Three's a Fantasy

Derek and Meredith, Mark and Derek

Derek rarely ordered dessert, but today, having a late lunch with Meredith in her beautiful dress at the five star Kobe Steak House, he felt like splurging on something sweet. He asked Meredith to choose something, knowing they'd end up sharing it.

"Hm, I don't know, Derek, this dessert menu has six pages! For heaven's sake, I want everything," she laughed, crinkling her nose, "You choose."

"Meri, you know I'm boring. I always go for the crème brulèe or the strawberry chocolate tart. Why don't you pick something you want that's more extravagant?"

Meredith took him at his word, ordering a mile high torte that both of them together had absolutely no chance of finishing. When it arrived at their table Derek grinned at Meredith's wide eyed little girl excitement. He teased her by pretending to hog the whole dessert to himself, only letting her have a taste on his lips when he kissed her between bites.

"Derek, you're so mean! Either kiss me for real or give me the dessert, I can't take this teasing!" she pouted, even though her eyes belied her words, sparkling with good humor.

Laughing and giving in, Derek kissed her full on and then slid the huge dessert in front of her. Three forkfuls was more than enough for him. He sipped his coffee and watched Meredith consume half of what was left with delicate greed. She loved desserts and this was so delicious. She smiled at Derek, enticing him to kiss the chocolate crumbs from her lips, and hummed in appreciation when he did just that.

They'd been reminiscing about the bomb episode in their lives throughout lunch. It had been a harrowing experience for all of them, but especially for Derek, because of all his regrets. Neither Mark nor Meredith had regrets.

Derek commented now, "I still can't believe how much you scared Mark and me."

"You mean after the explosion?" Meredith asked, nonchalantly licking her fork.

"Hell yes, I mean after the explosion," Derek growled, having a visceral reaction to the awful memory...

Seattle Grace Surgical Wing shuddered from the explosion in its bowels. The skeleton crew working on the lower floor stared at each other in horrified shock. Screams, cries and moans rent the air. Then everyone was in motion, the police and the senior medical staff shouting orders, but the bomb squad guys were still in command and would let no one past. They had to scope out the situation for themselves first, before anyone else was put at risk, even if it was to save survivors.

Mark and Derek hit the barricade of police and weren't let through any more than Cristina was. They were utterly frantic. If Meredith weren't dead, she soon would be, if they couldn't get to her and stop the bleeding. Their exhortations fell on deaf ears. The bomb specialists knew that they'd likely lost their friends too, but they stood firm, in protection mode.

Derek was the first to realize they had to go around if they couldn't go through. He knew every nook and cranny of Seattle Grace.

"Mark, come on!" he shouted in the melèe.

Then he ran down a side hallway to the back stairs. Police heavily barricaded them too so Derek kept running, Mark only a step behind. The further they got from the main entrance the quieter and more abandoned everything was, but every access was blocked.

"Fuck this!" Derek shouted and ran outside, back in through a service entrance, and then into a hidden courtyard, between Grace and the Seattle Grace Convention Center Annex.

Mark finally saw where they were going. There was a black metal stair case leading up to the helipad on the roof. They ran panting up the stairs to the roof and then to the doors of the top floor. Derek pulled out a set of keys and they were in, running down the interior flight of stairs to the surgical suites floor. The police had blocked access at the doors on other floors, not on the stair well itself. Mark and Derek burst through the doors and stopped in horrified shock. Even knowing that a bomb had gone off, they still hadn't been prepared for the destruction. No one who has never been at a bombed out site can ever imagine the reality of the scorched out floor, walls and ceiling; the blown out windows, door frames, and furniture; the stench of the blast, the burned debris, and the burned flesh. It had been a relatively small blast, but even so, it was horrific. They forced themselves to move forward, hope waning as the reality of an explosion set in.

The excavating bomb squad team at the far end of the hall (which they later learned had to break through the blast wedged door) shouted at them, but they were already leaping for OR 6 where Burke and Meredith had moved their patient. Meredith was no where to be seen so far. They stopped just inside the OR's open door, years of training taking over and restricting them from violating whatever sterile space Burke had been able to maintain for his patient.

The room was eerily well lit, after the semi gloom in the hallway, from the emergency generators that activated automatically with the fire alarms. Burke, his head lamp in place, casting strange beams around the room, was frantically trying to fix the gash in his patient's heart. He, himself, had inflicted it with a scalpel when the explosion had slammed his hand unnaturally across Mr. Carlson's open chest. His scrub nurse was covered in blood and ash. She had been standing between the open door and the patient, across the table from Burke, where she'd moved a moment before the bazooka shell's fulmination. Her ankle had been broken when the concussion had slammed her into the operating table but she was gamely standing on one leg trying to retract and suction for Burke. His other nurse was still ventilating the patient with an ambu bag, calling out readings from digital readouts overhead, and administering drugs while trying to protect the patient's open chest from all the lightly floating debris. All of them had been pelted with lethal force glass shards, but their flak jackets had mostly protected them. Burke was cut across the face, bleeding, but that was all. Their OR had been mostly protected and their equipment was still working. They'd been amazingly lucky.

Burke saw surgeons in his doorway and almost shouted, "Where the hell have you been?! Help us, now!"

Derek dutifully grabbed the nearest disinfectant and poured it over his own hands and Mark's. A six foot five bomb squad guy in a black uniform and flak jacket arrived at the door to bully them away from his crime scene, but they quickly shouted they were surgeons. They were needed. Both knew that Meredith wasn't in the hallway, at least not in plain sight, and she wasn't in the OR. And now they couldn't leave Burke to go look for her. Derek's heart sank as he pulled on a sterile gown and gloves, but he couldn't make himself ask Burke the question. Mark, pulling on his own gown and gloves, fully intended to do the bare minimum, and then leave this stupid son of a bitch on the table to his fate. To his way of thinking it was all his fault for making a bazooka shell, for God's sake, in the first place. Who, in their right mind, would think that was a good idea? It did not bypass him that this gormless wonder on the table may well have killed Meredith. If Derek could ignore the irony, he couldn't. Meredith may still be lying somewhere hurt and bleeding! They had to find her. Both Derek and Mark refused to believe the specks of blood and guts that decorated every surface of the entire floor had once been the deceptively fragile looking, sad lady who had managed to charm two cynical New Yorkers into love and happiness.