Thank you, to EVERYONE who is reviewing! I really appreciate each and every one! This is the second to last chapter in this story.
Then There Were Two
Chapter Twenty-Six
Surprises are what make life fun. They are the things that keep us on our toes, the things that can bring smiles to our face when we think everything around us is dark and broken. They give us hope when we have none. Surprises are usually good. They're usually the things that keep us going, that push us forward when we're at the end of our rope or when the monotony of life is controlling us. It's what we do with those surprises though, that matters. Because in the end, surprises are out of our control. Our response though, is what makes the difference. Sometimes we can keep a good thing going. And sometimes we can't. We fight, though. We fight to keep the happiness in our lives, even when we know it can all be taken away without a moment's warning.
"I should have waited, to take that stupid test." Meredith mumbled, standing slowly from where she'd been leaning over the toilet the next morning.
Derek smiled sympathetically, gently rubbing her lower back. "I don't think the test made you start having morning sickness, Mer."
"You don't know that," She made a face, grabbing her toothbrush. "There must be something about it. Because I wasn't like this yesterday."
"Being sick is a good thing, though," He reminded her. "Means your pregnancy is probably viable at this point. Not being sick would make me worry." He hated that she was throwing up already, but was happy for the little bit of relief it gave him.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"It's supposed to make me feel better." Derek teased, walking back to their room with her once she'd washed the taste of stomach contents out of her mouth. "You should stay home today, and just rest for a while."
"I can't call in just because I'm throwing up, Derek."
He gave her a look, standing there as he leaned against the door frame.
"Not if the throwing up is from being pregnant. I mean, it isn't like I'm going to pass some kind of virus to patients."
"I don't want you overdoing it. It's important that you take care of yourself, Meredith."
So you don't lose another baby. He didn't have to say it. It was implied, and easy for her to read between the lines. "I won't. I know."
"If I have to get the help of the chief to make sure that you aren't pushing yourself too far, I will."
"I don't want anyone to know," Meredith pulled her shoes on while they were talking. "It's still super early, Derek. Things could happen. Bad things. And I don't want to get the looks again. I don't want people to start treating me as if I'm not even there, or like I'm going to break or something. I haven't even seen a doctor yet."
"We don't have to tell anyone right away," The last thing he wanted was to upset her.
"Not even the chief. Especially not the chief. He'll go all daddy on me, and then I won't be able to do anything."
Derek headed downstairs with her, unable to help the amused smile that made its way to his face. "We don't have to tell the chief right now, Mer. But if I feel like you're pushing yourself too far, I'm…"
"I won't." She turned to him at the bottom of the stairs. "I won't push myself too far, Derek. I promise. This baby is just as important to me as it is to you. I went through enough last time to know how important every second is. You don't have to worry."
"Okay," He smiled and kissed her forehead. "Your appointment with doctor…what's her name again?"
"Davis." Meredith laughed. "Since when did you start forgetting stuff?"
"Doctor Davis." Derek smiled, "Eleven, right? I want to make sure that I'm there."
"Eleven. So don't be late." Meredith grabbed her lab coat from the kitchen table, and headed out the door with him.
"I wouldn't be late, Meredith. Not unless it was something out of my control."
"You've missed appointments before." She pointed out. It was only after the words came out of her mouth that she realized how much it probably hurt him. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I'm just, nervous."
"No, it's okay. It's true. I did miss appointments last time. But things are different now, Mer. We're in different places. We're different people. I'm going to be there with you today, on time." He reached over and took her hand once he'd backed out of the driveway.
** GA ** GA ** GA **
"Okay, Derek's all McCheery today and you're all smiley and, happy." Cristina cornered Meredith that morning when she got the chance. "Something's going on."
"There's nothing going on, Cristina. We're just happy. That's all." Meredith struggled against both wanting to share her news with her friend and wanting to keep things a secret just in case something went wrong.
Cristina looked skeptical, "No offense, but the two of you haven't exactly been happy in a while. So you'll have to excuse me if I don't exactly believe your made-up crap."
"More dirty sex," Meredith shrugged. "Sex makes us happy."
"You're always having sex. The two of you, you're like..."
"There you are!" Lexie interrupted the two of them, too caught up in her own excitement to notice the annoyed face that Cristina made. "I've been looking all over for you." She held out two different swatches of red fabric. "For the table runners. Which color?"
