Suggested listening:
"Not Falling Apart"- Maroon 5
Derek didn't see or hear from Meredith again until Monday morning at the hospital. He had just pulled into the parking lot when he saw her getting out of her car, and quickly sped into his spot and got out to catch up with her. He had spent the weekend thinking about that night at her house…and on Saturday when he had been called in to operate on a emergent sub-dural hemotoma, Cristina had assured him that Meredith was doing better and would be back on Monday. Derek hadn't expected Cristina to want anything to do with him -being so completely on Meredith's side- but she had answered the question in his eyes without hesitation as they prepared to scrub in…out of pity, maybe.
"Meredith-" he called out, jogging to catch up with her.
She slowed to wait for him, and then turned and continued towards the hospital as he fell into step beside her.
"You're back," he said.
Meredith nodded.
"Are you okay?" he ventured.
"I'm fine," she replied shortly, adjusting the bag on her shoulder.
"Wait," he said, reaching out to stop her as they reached the hospital doors. "What about…us?"
She looked up at him for a moment, and then glanced away and smiled as someone called out to her; it was Izzie.
"I don't know, Derek," she answered as Izzie approached them.
"Meredith-" he began.
"Hey," Izzie greeted, walking up next to Meredith. "You coming?" she asked, completely ignoring Derek.
Meredith glanced at Derek.
"Yeah," she hesitated, "In a minute…"
"Meredith," Izzie said unwavering, "we have rounds in ten minutes, and you've still got to go talk to the Chief..."
"…Okay," Meredith looked at Derek and shrugged her shoulders apologetically, turning to follow after Izzie.
"Come on," Izzie said, and once Meredith had sufficiently fallen into step next to her...glanced smugly back at Derek, who stood by himself outside the doors of Seattle Grace, at a metaphorical crossroads.
It was still several hours before Derek's first surgery of the day, and he had searched the entire residential floor -including the lounge- for Dr. Torres, and still could not find her. She was Chief Resident, so why wasn't she around, managing things like Bailey had always done? Frustrated, he rode the elevator upstairs to check the OR board for her name, and was surprised to see a small crowd gathered around it. Mark, Dr. Hahn, and Dr. Bailey were all vying for the marker, arguing over surgical residents, and two scrub nurses stood by, apprehensively waiting for their turn at the board.
"What's going on here?" Derek asked as he approached, and received a barrage of responses all at once:
"I don't want Yang-" Dr. Hahn demanded.
"I was assigned Stevens," Mark observed.
"Fighting over surgical residents-" Dr. Bailey explained.
Derek paused, considering this, and it was just long enough for the bickering to resume:
"You can have Yang," Erica offered Mark, "She won't be scrubbing in on cardio today…"
"No," Mark protested, "You take Grey, let me keep Stevens."
"Absolutely not," Dr. Hahn retorted, "Grey's just come back from some kind of…thing. I don't need distractions today."
"Actually, I was hoping to get Dr. Grey," Derek chimed in.
"Well then, who do I get?" Mark demanded.
"Hah!" Dr. Hahn exclaimed triumphantly, erasing Cristina's name from the cardio surgery slot and marking in Izzie. "Stevens is mine!"
"Hold up people!" Miranda demanded. "What is this, some kind of resident buffet? Since when do you get a pick? They are here to learn...this is why we have a schedule!"
Silence. The two scrub nurses glanced at each other and hurried off.
"Well then where is it?" Mark asked finally.
"What?" Dr. Bailey asked, annoyed.
"The schedule," Derek provided. "Or Dr. Torres, for that matter?"
"She's in OR 1," Erica explained, motioning towards the board. "…Orthopedic surgery."
"Well then how am I going to work when I don't even know who my resident is going to be today?" Mark demanded.
Everyone stared at him, no one spoke. And then:
"Are you people serious?" Dr. Bailey demanded. "You all have doctorates…almost forty years of combined medical education, and you can't work this out because the Chief Resident is currently in surgery? You're surgeons. Get it together!"
"Well then," Mark asked slowly, "what do we do?"
"Right. I'm taking Stevens." Dr. Hahn concluded, hurriedly writing Izzie's name into the rest of her surgery slots and capping the marker.
"Wait," Miranda demanded, holding up her hands. "The marker, Dr. Hahn," she demanded.
Erica begrudgingly passed her the marker and Dr. Bailey stood on her toes to erase, mark, and remark everyone's name on the board.
"There," she declared, satisfied. "Shepherd, you've got Grey; Sloan, you'll take Yang and Karev; and Dr. Hahn, you take Stevens."
