick. I can't be sick."

"Liar, liar, liar," Mr. Clark taunted.

Derek's chest tightened as he tried to pull in air. His diaphragm pushed into his lungs, and he forced out a slow, wheezy exhalation against the upswing of force, trying not to let go. In, out. In, out. He held his pillow against his body, and he breathed. Shivery urges to cough tortured him for a tense minute before he couldn't stop himself anymore.

A deep, wet, spuming cough pasted him against the back of the seat. The pillow barely did a thing to stop the knife that plunged into his sternum and sawed along the slowly healing line of bone. His eyes watered, and an uncontrolled shout of pain flew from his lips.

Meredith's seat-belt clicked. She popped the trunk and slipped out of the car. The space around his head spun. He grimaced and sniffed and panted as misery crushed him in its jagged embrace, and he didn't pay much attention to her at all until his door opened. She reached across his body and un-clipped his seat belt. Something crumpled and rustled as she leaned, and it hit his knee. He watched, almost as though he were watching a movie, unable to act, as she put his small blue Nike duffel bag on the floor by his feet. He kept his things in that bag. His doctor things. Just in case. In the trunk. She'd-

Her arms wrapped around his body, and she pulled him forward. The pillow quashed between their bodies. She held him prisoner against her shoulder. She fumbled with his shirt at the hemline, and something cold pressed against his back. His skin twitched.

"Breathe deeply," she said.

Breathe deeply, Dr. Shepherd.

The gelid clutches of anxiety pulled at his body. He rested his forehead against her clavicle.

She listened, placing the stethoscope against the skin over each lung, upper and lower, front and back. He tried not to wheeze or cough or sniffle or sound horrible, but his efforts didn't seem to make a difference. Her grip around his body grew tighter and tighter, and he knew she was panicking. His fault. His fucking fault. And then his nose ran, and he had to suck in breath after breath to keep from ruining her shirt.

When she'd finished, she sighed, a shivery, panty thing that sounded dangerously close to Meredith-in-tears. He didn't want her to cry. He couldn't stand it. She ripped his black stethoscope away from her face and let it fall against the duffel bag to the floor by his feet. She wiped her eyes with her fists, and then she hugged him, not speaking. Her palms ran up and down his back, soothing.

He coughed again, as horrible as the first. Tears welled in his eyes as pain sliced his body open at the seams. He moaned into her shirt, and her grip tightened. He didn't want to do this. He couldn't do this again. He'd been finished when they'd sent him home.

This would set him back to the beginning. If they took him back to the hospital and he was laid up for days on end, he'd be back to barely being able to walk down the hall. If they needed to put him back on the ventilator, they'd put the urinary catheter and the IV back in, and he wouldn't be able to speak. He vaguely remembered the feeling of breathing through a straw, only able to watch while Meredith babbled at him, and he'd hated it.

"Derek, your lungs sound really bad," she said.

"Please, I want to see my lake," he said.

"How long have you felt congested?"

He swallowed. "Since yesterday."

She sighed. "Your head, your chest, or both?"

"Both," he said.

"You haven't been coughing."

"It hurts," he confessed, and her grip tightened more. "Please. I don't want to spend the night in the hospital. It's not pneumonia. It's not."

She held him in her arms. Another car sped past. He stared over her shoulder through the bug-spattered windshield. Tunnels of green and shadow flashed white. White walls. White halls. White sheets. The rhythmic pulsing of his heart monitor echoed in his ears.

You're not the man.

"I'm not sick," he said, helpless.

She wound her fingers through his hair, and she kissed his temple. "I'm going to stop at the drug store and get you some Mucinex or something for the upper respiratory stuff, and you're going to take it," she said.

"Okay."

"And if this doesn't get any better by tonight, I'm taking you to the hospital, Derek," she said. "You just had heart surgery three weeks ago, your lungs sound like there's a small ocean of crap stuck in them, and you have a slight fever. We shouldn't even be having this discussion. I should be driving you to the ER. You know it just as much as I do."

"It's not post-op pneumonia," he said.

"Derek, if you were your patient, what the hell would you call this then?"

He couldn't stop another hacking, wet cough. He shivered against her, the pain making him dizzy. He hugged the pillow. "I don't know," he said, his voice weak and distant. He swallowed, and Gary Clark laughed in his ears as Meredith returned to her side and started up the car.

He rested against the door as his Cayenne began to move. She jammed her hand on the gearshift and tried to pull out into traffic. As she drove the car off the shoulder, a horn blared, and she had to slam on the brakes to keep from being t-boned. Momentum pushed him into the seat belt, and he couldn't stop a tortured bark of pain. The pillow made it less catastrophic than it would have been. He fought for breath against hurt and barely won.

"Damn it," she cursed, and she slammed her hands against the steering wheel as she panted and her face turned bright red. "I hate this car. I hate it, Derek! The blind spots are bigger than trucks."

The black spots in his vision flickered into normal sight. "Then why did you drive it?" he said, trying to peel the suffering grimace off his face. He sniffled.

"Because the suspension is smoother than the one on my Jeep," she said, and then she sighed.

