All Along The Watchtower

by AriaAdagio

Post S6 finale fic, set immediately after Sanctuary/Death And All His Friends. MerDer. Following the shooting, Derek struggles to recover from his wounds, both physical and spiritual. [COMPLETE]

14. Chapter 14

All Along The Watchtower – Part 14

Author's Notes:

It's been a while since I posted a new part for this story. The Dempsey Challenge was a phenomenal experience :) I'm so glad I did it! It's inspired me on so many levels. I can't wait to do it again next year. I thoroughly enjoyed my 'hiatus', but now, it's back to business!

Part 15 may or may not be slow in arrival, but you won't be experiencing an Aria-drought anymore. If I'm not working on part 15, I'll be working on my TDC raffle prompts. Keep an eye out for those :) I got some very challenging prompts, and I have some good ideas that I'm looking forward to sharing. As far as AATW goes, hello again, everybody! Buckle up. The roller coaster is leaving the gate again :)

I know I'm woefully behind on my feedback replies right now. That's next on my to-do list this evening after I get some dinner, but I figured you would all appreciate this now rather than later. Thank you to everybody who left feedback for part 13. I know I say this every time, but seriously. You people are why sharing this story is so enjoyable.

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The bullet slammed into his chest and knocked his breath away. He couldn't scream. The white, endless ceiling cartwheeled over his field of vision. He fell to the floor, and his eyes snapped open to darkness, but the muzzle of the gun hovered in the blur as Gary Clark aimed for a second shot. Derek lay there, panting. He couldn't speak or move. He waited to die.

Except he didn't die, and over minutes, he lost sight of the gun. He lay in bed on his back next to Meredith, staring at the ceiling in their bedroom, and he didn't die. Panic receded like a wave, leaving him in a muddy pit of doubt, not relief. His body shook. His eyes watered. The bullet wound plagued him with a persistent, painful ache, and he pawed at his chest with his shaky hand. His palm met the rough, pocked place where the bullet had broken him. No blood. Warm skin.

Breathing hurt, but he couldn't catch his breath to make it slow. He rolled to his side. Resistant sheets and blankets clung to his sweaty, naked skin and then released. He thumped to the floor. His toes scrunched the area carpet in the darkness, and he would have gotten up. Would have. A wave of weakness tugged him to the floor, and he curled inward on himself, grabbing his knees.

He rested, his back against the mattress, his side against his nightstand. Hot tears fell against his knees. Nausea swirled, and he thought he might throw up on himself. The taste of bile crashed into the back of his throat, and his tongue pulled back from his teeth in the precursor to vomit. His body jerked. Nothing came up, and he swallowed. Saliva stuck to the inside of his mouth. His mouth felt pasty and gummy.

His chest hurt. An aching, twinging, sting punched a line through his body. In time with his heart, it throbbed in horrible waves. Pa-pain. Pa-pain. Pa-pain. Not agony. Not like it had been. But enough, after seven weeks, that even mild as it was, it made him want to claw his body to pieces just to make it stop. His pain tolerance had been decimated after seven weeks of whittling away and whittling away. After seven weeks of fear, no sleep, and weakness.

The muzzle of the gun pressed against his forehead, and his body tensed. "I'll kill you," Gary Clark said. "I'll pull the trigger. You'll splatter like a ripe tomato."

Derek glanced at his nightstand where his pill bottles rested next to a water bottle. Three. Three pills would make this go away. Everything. The pain. Gary Clark. Reality would stretch, and he would be anywhere he wanted if he thought about it long enough. Four, and he wouldn't dream at all. There would just be empty, fuzzy black, and time would pass, but he wouldn't care or notice. He'd get through the night. He could.

Derek cradled his head against his knees as his murderer smiled at him in the blur. He swallowed. Three pills. Three. Or four? He reached for the bottle. His fingertips brushed the cool plastic. A low-pitched, frightened moan made him freeze, and Gary Clark's apparition faded.

"Meredith?" he whispered, and he set the pill bottle down, unopened.

She made another noise. Trembling, he stood despite a collection of shooting pains, and he crawled back into bed. The sheets slipped over his body. He slid across the smooth cotton until he met the warmth of her naked skin. She twitched. The dim street lamps laved her body with a silver glow in the darkness.

"No," she murmured. Her head moved, and her eyelids flickered as her eyeballs chased the sights in her dream. "Derek, no," she said, and his heart squeezed at her disturbed tone.

Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Kepner had said. Thank god, you're back.

The gun roared. He didn't remember the impact; he just remembered staring up at the ceiling. He couldn't breathe. Dr. Kepner screamed and started talking, but he couldn't understand the words.

Somewhere in that morass, he knew Meredith had been watching. Screaming. "Meredith," he said. His gut quivered, and he closed his eyes. The gun fired. Again and again. He found his voice somewhere in the rumbling thunder, but it sounded weak and beaten and scared. "You're dreaming," he said, to him, to her. "Stop. It's okay."

When I saw you get shot right in front of me, she'd said, I was thirty-two, and I'm going to be seeing it in my head for the rest of my life.

"Meredith," he said.

Her body stilled and relaxed as she woke. She took a long, deep breath and then sighed. He settled along her length and wrapped his arm over her hip. "Hey," she murmured. She didn't open her eyes, but she clutched his palm and squeezed.

"I'm here," he managed. "Go back to sleep."

"Mmm," she said. Her hands tightened around his, and he couldn't move without disturbing her. She took her comfort in his presence. Her breaths evened, and she fell into more pleasant dreams in moments. He could tell by the way her tension drained, and by the soft, happy noises she made before she began to rumble with familiar, raucous snores.

The shaky, nauseous feeling wouldn't leave him be so he could join her. His chest hurt. His muscles trembled. He breathed against her hair. Soft. Lavender. A hint of sweat and sex.

He closed his eyes, and he tried to relax. Noises in the old house made him tense. Old creaks and sighs of it settling between Meredith's snores. He imagined footsteps. His murderer lurked while his chest throbbed. Sleep took him by force after what felt like hours of lying helpless, waiting to die with her in his arms.

The dark house enveloped him as he stamped his muddy boots on the welcome mat. Rain came down outside, pounding, endless. His head ached. He'd ridden the subway home and walked the last few blocks, leaving him drenched and shivering and feeling sort of sick. His waterlogged jeans, sweater, and coat felt like they weighed an extra forty pounds.

He'd been at the library until 2AM, researching for a paper in his neurology class while Mark had jabbered and joked and threw crunched up balls of notebook paper around like miniature basketballs, much to Derek's annoyance. Derek needed to get a good grade. He would fail the class if he didn't.

A brief flutter of panic overwhelmed him. Fail. Fail. You'll fail, a voice said in his head. He stood in the doorway for a long, achy moment, panting, listening to the disembodied berating. His eyes wouldn't quite focus. He'd strained them that much, reading article after article with big words and small print. He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed.

A small noise on the couch drew him out of his spiraling worry.

He squinted. A blurry lump made the couch seem bulbous and blob-like. He flipped the light switch, and spears of yellow radiance stabbed his eyes. He blinked. Amy hissed at him. Her hair spiraled from her scalp in twisty coils as though she were Medusa's daughter.

"Trn-off-th'light," his little sister said, her voice slurred and low-pitched with sleep.

He glared and let the lamp light spear her as her familiar tone registered. She wasn't just slurred from sleep, he realized. "Amy, what are you doing?" he said. He tried to sound calm. Not accusing. Not anything.

She licked her lips and rolled off the couch to her feet with sloppy, flailing limbs. He caught her before she fell and broke her neck. "Jus' needed a pickmeup," she said. A burble of laughter fell from her lips. The stench of alcohol wafted into the air as she breathed, open-mouthed and heavy, against his wet shirt.

She stumbled in his grasp and backed up a step. An open bottle of his best Scotch rolled off the couch and spilled. A wet, reeking stain spread on the carpet as the liquid made a glug-glug-glug noise and then stopped when it reached equilibrium. An unmarked pill bottle lay open and tipped on the side table. White powder spread on the tabletop where she'd crushed whatever she'd taken. One pill remained whole in the orange bottle, but he couldn't identify it on sight.

His gut tightened. She'd started mixing. She would kill herself.

"What did you take?" he demanded.

"Nothing."

"What did you take, Amy?" He shook her. Her body was pliant like the corpses in his anatomy lab. Like a dead thing. In his arms. Dead. "How much?"

"Nothing!"

The world turned red. "How much?" he roared in her face.

She didn't answer. His teeth clenched as her gaze fell on him. Her bloodshot, blue eyes were cloudy and unfocused. Her pupils had dilated to the size of saucers. She had no coordination in her limbs. She tried to pull away, or rather fall over. He squeezed her wrists and held her close. Rain dripped off his dark coat and down his face. It dripped off his chin to the floor. He shivered as a dark, raging thing coiled in his stomach.

"Amy," he said. "You need to stop doing this. You told me-"

"This-is-th'last-time," she slurred. "I swear."

He swallowed as her voice echoed in his head across dozens of old memories like a repeating cassette player. The last time. She always said that. He'd gotten tired of trying to believe her. "Do you have any idea what this is doing to Mom?" he said. To me? To everyone? "You need to stop doing this."

A horn honked outside, and a smile oozed across her face as though he'd said nothing. "M'ride," she said, and she tried to loose his hands from her biceps.

"No," he said. "You're not going out like this. Sober up, first."

She struggled. "Fuck you. You're not my dad."

"Dad is dead," he snapped. Agony pinched her face as though he'd slapped her. "He's dead, Amy, whether you're stoned or not." A lump formed in his throat as he pictured the marbled head stone on the plot where Michael Shepherd had been buried. Derek's eyes hurt. Rain crashed against the roof of the old house. "I'm not Dad," he said, "But I'm all there is anymore."

"Well, you're doing a bang-up job," she said. She sniffed and looked away. "Really. Thanks." Her tone belied her words.

"Do you really want to see him again that badly?" he said, his voice soft. His headache beat like a drum behind his skull.

She looked at him, blinking. Watery film spread across her eyes, and her pained gaze caught him in its net. For a moment, he thought he'd gotten through to her. Just a moment. But then she laughed, and she pushed him. He stumbled at her unexpected movement, but he held onto her.

"I don't care," she said.

Her words splashed his face like the cold rainwater coming down in buckets outside, and he blinked. She tried to shake away his hands. He didn't budge. "Go to your room, and sleep this off," he said. "Now, Amelia." He would watch her and make sure she hadn't overdosed or something. He'd done it so many times he couldn't count anymore.

She moved faster than he thought her capable. Something wet hit the skin of his hand, but he didn't have time to think about it. Pain sliced his palm as she bit him. Hard. He yelled and let go.

"Fuck!" he cursed as she stumbled toward the door. She'd broken skin. Teeth marks formed a bruised, red crescent in the web of skin between his thumb and index finger, and his nerve endings shot agony up to his elbow.

He reached for her, but she pushed the door against him. He thumped against the wall, bell rung by the impact. He tried to catch his breath as she glared. "You're not my dad, and you're not my doctor," she hissed. Her fury brought clarity to her words. "Stay the fuck away from me. You don't understand anything, Derek."

The door rattled as she slammed it in his face. He shook his hand, breathing, trying to recover his wits. Blood wept from his skin.

"Derek?" called his mother down the stairs, her voice still slurred with the cobwebs of dreaming. "Are you all right? Was that Amy? It's three in the morning." Her feet thudded on the steps, and he couldn't look at her. Couldn't look at her standing there in her ratty bathrobe, her hair a wild mess from sleep.

He fled outside just in time to see Amy and her stoner friends weave off into the rain and darkness in a beat-up blue Firebird he didn't recognize. The rain and his fury blurred the license plate. The Firebird turned the corner and was gone before he'd come up with any functional thoughts about what to do.

Failed, said the voice. Just like always.

"Fuck," Derek said. He kicked the grass, and wet, dirty slop almost made him slip and crack his head on the sidewalk. Water sprayed. The rain thundered down against the pavement. "Fuck!" he yelled. Lights came on. Dogs barked. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Everything turned red and blurred as he let go of everything that toiled inside him. Wet tears slipped down his cheeks and mixed with rain. He heard the door behind him open.

