Well, frankly, I'm surprised I've managed to post this at all. I don't remember the last time I had free time. I even missed Grey's on Thursday:( If anyone has the link for a .torrent file, it would be much appreciated. Thanks for all of you who are sticking with me! Anyway, hope you enjoy :) you might get another chapter next weekend.
anything.you.want: Yeah, Derek was a bit of an ass... but he's a scared daddy!
FauxPoesFoes: Desiree is a bit of a wild child...
ajikan321: Caden's hair is the same colour as Meredith's. (in the first season... light brown or dark blonde... I can't really decide what the difference is.)
Disclaimer: Not mine.
"Are you ok, baby?" Derek asked, gently pressing a hand to his daughter's forehead. Her fever had gone down; she felt a normal temperature. The IV meds had done their job earlier that day.
"Yeah, I'm fine, Daddy," she said sleepily, rolling over to face him.
"That's good," he said, leaving the glass of water on the table. Cinderella jumped up onto the bed, and rested her nose on Desiree's hand. Derek smiled as she lifted a slender hand to scratch her ears. He slowly left the room, leaving the door open only a crack.
He ran a hand through his hair, trying desperately to forget what had happened when Kamila was a baby. He slid down the wall outside his daughter's room and rested his head in his hands. After a moment, he realized that the object of his distress was nothing more than the flu. The flu that infected people every day, and generally wasn't life threatening. He also realized that didn't change anything at all.
Meredith came out of the twins' room and sat down beside him. "I'm sure there are more comfortable places in this house to sit than on the hardwood floor."
"Yeah, I'm sure there are," he sighed.
"You can't forget," Meredith said, fingering her wedding ring. Derek grasped her hand.
"You're right, I can't forget," he said.
"Well you don't have to, you know. Just try to remember that the two incidents are entirely unrelated."
"How can you not be scared?" he asked as he shifted towards her.
"I am more scared than I'm letting on. This is her first sickness since her surgery, beyond a sore throat or some sniffles. I'm scared. I didn't want to leave her after I picked her up from school, but I had to save someone's life. She's going to be fine, I have to at least pretend to believe that, because when I do pretend, eventually it sort of becomes real, you know?" she turned to look at her husband.
"Yeah, you're right. I know you're right. I just can't deal with this."
"Yes you can. We can. She's fine; the meds that Melia gave her worked wonders."
"She doesn't have a fever anymore," Derek said, heaving himself up off the floor and heading towards their bedroom. Meredith smiled and followed suit.
"That's good."
---
"If I were you, I wouldn't do that," Meredith said when she caught Nicholas trying desperately to take one of her neuro patient's chart from another intern.
"I was just checking it out." He shrugged nonchalantly, and prayed Meredith didn't notice that his ears were burning.
"I stole charts when I was an intern," Meredith told him with a sly grin as they walked down the hallway, "I was just far better at doing it away from the prying eyes of those who can make my life miserable."
He opened his mouth, and was still slightly speechless when they walked into the neonatal ICU. "How is she?" Meredith asked.
"A bit better. No change with her leg though."
"Well it doesn't look like she'll ever have control of that leg. The CT showed abnormal cell growth in the left of the frontal lobe... I want to get the mass out, but I really don't want to operate on her this young," Meredith bit her lip. "It's possible to biopsy the mass without doing damage?" she wanted to make sure.
Alex nodded, "No more damage than it would anyone else."
Meredith's pager went off. "Alright, Dr. Keenan, Dr. Karev will help you perform a biopsy on this baby. Come find me when the results come in. If it's benign, I don't want to operate yet."
Nick's face softened when she turned around. Meredith saw him watching her out of the corner of her eye, and paused, but her pager went off again and she left the room as fast as she could.
She stopped for a moment when she shut the door and leaned against it. Addison came around the corner and noticed Meredith looking slightly flustered. "Are you ok, Meredith?" she asked trying not to sound concerned.
"What? Oh, um, yeah, I was just going to – to answer this page," she gestured towards the pager and took off down the hall. Addison shook her head in confusion, and entered the neonatal ICU.
"What are you doing with her?" Addison asked Alex and his intern as she checked the chart of her own infant. She sighed as she saw that his stats were dropping due to the small left chamber of his heart.
"I'm going to show Dr. Keenan here how to do a brain biopsy on an infant. Meredith wants to find out of the mass of cells is benign or not. She doesn't want to operate on her this young."
"Well, she knows what she's doing," Addison sighed. She suddenly looked up, listening to her infant's heart monitor. It was slowing down. "Dammit, he's crashing," she dropped the chart and Dr. Keenan was immediately at her side, preparing the IV. The infant's heart stopped. "Push two of epi," she ordered.
They watched with bated breath. Finally, there was a 'beep… beep' coming from the monitor, and they all let out a sigh of relief. "That was intense," Nick breathed.
"Yeah, well, it's not like you've never seen a code blue before," Alex commented. Nick looked slightly embarrassed. "Go, prep her for the biopsy."
Addison watched them leave and sank into her chair. As she wrote on the chart, she thought about Meredith. She'd seen the flustered face before; every time she and Derek came out of the on call room together, trying to be inconspicuous. She sighed and hoped for the sake of her friends' marriage that nothing fishy was going on.
---
"Dr. Keenan," Meredith came around the corner and saw him standing beside her office door, "Are the results in?"