He closed his eyes as the Cayenne started to move. She hit the accelerator, and the engine hummed. "Oh," he said. She'd driven it for him, then. Great. So, she'd planned a surprise. She'd thought of everything from a pillow for his chest, to the smoother suspension of his vehicle over hers, to help make him more comfortable. And all he'd done was moan in pain and yell at her.

Another bubbly cough shattered his frame, and this time when his eyes watered, they spilled over for several blinks before he got a grip on himself. He didn't want to cough, god, damn it. Except letting the first one loose seemed to have given a whole torrent of them permission to lay waste to his fragile sternum. Panting as he tried to recuperate, he leaned his head back against the seat. His chest hurt. It really, really hurt. At least, at the hospital, when they'd bugged him to cough a few times in the morning, they'd left alone long enough afterward to recover before asking him to do it again.

Gravel churned under the tires as she pulled into the small parking lot in front of the drug store and the market. The car handled the gravel well, but he couldn't help gripping the pillow tighter, waiting for something awful to punish him. Nothing did. When she stopped and put the car in park, she looked at him.

"I'll be right back," she said. She grabbed her purse and exited, leaving him alone in misery.

He closed his eyes, and let his thoughts drift away.

"Derek," Meredith said as she looked up. She sat in the dim light at the small dining table across from his kitchenette. She wore one of his t-shirts and nothing else. The paper crumpled as she folded her issue of Cosmo shut and sighed.

"What?" he said, grinning. "Are you not happy to see me?" He dropped off his grocery sack on the counter top. He planned to grill steaks tonight, ply her with a sixty dollar bottle of wine, and lay with her naked under the carpet of stars on a picnic cloth.

She shrugged. "I'm always happy to see you. I love you."

He sat across from her. The cushion on the chair squeaked. He frowned. He reached across the table to brush her lower lip with his finger, relishing the soft rippled surface of her skin. Her favorite lip gloss made his thumb slip. She licked the tip of his nail, but then she pulled away and looked down at the table.

"Well, what's wrong?" he said.

She fiddled with her hands. "I think you come here too much," she said.

He shrugged. "Because I need it."

"I know you think you do."

He peered at her. Her hair tumbled down, loose and tangled with sleep, and she wore no makeup. Her skin glowed anyway. Ruddy imperfections marred her face and neck, a small peppering of flaws, but they did nothing to detract, nothing to make her less his or less beautiful. Need devoured him as he stared at her. His wife.

"I've wanted to do this all week," he said. He stood and moved to her side of the bench. He kissed her and let his eyes close as the heady scent of her skin swept against him. She twisted backward, a small moan skipping from her lips. His shirt on her body rustled as he fiddled with the hem. She tasted him, and then she pulled away.

"You have done this all week," she replied.

"What can I say?" he rumbled against her skin. "You're irresistible."

She wiped her wrist against her lips as if to erase the taste of him, splayed her palm against his chest, and pushed him backward. He caught himself on the edge of the bench before he fell to the floor. He panted, flummoxed, as she stared at him. Her skin had flushed. He'd turned her on, and yet... "You're ignoring me again," she said.

"Please, Meredith."

She shook her head. "This isn't a good idea anymore."

"But I need it!"

She looked at him like he'd sucker-punched her. Her lower lip quivered. Tears welled up. She looked at the trailer and he followed her gaze, past the bricked windows and the grocery bag and the mussed sheets on the bed.

Her soft, gray stare met his gaze.

"I'm not really Meredith," she said. "You get that, right?"

"Derek," Meredith whispered against his ear. She rattled his shoulder. "Derek, come on. Wake up."

He coughed. The deep, bubbling sound of fluid caught in his chest, and he coughed again and again, until he felt bell-rung and half-dead and dizzy with agony. His trailer morphed into the small beige cabin of his Cayenne. Sunshine slammed into his eyeballs through the windshield. The tennis ball in his head had been exchanged for a basketball. He couldn't breathe or think or move.

She held him while he panted and wheezed, trying to catch his breath. Her feet churned gravel as she shifted to compensate for his weight. She rummaged through something she held behind his spine. The familiar jingle of a pill bottle intervened in the silence. Her shoulders shifted as she snap-twisted the child-proof cap. She pushed a cold water bottle against his palm. He grasped it by reflex. She gave him something. A small, solid dollop. A pill. Some decongestant or something. He didn't know what kind. He wasn't sure he cared. He took the pill and a swig of water and closed his eyes while she embraced him, rubbing his back and whispering.

"Please," he said. "I need to see my land. It's only a few miles. Don't take me to the hospital."

Her palm pressed against his forehead. Her fingers felt cold, but she'd been holding a water bottle.

"Do you feel cold, like you might be getting a fever?" she said. "Don't you dare lie to me."

"No," he said. She rummaged through his doctor duffel. Plastic crinkled. Before he knew it, he had a thermometer jammed in his mouth while she glared. "M'not lying," he said around the small device. His tongue rubbed against the sterile plastic sleeve as he spoke. A lump formed in his throat.

After a minute, she took it out and stared, holding it up to the gray and blue sky framed in a square by the trees at the edges of the parking lot. "100.2," she said, squinting.

"It's low-grade," he said. "I'm fine."

