Chapter 64: Sadness and Sorrow

Meredith sprinted towards the hospital entrance. She had spent an almost sleepless night, tossing and turning with annoyance. Her bed felt empty, too big and too cold without the reassuring weight of Derek's body. Still, she didn't shed a tear. If anything, she was angry that he made her get used to his presence… and his lies.

She couldn't help wondering what he was doing. Addison told her with evident reproach that he spent the night at Mark's. Why the hell was he holding his pretenses? He could as well go to his whore.

And why the hell was he sitting on a bench near the door, all windswept and shivering from cold? Did he want to convince her with that tear some look of a lost puppy? Maybe Gretchen was a worse lay? she snorted inwardly. That went without saying.

He jumped up to his feet seeing her coming and got to her in two strides.

"Meredith?" he asked with urgency in his voice. "Can we, please, talk about what happened yesterday?"

"I think it's all said and done, Dr. Shepherd," she replied loftily.

"Meredith, love, you can't be serious," insisted Derek walking side by side.

"Do I look amused to you?" she snorted. "Because I'm not. At all."

He tightly gripped her arm holding her in place. "Why are you doing this?" he demanded.

She yanked herself from his grasp. "Stop making a scene!" she hissed glancing around with exasperation. People were openly staring at them. "I'll repeat it loud and clear once more and please bear it in mind; this thing between us, it's finished. It's done, finally. By the way, I can't believe your hypocrisy." She turned away biting on her tongue. She wasn't supposed to tell him anything. She was supposed to leave him with the conviction that she had used him and not the other way around.

Derek was paralyzed with the disgust he read in her regard; so much that he didn't protest further and let her storm off. Apparently, Meredith assumed he deserved that. Somehow it was his fault. Had he done something reproachable? Gretchen's face so close to him immediately appeared in his mind. He kissed her… Well, technically, she kissed him, he didn't reciprocate. And there was no way Meredith knew. There was no one around except him and Gretchen when the whole incident occurred. It must have been about the ring then. He berated himself for being stupid; he didn't even know what she thought about the concept of marriage. That was idiotic on his part. What was more, he completely forgot that her parents had got divorced. She might not have embraced the idea of exchanging the vows as warmly as he would hope. Only was it a reason enough to break a relationship?

"Hey, how are you holding up?" asked Addie joining Mark and Derek at their table during lunch.

"How's Meredith?" he shot, looking at her expectantly.

"I'm sorry, Derek," sighed Addison. "She seems good, but she doesn't talk to me." She felt guilty almost wishing her best friend was heartbroken and drowning herself with tears. "She gives the impression of being… unconcerned."

"And… is she?" asked warily Mark.

Addison let herself ponder the question for a while, with her eyebrows set tightly and answered, "I'm not sure. She's unpredictable… and a liar like you wouldn't believe."

"I think I can," muttered Derek with bitterness. "But… if she was lying all this time, why would she hide the truth from you? You're the closest person she's got."

"Derek, I'll try to learn what's really going on," she promised him, "but… I don't want you living on a false hope…"

"It's not a false hope," he shook his head decidedly. "I'm not going to leave it like that. You asked me once if I had enough patience, and I do."

"Back then I thought Meredith was experiencing the love of her life. Right now, I just don't know," argued Addison. If she was to be completely frank with Derek, she'd have to admit she was more ready to believe Meredith did indeed nurse feelings for him, good feelings that was. However, for some reason unknown to her, she bolted back in panic to her shell of hostility. Why? Meredith was never in a relationship before, well, except Chace and even though she was doing so well for the past months, her emotional problems were much more deeply rooted than they thought, than Meredith thought herself. There couldn't have been another explanation for her behavior. Addison was convinced it wasn't because of anything Derek might have done. He loved Meredith in a big obvious stare-at-her-all-the-time way.

"You haven't noticed anything weird in the way she behaved?" asked Addison. "I mean, weird in Meredith categories."

Derek shrugged shaking his head. "Everything was perfect… Wait, except for that nightmare she had yesterday… I should have talked to her…" he trailed off raking his hair with frustration.

"Don't beat yourself up," threw in Mark. "Remember what your Mom always says? If it's meant to be, love will find a way."

"Wow," uttered Derek raising his eyebrows. "You really did a job on him, Addie."

She smiled and looked at Mark affectionately while Derek sighed and eyed at his untouched plate. He had a feeling he had a lonely night at the trailer with scotch as his only companion. The pain in his heart was taking on force; he hoped he was able to keep it under the surface until he could break down without any witnesses.

"I'm not really hungry," he muttered apologetically to his friends and stood up. "I… have this patient I need to check up on."