"Excellent," Dr. Hahn agreed, and, smiling, sauntered off.
"Fine," Mark grumbled, rolling his eyes at Derek and heading off in the opposite direction.
"Thank you, Dr. Bailey," Derek said happily, and turned to follow Mark.
"Not so fast, Derek," Miranda objected, and he paused, and then turned around slowly.
"Dr. Bailey?" he questioned.
"Are you okay?" she asked, referring to his situation with Meredith.
"I'm fine," he reassured.
"I don't want you using this to your advantage, Dr. Shepherd," she replied. "Meredith is there to assist you in surgery…do not turn it into something personal."
Derek looked at her quizzically.
"You do realize that I'm-"
"-my boss," Miranda finished for him, waving it off. "Yeah, yeah. I know."
Derek stood and watched Meredith from a distance, and wondered why he hadn't noticed it before…the slight curve of her belly beneath her scrubs. But only when she moved a certain way; when his gaze caught her at just the right angle…Meredith had issues, but had she been right all along when she had accused him of needing her? Needing to constantly pull her back from the edge? To save her? Derek had been haunted by that accusation -made so many months ago by Meredith the day of the ferry boat accident- ever since last Thursday night in her bedroom, when his resolve had so completely melted away. Was it because Meredith had been so close to falling apart in her dark bedroom that night? Everything he had felt up until that moment had been forgotten the moment he saw that she needed him…
He watched as she briefed her group of interns, talking animatedly with her hands, and then pulled a stack of files towards her as the interns all took off in different directions. She was standing, and leaned over the counter as she wrote. Tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, she absently brought a hand down to her belly to rest there for a moment, and Derek smiled. Maybe it was because he knew now that Meredith hadn't been keeping her pregnancy from him for quiet so long as he originally thought; or because he hadn't been with her -for breakup sex or otherwise- for weeks before even that.
Something made Meredith glance up from her paperwork and her eyes fell on Derek, who could do nothing but stand there and wait as she laid her pen down and came towards him.
"Requesting me for your surgeries?" she asked when she got near enough. "Seriously?"
"What makes you think I requested you?" Derek asked.
"Sloan told me," Meredith replied simply, crossing her arms. "And stop doing that."
"What?" Derek asked, glancing up at her.
"That-" Meredith said pointedly. "That staring thing. Quit staring at my stomach."
"I'm not."
"You are, and it's weird," she insisted.
"So what…you're all better now?" Derek accused, suddenly annoyed.
Meredith frowned, and Derek continued,
"I said I didn't want to be with you because you kept your pregnancy from me, but then I show up at your house because you're emotionally unstable…and now you're fine."
"I'm not 'emotionally unstable'," Meredith defended.
"You are," Derek insisted, "but now that I've told you I'm not done you're okay…as long as it's me that needs you and not the other way around."
"That's not true," she shook her head.
Derek gave her an apprehensive look.
"It's not," she insisted. "And besides, you're done; you just don't realize it yet."
"Why do you want me to be done?" Derek asked in disbelief.
"I don't," Meredith explained, "But I told you -outside the elevator that night- that I needed more time…and you've been done ever since."
"All I'm guilty of is asking for more than a physical relationship with you, Meredith!" Derek said angrily, "But that's obviously all you want, and I'm done with that."
"I'm the one who called off the breakup sex-" Meredith interjected, then glanced down the hall, "You were done, Derek. You as much as told me that outside the hospital the other night-"
"Because I realized how much you had been keeping from me!" Derek interrupted.
"-you were done," Meredith continued resolutely. "But then you come to my house and feel the need to be my 'Knight in Shining…whatever', and suddenly, you're not done? This is becoming a pattern Derek…you stayed with Addison-"
"I was married!" Derek said, exasperated.
"-but the minute I try to have a relationship, you're back. And then after Finn, I'm back with you, but you're mad about the ferry accident-"
"Mad? I was scared out of my mind because you let yourself drown!"
"-and then when you finally let that go, you don't want to be with me because you want to be Chief, and then you do again, and then you don't…"
Derek shook his head.
"I do, Meredith."
Meredith glanced down the hall again...something was off. And then she realized that they had an audience; everyone down the hall had gone very still and quiet, listening to them argue about breakup sex and the many facets of their twisted, messed up relationship. Derek noticed this now too, and they both grew quiet.
Meredith bit her lip and backed away.
"I'll...see you, Dr. Shepherd," she said, embarrassed, and turned and hurried off down the hall.
Derek was waiting for Meredith in the scrub room before his surgery. She pushed open the door and hesitated briefly when she saw him standing there.