"Scale of 1 to 10, how bad is it?" she said. She leaned into him, her eyes inches from his. Her frosty, slate gaze pierced him as she gripped his shoulder. "Don't. Lie. This is your life, and it's very freaking important to me, even if you seem to be an uncaring idiot about it."

Red blush crept over his face. "I'm not an idiot. I care."

Her fingernails dug into his skin as her fingers clenched. "Scale?"

"7," he said. "10 when I cough, but only because it fucking hurts."

She stared at him for a long march of moments, a vicious battle of should she or shouldn't she sprawled across her face. She reached across his lap into the back seat. A bag crinkled. His pain pills. She made sure they carried them everywhere the few times they'd been out. She pulled his Percocet bottle loose from the pile of other bottles. "Will you take one more Percocet before we try the road to your land?"

"I already took two."

"I know, but you look really miserable already, and I couldn't bear-"

He stared at the pill resting on her palm and, without further argument, swept it into his hand. He tilted back his head, and he took it with another swig of water. The pill caught in his esophagus, and he swallowed again and again, finally forcing it down. The cabin spun around his head. He blinked. She watched him as he re-settled, wordless, and then she slammed the car door in his face. He flinched.

When his heartbeat calmed, he stared at his lap, eyes watering. She was angry again. She was fucking angry at him, and he didn't know why or what the hell to do about it anymore. He didn't want to make her angry. Helpless frustration heated his breaths.

The car wobbled on its frame as she tore open the door on her side and settled herself with a huff. She jammed the key in the ignition like she wielded a knife for stabbing. Her knuckles turned white as clutched the key and turned it in the ignition. The car rumbled to life. She fought with her seat belt. In her agitation, she missed grabbing it and twisted again, spitting and hissing curses.

She pointed at the water bottle in the cup holder without looking at him. "Drink the rest of that."

A cough and a moan pasted him to his seat, and he trembled, barely able to breathe, miserable. "I'm sorry," he said, feeling useless. He wasn't even sure what he was apologizing for, but he could do that. Say sorry. He'd made a fucking Olympic event out of expressing remorse. It was one of his only skills that getting shot hadn't fucking robbed from him. "Meredith, I'm sorry."

She flipped down her sunglasses over her face and backed the car out of its parking spot. Gravel churned. "I hate you, sometimes, Derek," she said through gritted teeth. "I really freaking do."

He swallowed. "Why?"

"Because you're leaving this up to me! You're sick. You're really sick. You won't admit it because you're scared witless, which isn't allowed, because you're the mighty Derek Shepherd, a man who is completely incapable of admitting fear unless the confession is drawn-and-quartered out of him, and now I'm stuck making what could be a life-or-death decision. I don't want to take you to your land, because as a doctor, I know that's probably the biggest mistake ever. But I don't want to take you to the hospital, because as your wife, I know that's probably the biggest mistake ever. And I hate you, Derek. I fucking hate you."

He blinked as he stared at the windshield. His head started to whirl with the new introduction of painkillers. He couldn't breathe. His nose ran. He sniffled, and his torso shook as embarrassing, uncontrollable tears leaked. They crawled down his face, collected at the edges of his cheeks, and fell with wet splats onto his warmups, leaving darkened, round scars on the cotton.

"Hmm," Gary Clark said from the mirror. "Wrecking your marriage now, too? Making you cry like a gutless coward in front of your wife? You're almost making me glad I missed your heart."

Derek's hands shook as he wiped his face. Spit collected between his lips and teeth as he sniveled. Every fucking orifice on his face was leaking some sort of fluid. He felt disgusting. And shameful. And the licking heat of self-conscious distress wouldn't stop flushing across his face and his neck and his throat and... Hot. Now, he did feel hot. And awful. A deep, wet grunt of discomfiture tore through him. Pain.

And he couldn't stop crying.

She took one look at Derek and growled. "God," she huffed. "This is turning into the crappiest surprise I've ever-"

"It's okay," he said. Spasms of grief shook him. He watched the scenery pass by the window. Endless trees and bracken and moss. The cave of forest and fauna made the car dark. He gripped the door handle and the pillow.

"It's not okay," she snapped. "There's nothing about this that's okay."

"It's my fault."

"It's not," she said. "I've been trying so hard to be more sensitive or whatever, and I think this has pretty much proven that I'm a giant freaking failure when it comes to you. You're dying of pneumonia, and I didn't even notice because I'm so stuck on me, me, me. And now you're upset, and I don't want you to be upset, but I can't stop yelling at you because I hate you. I hate this. I hate Gary Fucking Clark. I just want things to be better."

"I'm sorry," he said. His tongue lost connection with his sentience. He blinked as the solid rush hit him. His grip on the door loosened. "Uh."

"Stop it," she snapped. "Stop saying that when you have nothing to be sorry for. If you say you're sorry one more time I think I might scream. You drive me crazy!"

"Ditto," he managed. He rested his head against the door and inhaled with a deep, wet, bubbly breath.

"I... Okay." She sighed. "You may have a point."

Tense, awful silence separated them, and for the first time since she'd married him, he felt alone despite the mere feet of space between them. Alone like he'd felt in the hotel, days after he'd discovered Addison with Mark. Alone and drunk and nauseated and not sure whether he would ever get out of bed again. He clutched the pillow, unable to stop crying.