"He's seriously worrying me," sighed Mark pushing his fork away, his own appetite gone.

"How was he last night?" asked Addison concernedly.

"A mess. I don't know if he slept at all. He either sat on the coach or paced around the house keeping me awake," grumbled Mark. "What is wrong with your friend? Knew she was a tough bitch, but I thought she was a reasonable one."

"If I only knew," she shrugged. "I guess I have to wait with the whole moving thing."

"You're staying at her house?"

"For all I know, she might be in extreme pain," explained A. "I can't leave her now. She's my sister, no matter what. I need to watch over her."

"But you're not going to pull something like this, are you?" he asked suddenly apprehensive.

She smiled sadly. "If you don't give me a reason, then no, I won't."

"Are you suggesting that Derek gave her a reason to treat him like shit? He worships the ground she walks on."

"I'm not saying he did!" exclaimed Addison. "The fact is that we don't know what really happened and that is why we should refrain from judging and concentrate on supporting our friends!"

"Derek looks worse for wear," commented Izzie with a frown, eyeing discreetly three friends sitting at the table nearby.

"Yeah," sighed Cristina while her eyes moved over the silhouette of Dr. Miles who appeared in the entrance to the cafeteria. "And the Horse looks like she hit the jackpot."

"She's a twit if she thinks she has any chance whatsoever with Derek," Izzie rolled her eyes.

"She's hot," cut in Alex. "Ouch!" he hissed as he didn't duck in time to avoid his girlfriend's hand making a hard contact with the back of his head.

"And you're disgusting!"

"You love it," quipped Alex.

"You know, I think they'll make up," she said perkily. "They care about each other."

"You don't know what they feel," dismissed her Cristina with a roll of her eyes. "And if you think you do, you're living in a dream world full of mushy secret feelings."

"It's better than living in a world of doom like you," Izzie answered back instantaneously. "I would have thought being with Owen might make you a little bit more sensitive about human emotions."

"Oh, don't throw Owen at me," snorted Cristina. "The fact that I'm with a guy now, doesn't change my worldview, and that is realism."

"It's not realism," Izzie shook her head. "It's pessimism. I look realistically and I can see that they love each other."

"Be that as it may," said stoically Cristina, "sometimes love isn't enough."

"I… realize that," Izzie swallowed heavily. "And it sucks… it seriously sucks… but just as often," she turned her head to look at Alex with a small smile and stated strongly, "just as often, love is enough. And I really can't understand that when you have everything, literally everything, and you breathe, you're alive, and you throw it away, throw love away. It's just so wrong!"

"Geez, Izzie, why are you so hell-bent on seeing love everywhere? Why do you even care so much about what's between Grey and Shepherd? She's not your friend."

"Derek is our friend," shrugged Izzie. "And the Chief? She was starting to be our friend."

"That's actually a good description, "starting to be"," nodded Cristina.

"Yeah," chuckled Alex who kept at a safe distance from the two females' argument up to now. "Now she's the like public enemy number one."

"You mean the nurses furious at Grey for hurting their precious eye candy?" Cristina gave a somewhat suffused grin. "It's not like they can actually make her life harder. They know she won't have second thoughts letting them go. And there are dozens she could hire on their place."

"It's just sad," sighed Izzie into space.

"It's just life," shrugged Cristina and continued to chew her lunch indifferently.

"But Derek-"

"He knew what he was getting himself into, he played with fire," Cristina cut her mid-sentence. "This whole thing was meant to be a disaster from day one."

Gretchen halted at the door to the lab and her lips arched in a satisfied smile as she silently contemplated her prey, currently hunched over a microscope. The recent events left her suddenly in a surprisingly favorable position. Meredith Grey facilitated her job considerably. She would have never thought the Chief would let Derek Shepherd out of her clutches just like that. He was definitely a keeper.

Gretchen shook her head making her hair fall naturally around her shoulders and strode resolutely across the room.

"Hey!" she greeted him, leaning back against the counter.

"Hey," he sighed in response not taking his eyes away from his task.

"So, I've heard…" she started gently, cautiously trailing off.

"Who hasn't," he muttered bitterly. Virtually all hospital was talking about his breakup with Meredith and he absolutely despised it. He couldn't stand his colleagues, the doctors, the nurses, their looks, either sympathetic and judgmental, and their tongues, their vicious tongues they used not even bothering to wait until he was out of earshot.

"You're not too fed up, right?" she went on lightly. "You've escaped pretty unscathed anyway."

"What?" Derek looked up at her with a frown as though she grew two heads. Did she seriously think he'd like to discuss his private affairs, pour his heart open, especially to her?