"Derek," said his mom, and he moved. Toward his bike. He'd parked it on the curb that morning. He ripped the tarp away and straddled the seat. He gunned the engine. The Harley throbbed. He jerked the handle and revved it. The seat vibrated with pent energy. More lights turned on. All the dogs in the neighborhood had woken up. He didn't care.

"Derek!" his mother called.

He didn't answer her as he throttled into the rain.

Blaring car horns became the rhythmic, throbbing scream of an alarm clock in his ears. Daylight slammed into his eyeballs as he chanced a look at the room. The black pavement sliding into a rainy horizon became soft, cotton sheets as his gaze took a snapshot of the room. He squeezed his eyes shut. He turned his head away from the noise and pulled the pillow over his head. He let the alarm ring and ring and ring. It would turn off after a few minutes.

His throat felt sore. His eyes hurt. His head hurt. The room swerved back and forth as consciousness lost its grip. Tired. He hadn't slept this little since he was an intern, not even when Meredith had kicked him out after sex, what seemed like eons ago. At least then, he'd been fucking healthy.

The alarm stopped. Silence crushed him. The sheets rustled. "Derek," Meredith said, as if to announce her presence, that it was her, and that she approached. She'd been doing that for weeks, now, ever since she'd sneaked up on him in the kitchen the night they'd fought.

He grunted, unable to come up with anything intelligent to say. He just wanted to lie there and not think and not sleep. If he slept, he dreamed, and he always remembered something bad, like his unconscious thought was taking cue cards from his waking stress. It probably was. That's how dreams worked, wasn't it?

Her warm hand slid up his spine and stopped where the pillow covered his neck. She laughed. "Did I wear you out last night?" she said, her voice muffled through his fluffy shield. She kissed his back. "I'm sorry."

"Mmm," he said. The echo of her tongue on his skin made him twitch. He couldn't help the ghost of a smile that curled his lips as he thought of her opened wide for him. "No, that was good," he said, but his voice came out strained and croaky from sleep loss. Her grip clenched.

"It's 6:30," she said. He didn't budge. Maybe she would leave him be. "Are you going to get up for your appointment?" She shook him, and he groaned as her earthquake rumbled through his body.

Stay awake, damn it, she'd said while he'd been bleeding.

He had a followup at Seattle Grace today. The last check before he resumed limited work. Dread coiled in his gut. He swallowed against a cold spear of anxiety. He'd avoided going back to Seattle Grace. His physical therapy had been a few blocks away from Meredith's house so he could walk to it if he wanted, and the cardio-thoracic surgeon on staff at Seattle Presbyterian had looked him over when he'd been in with pneumonia.

He wondered if they'd manged to clean his blood off the floor tiles on the catwalk, or if there was a stain where he would have died. Blood left a dark memory in grout that was hard to scrub away, even with bleach. After years working in hospitals, he knew that. Nausea rolled into him, and he inhaled the warm scent of the sheets, but it didn't help.

Gary Clark laughed in his ears as the white ceiling tumbled over Derek's face. Dr. Kepner babbled, but Derek didn't understand the words. He couldn't breathe, and the bullet wound sharpened like a blade in his torso. Dr. Kepner abandoned him. The gun still echoed in his ears. He lay supine, waiting to die. Derek begged, and he waited as Gary Clark aimed again.

"Derek?" Meredith prodded.

"I don't feel well," he said against the mattress as the memory oozed away, leaving only ache behind as the bullet wound twinged.

"Are you getting sick again?" she said. "You sound hoarse."

"No."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not really, I'm..." He took a breath and shoved the pillow away. The room seemed to quiver. She sat beside him, and he stared at her out of the corner of his left eye. She was already dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, her hair gathered up in a messy ponytail. Her face seemed pale, her hair lanky. She wore concealer, but he could still see the circles under her eyes. Worry clouded her gaze. "Did I wear you out?" he said.

"I didn't sleep well," she said. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Last night," she said. "That helped." She stroked his arm. "I love you."

He closed his eyes. "Love you, too," he said, and he let the room drift away as she stared at him, stroking his back. His world-spinning headache didn't seem so awful when he closed his eyes. He listened to her breathing, and he let it soothe him.

"So, why don't you feel well?" she said. "Nightmares again?"

I almost died fifty times in my sleep, he could say. Instead, he didn't reply. He pulled the pillow over his head, burrowing. The mattress shifted as she stood with a sigh. She'd be late if she lingered much longer. His senses dulled by the pillow, he lost track of her as she moved away. Silence. But she didn't say goodbye. The space behind his eyes rushed and separated in the blackness. Even if he didn't want it, sleep would take him back, soon. He'd be dying again, or dead.

The blankets ripped away from him, and he grabbed at the mattress. His heart thumped, and he yelled in surprise as cool air hit his skin. He didn't know what was happening. Fear exploded through his body, but he couldn't convince his muscles to do anything other than shake. His breath skipped away. The death he'd waited for all night had finally arrived.

The fitted sheet underneath him jerked. He slid an inch. Two. She grunted. Exhaustion and panic prevented him from understanding anything but the fact that he was being dragged somewhere against his will.

"Get up, Derek," Meredith snapped, but all he heard was Mr. Clark. "You'll be late," turned into, "You're not the man."

"No," Derek said as the last bit of air punched free from his lungs. The sheet stopped moving that instant.

Gary Clark yanked the pillow away from him. "Seriously," he said.

Light slammed into Derek's eyeballs as his canopy tore away. He grabbed for the pillow reflexively, but he'd been blinded. His grasping fingers brushed the pillowcase, but he missed. The shadow of his murderer's body eclipsed all else. Derek raised his arm to protect himself. He bent at the waist and whipped into a fetal position. Mr. Clark threw the pillow behind him, and it landed on the floor with a thump. Tears welled in Derek's eyes.

"No," he said. "Please."

Gary Clark froze. The world caught up with Derek, and he realized there was no Gary Clark. Only her. Only Meredith. He should have known that. He should have. He grunted in frustration as the live wires twitching his muscles stopped sparking. His panting eased into slow, calmed breaths. He closed his eyes and made a sick sound deep in his throat. He relaxed.

"Meredith," he said, exhaustion and embarrassment grating his tone. Why? Why had she done that to him?

A stricken look carved her sleep-longing face. She sat on the bed beside his body and stroked his side. "I'm sorry," she said. "I thought you knew it was me. I've been within four feet of you this whole time."

"I had a bad night," he said.

She sighed. "Every night's a bad night, Derek. Every day's a bad day."

"Don't you think I'm sick of it, too?" he snapped. "I fucking hate this."

"You'll always be scared if you don't even try not to be," she said. "So, get up."

He clenched his fingers. "I can't go there today. I'm not ready. Please."

"No," she said. "It won't work this time. You do that all the freaking time. I'm very sorry I scared you, but I'm not backing down. Stop 'please'-ing me to get what you want."

Silence stretched. His stomach clenched. He tried not to chuckle. He did. His face turned red with the effort, and finally a small snort popped loose. "Meredith..."

Her eyes twinkled. "That came out wrong, didn't it?"

"A bit," he said.

"Look. Just try. Okay?" she said. "I want you to go at your own pace. I do. But don't just stop. Stopping isn't a pace. It's stopping. The more you stop, the harder it is to get going again. I know from experience."

"I'm sorry, Meredith," he said. "I'm..."

"Don't be sorry, Derek," she replied. "Just get up, and go to your freaking appointment."

He sighed. He glanced at the digital alarm clock. Red numbers glared at him. "You're late again," he said to her as the time registered through the fog of exhaustion.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "I'm going on maternity leave soon, anyway."

"Mmm," he replied. "Confidence. I like it." His breaths halted when he assembled the possible meanings of her sentence in his head. His gaze shifted to her nightstand. An open pregnancy test box sat behind the alarm clock in the expanding pool of morning sunlight. She'd bought a huge stack of them, and she'd put them in her drawer as he'd watched. "Unless..."

He swallowed. It'd been less than fourteen days since they'd started trying again. They'd only had sex about four times. Or... His mind raced as he tried to remember the specific times, but they blurred into a long, passionate moan in his brain. A lick of salt on her skin. The drips of her sweat. The wet, tight heat of her body sheathing him as he drove himself home to her center. Four times. He was pretty sure. Five? No. Four. Bed, bed, dresser, and bed. They couldn't possibly get that lucky. Could they? She'd gotten her first period after the miscarriage two-and-a-half weeks ago. Ovulation was feasible, but... There was no way the test would pick up a new life blooming from just last night. Was there?

"Are you pregnant already?" he blurted.

"What?" she said. She bit her lip and followed his gaze. "Oh, that. No. Not yet. Sorry." She looked at her knees. "Bad wording on my part. Again."

"It's okay," he said. "Did you take a test while I was sleeping?"

"No," she said. "I just wanted to read the instructions. I forgot to put the box away." She kissed him. "I'd warn you if I was taking one this time. No more bombshells."

"I appreciate it," he said.

She shrugged. "You asked. I love you," she said, as though it were a simple math equation. Two plus two is four. A no brain-er. Her eyelashes lowered over her pretty gray eyes as she stared at him. He watched her gaze trace the lines of his naked body, unabashed, unhidden, and an unimpeachable sense of security overwhelmed him. She loved him. She said it all the time, now. She never pent anything up anymore. She touched him, stroked him, kissed him. All the time. Unsolicited. Despite how horribly he'd treated her. Despite everything. He knew he'd become high maintenance since the shooting. Something less than he'd been. He knew it, and he hated it, but she hadn't once shown any doubts. She'd never not been there. A lump thickened in his throat, for the first time in weeks not wrought by something upsetting. He swallowed.

"Thank you," he said, his voice rough and low. The world blurred as he blinked.

She stared at him. "For what?"

"I don't know," he said. "Everything, I guess."

She smiled. "Are you going to get dressed, now?"

"You don't like me naked anymore?"

She slapped his ass, and he smirked. "I love you naked, but get dressed," she said. "Seriously. You're even later than me."

He rolled onto his stomach and took a deep, cleansing breath. His ribs pressed in, and the bullet wound tightened. His sternum thrummed with vague discomfort. Don't keep this up, it said. But I'll let you go for now. The soft scent of the sheets caressed him, and he needed it. He'd slept there, yes, but they smelled like her. Like home. The last trill of upset left behind by his terror-filled awakening slipped away.

"I'm on my stomach," he said. He breathed, and he couldn't help the smile that overwhelmed him, or the pang of excitement. He realized he'd been staring at the mattress when he'd woken to the alarm clock. The sheets had been his pale horizon. "I was on my stomach when I woke up this morning."

"I noticed," she said. "How does it feel?"

"Weird."

"Weird like ouch?"

"Not ouch," he said. "But not entirely pleasant. I'm-" He grunted as he pushed himself onto his side and tried to sit up. He used his arms to push up. That hurt. He groaned and bit his lip as a wince creased his face, but he managed to find upright before the pain skidded him to a halt. "I'm getting so fucking tired of this."

She raised an eyebrow. "Getting?"

"I guess I passed that point a while ago."

"Maybe a bit," she said. She wrapped her arms around him, and he sighed in her embrace. "You're so much better, though, Derek. Really." She kissed his ear. "When you first woke up from surgery, you couldn't walk. You couldn't sit up. You couldn't even breathe on your own."

"I know," he said, and he looked at the floor.

He sighed, and he wobbled to his feet, using her shoulder as a support. Getting out of bed was, really, the hardest part of the day. His sternum made pushing himself up from lying flat to standing a chore, though at least he didn't get stuck anymore. He couldn't count the times he'd had to ask somebody to help him in the past months. Mostly Mark and Meredith, but once only Lexie had been around.

He straightened up by himself. He walked. By himself. He grabbed a towel from the rack in the master bathroom and wrapped it around his waist, just in case there were people still in the house. He hated that. Having to grab a towel to walk four feet across the main hallway to the shower, but he wouldn't have to deal with it that much longer.