Exhaustion gripped him. He hurt without dignity, and no matter how much he tried, he couldn't pull himself together.

"Don't take me to Seattle Grace," he said.

"What?"

"I don't want to go back there. Please. Maybe Seattle Pres?"

She bit her lip. Her palm came to rest on his shoulder as she accepted his shaky olive branch. She rubbed his arm, and he let the soothing tide pull him into the ocean. Disorientation made his sense of the passing scenery feel more like a drive-by in an impressionistic painting gallery. Greens and browns and earthy tones melded into muddy, featureless nothing. He swallowed as invisible cotton balls sucked the moisture out of his mouth.

"I still love you," she said in the quiet roar. "Even though I hate you."

His eyelids dipped shut. He didn't reply. She turned onto the unpaved portion of the road. The rear axle had barely touched the dirt, and he was already glad she'd suggested the third Percocet. He accepted the torture in silence, willing himself with the last of his reserves not to cry out after every pot hole, pock mark, ruffle, and dent in the muddy road. He'd asked for this. His land. For a few hours before she took him to the hospital. He strained against the pillow, trying to hang on to something, anything. His mind snapped out of conscious thought like a rubber band flung from a slingshot.

She grinned. "I'm always happy to see you. I love you."

He sat across from her. The cushion on the chair squeaked. He reached across the table to brush her lower lip with his finger, relishing the soft rippled surface of her skin. Her favorite lip gloss made his thumb slip. She licked the tip of his nail and moaned.

"You have done this all week," she replied.

"What can I say?" he rumbled against her skin. "You're irresistible."

She wiped her wrist against her lips as if to postpone the taste of him, splayed her palm against his chest, and pushed him backward. "Bed," she said as she tangled with his shirt. "Now."

They shuffled toward the back of the trailer. He shucked his shoes and his shirt, and she grappled with the buttons on his fly, and then he was falling. Falling backward. His body slammed into the bed. He huffed as he flattened and bounced back. She collapsed on top of him in a giggling tangle of angular limbs and silky skin.

"I love you," she said, and she kissed him on his lips, on his throat, on his chest. She trailed to his bellybutton, and he laughed, deep and rumbling and loose.

"It's my turn today," he said. He flipped her on her back, and she shrieked with delight. "Why is my shirt still on your body?" he said.

"Because you didn't take it off yet," she replied, eyes alight.

"This is a dilemma," he said.

"The bigger dilemma would be that you're still wearing your pants."

"Hmm. Very true."

Her tiny hands curled over his waistband. Her knuckles dug into his skin. She rolled his jeans down his hips and paused. Her eyebrows shot up. "Commando?"

"Why would I care about my underwear in this place?"

"You always put me in mine."

He grinned. "That's because I like to take it off you." He kissed her on the throat, and he delighted with the vibrations underneath her skin as she laughed. "Piece." He kissed her in the dip where her clavicles met her sternum. "By." Her body rolled back in a wave as he yanked up his soft indigo shirt and peeled it from her body. He took a nipple in his mouth and sucked. Her fingers spider-walked against his naked back. "Piece."

"Derek," she moaned. Her knees imprisoned his hips as she opened for him. "Please."

"Are you wet already?"

"Make me," she replied. "Are you hard already?"

He leered. "Make me."

He slithered out of his jeans and pushed against her. Heat radiated against his groin. He kissed her as she slipped her hand between their bodies and touched him, stroked him base to tip. "Oh," he groaned, panting. A slave to the building pressure she wrought, he pressed against her hand. Friction built, and another groan tumbled out of him. "Stop," he managed.

"Stop?"

He laughed. "It's my turn, remember?"

He captured her lips before she could answer, tasting the salt and sweetness of her skin. Arms shaking, he pushed himself down, down until he fell over the tip of the bed into a kneeling position. He grabbed her thighs and yanked her against his body with a growl. Her knees hooked over his shoulders, and he buried himself in her warmth. He curled his tongue against soft skin between her thighs, and she screamed, and he moaned, and then everything tumbled out of focus as he brought her to a trembling halt on a ledge below the pinnacle.

Her body shuddered as he licked her inner thigh. Exquisite heat. "I want you," she panted. She rose up and clutched his shoulders. "I want to see you. Now, Derek. Now."

He climbed back into bed with a playful growl. She cupped him as she kissed everywhere she could reach. "Mmm. Hard, now," she murmured.

"Wet, now," he replied. He let her taste herself on his lips, and she loosed a warbling moan that made his muscles shiver and his groin tighten with need.

"Fuck me," she said. "Fuck me, now."

He propped himself on his elbows, flat above her body. She wrapped her legs around him. Her body heaved as he peered into her glassy, lust-drugged eyes. With a grunt, he found home, and he closed his eyes to keep from spilling as hot and wet and slick and tight overwhelmed all other sensation. His breaths shivered, and her internal muscles clenched.

"Fast or slow?" he asked, unmoving, torturous. A buzzing sensation pierced his brain. Move. Move, god, damn it. Fuck her senseless.

She grimaced and squirmed. Her breasts heaved as she struggled for air. "Anything, Derek. Fuck me. Please."