"Aren't they both the same?" Cristina rolled her eyes, looking at the two pieces of fabric she was holding up. "I mean, isn't red, red?"
"No." Lexie glanced at her, shaking her head. "This one, the texture is different, see?" She held them out closer to her before turning her attention to Meredith. "So?"
Her excitement left it impossible for Meredith to do anything other than smile and play along, though she did laugh a bit before pointing to one of them. "That one's fine."
"Okay, good. Because I like that one the best too. I think it will work the best, with the black table cloths."
Cristina rolled her eyes. "This is why city hall is such a great idea. Or, a post-it."
"Post-it weddings are fine. For a while. But everyone deserves a real wedding." Lexie narrowed her eyes at Cristina. "Meredith wants a real wedding. With real wedding things. Pretty things. Right?"
Meredith nodded. "Yeah." She smiled. "Speaking of weddings, we should do one more dress fitting before. Just to make sure."
She immediately looked confused, "But you just did that on Saturday. And you've been the same size forever. I mean, you lost your baby weight from…"
"What she's trying to say is that if it fit this weekend, it will fit at the wedding." Cristina interrupted before anything else could be said.
"I know. I just think maybe we should try it on one last time, like a week before." Meredith hoped that neither of them would question her about it. The last thing she wanted was to have to explain that she needed to make sure pregnancy wasn't going to catch up with her and keep her dress from zipping.
"I can let the place know." Lexie offered. She brushed it off simply as her sister being nervous, even if it was completely out of character for her. "We could do it the weekend before, if you can take off work. You could come too, Cristina."
"I'd love to."
The heavy sarcasm in Cristina's voice made Meredith laugh, and she glanced at Lexie just as her pager went off. "That sounds good."
"I have to go, but we have to talk about the flowers later." Lexie glanced down at her pager before heading off down the hallway.
"No offense, but thank God there's only four more weeks of this. I don't think I can take any more of the bubbly bridesmaid's chats about ribbon and fabric and flowers."
"Supportive wedding person, remember?" Meredith looked at Cristina, smiling.
"Oh, yeah." Cristina made a face. "You still owe me an explanation for the happiness. I mean, it's almost as bad as your sister."
"There's nothing, Cristina. Really. We're just happy. People can be happy."
"People can be. You aren't."
Meredith sighed, knowing that sooner or later she was going to find out anyway. Despite her conversation earlier that morning with Derek, she didn't want to end up lying to her best friend, lying to her person. "You can't say anything."
"So there is something." Cristina walked with her into the supply closet, definitely having absolutely no idea what sort of news she was in for.
"I took a test yesterday."
"A pregnancy test?" Cristina Yang stared at her friend, definitely shocked. She'd mentioned trying for a baby the day before, but she definitely hadn't thought she meant she could be pregnant so soon. "I thought you guys just started trying."
"We did. But it was positive. I have an appointment today, at eleven."
"Wow." She stood there for a moment, her shock obvious. "Wow!" Finally, there was a smile. "That's great! Congratulations!" She hugged her, then slowly pulled away. "We're happy, right? I mean, I'm guessing from the smiles, we're happy?"
Meredith laughed and nodded. "Yeah, but you can't tell anyone. It's still really early, and I'd like to wait. I told Derek he couldn't tell anyone. So, you don't know. You don't know, until I tell him you know."
"You're in luck, because he and I, we don't really talk all that much anyway."
"So I've noticed."
** GA ** GA ** GA **
Meredith spent the next few hours of her morning rounding with her interns and dealing with a few problems in a post-op patient from the week before. By eleven o'clock that morning she was already exhausted and more than ready for a break even if it did mean a trip upstairs where she would be a patient once again. It was a good thing this time, or at least she hoped so. The shock from the previous day had worn off and Meredith found herself truly excited about the baby she was having, the baby she and Derek were having. They were finally going to be parents, she was finally going to be a mommy. There would be a baby to put in the crib that Derek had insisted on putting together himself.
Still, in the back of her mind she thought about what could be. She thought about the million things that could still go wrong. In the back of her mind there was fear that she could miscarry, that she would miscarry. There was fear that she would end up in the hospital again, that there would be another accident. There was fear every time she got in the car, every time she thought about Mark Sloan. Things had been easier, before she was pregnant. Things had been easier before the test. It had been easier to forget about everything; it had been easier to forget about Gary Clark. Now that memory was fresh again, he was haunting her. He was back in her dreams, taking over her thoughts as she walked across the catwalk to Derek's office.Go away. It was more than a year ago. You can't hurt me anymore. Go away.