They had a house. Of plywood.

"I'll wait downstairs," Meredith said. She gave him a small smile, and he smiled back.

He took a quick shower and pulled boxer briefs, an old pair of jeans, and a folded t-shirt from the dresser. He didn't shave. Too much effort. He wouldn't wear a suit or tie. He wasn't the Chief today. His nerves re-collected in her absence as he yanked his gray Bowdoin t-shirt over his head. He brushed his fingertips along the soft hemline.

I need to wear that, he'd said as she'd twisted his shirt into a wrinkled mess with her nervous hands. The last time he'd worn this shirt, he'd been helpless. She'd helped him put it on when he hadn't been able to lift his own arms.

He'd been at Seattle Grace for days after his surgery, but he'd stayed in his hospital room, for the most part. He'd been drugged out of his mind. Exhausted. He hadn't gone to his office, or to the catwalk, or visited the operating room where he'd lain on a gurney, unable to breathe while Meredith talked about dirty sex with him.

As a critical care patient, he hadn't been accessible to most of the hospital staff. Only the employees assigned directly to him had been allowed anywhere near him. No rubber-neckers permitted. No gawkers. No accusers. None of the friends and family of the people he'd gotten killed had spoken to him.

He brushed his teeth. He flossed. He slicked cold, sticky gel through his hair so he wouldn't end up with a horrific, frizzy mess when it dried, but he didn't bother with the hairdryer. He put on and laced his cross-trainers. All by himself.

She waved a toasted, plain bagel at him on the way out the door, but his stomach twisted, and he shook his head. She didn't press him as he forced himself down the front walk. She armed the new house alarm they'd had installed and shut the door behind her.

The air was wet, but the sky was clear, and the sun shone down, unobstructed. The scent of green, cut grass and moist earth touched his nose, and he inhaled. The air was pleasant, and a breeze blew through. Not warm or hot. Not cool or cold. Idyllic. Bird calls boomeranged between the trees, from jays to little finches. A lawnmower whirred in the distant background.

She wrapped her arms around his waist as he paused. "It's nice out today."

"Mmm," he agreed, but his brief respite faded when he glanced at his Cayenne, sitting in the driveway behind Meredith's Jeep. One look at the shiny, black paint, and his mouth went dry.

Fifteen minutes. Thirty in traffic, maybe. And then they would be there.

"I can't do this," he wanted to say.

"Derek," said the One. Beautiful face. "Please. Focus. Focus for me. It's me. It's Meredith. And I need you to-" Off. But he saw the word finish on her lips.

Move. He could do that. Could he? Yes.

He forced himself into the passenger seat of his Cayenne. He pulled his seat belt over his torso and lap. The engine rumbled as she turned the key. She babbled at him about schedules. Mark would take him home after his appointment, she said. She had a thirty-six hour shift this time, so she wouldn't be home until the day after, she said. She said, she said, she said, until it became a drone he heard but didn't process. He didn't mean to ignore her, but he couldn't listen.

The car jounced as she rolled it backward out of the driveway. He clutched the handle over the window. It didn't hurt very much. Just a twist down his center that faded. He winced, but that was all. He leaned against his knees, and his breaths screwed in his chest. Tight. Tighter. He gripped the bridge of his nose as he felt the car accelerate.

They'd made it to the highway. He blinked, and he stared at the concrete road. Watching the white lines blur made him sicker. Meredith darted and weaved between cars as though she were hired for Nascar. He watched a shiny red Prius slide backward past his window, and then he peeled his gaze from the road entirely. He settled on her.

"You had a nightmare last night, too," he said, trying to push away the churning in his empty gut.

"Yeah."

"About?" he said. Derek, no, she'd said. Like he'd been dying. He closed his eyes and gripped the seat as he waited for her to reply.

She shrugged. "Never getting pregnant."

"You're worried about getting pregnant?"

"I didn't think I was, but last night I was chased by a box of Night Light condoms and an overzealous, stomp-y can of spermicide."

He choked on a breath. The engine roared, and his body lurched forward as she braked and switched to the middle lane to get around an idiot gabbing on his cell phone in the fast lane. He clenched his fingers. "That's..." he managed before he had to stop talking, or he would burst. Bursting into gales of amusement would not be supportive.

"It was more scary and less funny when I was sleeping," Meredith said. "I swear."

He watched her. Flush spread between her freckles. She bit her lip. Her body quivered. Pressure built. They laughed at the same time, and he relaxed in the shared moment. He loved her laugh. The way she forgot the world. He brushed her face with his palm as she sniffled, recovering. He wondered how she would look, glowing and pregnant, and his nerves slid away.

I look like I tried to eat a freaking beach ball, she would say.

It's our beach ball, though, he'd assure her. You look beautiful.

Liar, she'd say. But she'd smile. He'd kiss her, and she'd laugh her perfect laugh.

"It was a really big box," Meredith said as she wiped her face and blinked as she focused on the road.

"I miss those condoms," he said. "Those were fun."

"They glowed, Derek. In the dark. They made sex look like a freaking UFO encounter."

He smirked at her as he stroked her hair. She turned her face, relinquishing her attention from the road for a moment to kiss his hand. She made a soft, pleasant noise that turned into a growl when a car blocked her path, and she swerved. His gut quivered, but he ignored it.

"We've only been having sex again for a week-and-a-half," he said.

He expected to be waiting six months for a positive pregnancy test. Maybe a year. He pictured a tiny, squirming bundle of nothing but lungs. She'd cry, and he'd wonder again how something so loud could come from someone so very tiny. Seven pounds, maybe eight. Part him. Part Meredith. Theirs. Made by them during an expression of love.

He swallowed as he watched Meredith, tried to picture her face as a baby, but he couldn't. She had piercing cat eyes, a long, slender nose, and a huge, glowing smile that didn't make sense on features only a few inches wide. She rarely showed him pictures from her childhood. He didn't think she had that many.

She sighed. "I know it won't happen right away. Well, it could. But I'm not expecting... I'm trying not to expect..."

"We'll get there," Derek said. "I got through birth control."

She snorted. "Does this mean I get to call them Supersperm?"

"Well, they're pretty super, I'd say, knocking you up through almost guaranteed failure," he said.

"I know we could be waiting months," she said. "It's normal to take months. I just..."

"You know it will take months, but you want it to be now," he said. "I know the feeling."

He brushed the seat belt with his palm. His bullet wound rested just underneath. He didn't need a pillow for support in the car anymore, at least. The little jostles and bumps didn't bother him much.

He leaned back into his seat and watched the road blur through his eyelashes. The bay spread out beside them under a blue sky. All blue. All sharp. All brilliant. All real. He inhaled, and the soft scent of her conditioner swirled with the freon emitting from the car's air vents.

"Do you still have the other nightmare a lot?" he said.

"Huh?"

She maneuvered the car onto the exit ramp, and his body tensed. Minutes. They were minutes away.

"The one about me dying," he said as the car rolled through the curve of the exit. He leaned into it. She gunned onto the main street and cut across two lanes. The car straightened out, but his stomach didn't.

"Not since we started having sex again," she said.

"I'm glad," he said. "I'm sorry..."

They stopped at a glowing red light. She turned. "Sorry for what?"

Derek watched as a bustling crowd wandered into the crosswalk. Several people wore scrubs, some brown, some periwinkle, some navy. Close. They were close. Mere blocks away. He clenched the door handle, and he swallowed.

"I wish you hadn't seen it," he said. He closed his eyes. Nausea swirled as he watched the white ceiling tilt over his head. He fell. The gun roared in his ears, and Dr. Kepner babbled uselessly.

Meredith touched his shoulder, ripping him away from yet another replay. "I'm glad I saw it, Derek," she said. "It was horrible, but I'll never regret it, because it means we're here, talking about babies and sex and my silly nightmares about your favorite condoms."

Her eyes watered. He blinked. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know anything.

"I really want to have a baby with you," she said. "I can't even describe how much anymore."

"We'll get there," he said, his voice low and thick with... Something. He leaned against the window and breathed. His breath clawed along the window in a spreading triangle of fog.

"You will, too," she said. She squeezed his knee. A horn honked. The light had turned green. She drove.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Meredith, I'm..." He couldn't finish his sentence.

"Do you want to talk about your nightmares yet?" she said.

She turned into the Seattle Grace parking lot. His body swayed, and the horizon line of cars and building and clouds tilted to the side. He clutched the door handle until it hurt. He tried to find his voice to say, "No," but he opened his mouth, and his throat went cottony and dry. He couldn't say that word or any other.

She parked, and his legs shivered with stress. His hands. He'd been shot. Dying. He hadn't seen the outside of the hospital during the massacre. He only knew what the zoo of flashing lights outside had looked like through inadvertently glancing at newspapers and seeing photographs. Flipping channels and finding news specials. The front door had been barricaded. Sirens had flashed. An endless line of police cars had encircled the building. He'd been lying on the floor on his back, bleeding, when a few hundred feet away, a line of law enforcement had stood, oblivious to his life draining out of him.

He remembered the ceiling in the operating room. Or, not really the ceiling. The lights overhead. Bright. Like the front of a train. When they'd put a mask over his face and pumped him full of anesthesia, he remembered hurting as he breathed. Once. Twice. And then the lights of the train had barreled toward him. The pain had faded. The feel of Meredith's hand had slipped out of his awareness. He'd heard noises. Then he'd seen nothing but black and heard nothing but silence.

He'd woken several times in the hours following his surgery. Every moment, Meredith had been there, sitting by the bed railing. She'd climbed into bed with him, and he hadn't been able to move to wrap his arms around her. He'd wanted to. But he'd felt sick, and he'd hurt, and then the lights had gone out again.

He'd woken once more as the clock wound around to... He hadn't had a concept of the time. His eyes had slipped open, and nausea had pressed against his body. The throbbing, endless pain, lung to spine in a jagged line, had started as the anesthesia from surgery had worn off, leaving his abused nerves on fire. He'd opened his eyes to nothing more than slits. He hadn't wanted to move as misery had crushed him. His mouth had been pasty and dry. His limbs had felt like frozen lead, and his throat like someone had pushed a rake down his esophagus in a hunt for fall leaves. She'd noticed him with his eyes open, and in moments, she'd been hovering by the bed. Her fingers had slipped through his hair as she'd whispered soothing things that hadn't helped, but he'd appreciated them anyway.

Hey, she'd said. Do you need anything? Ice chips?

He hadn't even been able to speak. He'd made a noise of some sort. He couldn't remember what. She'd pulled her chair close, and she'd sat with him while he'd hovered somewhere more than half awake but desperately wishing he weren't, until he'd found the blackness again.

He'd suffered pain and brutal nightmares for weeks. He didn't know how he would feel from one moment to the next.

Gary Clark had done that. In minutes. With one bullet and no regrets.

"Derek?" Meredith said, and he blinked.

Gary Clark's pistol pressed into Derek's temple. He rested his head against the cool window glass and breathed. The noise of gunfire ricocheted between his ears. A touch on his shoulder made him jump. He slammed his body against the door. His heart throbbed. Noise pushed through his lips, and he shuddered.

When the world came back to him, Meredith had her hand outstretched, but away from his body, and she bit her lip, stricken. The car had stopped. She'd removed the key from the ignition, and the engine settled. The clacking footsteps of a pedestrian in dress shoes passed by the car. A noisy breeze cut a swath through the parking lot and made the car rock on its axles.

When he looked at her, she moved, slowly at first. When he didn't balk, she closed the last few inches of the gap between them in a blink, and she touched him again. First with just a fingertip. Then her palm splayed. Her hand slid from his left shoulder to his right in a slow, wandering, whisper of support, and then she leaned over the parking brake and embraced him. Warmth spread against his skin as she radiated. He took a jagged breath and breathed against her hair. A loose strand flew out behind her ear. He pressed his nose against her.

"I can't," he said.

"Yes, you can," she said. Her arms squeezed tighter.

"Meredith," he said. His voice quivered in his ears. He inhaled, but his body pushed the air out again before he could use it. The soft scent of her fell against him, but it slipped away like wind through his fingers. He blinked, and the space beyond her hair blurred. "I can't breathe," he said.