"How about slow?" he said. "I can do slow." He pulled out and pushed in by inches, and he rumbled as tension locked his body and the buzzing sensation became a constant wail. He rested his lips by her ear, and he told her softly, "I can do incredibly slow."

Out and in again, and she moaned. "I love you," she said.

"Hmm. I love you, too."

She clawed his back and he stroked her insides once, twice, again. Slow. He let the harrying rhythm pull him toward mental frenzy. The wail became a tormenting siren. Move. Move, faster. He denied it as long as he could, delighting in her moans and sighs and soft breaths against his body. Home. Her body was home, and he'd found it, and he never wanted to leave. He just wanted to come in. Again and again and again.

Her fingers twisted against his shoulder blades. She squeezed her legs around his body, until every time he met her with his hilt in a slow grind, she screamed and she squeezed and he felt like he was in the grips of a boa constrictor. Sweat meandered down his spine and dotted her brow as he tortured her. Tortured himself.

"I need this," he said. "I need you. I need to be me."

"I know," she said as he speared her again. Again.

"I want you."

"You have me. Take me."

He couldn't hold it in anymore. His lower body tightened like a screw and then snapped. The world split apart. He yelled as his body shuddered and twitched and he moved within her, lost to everything. Bright light flashed in his eyes. He arched his head back.

Heaven exploded into exquisite hell. Sunlight pierced the small crescents of space between his eyelids. He moaned as a dark, blurry shadow crossed his vision.

"We're here," Meredith's soft voice said.

Reality crushed him, and he leaned into her arms, silent, feeble and unable. His sinuses felt a little more clear. Not a lot. His nose didn't leak between every inhalation. But he still couldn't breathe, and the horrible car ride had crushed his normal pain tolerance into tiny bits while he'd been absent. His sternum hurt. It didn't ache. It hurt. Like he'd been pried open with a sternal retractor, and then the surgeon had forgotten to staple him back together. Pain-born nausea coiled at the back of his throat, threatening to make him lose his breakfast in a wet splatter all over Meredith's shirt.

She leaned through the car door and held him. Something clicked. He felt his seat belt loosen. "How are you doing?" she asked, her voice soft and low.

His troubled, strained gasp answered for him.

"Can you get out of the car?" she said.

He forced his feet over the floor panel into air, and he let gravity pull him into a wobbly standing position. His weight rested against Meredith. She swayed under the assault, but she shuffled back one step and then two, found her balance, and braced herself for him. His cross-trainers squished in the soft, wet dirt and spongy grass. Through a nauseated blur, he saw his trailer resting on the earth twenty feet away.

Bird calls, insects buzzing, and the soft whistle of the breeze soothed his ears. His heart pounded, and his breaths quickened as adrenaline contributed to the chemical mess in his bloodstream. "M'land," he slurred. He took a step, only to stumble.

"You're totally stoned, Derek. Be careful."

The distant chatter of ducks and geese and other water fowl drew his gaze to the right. He couldn't see the water or the dock from the trailer. Elevation changes and tall reeds interrupted the view. But he could feel the wet breeze against his face.

"M'lake."

"I think you should lie down for a few minutes first before we try that hike," Meredith said. "Okay?"

"M'lake's over there," he told her.

Her grip tightened around his waist. "I know. And you can stretch out there in a bit. But why don't you lie down first?" she said.

Another step, and the tidal wave of adrenaline receded. He breathed and clutched her body. With a weak, shaky nod, he let her lead him to the trailer. Wrong. A vague sense of wrongness invaded his body as his feet hit the deck. A tarp covered the grill, but he knew he'd pulled it off that morning because he'd planned to grill steaks. And, despite the breeze and the birds and all the perfect things, he felt horrible. He wasn't supposed to feel horrible here. He was supposed to feel better.

His body shivered as she fumbled with her keys and unlocked the door. Light slanted into the small cabin through the windows. They shuffled inside, and sound muffled into almost silence. Too bright. No bricks over the windows. Meredith guided him to the bench at the table. "Let me put out clean sheets, okay?" she said. She left him without waiting for an answer.

Her issue of Cosmo had disappeared. And his groceries didn't sit on the counter by the sink. The light made his eyes water, and he blinked. There were supposed to be bricks. Where were the bricks? The room swirled, and he put his head down on the table. Wrong. All of this was fucking wrong. He coughed, wet and wheezy against the place mat. A sob of pain popped loose from his lips, and he rested there in abject misery.

Arms gripped him around the waist. "Okay," said Meredith. "All set. Are you doing okay?"

No. But he didn't answer.

She helped him stand up and shamble down the short hallway to the bed. He lay on his back. She propped him up with piles of soft pillows, and she tucked all the blankets around him after she pulled off his shoes. She kissed his cheek, and then she settled next to him, warm and breathing and alive. The mattress sank with her small weight. The flat of her palm rested under his shirt against his bellybutton.

He stared at the ceiling, hazy and drugged. He couldn't move. Miles of clothes and blankets separated them. His breaths struggled in his chest, and though he felt less congested above the neck, below remained a haven for discomfort. He sniffed, and he coughed, and his eyes scratched with latent sickness. Pain radiated through his torso. And he did feel hot. Now. Uncomfortably so. Mindless, he pushed back the comforter. She snuffled in her sleep and resettled. The very idea of sex nauseated him.

