A/N: I don't own it, obviously!
Thank you all SO MUCH for the sweet comments on my last two stories. I appreciate it so much and they make me smile whenever I read them! This story is definitely not my favorite but I've been racking my brain for ideas lately and this is what I came up with. Life has been crazy for me so I wrote this short story in the little free time I have. Since it seems I talk about my inspiration for things in these author notes, the inspiration for this is ME! I am a proud band kid.I have been in band since 5th grade and I was in one of the top audition only concert ensembles at my university as well as the marching band and athletic bands. We were basically treated as student athletes. My experience in band was entirely different than what was described in Grey's when Derek and Bailey talked about it. First of all, since a lot of stories on here seem to think hockey players aren't in band and that there's no way Derek played hockey as he said in season 10 and was in band like he told Bailey. I am here to prove that wrong! Three members of my high school band were on the varsity hockey team and one member was on the varsity football team. He used to march in our halftime shows in his football uniform! Secondly, at least at my school, band kids were respected the heck out of and we definitely don't all fit the geeky idea that probably pops in your head when you think about band. I know that's not the case everywhere but it was for me and I am so grateful for that. Third, the people I met in band are like my family but I definitely do not keep up with most of them, like Alexander in this story. Even so, you definitely do run into band kids everywhereas the title to this story suggests. I ran into a band kid in a different country once and when you do run into them you are immediately transported back to good band memories. This takes place around now (April 2021), Derek obviously didn't die and COVID is either non-existent or the fictional surgery was bad enough that a visitor was allowed in. Anyways, that's definitely enough for now. Enjoy!
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The Derek Shepherd Alexander Verlice remembered was absolutely nothing like the Derek Shepherd that stood before him at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital on a rainy Monday afternoon.
The name had sounded familiar. That was his first thought when his wife's oncologist had recommended they she get a consult from Dr. Derek Shepherd in Seattle. He wasn't sure where he knew the name from but Dr. Ford helped set up a consult with the neurosurgeon and they had driven up to Seattle from Portland that weekend.
He had called his mom after the appointment with Dr. Ford and told her that they were going to visit a neurosurgeon in Seattle. The first thing she said after hearing the name was, "Derek Shepherd? As in Carolyn and Christopher's son? The boy you were in band with from elementary school through high school?" and a light bulb in Alexander's head went off.
Alexander hadn't kept in touch with many of his high school band friends since their graduation nearly forty years prior. He was friends with a few of them on Facebook, followed a few on Instagram and occasionally ran into one or two when he was back on the east coast visiting his parents. Derek Shepherd was not one of those few and the man standing in front of him was nothing like the teenager that resided in his memory but Alexander couldn't deny it was him. His voice sounded the same, albeit slightly deeper, his eyes were still the piercing blue he remembered from his childhood and the laugh was the same, instantly transporting Alexander back to the band room and the pranks he had played on his fellow band mates.
Beyond that, the Derek Shepherd Alexander remembered was fairly scrawny, played the alto saxophone, had acne, and did not know what the words "hair product" meant. Even so, he played hockey and was best friends with Mark Sloan, the boy everyone in their high school wanted to be just like. He knew that Derek had attended Bowdoin College after high school, but beyond that he knew nothing of his former friend's new life.
The Derek Shepherd that stood in front of him was a neurosurgeon. Confident, no longer scrawny, and had definitely discovered hair product. Alexander couldn't help but think that the name of the hospital he currently stood in was uncanny considering the best friend of only Sloan he knew stood right in front of him.
Derek didn't seem to remember who Alexander was at that consult, or he just didn't connect the dots. Alexander didn't blame him. It had been forty years after all and he hadn't connected them on his own either. Anyways, he didn't want to distract the man who was about to have his hands in his wife's brain so he decided to not say anything. At least not right away. Instead, he just observed.
Derek Shepherd had turned into an amazing man, that was for certain. He was kind, confident enough that you trusted him but not so much that it was annoying and he answered every single question Alexander's wife directed his way, including the ones about his personal life that made Alexander cringe.
"Are you married, Dr. Shepherd?" Julie Verlice asked a few days after her first surgery.
Derek looked up from the chart he was reading as he walked into the room. He smiled widely, "Yes, I am."
"For how long?" Julie asked, "She's a lucky woman."
Derek chuckled, "I'd like to think so."
He paused for a moment, setting down the chart on the table that was beside Julie's bed.
"We've been married for twelve years."
"Any kids?"
"Julie," Alexander warned. She was asking far too many personal questions this morning.
Derek smiled again, "Three. Two girls and a boy."
"Ohh," Julie sighed, "I bet they're beautiful."
"I'll bring a photo the next time I'm here," Dr. Shepherd laughed, "My phone is dead, otherwise I'd show you one now."
Over the next few weeks, thanks to his wife's prying questions, Alexander learned that Derek's wife is also a surgeon, the head of the general surgery department at the very hospital they were in now. Derek had spent time working for the President of the United States and his little sister, Amelia, was the head of neurosurgery at Grey Sloan, which surprised Alexander even more than hearing all that Derek had accomplished.
On their last day in the hospital, Alexander decided to tell Derek who he was.
"I don't know if you remember me," he began, but was cut off.
"I remembered you from the minute you introduced yourself and my mom called that night saying she had talked to your mom," Derek laughed, "just wanted to see if you'd say anything."
So Alexander became friends with Derek Shepherd on Facebook and followed him on Instagram. Derek was still friends with Mark, kind of. He learned through Facebook and Google that the hospital was named after Mark Sloan and Lexie Grey, Derek's wife's sister. They had died in a plane crash almost ten years ago. A plane crash that Derek was in himself. He learned that Derek had been shot at work many years prior, reminding Alexander far too much of the day in middle school when his class was told that Derek wasn't going to be in school for awhile because his dad had been shot at work and Derek was there to see it happen.
He learned that Derek's oldest child wanted to become a neurosurgeon, that his middle child loved to fish, and that his youngest would never cut down a tree. He was unbelievably smart and unbelievably talented. He had an ego so big it even came across in his social media posts but he loved his family more than anything else. He was definitely nothing like the boy Alexander had once known, but at the same time, was exactly like the boy he had once known. He was definitely glad to add Derek Shepherd to his short list of band kids he kept in touch with almost forty years after their last interaction.
If you had told seventeen-year-old Alexander Verlice that the kid that sat next to him in the band, laughed at fart jokes like any teenage boy and didn't know how to do his hair would be a world renowned neurosurgeon operating on his wife one day, he would have laughed in your face. Fifty-seven-year-old Alexander Verlice, though, was proud to say that his high school band friend became a neurosurgeon and saved his wife's life, confirming what he already knew. Band kids were and still are the best kids.