"Hey," Derek smiled when he saw her, meeting up with her just as she stepped on the elevator. Like the gentleman he was, he held the door for her, letting her go in first. "You okay?" Right away he noticed that she seemed distracted. "Mer?" He repeated her name when she didn't answer right away.
"What?" Hearing her name was enough to pull her out of her thoughts, out of the living nightmare she suddenly felt like she was trapped in.
"Are you okay?" He looked even more concerned when he realized that she hadn't even heard him, though he tried not to jump to conclusions that there was something wrong. There was no reason she couldn't have a perfectly normal pregnancy, even after all that had happened last time, though he had to take a moment to remind himself of that.
"I'm fine," Meredith smiled, doing her best to assure him that she really was okay, though she could tell by the look on his face that he knew something was up. "Just thinking. A little nervous about the appointment, that's all."
"Everything's going to be great, Meredith." He reached over and took her hand as they stepped off of the elevator together. "Did you get something to eat this morning?"
"Yeah," She was reassured by his insistence that things were going to go right this time around, and just like it always did, just having him there with her helped calm her growing nerves. "Cristina and I went down to the cafeteria and grabbed something between patients. I told her, about the baby."
"I thought you wanted to wait," He wasn't too surprised, though, despite the conversation they'd had earlier that morning. Cristina and Meredith had the type of relationship that few people understood, and he knew good and well that he was only beginning to figure it out. It just wasn't realistic to think that she'd keep such big news from her, even if she had insisted that they didn't tell anyone.
"I did, but she was bugging me about something being up. I tried, but I couldn't lie to her about it."
"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Mer. Do you really think I thought you'd be able to keep that from her? You and Cristina, you tell each other everything."
"I still don't want anyone else to know."
"We won't tell anyone else. Not until you're ready." He assured her, sitting down with her in the waiting room of the clinic upstairs after she signed in.
"Wanna make a bet on how far along I am?" Meredith glanced over to him as they sat there waiting for her name to be called, trying to at least talk about something to keep her mind off of her worry.
Derek smiled, thinking about what she said for a moment. He was glad that she seemed to be calming down some, and was definitely reassured that she was trying to make conversation with him rather than retreat into her own thoughts. "What kind of conditions are we talking about?"
"Winner gets off kitchen duty for a week," Meredith said after thinking about it for a moment. "So, what do you say?"
Derek laughed, reaching over to take her hand. He didn't care that there were a few other couples there. In that moment, he was concerned only with his wife and the baby they were going to have. "I'm going to say seven weeks."
"Seven weeks?" Almost instantly, Meredith made a face. "There's no way I'm seven weeks along already. I would have missed a period, or at least figured it out before now."
"I'm sticking with my guess." He wasn't swayed by her disbelief.
"Fine, but you're about to be cooking for seven days. And nothing gross. I have to eat for two. We need good food. Fried food, and pasta."
Derek laughed, shaking his head. "You can eat whatever you want, Mer. Whatever makes you happy and clogs your arteries."
"Paranoid." She teased, a smile on her face as a nurse stepped out and called her name. "Five weeks. That's my guess. Be prepared to lose." Letting go of his hand, she got up and followed the nurse back to the exam room. Once her vitals had been taken and a few basic questions were answered, the two of them are alone again. "How did you hear about this doctor, anyway? We could have just used Dr. Hayes."
"Addison said she was going to come down and see you herself, so we didn't really think there was any reason for you to see a high-risk OB-GYN right now. This pregnancy is normal, Mer. We don't have to worry about the same things we worried about the last time. This lady should be just fine. My scrub nurses like her." He shrugged.
"Just because things are okay now doesn't mean they will stay that way." She pointed out. "And since when are you all laid-back about this?"
"I'm not laid-back. I'm just saying that it isn't going to do us any good to worry about it if we don't have to." He sat down in the chair next to the exam table. He would never tell her, but Derek was just as scared as she was. He just chose to keep it to himself instead of making her nerves worse than they already were.
"I like this Derek." Meredith admitted, swinging her feet a bit as they dangled over the edge of the exam table.
He had opened his mouth to respond just as the doctor stepped into the room. Derek got up to shake her hand, introducing both himself and Meredith.