"You can," she said. Her hand chased his spine. "Just slow down."

He looked at the archway. Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital. The parking lot beyond the car turned white, and he fell backward as the gun roared in his ears. The bullet lodged inside his body, and breaths became a serrated blade, sawing his ribs and his lungs. His throat closed.

"I can't," he croaked, and he coughed. His sternum flared with pain. He pawed at the collar of his shirt, desperate.

"Stop it," she said. She pulled his gaze to her, and her eyes became gray, endless tunnels jagged with flecks of green. He lost himself there, pupil to pupil with her. She blinked, and her eyes dilated less than a fraction. "Look at me, and breathe. You can breathe. You're alive. You're okay. He's dead. You're not. We're making a family, and it's okay."

He took her shirt into his hands. The soft weave ran under his fingertips. He lowered his gaze to the dark space between them. Two seat belt clips, the parking brake, and a small storage compartment separated their hips. She'd leaned into him. Her cleavage interrupted his view.

"Are you looking at me?" she said. "Look at me."

Her fingertips dung into the sides of his face. He blinked, and she caught his eyes again. "It was a good distraction," he said between a short breath and another.

"Stop it," she repeated. "No distractions. Just breathe."

He tried to laugh, though it ended up a vague, breathy splutter. He watched her eyes. She didn't look frightened or disturbed. She pressed her forehead against his, warm skin to cold. Their noses bumped. Her calm, even breathing rolled over him like waves on a shore in the intimate space. He followed the crash of the surf, and as the wave pulled back, he inhaled. He exhaled in time with her. Waves mingled. The spots in his vision evened into the sharp, focused colors of her face. Soft peach skin, cinnamon-brown freckles, rose-y lips.

Her eyes narrowed with quiet pleasure. She smiled. He breathed in and out again if only to see her smile widen. For once, Gary Clark had nothing to say. No post-mortem taunts. No observations. Nothing. The inner silence soothed him.

"You're very bossy," he said.

"And you're very stubborn," she said.

He smirked. "I'm breathing, now."

"You are," she agreed. She traced the dent on his forehead with her thumb, and then her hand wandered over his scalp. "I'm sorry I don't have a paper bag."

"A what?"

Her lip quivered. She kissed him. "You helped me before. Remember?"

I don't want my mother to die alone.

She'd hidden in the dark closet, and he'd followed. She'd collapsed against him in tears. They'd shared a minute. In a dark closet. All he'd wanted in that minute was to make her happy again. When he'd first come into the room, she'd only been hyperventilating. As he'd sat down, she'd squeaked, and his heart had broken as she'd fallen apart.

Slow down, he'd said. Slow down. Just slow down. Shh.

"Mmm," he said in a low voice as the memory solidified. "I remember."

Thank you, she'd said.

He'd looked into her eyes. You're welcome.

"We have good memories here, too," she said. She splayed a palm against his shirt over the bullet scar. "Think of those instead of this." She circled the old wound and stroked his ribs.

"You were crying in a closet after a patient died," he said as she roamed back to his shoulder, "And I was still married to Addison."

She blinked. "Maybe not that one."

"Not that one," he agreed.

"But we kissed in an elevator," she said. "You proposed to me there. And you were with me the first time I scrubbed in to a surgery."

"That's a pretty helter-skelter list."

"So is our life," she said. "I didn't say it made any sense."

"It really doesn't," he said. He sighed. He turned his gaze away from her and stared at the archway, and nothing happened. Seattle Grace Mercy West. His eyelids lowered, and he leaned back into the seat, departing from her embrace. The leather moaned under his weight. The letters blurred and split into duplicates. Words crossed into an alphabet mush.

She echoed his movements and let her stare follow his. She took his hand in her lap across the brake and held his palm in hers. "Healing from what's happened to you is a giant hill or something," she said. Her fingers clenched. "You're pedaling to the top right now. If you get through those front doors, it has to get better."

"You're sure of that," he said.

"Yes," she said. "It has to get better."

He leaned, and he kissed her ear. "When did you get to be so sure?"

She laughed, and the sound lifted him. She had such a beautiful laugh. "I'm in love with you. I'm married to you. We're going to have a family, and I'm happy about it. I can say all these things to you. That I love you, and that I'm happy or whatever. If I can get better, you can get better. It has to get better."

"I like you happy," he said. "It suits you."

She kissed him. "I wish you were happy, too."

His stomach quailed, and he shut his eyes as a familiar, unsettling wave splashed against him. He let out a shaky breath and massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. "Meredith, I really..." His gaze blurred. "What if this never goes away?"

"It will."

"How long will you wait?"

"Forever," she said. "But it won't be that long. I know it won't."

"It feels forever."

She stared at him for a long moment, but he had no idea what she could be thinking. "Get out of the car, Derek," she said. She released his hand, and she grabbed her door handle.

He watched as she slid her tiny body out of the seat and plopped onto the ground. Her reflection flashed in the side view mirror as she opened and shut the door, leaving him staring at an empty seat and the cloudy sky beyond. He sighed. Overwhelming lethargy sank into his bones.

The thunk of his door opening startled him, and he twitched. "Appointment, now," she said. She leaned over his lap and unclasped his seat-belt. The soft scent of lavender wafted into his nose as he breathed. Rain-kissed air rushed through the open space and hugged his skin. "You're late," she said. "You're beyond late. Get up."

"And you're very bossy," he said.

"You keep saying that."

He gave a tired sigh, though he tried to smile. "Because you keep being bossy."

He grabbed the handle over the door, and she backed away to give him space. He slid off the seat. His feet hit the hard pavement and stopped. He looked at the archway, Seattle Grace Mercy West, and his legs threatened to stop supporting him as his remnant nerves coiled in a tight ball and took away his muscle control. He scrabbled for the side of the door. The roads had been wet despite the clear sky. Rain-spattered paint slipped past his grasping fingertips. He leaned against the side of the door and let the breeze ruffle his hair as he closed his eyes.

The car chirped as Meredith armed the alarm. "Derek," she said. A now familiar announcement indicating she was there. And then she wrapped around him. Her hip bumped his. "Come on. Let's walk."

"Meredith..."

"Breathe and walk," she said. "Up the hill."

A nervous laugh burbled in his throat. "Are you sure you don't want to go home and make babies?"

"I thought you wanted me to be on time," she said.

"Yes, but you're already tardy to the point of no return. You should at least make it worthwhile."

She rubbed his back. "This is worthwhile."

He took a step and stumbled as the jelly in his legs turned his stride to mush. Heat spread across his cheeks, and his throat felt full. "I'm a bit shaky," he said.

"You're fine," she said.

Wind tumbled against them as they stepped away from the car. Slowly. He felt like a wobbling old man. He glanced around, wild, trying to see if anyone was looking at him, but nothing stuck out. People walked to and fro, in and out. People in scrubs, suits, jeans, sweatpants. People on their own feet, in wheelchairs, or struggling with walkers and canes. But nobody seemed to care that Derek Shepherd was returning to Seattle Grace for his followup appointment, held upright by his petite wife. Unshaven, in jeans and a shirt, he probably didn't look like anybody worth watching. Just a sick man in a place meant for sick people.

As he approached the doorway, his world became a funnel, narrowing and narrowing, until the sliding doors spread apart and a whoosh of cool, antiseptic air hit his face. He knew that smell. The familiar odor that told him he was in a hospital. The adrenaline pouring through him made his body feel weak and willowy and ready to topple.

"Excuse me," a man said as he pushed past, and Derek shuddered as he was bumped by a quick-striding, solid-but-thin man the height of an NBA center.

"Are you okay?" Meredith said to Derek.

He didn't reply as the welcome mat left them behind. He walked underneath the promenade, and the catwalk came into view. His muscles clenched, and something in his body told him to turn around and leave. Just leave. The impulse became a need that sank into the depths of his bone marrow. Tremors ran through him. The jelly in his legs wasn't a hindrance. It meant his muscles were ready. Brimming with pent up energy. He would be able to go. Sprint. Fast. And he wouldn't stop until his lungs burst. He felt sick because he needed to run, not walk toward something that made every inch of his conscious thought quiver with an intense, thrumming, almost-panic that could easily explode.

Meredith pulled on his arm. "Come on," she said. "Just worry about your appointment today."

He wanted to tell her he didn't feel well, but his throat closed, and he couldn't speak. She dragged him down the hallway toward the admitting desk, her hand gripping his like she expected him to bolt. He remembered walking there, less than an hour before he'd gotten shot. There had been a body on the floor. Blood spatter in a gruesome fan around the wound. Bits and pieces of obliterated flesh, no longer identifiable as organs or skin or anything. He'd checked the body by reflex, but he'd found no pulse at the wrist. He wouldn't have. Dead eyes had stared not at him but past him as he'd approached. A huge chunk of the man's neck had been missing. No amount of scientific miracles would fix that.

People started to recognize him. He heard whispers. The receptionist behind the desk, a blond, plump woman he knew he should know, brightened into a wide smile. "Dr. Shepherd!" she said, her voice burbling with cheer. "Good morning! It's so nice to see you back. Seattle Grace just hasn't been the same without you."

He couldn't think of her name. All he could think of was Paul Wandell, the security guard who'd been stationed there by the desk. He must have wandered during the emergency. Derek hadn't found his body. He'd just seen the name on the death list.

Morning Dr. Shepherd, Paul had said as Derek had walked past.

Derek had smiled. Paul. How are the girls?

Doing great, the balding, thin man had said. Leticia is taking them to their dance recital tonight. I'm headed there after work.

Ballet?

No, Paul had said, and then he'd laughed. A deep, gruff laugh that had probably been his last. Some crazy modern expression thing. I don't really understand it, but they love it.

Wish them luck for me, Derek had said.

Will do.

"Hello," Derek said to the receptionist, his voice shaky. His smile lasted for less than half a second.

He'd failed his attempt at normal and happy by the look on the woman's face. Her smile faltered, and he saw what he didn't want. Pity. Worry over the fact that a very not normal Dr. Shepherd had just returned to Seattle Grace. Normal Dr. Shepherd would have remembered her name. He would have smiled. He would have said hello and asked about her family and complimented her hair or... something. Anything but the bald hello he'd barely managed.

Meredith squeezed his arm, and he swallowed. "I have a followup appointment with Dr. Altman," he said.

The receptionist nodded. He lost himself in the sound of her fingers as the keyboard clacked. She frowned as she stared at the computer screen. "I'm sorry," she said. She glanced at the small typed sign at the desk that stated anyone more than fifteen minutes late would not be seen, but she shook her head and forced a smile back onto her face. "You might have to wait a little," she said. "But we'll get you in."

"Thank you," he said.

The receptionist printed out an update patient form, handed him a clipboard, a pen, the form, and a sheath of stickers for his charts that stated his name, patient ID number, and various other bits and pieces of information that would explain his physical woes in a nutshell to anyone who wanted to know. Meredith followed as he walked to a nearby chair and collapsed with the form and the pen. Nausea roiled. He couldn't get his legs to solidify. He leaned over his knees, head in his hands.

Meredith took the clipboard from him, and he listened to the scribble of the pen as she filled everything out for him. His name, address, current medications, allergies, and complaints. He didn't bother to check it. She knew all of it by heart anyway.

"I found a body by the desk," he said against his hands, his shaky voice barely audible. He touched his jugular. "The bullet went here."

The receptionist chattered in low tones against the phone receiver. The keyboard clacked. Nearby, waiting patients conversed. Meredith set the clipboard aside. She didn't speak. She hugged him instead.

"I don't even know who he was," he said.

She kissed his shoulder. "Stop it," she said. "Seriously, you need to stop. Just worry about your appointment. That's a great start. Get through that. That's all. Then go home. Mark will take you back to the house; you just have to page him."

"I really don't feel well," he said.

She took his palms and rubbed his freezing hands. "I know," she said. "Life sucks. But you'll never feel well again if you don't push yourself through this. You can't let yourself wallow."