Nick turned around suddenly and without a word, pressed Meredith against the wall, his mouth hard on hers. Meredith squirmed and pushed him away with her hands on his chest, "What the hell do you think you're doing?!" she hissed as he hit the wall. "I'm married." Meredith heard a door open and both she and Nick whipped their heads around to look at the newcomer.
"What's going on?" Derek asked, shutting the door to his office, a chart in his hand.
"Nothing," Nick said, rubbing the back of his neck.
"What's going on, Meredith?" he asked again.
"Keenan, go get the lab results," Meredith ordered, fire in her eyes. "Derek, let's talk over here," she took his arm and led him into her own office."
"What did he do?" Derek asked.
"He kissed me," she said, simply. She waited for her husband's reaction. It came with a fury.
"HE WHAT?!" he exploded, turning towards the door to go after the intern.
"Don't, please, Derek, don't," Meredith sighed, grabbing his arm.
"Tell me you didn't like it," his eyebrows were pulling together, memories of Mark and Addison flooding back, "tell me."
She looked into his gorgeous eyes, and quickly managed to reassure him, "No, I didn't. That's why I pushed him away. The sound you heard, that was him hitting the wall after I pushed him. Derek, he's just a cocky kid."
He stared at her, and saw nothing but the truth in her face. He took her into his arms and exhaled heavily, so relieved that she was still his. He was going to have to do something about the intern though.
---
"Dr. Carry," Derek greeted the resident with a smile, "Is Nicholas Keenan your intern?"
"Yes, he is," the stout man said, leaning against the counter at the nurses' station, "Why do you ask?"
"Well, I know he's assigned to Meredith to study neuro, and I was just wondering if I could take him under my wing myself. You know, I've had a lot more experience than her and therefore I have a lot more to teach. Plus, I would really like an intern that is interested in neuro helping with my paralysis case."
"I don't see why I can't assign him to you, so long as the other Dr. Shepherd doesn't mind."
"Excellent. Good day, Dr. Carry."
"Dr. Shepherd," he nodded at Dr. Shepherd's retreating back.
---
Derek arrived home that night to the sound of easy Bach and the aroma of a roast in the oven. Desiree hit him in the knees with a hug, and Caden proudly showed him a drawing that he'd done in school. "Hi, Der," Meredith called from in the kitchen.
"Dr. Keenan's on my service now," Derek hung up his coat and let his bag rest at the foot of the stairs.
Meredith's head came around the corner, "Why?"
"I spoke to his resident, and we came to the agreement that he'd do better under my service."
Meredith's face set into an annoyed expression, "He'd learn more with you than with me," she verified, crossing her arms.
"That's what his resident thinks. I, on the other hand, think that perhaps he'd be able to… focus more under my service," he told her a little smirk on his face.
Meredith couldn't let herself be mad anymore. She began to laugh. Desiree and Caden stared at her. Derek began to laugh too. Before long Meredith and Derek were both bent double, laughing so hard they couldn't breathe. A timer went off in the kitchen and Meredith stumbled into the kitchen to save dinner, gasping, "Thank you!"
---
"What are you doing after school today?" Kiera asked Desiree as they pulled their coats on.
"To the stables; I'm getting a new horse today. They're bringing her down from Kamloops, in Canada," she was so excited. Since she began riding horses five years ago, she'd ridden horses belonging to the stable. Now that she was older, her parents decided it was time for her to get her own horse, and this new horse was her birthday present. She was twelve as of last week.
"That's so cool!" Kiera exclaimed as they separated to get on their respective buses, "You have to tell me about it tomorrow!"
"For sure!" she climbed on the bus. Caden sat down beside her after a moment. He pushed his glasses up his nose and pulled his sketch book out of his backpack. "You're coming with me?" Desiree asked him.
"Duh," he never looked up from his drawing of the ninjas.
Desiree smiled. She could always count on her brother to stick by her side; being a pain in the neck the entire time. As she saw the bus pull away, she saw her sister talking animatedly with Adam. They were inseparable; best friends. They were almost as close as Desiree and Caden were, and that really said something.
Kamila brushed her long curly hair behind her shoulders. It fell to the middle of her back in perfect blond ringlets, "Do you want to come over to work on the science with me?" she asked her friend.
"Yeah, sure," Adam said, bending down to tie his shoe, "Do you have the textbook? Cause I didn't bring mine home with me."
Kamila rolled her eyes, "Do you ever do your homework?"
"No," he shrugged. They laughed together before getting onto the bus.
"So have, uh, have you talked to Kendra lately?" Adam asked, leaning against the window.
"Well, we do sit beside each other in French," Kamila raised her eyebrows.
"How is she? What with her dad getting remarried and all."
"She's angry. You can't exactly expect anything else from Kendra."
"Yeah I guess not." They segued into a conversation about something funny their teacher had done in science that day that left them both hysterical with laughter when they got off the bus. The house was empty when Kamila let herself in with the key she'd been given when she turned twelve almost two years ago.
"Where're the twins?"
"Desiree got a horse for her birthday last week. Caden's probably gone down to the stable with her."
"Oh," Adam opened the refrigerator and began digging around for the excellent yogurt the Shepherds always had.
"Can you grab me one too?" Kamila spread her books out onto the kitchen table.
"Yeah," Adam slid a raspberry one onto the table with a spoon for her. Raspberry was Kamila's favourite. She caught his eye with a smile, and there was a pause before she said thank you where they just stared at each other.
---
Find those who will stick with you. They might be family, and they might be people you've chosen as family. They may even be friends that feel like your family. But those people are the ones that will be with you no matter what, and no matter what may come between you, everything will work out for the best.