"It's nice to meet you both." She had a genuine smile on her face as she put Meredith's chart on the counter. "I'm sure you both know who I am. But just in case, Emily Davis. I read over your chart from your last pregnancy. You were seen by quite a few people. Was it Dr. Montgomery that was your primary physician?"
The mention of her last pregnancy made her a little uneasy, but Meredith tried not to think about it. She knew the doctor was just doing her job, and was actually reassured by the fact that she'd taken the time to look at her history. "She was, for the most part. Dr. Hayes did see me some though. After the accident, Addison took over again."
"We're going to do everything we can, Meredith, to make sure that we don't have a repeat of your last pregnancy. It's likely though, that we won't see any of those same symptoms. As I understand it, you had a lot going on during your first trimester last time around. High levels of stress can cause premature labor."
"I also had a pretty bad infection." Meredith pointed out. She wasn't exactly comfortable with the conversation, but she recognized that there was no way out of it. "Do you think it's okay, for me to see you? I mean, you don't think I need someone for high risk pregnancies?"
"I don't consider you to be high risk." Dr. Davis smiled. "But lets not get ahead of ourselves. I want to get a urine pregnancy test, some blood work, and do an ultrasound before we talk about anything else. It's easier to predict things if we can at least get a good idea of how far along you are first."
Derek gave Meredith's hand a gentle squeeze, knowing she was getting more nervous with the mention of her pregnancy with Grayson. He stayed quiet though, knowing opening his mouth would likely only result in saying something that would make things worse for her.
It was a good hour later that doctor Davis sat down with them again to discuss the results of Meredith's pregnancy test as well as what she'd seen from the ultrasound. "You're most definitely pregnant." She started with the easiest thing first, knowing that the couple in front of her was waiting on that assurance, the assurance that they weren't going to end up with more heartbreak. "From the dates of your last period and the ultrasound we did here today, I'm putting your due date as September 24th."
"That's just a couple of weeks after your birthday." Meredith pointed out, glancing over to her husband. She smiled when she saw the unmistakable tears in his eyes. He'd been scared. She realized, in that moment, that he'd been just as scared as she was that things weren't going to be okay. There was hope now, though, and a smile had settled on her face. Meredith was allowing herself to be happy, and hopeful.
"So that means she's…how far along?" Derek squeezed Meredith's hand gently, brushing his thumb over her skin. He managed to get his tears in check, not wanting to come across like some sap, even though he knew Meredith could see straight though him.
"She's right at six weeks. And I don't think, from anything I've seen here today, that there is any cause for the two of you to be concerned." Dr. Davis smiled.
Meredith made a face before the woman standing there could continue. "That means no one won the bet. I was looking forward to having my own chef for a week."
"We get take out anyway." Derek laughed softly, glancing over to her though his attention went back to Emily Davis. He wanted to make sure that he listened to everything she said. Even if he was a physician, his expertise wasn't in pregnancy.
"My only concern is that you do have a very busy work life, and you have long shifts with relatively no time to rest." Emily did laugh a bit with the two of them, but also managed to keep the appointment on track. "I want to make sure that you're taking care of yourself and that you're allowing yourself to be off your feet and to get some extra sleep. That may mean talking to the chief of surgery and getting your hours reduced. I'm not saying that you're going to have anything go wrong, but I am saying that if you want to safeguard this pregnancy, you need to take some precautions."
Meredith nodded, agreeing with what the doctor was saying even if she hated that it meant spending more time away from the hospital. Just like she had before though, she would do whatever it took to make sure that they had a healthy baby. It was obvious that another loss would be too much for either of them to handle, and she wasn't about to be a contributing factor to complications in this pregnancy. "When do you need to see me back?"
"A month should be fine. Between now and then, just give me a call if you have any questions or concerns." Dr. Davis stood and shook both of their hands again before picking up her chart. "Again, congratulations to the both of you."
Meredith turned to Derek when they were alone again. "We're having a baby!" It wasn't until that moment that her own tears fell, and he reached over to wipe them away.
"I love you, Mer. I love you, and this baby." His hand rested on her flat stomach as he leaned over and kissed her. In that moment, Derek finally truly believed that they were going to get their chance, that he was going to get a chance to be a dad; he was going to get a chance to raise a baby with the woman he loved.
*Revised 6/2017