All wrong. All fucking wrong.

His eyes drifted shut after a suffering forty-five minutes, and he didn't know how long after that it took him to fall asleep.

"Did you irrigate the ears to induce an ocular response?" said the defense attorney.

"No, that was not necessary," Derek said.

"Why?"

"The patient had a pupillary response."

"So, you saw life in her eyes?" said the attorney.

Derek paused. Gary Clark glared at him, his eyes bloodshot and brimming with grief and anger. Derek bit back the urge to apologize. He'd dealt with plenty of unjustified malpractice suits before. Distraught loved ones could, at times, be difficult to deal with, but understandably so. He thought of how he would act if it were Meredith who'd died. Or even Addison. And he understood. He did. But that didn't stop the headache beginning to bloom in his skull, or the dull slivers of upset that jabbed behind his eyes like toothpicks. Jab, jab. "There was a pupillary response," he said.

"Yet, you declared her dead," the attorney said.

Jab.

"No, you misunderstand-" Derek said.

"Absence of a pupillary response is one of the signs of brain death, yet, you declared her brain dead."

"I never declared her brain dead. She had normal brain activity," Derek said. His gaze wandered to Gary Clark. Mr. Clark didn't move, but unmitigated hate clamped unseen hands around Derek's neck. Derek blinked. "I'm sorry," he said to Mr. Clark. Jab, jab. "I tried to explain to you that there was absolutely nothing-"

"So, she was alive, until you withdrew care, until you pulled the plug," the attorney said, undeterred.

The headache flared like a brilliant sun. "I'm sorry I'm not being clear," Derek said. "Um." He inhaled, trying to vent the frustration away with oxygen. He'd made the right decision to unplug Mr. Clark's wife. He knew it. But the attorney's relentless questioning and Mr. Clark's unwavering, hateful gaze made him want to crumple. He tried to keep his cool. "According to the letter of her advanced directive, there was a level of brain activity that I judged-"

"You judged, you decided," the attorney needled.

"It was my opinion, to-"

Mr. Clark burst into tears, and Derek couldn't take it anymore. His headache shrieked in his ears, and his heart burst as it beat and beat and beat. The room around them disappeared in a red-tinged blur, and he launched across the table with the athletic grace of a big cat. He skidded on his knees. "She was a fucking vegetable, and she didn't want to be," he shouted as he wrapped his hands around Mr. Clark's throat. "I didn't kill her. Why don't you understand? What do I have to say to make you fucking understand?"

Mr. Clark choked and sputtered, and his face turned a bright beet color. The chair squeaked under Mr. Clark's body as he struggled, trying to free himself. Derek felt Mr. Clark's flesh slip under his palms as sweat intervened like an oil slick.

"How does it feel, now?" Derek growled as he grappled for better leverage. He pushed his feet to the floor, and he stood. "I'm going to snap your fucking neck."

Gary Clark wrapped his arms over Derek's and yanked. Pain splintered Derek's elbows, and his choke-hold skittered loose as he hissed with the unexpected jolt. The chair overturned. Mr. Clark's wretched gasping filled the room as he stumbled backward, free. "Dr. Shepherd," said Mr. Clark. "Please."

"Nice try," said Derek. He jammed a fist into Mr. Clark's solar plexus, and Mr. Clark tumbled to the ground in a breathless heap. The conference room flashed soulless, clean white, and the small, enclosed space spread wide and open. The greenery of Seattle fanned out to the left like a verdant carpet. Drizzle fell against the huge side windows in the empty center of what should have been a bustling hospital.

"Please," said Mr. Clark, and the word echoed in the open space like a thousand whispers.

"Shut up," Derek said. "No talking. You're not the man here."

Derek flexed his fingers. Something cold and solid filled his grip, and he looked at the black semi-automatic cradled in his hand. The headache faded, and a calm, reassuring sense of power spread through his body. His joints loosened as pleasant adrenaline charged through his veins. His heart pumped, strong and sure. He inhaled, and all the pain and frustration and embarrassment and churning guilt he'd ever felt as a result of this man drew into a pinpoint of pressure on the trigger, channeled through his index finger. The trigger gave a millimeter.

"I'm the man," Derek said, and he pointed the gun.

He stood, omnipotent. He watched with cold satisfaction as Mr. Clark begged and pleaded with nonsensical gibberish born from terror. A globule of drool formed on Gary Clark's lips, and then he lost control of his bladder. A wet stain spread across the front of his pants.

Derek laughed. A sense of peace unfurled like a blooming rose. And then he pulled the trigger.

He woke up yelling and frenzied and caught, and he couldn't get away. Blankets twisted around his body. Sweat plastered his clothes to his skin. He didn't know which way was forward or backward or left or right. He didn't know where he was. All he saw was blood. All over his hands. On the floor. Everywhere. And he'd caused it.

"Derek!" said a voice.