"Is that what Dr. Wyatt says?" he snapped.

A deep pink blush spread across her face, and she bit her lip. She didn't speak.

He deflated, and embarrassing tears popped loose. "I'm sorry. I'm..." He bent his head down and looked at the floor as he sniffed. Not here. Please, not here. Anywhere but here. He choked on air. The floor tiles blurred.

"Pathetic," said Mr. Clark, and Derek cringed.

"No," he said, though it was more of a gasp. He became vaguely aware of Meredith standing over him, a shield between him and prying eyes. She spread his legs with a nudge from her knees, stepped against him, and pulled his head against her body. Her fingers twisted through the hair at the nape of his neck. The soft feel of her shirt was interrupted by the bump at the waistline of her jeans. A belt loop mashed underneath him. He rested his ear to her belly and closed his eyes. Her stomach gurgled. She breathed.

He stuffed the swell of tears back inside his body. Jumbled thoughts churned in his head. His stomach wouldn't settle. But he wouldn't cry in his own fucking hospital. Not for everybody to see. Though he was sure it was too late, anyway. The receptionist had probably already phoned into the gossip hotline to report the latest and greatest Dr. McDreamy news header.

Derek cries! News at eleven.

He wiped his face and cleared his throat. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"Shut up," Meredith replied.

A miserable smile flickered on his face. "Bossy," he told her.

She grinned and sank into the seat beside him. She waited with him in supporting silence until the admitting nurse called his name. "Almost done," Meredith said as he stood and convinced his body to move. She kissed him. "See you at dinner tomorrow?"

"Yeah," he replied. She squeezed his shoulder, and he wobbled to the waiting nurse. He tried not to think about how far away dinner tomorrow seemed. The admitting nurse led him through a door into a busy, bustling hallway, and he left a waving Meredith behind.

"Hi, Dr. Shepherd," the nurse said. Another woman he knew he should know, but didn't. Amanda? Anna? He couldn't see her name tag to read it, so he gave her a watery smile that lasted less time than the one he'd given the receptionist. He couldn't manage a hello.

She led him to an immaculate exam room the size of a large closet. A white ceiling, white walls, and a white floor framed a navy-blue exam bench. A stainless-steel hand sink and a narrow counter top lined the side of the room, and a small chair with a low back rested next to the counter in the corner by the door with a coat rack. The sink dripped with no seeming pattern.

He sat on the exam table. The paper lining gripping the cushion crinkled, and he shifted. He tried not to think about anything as the nurse took his blood pressure, temperature, and pulse. "Are you experiencing any pain today?" said the nurse.

Derek clenched his fingers. He croaked at first, and he cleared his throat. "Some."

"How would you describe the pain?"

Derek frowned. "It's not bad right now," he said. "Three or four."

"And have you taken anything for pain today?" she said.

"No."

The nurse wrote everything on his chart and smiled. She showed him his chart, and he saw Meredith's neat handwriting listing all his prescriptions. "The medications you've listed are current?" she said.

"Yes."

"All right," she said. "Remove all your clothes except for your underwear, and put this on." She placed a hospital gown on the exam table by his hip. "Your doctor will be with you shortly." She stopped at the door on the way out. "Good to see you," she said. "You've been missed."

"Thank you," he managed.

She departed, and the door closed quietly behind her.

He stripped in silence, his lips set in a grim line. He folded his shirt after he took it off, trying to ignore the creeping ants sensation of self-consciousness that tickled his skin. He felt like somebody watched him. He put his shirt and his jeans and socks on the small chair by the sink. The cold air of the exam room wrapped around his body. He shivered and looked down at himself. The scar meandering down his chest made him cringe, even under the wisps of hair that had grown back. Ugly. Red and twisted. He touched the incision, and his vision blurred as his sensitive fingertips roamed over rough skin that had once been smooth.

Hang on, I'm coming!

The room flared white, and he blinked. He'd been alone and dying in a sea of white and red. A shadow had crossed his vision, and then she'd been there. Meredith. He'd hurt, and he'd lain there, helpless. She'd touched him. Pain had rumbled through his body when she'd put pressure on the wound, and he hadn't understood much at the time other than a consuming, mindless fear. Mr. Clark would come back. He would come back and finish what he'd started, and he'd get Meredith, too. He'd tried to push her away, and then...

Nothing but colors and pain and panic. For a long while.

Please, don't die. Please, Derek. You can't leave me.

Derek blinked and swallowed as the memory faded. He shuddered. This would never go away. The scars. Seeing the disfigurement every time he looked at himself served as an instant replay. He tried to catch his breath as he pulled on the exam gown and covered himself. Nausea coiled in the back of his throat, and he sat on the exam table and hunched over his knees. His toes turned an unhealthy red as his nervous body withdrew circulation.

Derek squeezed his eyes shut. "Stop it," he said to nothing but air. He breathed once and twice and again, and he listened to the faucet drip to no particular rhythm. He didn't want to be here in this place, stuck in an endless crush of bad memories.

I pick you. I choose you. You don't get to die on me.

A knock on the door made his heart skip and his body lurch. Sweat made the paper on the exam table stick to the backs of his naked thighs and knees. The paper ripped as he launched to the side. He caught the edge of the table with his hand as the door opened, and somebody stepped in. Ragged, uneven breaths drilled through his body, and it took him several seconds to stop his brain from racing away with his senses.

He looked up as he caught his breath. "Cristina?" he said, incredulous. Blush cut a swath across his skin. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Where was Dr. Altman?

Cristina stood there in pale blue scrubs, a stony gaze on her face. "You're late," she said. "Dr. Altman is in surgery." And I got stuck with this lousy assignment, Cristina's expression said, though she didn't speak. She clenched his chart in her fingers.

"Oh," he said. He wondered how much of his descent into panic she'd seen. The paper on the exam table looked like a tornado had run through. Shivers he couldn't help raced along his skin, and the blush wouldn't go away. Hot. His face. His chest. Everything felt hot. He didn't need to see himself to know he'd turned a telltale shade of red. Damn it.

He knew on a fundamental level that she'd seen everything. Everything. The nurses and doctors of Seattle Grace did their best to preserve everybody's modesty, but the simple fact was that in order to keep a sterile field, not a lot in the way of clothing was allowed into surgery. Just a gown. Pressure stockings. Nothing else. After he'd been anesthetized, they'd shaved his chest and catheterized him. Hell, she'd been the one who'd cut and cracked him open. He knew. If he had it, she'd seen it. More than once.

But at least he hadn't been awake, then. He hadn't been awake to know that Meredith's best friend, who hated him, and often made snide jokes at his expense, had seen him at his most vulnerable. She had the bedside manner of a robot, and she clearly didn't want to be there. Stress stiffened his muscles into thick lines of iron sinews.

He stared at the chart in her hands, not at her. The yellow sheet of paper had the hollow silhouette of a person drawn in the top left corner. The mid-line down the silhouette's chest and a small spot on the left breast had been circled in red marker. Shepherd, Derek C. was written across the top.

She didn't say anything as she set his chart on the counter top and unwound her stethoscope from her neck. She didn't rub her hands or warn him that it would be cold. She touched the small of his back just over the waistband of his boxer briefs. "Sit up straight," she told him, and he forced his spine to uncurl.

She slipped the stethoscope under his gown, and a freezing spear jabbed his back.

"Breathe," she said with a soft voice. He closed his eyes, and he breathed, deep and long and low. She moved the stethoscope. "Again," she said. "Again. Again." Satisfied, she pulled the gelid instrument away and wrapped it around her neck. "How are your energy levels?" she said

Derek sighed. Clinical. Make this clinical, he thought. He could manage this if he pretended she was somebody else. Maybe his personal physician, who he saw yearly. Dr. Worthington. He owned a private practice in a small office complex in Queen Anne Hill.

"You could pretend she's me," said Mr. Clark, and Derek stiffened.

"I get tired easily," he said.

She nodded. "How easily?"

"I can walk about two miles. Maybe three."

"Can you jog?"

He set his lips in a thin line. He'd jogged. Across parking lots. Maybe a few house-lengths on Meredith's street. The jouncing and the extra exertion made him feel sick, more often than not, though he tried every other day at the recommendation of his physical therapist. "Not really," he said.

"How are steps?"

"Fine as long as I don't do them over and over," he said.

She gripped his shoulders. "Lie back," she said.

He swallowed, and he forced himself flat onto the table. He tried to keep his breaths steady. He listened to the dripping sink as she undid the gown's ties and pulled his only shield away from him. She touched his chest, and he bit his lip. Her fingers slipped along her handy work. Her eyes sparked with satisfaction, a sort of glow in her dark eyes. A job well done. Nothing else. He felt like a slab of meat.

"Do you need to take naps during the day?" she said as she inspected the remains of the sternal incision.

"Sometimes."

"But not always?"

"No," he said. "Usually, I'm okay if I sit down for a while."

Her inspection roamed to his abdomen. She kneaded the space over his intestines, and he fought to keep from wincing. It didn't hurt, but it was uncomfortable. He didn't like her touching him anywhere, let alone when he barely had any clothes on. He grunted as she drilled into his side like she was trying to reach the exam table underneath him. He gazed at the ceiling, blinking.

"How's your pain?" she asked.

"I still use painkillers," he said.

"How much?"

"Good question," said Mr. Clark.

Derek's stomach turned. Nausea coiled around his body, and the first sound he made wasn't a word. Just... Something. He couldn't look at her or anywhere.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm..." What did you take this time, Amy? How much? "Not always. I don't always need them."

Silence stretched except for the drip, drip, drip of the faucet. Cristina stared at him, her eyes narrowing, and he resisted the urge to try to explain things. He clenched his hands, and what was left of the paper underneath him crinkled.

"So, it flares up at times, but it's not constant?" Cristina said.

"The constant part is tolerable," he said. "Just..." He wilted under her stare. "Yes, it flares."

She touched his bullet wound and probed it, and he couldn't stop the gasp of pain, more from surprise than hurt, though the discomfort made his innards quiver. "GSWs are nasty," she said. "You could have chronic pain here for a while."

He raised a shaky hand to his face and wiped away damp remnants of nervous sweat. She'd surprised him. He hadn't been able to steel himself for any sort of invasion. He clenched his teeth.

"I think you're fine for light work," she said. "Paperwork. No surgeries. And don't drive if you take pills, obviously, but otherwise you can get behind the wheel again if you want. I'll renew your Percocet prescription with the pharmacy here."

He didn't know what he'd expected or hoped for. You're in terrible shape; stay home another month. We don't need you back here yet, anyway.

"Are you sure?" he said.

"Yes," she said as he sat up. "Why? Do you think you're not ready to come back?"

He pulled up his gown but didn't bother with the ties. They would be done soon, and she would leave so he could change. Soon.

"I'm fine," he said while his mind screamed no. No, no, no. Just say no.

She picked up his chart and made notations. He rested on the table, eyes closed, and he wanted her to leave so he could put on his clothes and get away. She'd gone down the veritable list for followup checks. As soon as she finished writing, they were done. Her pen scribbled on the paper, and the faucet dripped. She took forever. He blinked and watched the white walls. White. All white.

The bullet wound throbbed where Cristina had poked him. He rested a palm against his breast. His hands felt cold and clammy. He remembered blood, a glistening stain on his skin, as he'd held his hand to the sky. The gun cracked, and he'd fallen backward. You're not god, Mr. Clark had said.

"How are you doing, mentally?" Cristina said.

His waking dream dissolved, and he blinked. "Why would you ask that?" he said.

She shrugged. "Because I'm not a moron."

"I'm fine," he said.

"So, you've been peachy keen since I showed you screaming babies?"

I thought you were dead, Meredith had said. And I was screaming and screaming and then... I lost... I'm so sorry. As if she'd had something to apologize for. He hadn't known how to react, hadn't known anything. He'd been a potential dad for a nanosecond. I was pregnant, she'd said, and it'd taken him a blink to realize that the word 'was' meant past tense. Pregnant before, but not then.

"I'm..." His voice fell away.

"I thought so," she said.

