Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, dialogue and scenes from the show belong to Shondaland Media, ABC and/or Disney Corporation.
A/N: Another long chapter, hopefully offering some background on what Derek has been up to while away from Meredith. Last chapter before he reunites with the family though and an explanation of how he ends up in Zurich.
Apologies for any liberties I have taken about the German medical system. I tried to research it best I could, but it is drastically different than the Canadian system that I am more familiar with. Please treat any conversation italicized in this chapter as having occurred in German.
~Juist, Germany, Present Day~
"Derek! Are you listening?" Hans asks impatiently after the Derek fails to respond to his question.
"Sorry, what was that?" Derek replies in English, shakes his head, then repeats his question in German.
Despite obtaining a Goethe C2 language certificate, Derek finds he still instinctively thinks and speaks in English. It wasn't so bad when he was seeing a patient or in a social setting surrounded by just the locals who typically spoke German but in the privacy of his home, he still gravitated towards his native language.
"Have you thought of coming with me to Zurich? Klausman Institute Conference? You need a break; you haven't left the island in a month! and you haven't gone past Norden in over a year outside of taking exams. You need to relax… I'm concerned about you."
"What do I need to leave Juist to relax for? Just look!" Derek points to the view outside of their shared home. The sun was setting past the marina watch tower, the yellows and red colours of the setting sun glistening against the Wadden Sea, the water gently lapping against white sand beach.
"I hike, I fish, I bike. Some can say those are very relaxing! Besides… you're supposed to be retired. What are you going to a medical conference for?"
"Technically, I am not fully retired yet, not until I sign off you've completed all your PJ hours and you can practice on your own." the old man grumbles.
"Technically, I don't need to do anything, do not try to guilt trip me, you could've retired! You're the one that wanted me to get my approbation then go through the Facharztprüfung! I was perfectly happy helping around town, teaching English, helping the students, helping at the clinic doing unofficial consults!" Derek exclaims.
Hans thinks on their friendship, to what caused him to encourage the other man to go become a medical specialist:
~Koblenz, Germany 2015~
After initially meeting Derek as his patient, Dr. Hans Schaeffer had formed an unlikely friendship and bond with the man without a past. Maybe it was fortuitous that they had met within a year of the older man becoming a widow and when the older man was initially due to retire from practicing medicine. Even while recovering, Derek seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of medicine and Hans suspected that Derek was a doctor.
Despite not being able to remember details about his personal life, Derek seemed to be able to diagnose and identify surgical issues from scans and description alone. Furthermore, he was able to suggest HOW to treat the issues. The first time Hans saw the advanced knowledge happened purely by accident. A careless intern had left the scans in Derek's room during pre-rounds after being paged to respond to an emergency.
During rounds, the surgical residents were presenting to both Dr. Schaeffer and Dr. Becker, the neurosurgeon on Derek's case. At the end, after Derek had asked questions about his own case and possible treatment of his own memory loss, he had asked, "Is that case an HH Tumour?"
"A what?" Dr. Schaeffer had asked.
"Those scans, the ones that were left here earlier," Derek points to the scans in question, "are they for a hypothalamic hamartoma? An HH? I think it's a slow-growing, non-cancerous tumor that sits on the hypothalamus."
"I thought you said you didn't recall anything about your background. Are you a doctor?" Dr. Becker asked. Dr. Becker was not in the room when Derek had been brought out of the coma and no one had briefed him about the initial interaction.
"I don't remember anything, not anything real about myself anyway." Derek bitterly replies, "…I was bored, and I saw the scans. The diagnosis just… popped up in my head when I saw the images. I don't know if I am right or if I am just grasping at anything that counts as actual knowledge at this point."
"It is." Dr. Becker responds but does not offer anything further as he turns to leave.
"Are you doing a transcallosal approach?" Derek persists. All the residents and Dr. Schaeffer's attention volleys from the patient to Dr. Becker.
"Protocol dictates a subfrontal approach. Transcallosal is riskier and I doubt It can be done." Dr. Becker responds, seemingly irritated rather than intrigued that his amnesiac patient had successfully diagnosed a condition from a scan or asked about treatment options.
"If you go subfrontal the tumour will just regrow, you'll have to do another operation again in a few years, and your patient will continue to suffer. You go transcallosal, get all of it and your patient doesn't have to suffer through seizures anymore." Derek argues.
Rather than considering the other approach, Dr. Becker just shakes his head and walks out of the room, the residents eventually following him. Dr. Schaeffer stays back, wanting to probe Derek's ideas further.
"Forgive my colleague for being dismissive, he is what we think of as typical neurosurgical breed… thinks his time is more important than anyone else's. What you Americans know as a "Know-It-All". I would ask him, but he sees me as just an elderly general surgeon, about to be put out to pasture." Dr. Schaeffer jokes.