He discovered the floor with a resounding slam that tore through his joints and his bones and his muscles and knocked him into a pained stupor. He lay there on his side, tangled and sandwiched between the bed and the too-close walls. Claustrophobia squeezed. He shook, staring at a floor he didn't recognize as his heartbeat slammed under his sternum. Every throb brought agony. Nausea roiled in his gut. He couldn't move as he watched Gary Clark die on his back in a spreading lake of blood. White turned red, and the light left Mr. Clark's eyes. Again, again, again.

Primum non nocere, Derek had been taught in medical school. First, do no harm.

A hand brushed his shoulder. "Get off me," he snarled, and he closed his eyes as he shivered with stress and grief. He'd killed a man. He'd killed a man, and he'd enjoyed it. The hand drew away.

"It's just me, Derek. It's Meredith. It was just a bad nightmare. It's okay. You're okay. I'm here."

He blinked. A nightmare. But he could smell the blood and bits and the burning gunpowder. And he could see the dull, glassy eyes of his victim. He could hear the words he'd spoken, stolen from the man who'd shot him three weeks before. And he could feel the laughter burble in his chest as he pulled the trigger.

The room blurred as he pulled the wrinkled, tangled blanket to his mouth to muffle his sob. Pain split him open. Derek Shepherd was a doctor. He wasn't a murderer. He wasn't like Gary Clark. He wasn't like the men who'd killed his dad. He was Derek Shepherd, and he helped people. He saved lives. He...

"I'm going to touch you," she said, her voice hesitant. "Okay?" He stared, blank and empty, at the carpet as tears leaked down his face, and when he didn't protest, he felt her warm hands slide across his shoulder. "You're all tangled," she explained, soft and soothing. The blanket moved. She pulled it from his torso and teased it through his legs and away from his ankle.

Freed, he curled into a fetal position. His ribs protested. His bullet wound wailed at him. The sternal incision flared. Pain fueled his tears, and he trembled with discomfort and exhaustion and sickness as he wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled into a ball. He coughed against his knees, and he coughed again, and once more before he could make himself stop.

"It's okay," she said. Her palm stroked his side. Fingers stroked his hair. He felt the crawling pull along his scalp as her nails teased through each strand. His eyes slipped shut as he listened to her soothing. "Do you want to talk about it?" she said.

He couldn't bring himself to speak, and so he listened while she talked. She started with gentle platitudes. It's okay. It's all right. Everything is fine. Please, don't be scared anymore. She devolved into babbling about anything that came to her mind. She talked about the weather as she rubbed his body. She talked about a funny noise her Jeep had been making lately, and mentioned that she wanted him to look at it when he felt better. She talked about the errands she'd run the night before. She talked about Alex, and how excited she was that he would be coming home soon. And about Mark. About the latest book she'd read other than The Sun Also Rises, and why she was thinking about switching shampoos again. About her most recent cooking snafu. She even confessed that she'd messed up a load of his dress shirts by mixing lights with a dark red sweatshirt by accident, but that she would buy him new ones as soon as she could. Her monologue ran for minutes and minutes and minutes, until he lost all track of time, just listening to her voice.

"Do you want some water?" she asked after a long, long time. "You should drink some water."

She left him for a moment. The faucet rushed. She put a full glass on the floor by his head, and she resettled. "Please, will you say something?" she said. "You don't have to talk about it."

He sniffed, and it sounded wet and bubbly. She felt his forehead. "You feel really hot. Worse than before."

"I don't have pneumonia," he said.

She didn't speak as she rubbed him. For a long time, his wheezing and her soft breathing mingled in the muffled silence. Birds chirped. Sunlight crashed down. Nothing was right here, nothing. And lying on the floor with no support was tightening the pressure in his head and his chest. His back hurt. A vague chill swept through his muscles, followed by trembling he couldn't stop. He winced as he tried to get purchase enough with the carpet to sit up. She helped, which only made him feel worse. More ineffectual.

The room spun as he panted, and his brain tried to catch up with the fact that he'd changed perspectives. She supported him. He reached for the water she'd brought, and he could barely lift the glass. She had to help with that, too.

"I want to go home," he croaked after several weak swallows.

"Can you stand up?" she said.

The embarrassing prospect of her calling an ambulance drove him to his feet. His muscles shivered with the stress of holding his weight. She put his shoes on, and she tied the laces while he braced himself in the doorway, trying not to fall down.

The twenty-foot walk back to the car seemed interminable. He collapsed into the seat. He blinked, lost track of her in the effort to stay conscious, and then from the nondescript abyss she jammed the thermometer into his mouth again. She watched him. He swallowed and closed his eyes. A niggling request for a blanket hovered in the back of his mind. Visible shakes surged up and down his limbs.

Not too hot, he willed his body. Please, no fever, god, damn it. God, damn everything.

She pulled the thermometer away, and she sighed. "103.2," she said. "That's not low-grade anymore, Derek. Not even close."

"Fuck," he snapped. "God, damn it, I am not sick!"

A cough ripped through his body. His sternum and his left lung burned. He put a hand over the bullet wound and closed his eyes, panting. He rested against her shoulder, breathing through his mouth because his nose had long since closed up solid. His muscles shivered, and he swallowed. Shivering meant his temperature was likely still rising, too. Damn it. God, damn it. Fucking...