Apparently, she did, as she followed her thought. "Don't get me wrong, Meredith Grey is an excellent physician, an experienced professional who makes this place blossom but… emotionally, she's a baby. A career at such a young age comes with a price-"

"Don't," he hissed in warning. "Don't talk to me about Meredith. You don't know her, you know nothing about her life and why she's whom she is, nothing at all. So, don't talk to me about her."

"Derek, are you listening to yourself?" she snorted. "You're defending her? A woman who left you before the eyes of the entire hospital?"

"It doesn't matter," he shook his head, folding his arms over his chest and casting his tired eyes down, a pained smile flashing across his face only to disappear momentarily like the flutter of a butterfly's wings.

Something in his regard, a glint, a light, caught her attention and she stared into his eyes like she never had before.

"I promised her," he continued gently and there was no doubt in her mind that he was reliving the moments he spent with Meredith Grey. "I promised to always be there for her, care for her, to always love her and… it's not going to change because she pushed me away. I love her, there's nothing in the world that can change it, even if I wanted. Do you understand?" he chuckled.

"I… I don't know," she confessed with wonder in her voice. She was always that person, that woman, who knew what she wanted and went for it, no matter what. She applied that same rule to men in her life. Free, with a girlfriend, with a wife or even a family waiting at home, that was irrelevant. Her and her partner's free will was always enough of a justification. Plus, she spent all her strength and resources on medicine, on devising new ways to save lives. She could have some fun in return, couldn't she?

Now, she met Derek Shepherd, a gorgeous man she wanted to have since she laid her eyes on him, whereas he, he wasn't interested in her for one second. Even when he was free, even when he was humiliated by the woman, he had been involved with… he still defended her, pledging his love and devotion. He was something else, or maybe just… love was something else?

"I'm sorry," she sighed. This time, she meant it.

Meredith stood in front of the vending machine watching with undivided attention the unsteady trickle of coffee filling an ugly brown plastic cup. Not that it was an exceptionally fascinating phenomenon, she just couldn't entirely trust herself. She was afraid that someone might read her true feelings in her irises; the saying that eyes were windows to a man's soul certainly wasn't empty words. She held her head high, but the vulnerability caused by the greatest betrayal of trust in her life floated shallow under the surface.

That was also the reason why she preferred to fulfill her need for caffeine with the cheap bland liquid than make a trip to the cafeteria for a cup of a much better quality. Catching eyes of just a few people today, she realized her popularity hit rock bottom. It felt like she had just arrived at Seattle Grace for the first time, crashing head-on against the silent barrier of hostility. She didn't enjoy any respect then, while now she lost all she had managed to gain so painstakingly. But that wouldn't break her for she alone knew the truth and she wasn't going to reveal it. She came out as the stronger one; that was all that mattered.

She snatched the lithe container, marching off towards the elevators. She bit on her tongue not to curse out loud when she noticed who was already there waiting. She made a smooth swerve, taking a little detour to enter the staircase. Her effort was all for nothing though. His reactions to her proximity were almost instinctual, he would recognize her energy in the middle of the most crowded street in New York.

Without a millisecond of hesitation, he followed her, disregarding curious pairs of gawking eyes.

"However hard you choose to run away from me, you're not going to escape me," he said feverishly jumping up two steps at once to catch up with her.

"Sorry to crush your god complex, but I'm not avoiding you," she lied effortlessly walking decidedly in the middle of the passage, making it impossible for him to take over and face her. "It's my hospital, I'm not bending before anyone."

"Now I really have to disagree, you bend just fine," he quipped but his natural flirtatious charm appeared somewhat deflated.

"Seriously?" she snorted with indignation. She'd love to fire him for sexual harassment, but it wouldn't work given their recent whirlwind romance, the news of which raged through the hospital for two whole months.

"You can run away from me," he continued relentlessly at her heels. "You can avoid, fight me, send me to hell… but I'll still be here. I'm not going anywhere, Meredith. I'll be always waiting for you-"

His last words drowned as she found refuge in the confines of her office, almost running inside as quickly as the hot beverage in her hand allowed her to. She locked the door leading to Patricia's workplace, currently empty, and hid safely in her proper office. She placed the cup on her desk absentmindedly and sank on the carpet heavily. Her breath got deeper and deeper, and she struggled to keep it in control. In and out, in and out, steady. She wasn't going to hyperventilate but she could do nothing to prevent her vision from blurring suddenly. She felt the unpleasant tingling in her skull and her tear ducts threw her dignity out of the window, releasing two violent streams down her cheeks. She flinched at the coldness of the air on her wet neck.

Her fists clenched into hard balls. She would get through this. She was a force of nature; she was a force to be reckoned with. No man decided who she was, she was the master of her own fate. She would get through this… as soon as she could stop crying.