Derek laughs then suddenly stops to ask, "You think I am American? How come?"
"Well, your accent eliminates any European nation, it doesn't sound like Australian or New Zealander either. Maybe I am being presumptive but your confidence and assertiveness, I would put money on American rather than Canadian, though I could be wrong." Dr. Shaeffer says, ruefully laughing at the end of his analysis of accents.
"You're a funny man Dr. Schaeffer…and they said Germans have no sense of humour." Derek chuckles.
"Please, call me Hans… I will come visit you later, maybe you will recall something about yourself in the interim and we can discuss our assumptions on stereotypes of different nations." Hans jokes as he leaves the room.
After that day, Derek's humour and intellect intrigued Hans that he found himself visiting his patient, staying to chat rather than going home to an empty house at the end of his shift. Hans kept his suspicion that Derek was a doctor to himself. He did not want to cause unrealistic expectations or give the younger man false hope. He found Derek to be charming and good company and clearly despite the language barrier, a lot of the residents and nurses thought so too. Whether it was because they felt bad for Derek who never had any visitors, or as he suspected, because several staff found the man attractive, Derek seemed to always have a trickle of people coming in and out of his room.
At the end of a particularly long shift, Hans entered the room and found a dejected Derek staring at his watch, the only item of significance that he was found with.
"One of the nurses said the watch's serial number may be registered to the owner and suggested I contact the manufacturer to see if it is registered." Derek explains without looking up from staring at the watch.
"It's a nice watch…it's a Tag Heuer Monaco isn't it? The square face is pretty distinctive." Hans says after Derek doesn't say anything else.
Derek shrugs, "Yes…I called, they said it's a limited edition that was part of a batch sent to the United States. Unfortunately, whoever the final owner is did not register it."
"I am sorry Derek; I wish it had been different." Hans said, sympathetic to the other man's frustration.
"It was a gift, right? No one engraves a watch, at least not a limited edition, unless they know the person they're giving it to doesn't care about watch valuation. And with an engraving like that, it sounds like it's from a partner…" Derek whispers the question as he hands the watch over to Hans. Hans turns the watch over and sees the engraving:
"Extraordinary Together." and on the other side, "Derek, This Is Forever."
"Whoever gave it to you must have loved you a lot." Hans says as he hands the watch back to Derek. Hans removes his wedding ring and hands it to Derek. "My wife and I, our wedding rings are engraved too."
Derek brings the wedding ring closer, and sees the engraving, faded with time, "How long have you been married and when do I get to meet this paragon of virtue? And what does "Ich Bin Bei Dir Immer" mean?"
"It means "I am with you always" …married for 50 years," Hans smiles nostalgically, "sadly, you're about a year too late. She passed away last year, pancreatic cancer. Ironic isn't it, a general surgeon whose wife dies of that?"
"I am sorry for your loss, I didn't realize… every time you mention her, it always felt like she was still present. I thought she was just at home." Derek grasps Hans's hand, attempting to give some comfort to the older man, his sense of empathy for the other man overriding his self-pity.
"In a lot of ways, she still is, I hear her voice whenever I am feeling low. She would have liked you, just like the nurses seem to" Hans jokes as he puts back his ring. Becoming serious once more, "a love like that Derek, it does not leave you, no matter what happens. The person—"
"The woman. I'm pretty sure it's a woman that gave it to me. Blonde, green eyes, infectious giggle, and a rambling way of speaking. I see her in my dreams, different images, but always the same woman when it becomes intim-" Derek stops what he's saying and blushes.
"I'm sorry I didn't mention it before, I just see her, but I can't remember her name. Every time I try to ask her, my dream changes, or she leaves me. I see other people too. I think I may have worked in a hospital…or I was sick a lot, because I see a lot of people in white lab coats. I was hoping I would remember more, see something that would identify the place before I mentioned it to you but…" Derek's word tapers off and a haunted expression takes over.
"Derek, a love like mine and Greta's, or yours and your Ms. Green Eyes, that never leaves you. That means even if you don't remember her, your soul does. A love like that, we're lucky to have had it."
Over the course of the following month, Derek with the help of some of the nurses and Dr. Shaeffer attempted to contact the various embassies, asking if any of their citizens visiting Germany had been reported missing. Unfortunately, without proper identification and only a suspected first name to go by, they found themselves facing a bureaucratic wall. In the end, Hans had contacted a friend who was an attorney to help get Derek legal status in the country. He could've allowed Derek to be discharged into the welfare system as a displaced person but in the end had impulsively offered to let the latter stay with him instead.