"Meredith-" he started as she walked to the sink.
She shook her head.
"Meredith-" he said, insistent.
"If you're going to request me for your surgeries, Derek," she looked sideways at him and scrubbed her hands above the sink, "…you can't harass me."
Derek smiled.
"Did you talk to the Chief?" he asked.
"This morning," she nodded. "He told me he talked to you…"
"Yeah," Derek agreed. "So what happened?"
"I'm going to continue with my residency," she explained resolutely.
"Can you do that?" he asked.
Meredith looked up at him.
"Richard said he talked to you about my options…"
"He did," Derek agreed, "But can you physically do that? I-"
"Derek, you don't have to worry about it," she explained, and, holding up her wet hands, backed through the swinging doors into the OR.
"Alright, this is the final step," Derek was saying. "Keep an eye on the monitor," he instructed. He glanced at Meredith, who stood across the operating table from him, next to George and another intern.
"Suction, Dr. Grey," he said, and Meredith maneuvered the instrument around the opening in the cranial lobe.
"Good," he said slowly, "We're going to try and redirect the blood flow around this area to avoid hemorrhage…Dr. O'Malley? How should we proceed?"
"The blood vessel has weakened," George answered, "A stent needs to be placed inside the vessel to give support and hold it open."
"Good," Derek nodded, and then looked at Meredith. "Dr. Grey?"
"You need to close off the base," she answered. "The clamp will restrict the blood flow while the stent is inserted, which allows us to reroute the direction so that it bypasses the weakened artery, successfully preventing a saccular aneurysm."
Derek nodded and lowered the tiny tube towards the blood vessel.
"Dr. O'Malley, please clamp the base."
George nodded, and Meredith reached up and swung the light closer to the patient.
"Well done, O'Malley," Derek said appreciatively and after a moment, began to insert the stent. "The blood vessel constricts without blood flow," he explained to the room, "I'm going to slip the tube into the weakened area and then we're going to release the clamp."
"BP rising-" a nurse announced.
"No, push another diuretic," Derek said quickly, "or this vessel is going to rupture. Suction, Grey."
Meredith looked up at Derek and then hurriedly suctioned around the clamp.
"I need another clamp here," Derek demanded, and took the one George passed to him, applying it above the first one.
"Still rising-" the nurse called.
"Give him a vasodilator; the strongest available," he instructed. "Good," he said as the heart monitor gradually became regular again. Everyone in the room watched the monitor.
"BP stable," the nurse announced finally.
"Alright, O'Malley, let's release the clamps…slowly," Derek guided. "Good…"
George removed first one clamp, and then the second, larger one; after a moment, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
"That's it," Derek said, pleased; but his relief did not last long.
"BP rising!" George said, glancing at the monitor as it began to emit a shrill alarm.
"It's too high-" Meredith began, and then the blood vessel bubbled and ruptured, spilling blood out onto the rest of the cranial opening.
"Suction!" Derek ordered, and Meredith quickly did as he said. "I can't see to clamp…" he said intensely, and Meredith glanced at the monitor as the patient flat-lined, and the alarm became one long, shrill tone.
"Suction!" Derek said again, and Meredith hesitated before lowering her tool back towards the vessel, glancing sideways at George and the surgical nurses.
"Dr. Shepherd-" George began slowly.
"No," Derek looked up, "I'm not finished..."
One of the nurses moved over and shut the monitor off. The room was silent, except for the continued sound of Meredith suctioning the blood away. The nurses and George and Meredith all looked around at each other and finally, Derek pulled away slowly...and looked up at Meredith.
"I'm not finished," he repeated intensely, pulling off his surgical glasses. And this time, Meredith knew what he meant.
"Wait, Derek...wait-" Meredith followed him out of the OR and through the scrub room, calling after him. He stopped, and she hurried to catch up. Her surgical gown was still draped over her scrubs, and she pulled her mask off her face and down around her neck.
"Are you okay?" she asked him after a moment, slightly out of breath. "...Derek?"
"I'm not finished, Meredith," he said slowly, and his eyes met hers.
She hesitated.
"I know," she said finally.
"I love you, and I'm not finished."
"I know," Meredith said again.
"…Are you?" Derek asked after a moment.
"No," Meredith said almost immediately. "No, Derek...I'm not."
And Derek smiled.
So, chapter eleven out today as promised! For those of you who thought it seemed a little easy for Derek to change his mind about Meredith and their situation in the last chapter…I did too, and that's why I hope I did a sufficient job in explaining Derek's thought process about that in this chapter. As you know I always appreciate feedback… hope you enjoy!