She pushed the car door shut beside him. He watched through bleary, half-lidded eyes, at the space beyond the windshield while she walked around to her side of the car. All wrong. All of this was wrong. All of-

He stopped, and he blinked, and he stared. She sat in the drivers' side seat, and she started up the car. His fingers clasped his seat belt and released it. He flung himself from the car. He nearly collapsed as his feet hit the ground. He wheezed, and he couldn't stop staring.

"Derek!" Meredith called after him, but he didn't listen.

He forced himself forward. He made himself move. Not that far. He didn't have to make it that far. Half a mile. Mostly flat. A cinch. He pushed himself. His chest burned.

"What the hell are you doing?" Meredith said as she jogged beside him. She grabbed his arm and tried to make him stop, but he shook her off. "Derek, you're sick. Stop it." She started to sob. "Stop it, please. You're going to give yourself heatstroke."

Adrenaline poured into his body, and he kept going. He slogged through the small clot of trees and then through the disturbed mud and dirt and mire. Wide open space swept out beyond for miles and miles. Flocks of birds spiraled in the air in endless, lazy circles as they chased the wind with their wings extended. He collapsed on the front step, heart pounding in his chest. A big black curtain threatened to swallow him whole.

"What the hell!" Meredith said. "You're going to freaking kill yourself!" She shoved a water bottle at him. "Drink this before you die or something."

He took several moments to find his voice, and when he did, he sounded shaky, weak, and ill, but he spoke. "We have a house," he said. He rested on the stoop, sipping water.

She glared. "Of plywood, yes. I would have driven the freaking car there if you'd asked instead of shot off like a marathoner."

With another Herculean effort, he forced himself up the temporary slabs that would be brick-and-mortar steps in a few months, through the empty space that would be a door, and into the wooden maze of the lower floor. His feet thumped on the floor as he plodded into the wide open area that would be their living room. The smell of cut wood brushed his nose. He closed his eyes, and he pictured the house around him finished, with fresh paint and clean, sleek lines. Furniture. Lamps. A television. His framed diplomas on the wall. Hers. Pictures of his family and her friends on their mantle. A fire burning in the fireplace. The soothing scent of woodsmoke.

"This is our living room," he said, barely able to find his breath.

She thumped after him. "What are you talking about?" she said.

He came to rest against the wall. A big bay window spread across almost the entire width of the room. He stuck his hand out into open space, and then he stared, breathless, at the open valley beyond. A balmy breeze whispered through the air. He shivered.

"We have a view," he said.

She stared at him, her lips a flat line. Her eyes didn't sparkle. "I have a view," she said. She crossed her arms and stared at him, not through the windowless window.

He swallowed. "Was this the surprise?"

"The house of plywood?" she said.

He nodded.

She sighed. "It was supposed to be."

"We need to tell the contractors to put in a fence," he said.

Her solid mask of fury cracked around the edges. She glanced at the window. "What?" she said. Her body shifted closer to him. "Why?"

"So our kids won't fall off the cliff."

"Oh," she said. "Well, there is that. Not falling would be..."

He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his nose against her neck, searching. His legs felt wobbly and strange, and his head swam. He found the pulse at her throat, and he kissed her.

"What are you doing?" she whispered.

"Making kids?"

She stiffened in his arms, and she drew in a wet, shaky breath. She hugged him, one arm pressed against his back, like she was trying to keep him from bolting again, and the other cupping the back of his head. Her fingers scrunched, and his hair pulled as her grip tightened. "I think you're maybe delirious, Derek."

A cough almost sent him to his knees, but she dug in, and she held him up. "Meredith..." he whispered, trying to breathe. His legs turned to jelly. He wanted to sit. Cristina had opened him up, and he could feel the knife. Cutting.

"You're burning up," she said. "I need to take you to a hospital. Now, Derek."

He clutched her with shaky palms. "Please, Meredith. I need it to stop."

"I know, but-"

Tears spilled. "Please, make it stop."

"Derek, you're really, really sick. You're not thinking straight."

He breathed against her skin, and he blinked, and the house around them faded away. He stood maybe thirty feet from the car, ready to collapse. His body shivered, and he couldn't breathe. He saw the plywood construct in the distance, on the cliff, just like they'd planned. And he couldn't get there. He coughed, and his legs threatened to give out.

She pushed him toward the car and corralled him like some sort of fucking lost lamb.

"We can see the house later, Derek," she said. He collapsed into the seat, sort of in the car, sort of out. She picked up his feet and dropped them on the floor mat, and then he couldn't move anymore. He coughed, and the invisible knife cut him into ribbons of pain. The back of her hand brushed his forehead. She took his temperature again, and whatever number she saw made her expression collapse into a solid sheen of tears.

His teeth chattered as a frigid chill swept through him. His muscles twitched. Temperature going up, up, up and away. He lost track of her, lost track of everything. He wanted a blanket. Something to curl up in.

The car wobbled, and the engine started.

"Hang on," she said.

His teeth clacked in the silence. Her hand rested on his thigh over his warmups.

"Meredith," he said, but his voice fell away. Breaths bubbled in his chest.

"I'm here," she said.

The Cayenne began to move, and he closed his eyes against the onslaught of pain. The ride down the hill seemed even worse than the ride up the hill. She took his hand, and she held it while he shivered.