"Hans, you told me a while back, that a love like what we've had, it never leaves you, that we're lucky to have it… if that's the case, how come my…my woman, never reported me missing? If she felt for me the way I feel about her in my dreams, that gnawing sense of being lost without the other person, how come she hasn't come to look for me?" Derek asked morosely as they packed up his room, getting ready to be discharged from the hospital.
Hans was at a loss for words, not knowing how to respond to the sadness emanating from Derek. An idea enters his mind, and he says, "Follow me."
They headed down the hallway, past offices into what appeared to be a classroom. Hans flicks the lights on, walks to a tall cabinet and begins to pull out suture kits and a series of different surgical dummies.
"Um…Hans have you finally lost it? Become that senile man that Becker thinks should be put to pasture?" Derek jokes as he watches from the doorway.
"You're a funny man." Hans says sarcastically while continuing to pull surgical tools and preparing a table. With a flash of inspiration, he pulls up a file on a computer and begins to prepare a neurosurgical dummy with the specifications outlined in the file.
"When I am sad, one of the few things that makes me feel better is a surgical high. Obviously, I cannot have you doing it on real people… I mean we may suspect you're a doctor, a surgeon even, but they will ACTUALLY put me out to pasture if I let you test the theory out on a patient so… here. I've laid out a few models. Get your hands dirty, maybe your muscle memory for surgery will trigger other memories. Let's see if you can do a list of different sutures, then an appendectomy, a hernia repair, then see if you can resect a gastric tumour. If you pass all that, then you can move on to final model." Hans points to each procedure, finally ending with the brain setup. "Think of it like… a surgical obstacle course." Hans challenges.
Derek moves from his spot at the door to the first part, a smile finally taking over the frown that had been on his face since leaving his room. Derek begins to read the list of sutures outlined on the first table. He looks up when the door opens and five residents enters the room.
"What's happening here Dr. Schaeffer?" One of the residents asked.
"Surgical obstacle course, Hans is testing to see if I could do it." Derek replies ahead of Hans.
"Oooooh can we join? Turn it into a competition!?" Another eager resident begs.
"Well, don't you guys have patients to see? Attendings to suck up to?" Hans asks his residents.
"None of us are scheduled to scrub in and this looks cool, better than doing charts! If we get paged, we'll go."
Hans laughs at the bloodthirstiness and competitive spirit of the residents. He could still remember the adrenalin and sense of satisfaction that came with winning. He begins to set up five more stations up to the gastric tumour but only one extra neurosurgical model.
"Ok fine, but the person who does the worst after the first three stages has to sterilize all the equipment and put everything away. For the final, first two that can complete the four stations AND diagnose the final issue gets to try and operate. Winner is the person who gets the best results."
"Dr. Schaefer, how come this is mostly General but the ending is Neuro?"
"Well, because I am a general surgeon, I can judge it a lot easier." Hans chuckles, "Why do you think I only did two for the final?"
His suspicions regarding Derek having surgical training seemed to be confirmed as the competition progressed. Derek had to double check a general surgery reference to confirm what the procedure would entail as a refresher but still managed to perform well enough to finish in the top two. Hans watched Derek handle a scalpel and surgical instruments with the ease of someone who had developed the skill and muscle memory from years of practice. Hans was humble enough to accept that the skills Derek displayed meant he was probably a great surgeon.
"Is this the HH tumour from a month ago?" Derek asks, a grin forming on his lips when Hans nods.
While the final resident attempts a subfrontal approach as protocol dictates, Derek does the transcallosal approach he had proposed to Dr. Becker. In the end, the resident finished first, but Derek's approach had better margins and was able to remove the entire tumour, just as he had proposed.
"Thank you for this Hans. You were right, my muscles seem to remember how to do things, even if my brain sometimes did not." Derek tells his friend as they exited the classroom, leaving the residents to clean up the room.
A few months later, Hans and Derek left Koblenz. Hans had planned to spend his retirement splitting time between Norden, his childhood city and Juist, near Norddeich Harbour on the Wadden Sea. Hans had found Derek's excitement about riding a ferryboat to Juist oddly endearing.
Derek seemed to thrive on the car-free island, choosing to stay in the small cottage by himself when Hans elected to return to the mainland. Derek argued that living on the island was more conducive to learning and passing the Goethe-Institut German certification test.
The first week of settling on the island, Hans had invited John, the local doctor, and a childhood friend to dinner. During the meal, Derek and John developed a rapport over a shared interest in fishing and hiking. John was sympathetic to Derek's amnesia and upon hearing that Derek may have had medical training, agreed to have Derek help in the clinic as an assistant while Derek worked on learning the language. Derek endeared himself to his neighbors with his willingness to perform handyman tasks and tutor the youth who stayed on the island year-round in English, maths, and science.