He slid off the exam table and let his weight onto his feet. He scrunched his toes against the cold floor. The loose hospital gown threatened to fall, and he clutched it to his chest. He shivered, naked back exposed, and she watched him, relentless. He felt as though a thousand eyes watched and judged and found him very lacking.

He met her gaze, glaring. Her tone seemed haughty in a told-you-so sense. She didn't look away, didn't back down, despite the sharp, metaphorical scalpels he tossed her way. She held his chart at her hip, and her hair hung in a frazzled ponytail with loose, flyaway curls.

He hadn't seen Cristina since he'd been released from Seattle Presbyterian. She visited Meredith, sometimes, but Cristina had started knocking, which gave him time to retreat. Usually, when she stopped by, Derek went to bed, and Meredith let him have the bedroom with no barging in. No kicking him out. If he went to lie down, Meredith never disturbed him, and other than a bleary, vague recollection of getting himself a glass of water from the kitchen in the midst of an exhausted painkiller haze while Cristina had been rummaging in their fridge, he hadn't laid eyes on her in a month.

He sighed. "Meredith-"

"Hasn't told me a damned thing," Cristina said. "Don't yell at her."

Meredith had promised him that she wasn't talking to Cristina, and he believed her, but he knew she couldn't realistically be expected not to say a single word. They were married. He was bound to come up in conversation, and they'd had a fight. Surely, the fight, if nothing else, would have been mentioned, even if the specifics had been glossed over. Meredith. Where else could Cristina be getting her information? Or, maybe she was fishing, but she sounded so sure.

"Or maybe you're just a big crybaby," Mr. Clark said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell that I've twisted you into a gooey pile of tear-filled knots."

Derek took a deep breath and stared at his hands. They shook. "I'm not going to yell at her," he said.

Cristina rolled her eyes and snorted. "Right."

"I'm not going to yell at her!" he snapped.

"You're okay with yelling at me, though?"

"I'm..." He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned into the exam table. The soft leather bowed under the weight of his thighs and body. He clenched his teeth. "Fine."

She sighed. "At least tell me if you're more fine than you were before," she said.

"Can we wrap this up?" he said. Home. The word repeated in his head like machine gun fire. He wanted to go home.

She set his chart down on the counter and approached. She stood next to him, not close enough to be considered a breach of personal space, but he bristled anyway. He wanted to go home. Now. Why wouldn't she leave him alone? His vision blurred, and the white walls smeared.

No, Mr. Clark, he'd gurgled, unable to catch his breath. Dr. Kepner had abandoned him, and now he would die. He would die on the floor of his hospital because he was helpless. He couldn't breathe. He had a bullet in his body. He raised a hand in front of his body, begging. Mr. Clark...

A hand touched his shoulder, and he flinched away. "No," he said. A verbal tic. A reflex. The word spilled from his lips as though his lungs had punted it. He clenched his hands. Cristina let go with a fluid, slow motion, like she backed away from a rabid dog that might bite. He sniffed.

"Post-operative depression is almost a given after cardiac surgery," Cristina said. "You've been crying a lot."

"I'm not crying," he snapped. He wiped at his face with a shaky palm. Wet smears came away from him. Why wouldn't she leave?

She snorted. "Is this sweating from your eyes, then?"

He said nothing.

"And I suppose you got hit with a lawn sprinkler when we looked at the babies?"

"Stop it."

"What about in the car on the way home from Seattle Pres?"

He grabbed the ruined paper on the examination table and yanked. The sudden motion sliced him through with pain. The paper came away, and he slammed it onto the table, crumpling it into a wrinkled mass the size of a basketball, or maybe a watermelon, or... "I said I'm fine, Cristina."

"If this doesn't go away soon, within another month or so, you might want to think about anti-depressants."

"I don't need those," he said. "I don't need drugs."

"Oh, that's rich," said Mr. Clark. "Really."

A long silence followed. She slipped her index finger against her temple and swiped away a free falling lock of hair from her face. She stared at him. He wiped his eyes again. Why wouldn't any of this stop?

"Because you're weak," Gary Clark said.

Pathetic.

Cristina picked up his chart and put the pen in the pocket of her lab coat. The pen's clip slid over the lip of her coat pocket. She smoothed the pocket and looked at him with an icy glare. "Any questions for me then?" she said.

"No," he said. "Are we done, now?"

"Yeah," she said. "We're done."

She turned toward the door and took four steps. As her fingertips brushed the handle of the door, she turned. "She's worried about you," Cristina said. "And I don't think she's being paranoid."

He blinked. His eyes burned.

But you have to stop this... Whatever this mental hangup is that you've got going on. If you break yourself, it's not just you you'll be breaking.

"I can't win with you," Derek said. "No matter what."

"No, but at least I've figured out you're not a jackass on purpose," she said. And then she left as abruptly as she'd arrived. The door shut like a whisper behind her.

His stomach churned. He shoved aside his clothes and sat in his underwear on the chair beside the counter for a long time, shaking. He stared at the floor over his knees. He couldn't move. He pulled his hands through his hair. Really pulled. Until his scalp hurt. His teeth clenched. Something black and ugly coiled in the back of his mind.

"Fuck you," he said to no one. To her. "I'm trying."

"This is what you call trying?" Mr. Clark said.

Just get through your appointment, Meredith had said. He rocked in his seat. He'd done that. He'd gotten through his appointment. How the hell was he supposed to get out?

Somebody knocked on the door, and he stiffened. "I'm still in here," he said. His vocal cords seared with the strain of sounding normal despite falling apart.

Footsteps padded away from the door.

He stared down at his socks and his jeans and his shirt. He started with the socks. He could do socks. He pulled one onto his left foot, and then the other onto his right. His yanked up his jeans and buttoned them up to his waist. They sagged and slid down his skinny hips an inch. He still needed to gain back more weight. He pulled his shirt over his body last. His sternum didn't twinge at the movement. Not once. The only things left that strained him were coughing, breathing deeply, and pulling or pushing too much weight. The sternum wasn't considered fully knitted until sixth months had passed, and it'd only been two. It would be a long time before he felt no pain at all. At least it wasn't constant anymore.

He sniffed as he laced his shoes. The soles squeaked against the floor as he shifted. The sink dripped. This room was small. Nobody stared at him in here. He stared at the door, tense with anguish. He couldn't bring himself to move from the chair into the sea of watching eyes and sharp memories.

He fumbled at his pocket for his cell phone and dialed Mark. Mark answered on the third ring. "Hey, man," Mark said. "Ready to go? I need a few more minutes here."

Derek swallowed as he squeezed the receiver with a white-knuckled grip. He took a deep, wet breath. He couldn't bring himself to say hello. He watched the door, and all he could ask was, "How long?"

A brief silence stretched, and Derek heard papers shuffling. "Twenty minutes, I think," Mark said. "Can you wait at the front door?"

No. "I'll wait," Derek managed. He breathed as his torso quivered with pent grief. He wiped his eyes. They were dry, but sticky with salt.

"Okay, I-" said Mark. A low, male voice said something, and Mark spoke. Not to the phone. Papers shuffled. "Look, I'll meet you there," Mark said, his voice distracted. "I have to run; my patient is having some issues."

Derek's phone beeped, signaling a disconnected call, and Derek sighed. He put the phone back in his pocket. He stared at the door and rocked in his seat as he hugged his stomach. Twenty minutes. He didn't think he could stay in this place another second, let alone twenty minutes.

Hold on, okay? Meredith had said. Hold on. I love you. Please, don't die.

"Scared?" said Mr. Clark.

Somebody knocked, and Derek squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm still in here!" he said.

Whoever stood behind the door paused, but didn't walk away. The staff probably needed the room for the next patient, and he knew he wouldn't be left alone much longer. "Dr. Shepherd," said a muffled, feminine voice through the door. "Do you need any help?"

"No," Derek said. "I'm..." He swallowed. "I'm fine."

Please, don't die. Please, Derek.

His body waved warning flag after warning flag. When he stood, he felt like a fault line under stress. His joints creaked. His muscles stretched. We're losing equilibrium, everything told him. Treat us with caution. Eventually, the fault would slip, and there would be an earthquake. His throat constricted, and he held back tears. Barely.

He looked at the door. He grasped the handle. Get out, get out, something whined in his head, but the thought of all the people beyond the door broke everything into a pile of indecision. Get out. He squeezed his hand. The cool metal jabbed into his palm to the point of pain. He twisted the knob and pushed.

I really can't breathe, Mere.

"Dr. Shepherd," said a wide-eyed nurse as he stepped outside. She stood in the hallway by the door, a pen grasped loosely in her hand. She'd stopped mid-note on an overflowing clipboard. Her voice sounded clear with the door removed. Deep and rich. Earthy. Her burden buried her name tag behind reams of paper, and he stared at her, lost.

Derek, please. Focus. Focus for me.

"Are you sure you're all right?" the nurse said when he said nothing. He looked over her shoulder. The hallway wasn't wide, perhaps five feet at best. The space behind her would dump him out closer to the main hospital entrance, but he'd have to push past her to escape. And he'd also have to pass the already suspicious receptionist.

"Dr. Shepherd?" the nurse said when he didn't answer.

"I'm fine," he snapped. He wiped his face again. He felt quivery. Unsure. And he probably looked like a red-eyed disaster victim. He turned away from the nurse and walked in the opposite direction, down the shiny white hallway that went on forever. Into the hospital's heart. Not toward the entrance. He felt the nurse staring at him, felt her eyes piercing holes into his back. His skin crawled like thousands of spiders had made his body a highway.

He remembered this hallway. After he'd found the bloody body with the ruined neck, he'd walked this way. The pharmacy would be on the left after the turn. Everything seemed to flicker, and his past immersed him.

He'd walked in tense silence. Most floors of the hospital had been emptied, and everything had been quiet and still, save for the eerie echoes of his footsteps on the immaculate tiles. He'd stopped midway down the hall to inspect a long smear of drying, sticky blood along the wall. Rather than one thick line, the smear was five thin lines close together, as though someone had dipped his fingers in red paint and stroked the white wall with an artistic flare.

You're not god.

The world flashed white, and he stared overhead as he held his bloody hand aloft. He'd been shot, and he had blood on his hands. He couldn't breathe. Every inhalation stabbed him with knives. He couldn't think. The knives made it difficult. Dr. Kepner babbled somewhere behind him. He didn't understand the words.

"Are you all right?"

He blinked, and the death and dying disappeared with a pop, leaving him panting and hollow.

"Fine," Derek said to the passing nurse who'd asked.

He shuddered, and he moved onward, away from the new batch of scrutiny. He turned left out of the narrow hallway into a wider, more heavily trafficked area. A patient bumped into him. An orderly darted past, his sneakers squeaking as he bolted for some emergency. The PA system crackled to life and called Dr. Weller to conference room seven. The lights seemed too bright. His skin crawled. He wanted to be alone and not there. He caught himself veering toward the wall, his shoulders hunching protectively, and he forced himself back into traffic flow with a deep, shaky breath. Normal. Look normal. Except he couldn't walk more than five feet without somebody recognizing him and asking how he was.

His soul was splitting apart at the seams.

"Dr. Shepherd!" called a deep male voice. "Wait!"

Derek froze. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He turned toward the voice. The hallway where he stood spread wide like an ocean. Two small windows with counter tops at chest level opened into the abyss. One window was labeled drop-off, and the other was labeled pick-up. Between the windows, chairs lined the hallway. Placards about flu shots, accepted insurance, and all sorts of drug advertisements decorated the wall above the chairs. The man at the pick-up counter looked out at him. Gregory Wallace, Seattle Grace's head pharmacist, a weathered, wrinkled, snowy-haired man who'd been there for at least fifteen years, stared over the counter with his eyebrows raised. He held up a white paper bag emblazoned with Seattle Grace's logo in his meaty hand.

"You forgot your prescription," Greg said.

Derek saw the familiar bag, and the tug of war began. Run or stay. Run or stay. He wanted to run to a dark corner and collapse away from prying eyes. The bag held his gaze captive, though, and conflict nauseated him. He stepped forward once and swallowed.

