When a pillow hit his butt, Derek needed a few moments to recall what had happened. He met a girl in a bar, got drunk and slept with her.

"This is ..." Derek picked up a bra, that was laying beside his face. "... humiliating, on so many levels." The girl from the bar, whose name he couldn't quite remember, finished his sentences, not exactly in the same way he was going to.

"You have to go!" Wait, was she kicking him out already?

"Why don't you just get back down here and we'll pick up where we left off?" Derek, who now remembered how the previous night had been, lifted himself up to have a better look at the girl from the bar. She was disheveled, but still as pretty as at the bar.

"No, seriously. You have to go. I'm late, which isn't what you want to be on your first days at work, so..." While she was talking, rather anxiously, Derek started putting his clothes back on. It was clear "it" wasn't going to happen again.

"So, uh, you actually live here."

"No!"

"Oh." What was she doing there then?

"Yes, kind of."

"Oh." She was quickly becoming more and more interesting every second.

"It's nice, a little dusty. Odd, but it's nice." Derek couldn't help but be intrigued and wanted to know more about this girl, who got drunk the night before her first day of work and lived in what looked like an unused house, that you could tell was really nice once. "So, how do you kind of live here?"

"I moved two weeks ago from Boston. It was my mother's house. I'm selling it." Crap, had her mother just died?

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"For what?" What? Shouldn't he be sorry for her mother passing away?

"You said was."

"Oh, my mother's not dead. She's ... you know what? We don't have to do the thing." She was clearly not in the mood to keep the conversation going, but Derek tried to cling, because he didn't want it to be over.

"Oh, we can do anything you want."

"No, the thing ... exchange the details, pretend we care. Look, I'm gonna go upstairs and take a shower, and when I get back down here, you won't be here, so, um..." Okay, Derek couldn't help but smile at the nervous way she was kicking him out of the house.

"Goodbye, um..."

"Derek!" Derek, who was now fully dressed, reached out to shake her hand.

"Right. Meredith." Meredith. He liked the name.

"Nice meeting you." It was all he managed to say, while getting closer to her, before she turned and hastily climbed the stairs. And then she was gone.

He tried to recall every detail of the night and of the awkward morning he'd shared with that mysterious woman, he wasn't going to see anymore. It was all he could think of, while going back to his trailer to take a shower, and on his way to work.

"Shepherd, I have a neuro case for you!" Preston Burke, a renowned cardio surgeon, had been nice and welcoming. He probably didn't know he was his competition in the race to becoming the new chief of surgery.

Richard's call had actually been a life-saver. It'd given him the opportunity, he was looking for, to leave New York, where he'd just seen his life shatter. There, he was a fancy neurosurgeon, who had everything he could ask for: a successful practice, a comfortable life and many friends. Among them, one was like a brother to him: Mark. They'd known each other since they were kids and they were so close, that his parents host him all the time, because Mark's parents, although rich, were never there for him. They'd been like brothers, until Mark betrayed him in the worst possible way: sleeping with Derek's wife. So, when Richard offered him the chief position at his hospital, he left literally everything he had in New York (wife, best friend, practice, family) and bought a land in Seattle, where he started living in a trailer. Another thing he left in New York was his lifestyle. He was done with all the fancy events, people and places, he used to surround himself with. The view from his trailer gave him more joy than the one of Central Park from his apartment in Manhattan.

Derek had been thinking about his previous night encounter all morning. Why exactly?, he was wondering himself. Probably because he hadn't felt that excited in a long time. After lunch, he was talking about a case with some colleagues, when, lifting his eyes, he saw the girl, who a couple of minutes before he was sure would stay a memory.

So, that's the job she was starting: interning at Seattle Grace Hospital! He couldn't believe it.

She clearly saw him, too, because blood drained from her face and she quickly turned around and left. Derek, instead, had the opposite reaction: he was excited that the woman, he'd been thinking about all day, wasn't going to be only a fantasy. So, he sprinted after her.

"Meredith, can I talk to you for a second?" He said, pulling her to the staircase and making sure no one could see them.

"Actually, I was..." She, too, was checking there was no one listening to them.

"Dr. Shepherd." Wait, what was the matter with her? Weren't they the same people as that morning?

"Dr. Shepherd? This morning, it was Derek. Now it's Dr. Shepherd." He felt almost offended that she was pretending nothing had happened between them.

"Dr. Shepherd, we should pretend it never happened."

"What never happened ... you sleeping with me last night, or you throwing me out this morning? Because both are fond memories I'd like to hold onto." Which, honestly, was all he'd been doing that morning.

"No, there will be no memories. I'm not the girl in the bar anymore, and you're not the guy. This can't exist. You get that, right?" No! Or yes. Although he saw her point, that was being made in a rather serious way, he couldn't help but try to flirt.