A year after arriving on the island, Derek successfully obtained his C2 levels, upon which, both Hans and John encouraged Derek who had become an adopted son to pursue getting his approbation. Derek was hesitant at first, still uncertain if he would be able to remember technical medical aspects and pass entrance exams. He joked that he was too old to be competing with some of the children he tutored for a university spot. Hans "unretired", obtaining surgical privileges at the local hospital in hopes that it would ease Derek's path through the German medical education system.
Hans used his connections to obtain an exemption and allow Derek to fast-track and challenge the Abschnitt der ärztlichen Prüfung exams at the end of the Vorklinik, Klinik and Praktisches Jahr and get his approbation faster than the standard six years of university studies. Hans argued that the knowledge Derek possessed showed he had already gone through university and medical training. Hans was also certain that Derek already had the qualifications to challenge and pass the highest level of the Facharztausbildung based on the skills he could do in a skills lab.
Hans was partially successful regarding the approbation portion but the Landesärztekammer, the state medical association, insisted on the submission of a doctoral thesis and more "clinical and surgical hours" before allowing Derek to sit for the Facharztausbildung.
~Back in the present~
After a moment of silence, "Are you though? Happy?" Hans asks quietly. "You spend most of your time brooding. Even I took Greta on a vacation after I finished with Facharztausbildung. You need to be around people, and NO not patients, or students…you need to make friends." he adds when Derek looks to argue.
"I have friends! I have John. I have you, what more do I need?." Derek jokes, "It could be argued that the two of you as friends is all the trouble and excitement one man can handle!"
"You're not as funny as you think you are. You're still in the prime of your life, yet you live like a monk!"
Derek chokes on his drink when he hears that. After regaining his breath he asks, "Hans, when you say "friends" are you trying to be a yenta and be a matchmaker for me? Are we now trying to discuss my sex life?"
"What sex life? John tells me the ladies try to get your interest, but you do not return it. At first he thought it was just with the women that live on the island and you're afraid of commitment, but even the tourists that come for a short time have tried and failed to gain your attention. Then we thought…maybe men? But John says men have tried to and still nothing! You don't want to die a lonely old man, do you?" Hans laments.
"Hans there's a difference being lonely and choosing to be alone." Derek instinctively touches his watch as he replies, drawing the older man's gaze to it, the infernal phrases of "Extraordinary Together" and "This Is Forever" ringing in his head.
"Oh Derek. Please tell me Green Eyes isn't the reason you're holding yourself off from finding someone. You weren't wearing a wedding ring, maybe it was just a girlfriend? You asked me before why such a woman would not try to find you… did you ever think maybe she is like Greta and she is gone?"
Derek inhales sharply at that suggestion. The woman was always vividly alive in his dreams. "Don't even say that! I keep hoping, maybe there is something we missed, something else I could try to remember. I mean, I remember complex medical training, I think I just need a trigger to remember my past, to remember how to get back to her."
"Ok fine. But Derek, it's been nearly six years. I did not even think you still had the dreams; you haven't mentioned it in over a year. I thought you were finally moving on." Hans says gently.
Derek shrugs, "I still have them. But it seemed to make you sad every time I mentioned it, so I just kept it to myself."
Hans inhales sharply, "Oh Derek. You could tell me anything. I just worry about you. I want you to have a family, what would happen to you when both John and I are gone?" When Derek doesn't respond, he chooses to change tactics. "You wouldn't want me in my frail age travelling to Switzerland by myself, do you?"
Derek doubles over in laughter, clearly seeing the attempt to tug at his heartstrings. "Hans, you may be 75 but you are one of the healthiest, sharpest, most able men I know. You run circles around some of the residents at the hospital who are ¼ of your age! What is so interesting about this conference that you're so desperate to go?"
"One of the keynote speakers is of interest to me as a general surgeon. Her mother was a pioneer in our field, even all the way from America. I hear she's just as brilliant, pioneering some general surgical techniques that show promise. Mini-livers and whole abdominal transplants. She hasn't come to Europe before so it's my chance to hear her speak." Hans explains. "Klausman is an innovative research facility, and this conference is a hot ticket item. I am sure they will have other keynote speakers that may be of interest to you and you'll learn something new. You could do with a change in scenery, It's a lovely city. Zurich was my last trip with Greta before she became ill."
Derek could hear the nostalgia in Hans's voice when he mentioned his wife. Realizing his friend may need some emotional support on the trip, he finally relents saying, "FIIIIINE, if this will truly make you happy, I will come. But you have to promise not to try and matchmake. I am going for you…not for this sex life you're clearly wishing I get. Who knows, maybe you're right. Hopefully I will learn something new on this trip."
Updated: May 1, 2021
AN2: Thank you so much for everyone who has taken the time to leave reviews and comments on the stories!