"Right," he said. He had to clear his throat. "Sorry."

"You just need to sign here," Greg said. He pointed at the sign-out sheet.

"Thanks," Derek said.

He closed the gap between him and the counter and picked up the pen by the register. He pressed the ball point into the paper. The pen tip left no ink, only an illegible indentation in the paper. He clenched his fingers.

Mr. Wallace frowned and rummaged for a new pen in the desk behind the counter. "I haven't seen you in several weeks," commented Mr. Wallace. He found a new pen and deposited it on the counter.

Derek picked up the pen and began to sign his name next to the prescription sticker that would indicate he'd received his prescription and knew how to use it.

"How have you been?" Mr. Wallace asked.

Derek paused, and the letter d in Shepherd, already messy, faded into a tense squiggle. The pen almost snapped in his grip. He'd been nearly dead seven weeks ago. Why did everybody ask him how he was? He'd been shot and nearly killed and he couldn't sleep or breathe or function or- "I'm fine," he said. Derek snatched the paper bag and continued down the hall without saying goodbye. His breaths tightened in his chest. The bag crinkled in his hand as he squeezed and squeezed. He felt the cylindrical orange bottle sheathed within. His Percocet.

Take some, now, a voice said. Take some, and you won't feel any of this.

His jaw tightened.

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Clark. "Take it here. In front of everyone."

The bag crinkled as Derek's grip crushed the top of the bag. "Stop it," he said.

"Stop what?" said a bug-eyed intern as he halted.

"Nothing," Derek said. The intern frowned and continued on his way.

Derek tried to get to the front of the hospital. He tried. But everywhere he went, his progress was dictated by another person asking if he was okay. He'd say he was fine, and he'd move in the opposite direction like terrified livestock being corralled with cattle prods. People. Everywhere. All of them seeing him in the process of having some sort of nervous breakdown. His heart throbbed. Sweat trickled down the small of his back. His muscles shivered with stress. Noise scraped his eardrums like nails on glass.

Help is coming. Don't die.

He moved into a dark stairwell because it was the only place without people. Nobody used the damned stairs. Not this close to the elevators. He climbed for a bit and then collapsed onto the step under the first landing. He curled into a ball over his knees. His body shivered. He couldn't breathe, and he couldn't stop himself from crying. He blinked once. Twice. Tears cut his face like sharp glass, and tiny blusters of vocalization hit the air and echoed in the bad acoustics.

"Please, stop," he begged.

How are you doing? Meredith had asked while they'd watched the water over the Elliot Bay. She'd leaned across the table, close to him, and her eyes had sparkled like the sunset outside.

He'd crammed himself as close to the window as possible. I'm fine, he'd said after a long pause, and he'd taken another forkful of oyster omelet to chew.

I'm sorry you're not feeling great, she'd said. She'd mirrored his forkful with her own.

The world had been a bit of a dizzy haze. He'd barely flinched as a pile of dishes crashed, and the waitress who'd carried them had turned red and bustled to pick them up. By the time the noise had made any sort of sense to him, the the terror impulse had long since faded. He'd blinked, and he'd turned his attention back to the table, only to find Meredith scrutinizing him.

He'd forced himself to smile at her. A real smile. Easy with the undercurrent of false euphoria running through him like an untapped well. She'd smiled back, her gaze hopeful.

You're safe, his imaginary Meredith whispered in his ear as he watched the real one eat her fluffy omelet with gusto. Don't be scared.

M'okay, he'd said at last, a little slurred, but mostly put together. A sleepy yawn had cracked his jaw, and he'd stuffed another bite of omelet in his mouth. Real Meredith hadn't commented at his lethargy. Before they'd left, he'd taken painkillers for pain he hadn't really been having right in front of her.

It'd been easy.

He blinked against tears. The blurry stairwell resided beyond the wall of grief in his eyes. He glanced at his watch and couldn't tell the time. The numbers were mush. How long until Mark would be able to take Derek home? He wiped his face. A door slammed several floors above, and he cowered, but the shuffle of footsteps exited above him, out of sight. He forgot about checking his watch.

"Admit it," Mr. Clark said. "You can't do this. You can't do anything."

Derek put his forehead against the cold metal railing and breathed. His body shivered as Mr. Clark stood over him, gun pointed, a leer on his face. Derek's shoulders curled. He hunched away from the apparition of his murderer, but Mr. Clark wouldn't disappear. Tension rung in Derek's joints like big, loud bells. Low, vibrating, painful. His cross trainers squeaked on the step.

The bag in his hands crinkled. He tore at the staple holding the paper bag closed, and he dumped out the orange prescription bottle within. The childproof cap would have confounded his shaking hands, but he forced himself to stop. Just for a moment. He needed what was inside. He needed it for this to stop. He could keep his hands still for a moment if doing so would make everything stop. He breathed. His exhalations echoed in the silence.

He fished out one Percocet and took it dry. The lump rolled down his throat painfully. He gagged and swallowed again, forcing it down. He took a second pill with the same ritual. He grappled for a third...

The stairwell door in his line of sight opened with a loud clank. He flinched against the railing in surprise, and the third pill he'd pried loose skipped from his hands onto the floor. The pill pinged as it bounced down the steps and came to a stop by Dr. Kepner's feet, where it spun until it settled. He scrambled off the stairs into a standing position. Dr. Kepner stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and showing white all around the diameter of her irises. Her mouth formed a tiny o.

The room flashed, and he stared at her covered head to toe in wet blood. He backed up a step, almost stumbling as the stairwell became his office, and he sat behind his desk. She pushed through the door, a jumble of limbs and panic.

I grew up on a farm, so, you know blood... blood doesn't... doesn't bother me, I... she'd said.

He looked up, and his stomach sank into his shoes.

"Dr. Shepherd," Dr. Kepner said. The stairwell flashed back into place, but the blood on her body stayed like a garish coat of wet paint.

"I'm fine," he said. He scraped a palm against his face. He turned, and he pushed himself up the steps. Away from her. Away from people. Away. "I'm fine."

"Dr. Shepherd, wait," she said. "You dropped your pill..."

Her feet echoed on the stairs, and he pushed to get away from her. From everyone. He made it to the next floor. He opened the door, and it dumped him into bustling crowds. Nurses. Orderlies. Custodial staff. Administrative workers. A breathing, murmuring, flotilla of busy people. The whispers around him kicked into a rumble. Eyes turned. Heat burned his face, but he didn't have time to be embarrassed. The spiders crawled.

The crush of life constricted around him. He dissolved out of sentience into pure flight, no fight. The world around him blurred not just from tears but confusion as over-sensitivity drove him into a deep, ugly pit of panic.

"Run," said Mr. Clark. "Cowards run."

The gun roared in his ears. He fell flat on his back with the impact and stared at the ceiling. His blood seeped out of his body, and he couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't fucking breathe or think or anything. Light flashed. Or was it the ceiling? White. Endless.

A noise shrieked in his ears. He didn't know what. People touched him, and he couldn't get away. He couldn't. A shadow crossed over the world. "Hey!" a woman yelled, the letter 'e' stretched into eternity, and the horrific rumble of voices died to whispers.

"Back up," said the woman. "Give the man some damned space. Shoo!"

He blinked. His grip hurt, he clenched so hard, and the color had drained from his fingers and palms. He couldn't stop crying, but the blur beyond the sheen of salty water looked sort of like a...

He blinked again. A long fucking drop spread out below him. Disorientation made him sway. A sea of wide-eyed faces looked up at him from below. He saw the entrance to the hospital. The place he desperately wished to be. He'd mashed himself against the glass barrier on the catwalk. He had nowhere left to go. People were everywhere behind him, staring. He didn't know how he'd gotten there.

His chest hurt. His legs weren't working. He would fall on his ass if he let go of the railing. Only his precarious balance against the railing held him upright. He couldn't breathe. Lights flickered in and out, and he heard his heart and the rush of blood in his ears more than anything else.

"Back up," shouted the woman behind him, but he heard her voice through what seemed like fifty feet of water.

The spiders skittered. Whispers died into silence.

His grip wasn't enough anymore. He buckled into a sitting position, crunched up against the glass and the railing. His hands slipped loose from the railing and fell into his lap. He shivered as a deep, numbing chill set into his bones, and his head thunked against the glass. He put his head against his knees and hid away in the dark.

A shadow loomed. Somebody touched his shoulder, and he flinched, so overwhelmed with terror that he couldn't even cry out, but whoever it was didn't let go.

"Derek," said a woman. "Derek, look up." She shook his shoulder. "Look at me," she said. "Derek." The hand on his shoulder shifted to his head. She pushed. His muscles had become spaghetti. His neck tilted, and bleary colors replaced solid black as the warmth of his knees left his face, and cool air stroked his skin.

He swallowed. A familiar, tiny body with soft brown eyes knelt in front of him. He shivered. "Miranda," he said. Choked. Gasped. He blinked.

She nodded. "That's right," she said. "Can you stand?"

What little he'd recovered of his breaths dropped way, and the room spun. He couldn't run anymore. He couldn't hide. There was nowhere to go. He needed to be not there, but he couldn't be anywhere else. His innards sank into the floor.

He couldn't breathe.

He was going to die.

"No," Bailey said. She shook him. Panic still thrummed like electricity on a live wire. "Look up," she said. "Look at me. Focus on my voice."

He tried. He did. His heart pounded in his ears, and her voice faded into a dull murmur of which he only caught bits and pieces. It's fine, she said. You're fine, she said. Everything is fine, she said. Fine. Except he wasn't fine, and nothing would stop. The gun roared in his head, and he fell back. The ceiling tumbled over his head. White. Endless white. Like Bailey's lab coat. The blur stretched. He didn't know how much time passed.

"-ok at me," she said. "Look at me, Derek." She patted his cheek. The repetitive motion hit his nerves like drumbeats. "Look. You're fine."

Under her constant, calming assault, fear receded like a slow tide, by inches and inches over eternity, until he didn't feel scared anymore. Just tired. Nauseated. Embarrassed. Unsettled. Stressed. The exited murmurs around him made his face heat. He knew without looking that his fantastic episode of being fine had attracted attention like a Rolling Stones concert.

He rolled his gaze to the left. Thick, navy pant legs blocked almost everything from view. He looked up and blinked. Mark stood beside him like a human shield, blocking Derek from the crush of bodies. Mark's back faced the crowd, but he wasn't looking at Derek either. Mark's lips formed a thin line, and he swallowed against red eyes. The skin underneath his temples leaped as he mashed his jaw again and again.

"Okay?" Bailey said.

Derek couldn't bring himself to speak. Bailey looked up. "Sloan," she said. "Help him up."

Mark turned and frowned. "Dr. Bailey-"

"No," Derek said, more a moan than a word.

Bailey glared. "Did it sound like I was asking for opinions from the peanut gallery?" She pointed to Derek. "You, get up." She pointed to Mark. "You, help."

Before Mark could move, Derek grabbed the railing. He pushed down with his legs and pulled up with his shaking arms. His sternum screamed in protest. Too heavy. But he didn't care. He bit back on a moan of pain, and he pulled himself upright without Mark's help in front of... Eyes. Everywhere. The room swam and blotted out, and Mark grabbed Derek before he fell to the floor again. Derek gasped. The fuzzy blackness resolved after a long, sickening moment that made his stomach churn. The Percocet. He'd forgotten...

Bailey stood in front of them. She waved her arms like an airplane conductor. "This way," she said. She gestured them both away from the Chief's office.

Derek blinked. There must have been two dozen people crammed on the catwalk around him, all with concerned, sad eyes and piteous looks that made his coiling stomach want to heave. Heat flamed across his cheeks. He tried to take a step. His legs were like deadweights. Mark's grip tightened. Derek's arm squashed against his torso and his ribs constricted as Mark crushed him. At least Derek didn't fall, but Mark's grip hurt.

Derek thought about how similar this was to the last time he'd fallen on the catwalk. Last time. Like this would become an annual ritual or something. Mark had caved in Derek's face, and Meredith had walked a hurting Derek off through the crowd. He'd been broken. He'd wanted to die. A laugh twisted from his mouth, and the whispers started again.

He hurt. His body shivered. He swallowed. "Mark," he said, his voice soft and shaking. "Ow."

Mark's grip loosened. "Sorry," he said gruffly.

Derek stared at his feet as they baby-stepped off the catwalk because it meant he didn't have to look at the well-wishers and gawking masses. As he passed the place he'd nearly died, he saw the light grout between the tiles become dark with an ominous stain, and his stomach twisted. Him. He'd bled out his life into the floor, and it'd stuck despite bleach and other things. Forever. He pressed his face into Mark's shoulder and breathed as he moaned, deep and low. The whispers roared in his ears.

"Why aren't any of you working?" Bailey snapped as she pedaled backward, staring at the crowd behind them. "This is a hospital. Don't tell me there's no work to do, because it'll make you a giant pack of liars."

Her piercing voice seemed to set the crowd into motion. They dispersed around him as he and Mark walked. Away. Bailey turned and swiped a small object from the one of the last people left in what had been a mob. She flipped open the phone and started hitting buttons. Derek watched. His stomach twisted again. Somebody had been taking photos? Or...

"Hey, I need that phone," said an offended, scrappy orderly. He was a thin, wiry creature, with the wispy dusting of a beard covering his pale face. His eyes widened as Bailey glared.

"I know you're not playing paparazzi in a hospital," Bailey said.

The orderly's mouth opened. And then shut. And opened. "I was just texting my girlfriend about dinner-"

Bailey held up her hand. "Do I look like I care? Do it elsewhere!"

"But-"

Her eyes narrowed. "Zzt!"

Blush crept across the orderly's face. Bailey pocketed the phone, and she shooed him away. He took her direction to heart, and he rushed off in the opposite direction.

With no crowd left to fend off, Bailey scurried to the place on the railing where Derek had fallen. She picked up the crumpled white bag containing his Percocet. She took the spot on his left side, and the three of them walked down the hallway opposite the Chief's office. Or, rather, Mark and Bailey walked. Derek limped. An eternity passed before they found an empty but open office in the long line down the hall.

The dark, ten-by-ten, matchbox room was full of sprawled papers and open books and other neurosurgery research. The desk plate identified the unkempt office as Dr. Weller's. Derek knew from experience Dr. Weller didn't spend more than about thirty minutes a day in the small closet Seattle Grace had provided him. They shuffled three feet inside the door before Bailey launched for the desk and pulled the wheeling executive chair around for Derek.

"I'm..." Derek managed between pants.

Bailey squeezed the back of the chair. The leather made a squishy noise. "Sit before you fall," she said. The bag containing his pill bottle jingled as she handed it back to him. He clutched it.

A pager bleeped, and Mark groaned as he looked at it. Derek collapsed into the chair, which rolled two inches before the stained carpet caught the wheels like mud. "Fuck," Mark said. "I told them not to page me unless it was a life or death emergency." His gaze shifted back and forth between Bailey and Derek.

Bailey shooed him away. "Go, then."

"But-" Mark said.

Bailey glared. "You're not ignoring an emergency page." She jabbed her thumb in Derek's direction. "He's not dying."

"I'm sorry. I'll be right back," Mark said, and he fled the room at a run, whether to get to the page faster, or to return from the page faster, Derek didn't know.

The door slammed shut, and muffled silence spread into the room like a soft blanket. Dr. Bailey breathed. He breathed. The blood rushed in his ears. His heart beat. But nobody spoke, and he needed that. He settled in his chair and inhaled the musty scent of paper.

"You heard that, right?" Dr. Bailey said.

"What?" he said.

She touched his shoulder and squeezed. "You're not dying."

His stomach quivered, and everything fell out of him. Everything he'd been trying to hold inside. His lungs heaved. He sobbed once, but the rest was quiet grief. Quiet weeping. His breathing stuttered, and his eyes leaked, but he didn't make any noises.

Bailey stood in front of the chair and wrapped her arms around him. She said nothing, but she made soft shushing noises until the tears dried. He didn't have much left. The entire episode lasted two minutes, at best.

He closed his eyes and put his face against his hands as she pulled away. His elbows jammed into his knees as he pressed his weight into himself. His pill bottle rested in his lap. "I'm fine," he said into his palms. His voice came out croaky and wretched.

"I know you're not trying to tell me this is fine," she said in a soft voice. She went to the miniature water cooler by the desk, pulled off a Dixie cup from the stack, and filled it. He raised his head and watched her.

"Miranda..."

She turned. "Shut your fool mouth," she said. She jabbed the cup at him. Water sloshed. "Drink this. Small sips," she said.

He took the cup from her hands. The idea of putting something in his stomach, even water, nauseated him. He took a tiny sip and swirled it in his mouth. The cool feel of the water relaxed him. He swallowed. The water felt good against his hurting throat, and his stomach untied a few knots when the fluid collected there.

"Okay?" Dr. Bailey said.

"Okay," said Derek. He rolled the paper cup against his forehead. The dry, cool paper soothed him. He sighed and took another sip. Another.

"I can't go into the room where Dr. Percy was shot," Dr. Bailey said. "I hid under the bed when Mr. Clark came. He found me, and he yanked me out by my ankles."

"I'm sorry."

Her gaze hardened. "Do I look like I need a pity party?" she snapped.

He blinked. "No."

"Well, don't be a hypocrite and start one then."

Blush bloomed across his features. He didn't have a good reply for that. She sighed, and she squeezed his shoulder.

"They haven't been through this," she said. "They don't know. You just take your time, one day at a time, and you don't worry about them." She pulled the visitor chair away from the desk, rolled it next to his, and sat.

He put his head down against his knees as Mr. Clark laughed in his ears.

"Deep breaths," Bailey said. "You're okay."

"I can't be here," he said. "I need to go home." He reached for his pill bottle and unscrewed the cap. He felt like a uncoordinated blob as he tried to pull a pill loose from the pile.

She grabbed the bottle from him. "How many do you usually take?" she said.

He closed his eyes. "Two. I take... When it's bad."

"You're getting sneaky," Mr. Clark said. "Really."

She dumped out two pills onto her palm. "Why didn't you say anything? Did you wrench yourself when you fell?"

"Sorry," he said as she handed him two pills and screwed the cap shut. While she muttered about idiot male doctors and their pathetic pain management skills, he popped one pill into his mouth and tipped back his water cup. Water sloshed into his mouth and swept the pill down his throat as he swallowed. He took the second pill as well. The room spun as they both settled in his stomach.

"Is somebody supposed to give you a ride?" Dr. Bailey said.

He blinked. The room began slow revolutions as he absorbed more and more of the Percocet from his otherwise empty stomach. A wall of tiredness chased him, threatening to run him down. "Mark," he said.

"Well, Mark just got-" Dr. Bailey's beeper went off, a shrill, sharp sound in the quiet. He flinched at the interruption, and he hated himself for it when he saw her eyes widen at his discomfiture over such a small thing. "Paged," she said as she un-clipped her pager from her belt and squinted at it.

He wobbled to his feet. The room blotted out, and he caught himself against the armrests of the chair. "I need to go home," he said. "I need to-" But he couldn't. If he left the dark office, he would fall apart again. He knew it. He was trapped, and- His vision blurred. Maybe it didn't matter.

Small hands grabbed him and guided him back to the chair. "Did I tell you to stop breathing?" Bailey said.

"Y'asked me a question," he said.

"Well, stop answering, and breathe," she said.

He gestured to her pager. The flick of his wrist felt sloppy. Disjointed. "Wusthat 'n emergency?"

She glared, and he made a show of forcing himself to take long, even breaths. It wasn't difficult. He felt like he was turning to mush. The air turned to molasses. Muffled voices wandered past the closed office door, and he swallowed. The noise took so long to process it didn't really bother him. His muscles loosened. Peace laid a blanket over everything.

"I have to take this page," she said. "I'll find Dr. Sloan for you. Don't move from this spot."

"'Kay."

"Did I tell you to talk?" she said. She backed into the door, but didn't take her eyes off him. "Breathe."

"I am," he said.

"No," she said. "You're talking."

He opened his mouth to reply, but she held up her hand, and he stopped himself. He took a deep breath that inflated him from his belly to his shoulders and blew it out. She seemed satisfied. She nodded. "Don't move," she repeated. He breathed in and out once more, and she left him alone.

He blinked once. Twice. His eyelids seemed kind of stuck. Kind of heavy. He leaned back in the chair and let his head tilt into the head rest. His body slowed down as he breathed. His tension loosened. He stared at the ceiling. There was a brownish, liquid stain near the light fixture shaped sort of like an amoeba.

He heard noises outside the room. People walking. Voices. A fog descended around his body, and though he heard, he didn't process. He breathed, slower. Slower. His heart rate depressed. His eyes closed, and he didn't care anymore. He didn't care about anything. The soft buzz of contentment spread through his veins.

I know you're not playing paparazzi in a hospital, Dr. Bailey had said.

The orderly had said he'd been texting about dinner, but the idea was ludicrous. To be texting about dinner while somebody was having a panic attack fifteen feet away. No, he'd been texting about Dr. Derek Shepherd on his knees. Doctor... Shep. Shh. Derek lost his train of thought. The memory of the phone and the beak-y orderly broke apart. Fear became a distant memory. He could think of the gun. He could think of Gary Clark. He didn't feel a thing when he did except peace.

A vague sigh of relief swept through him.

His lips parted as he lost his conscious willpower. Air swept through his cottony mouth. He breathed, and he heard the rasps in the silent space, but he didn't care. The room spun, but it didn't matter because he wasn't walking. Blackness swirled around him. With his eyes shut, the carousel wouldn't stop. He smiled sloppily. After several revolutions, he became less aware. The carousel continued, but far away. Wispy black became solid black, and then he slept, dreamless.

No sound. No light. Nothing.

"Derek," Meredith said. The noise pierced his abyss. She sounded concerned. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, and she shook him. Earthquake. "Derek, wake up. Derek."

"Mmm," he said. He turned his head into the chair and pushed at her. He wanted to be in the black place. But she wouldn't back off.

"Derek, wake up," she said again. "Derek!"

He squinted at the sharp, smeary colors beyond his eyeballs. He swallowed. "M'dith," he said.

The fleshy blur in the middle of the mess resolved into her face. Meredith. She wore her baby blue scrubs. A smear of dried blood crusted the sleeve. He leaned forward. "Bleedin'," he said. He reached for the stain.

She frowned until she followed his hand. She brushed him away. "It's from a patient. Don't touch it. I need to change. Are you okay?"

He blinked. "M'fine." He stood up to demonstrate, but the room turned fuzzy and black, and the floor disappeared.

Arms wrapped around him. When he caught his breath, he still stood.

"Oops," he said.

Meredith stared at him. "You're stoned," she said. "Did you hurt yourself? Are you hurting? How much did you take? Derek?"

"What..." he said. He took a wobbly step away from the chair. The floor felt like an obstacle course despite being flat and unobstructed. He gripped her shoulder when the room see-sawed.

"Mark's busy. His patient needed emergency surgery."

"Butyer busy, too," he said.

She bit her lip. "That doesn't matter." She hugged him. "You matter."

"Goin' home?" he said. He waded toward the door. The air in the room seemed like liquid. He swam.

She blinked. "Yeah," she said. "Home."

He opened the door. Bright lights slammed into his eyeballs. He blinked, and he held the door frame. His hand slid, and his resolution to stay upright faltered. She held his waist. "Derek, I'm sorry I made you do this," she said. "I pushed too hard, and now you're hurt, and I-"

"M'okay," he said.

She babbled. He couldn't keep track of anything. Words gathered and collided on his tongue, until a gnarled, twisty pile of unspoken syllables rested there, waiting to be said. He lost track of them, too. Lost track of everything. People stared at him in the hallway, and hushed whispers curled around him, but he didn't know why it was important to care. He could barely keep track of his limbs.

He did remember one thing.

"Home," he said. "Please."

She rubbed his back. "We're going," she said. She kept pace with him as he shuffled mindlessly toward the elevator.