"You took advantage of me, and now you want to forget about it."

"I did not take..."

"I was drunk, vulnerable and good-looking, and you took advantage."

"Okay, I was the one who was drunk, and you are not that good-looking." This back and forth was starting to be very amusing. It was much more than he could have imagined after leaving her house that morning.

"Maybe not today. Last night, I was very good-looking. I had my red shirt on, my good-looking shirt. You took advantage. "

"I did not..."

"Want to take advantage again ... say, Friday night?" Derek was sure she couldn't resist any longer, and honestly he couldn't. Looking at her with fresh eyes, he thought she was even prettier than he remembered.

"No. You're an attending, and I'm your intern. Stop looking at me like that." Wait what?

"Like what?" Derek felt amused, confused and slightly disappointed at the rejection at the same time. How long had it been that he hadn't felt so many emotions? A very long time. It wasn't that he was apathetic, but it had been so long since he'd experienced something that made him feel good outside his work.

"Like you've seen me naked." A smirk appeared on his face. He really couldn't help it.

"Dr. Shepherd, this is inappropriate. Has that ever occurred to you?" Derek sighed. Now that he remembered how it felt like, he was determined not to lose all those emotions very soon.

Later that day, the pager started going off like crazy. It was Katie Bryce, his new neuro case: a girl who was having seizures but had no sign of anything wrong. He was trying to wrap his mind around it, but he couldn't figure out what was causing those strong seizures. He rushed towards her room, because something was clearly off, to find Meredith trying to revive her.

"What the hell happened?"

"She had a seizure, and her heart stopped." She must have been seizing for a while, before being treated.

"You were supposed to be monitoring her." Derek was dead worried that she could have brain damage, even though he saw she was stable now.

"I checked on her..."

"I got her. Just ... just go." He was too scared that Katie could have something irriversable to have time to talk or listen to excuses. After checking her pulse and examining her, he concluded that everything -except for the recurrent and mysterious seizures- was okay.

Derek went to talk to Katie's parents, to explain what had just happened. Her father was understandably scared and wanted answers, answers he did not have. He was at loss and needed a plan right away. So, he had an idea. It was kind of a last-ditch attempt, but it was Katie's best option: he called all the interns to asked them for help, because it was something rare that was happening to Katie and he didn't have enough time to do all the research required alone.

"Well, good morning." Entering the room full of interns, he immediately noticed Meredith, who was surprised to see him. Derek pushed any thoughts relating to her aside, because he had to focus on Katie's life.

"I'm gonna do something pretty rare for a surgeon. I'm gonna ask interns for help." Everyone looked interested, but also extremely tired.

"I've got this kid, Katie Bryce. Right now, she's a mystery. She doesn't respond to our meds. The labs are clean, the scans are pure, but she's having seizures - grand mal seizures with no visible cause. She's a ticking clock. She's gonna die if I don't make a diagnosis, which is where you come in." All the interns's eyes were following him, while he was pacing around the room.

"I can't do it alone. I need your extra minds, extra eyes. I need you to play detective. I need you to find out why Katie is having seizures. I know you're tired. You're busy. You got more work than you can possibly handle." Derek still remembered his first day as an intern: he puked outside the hospital for the stress.

"I understand, so I'm gonna give you an incentive. Whoever finds the answer rides with me. Katie needs surgery. You get to do what no interns get to do: scrub in to assist on an advanced procedure." He saw the attention increasing exponentially in the room. People were standing straighter and jaws were dropping. He hit the right spot.

"Dr. Bailey's gonna hand you Katie's chart. The clock is ticking fast, people. If we're gonna save Katie's life, we have to do it soon." Everyone stood to get to the charts faster and Derek, too, quickly left the room to go study all the scans and the symptoms once again.

He started thinking his idea wasn't that good after all, because random interns kept interrupting him with even more random solutions to Katie's problem, until he was called by an intern, closely followed by non other than Meredith.

"Dr. Shepherd, just one moment." The elevator's doors were about to close, but the intern kept it open.

"Katie competes in beauty pageants."

"I know that, but we have to save her life anyway." He'd spent half an hour with the kid and she couldn't stop talking about how unfortunate it was that the seizures had started, when she was could have won a prize of some sort.

"She has no headaches, no neck pain, her C.T. is clean. There's no medical proof of an aneurysm, but what if she has an aneurysm, anyway?" The other intern, who was more upfront than Meredith, was keeping the doors from closing, and Derek could hear the other people in the elevator complaining.

"There are no indicators." He was starting to get annoyed, because he was wasting his time.

"She twisted her ankle practicing for the pageant." Not enough!

"I appreciate you trying to help, but ..." He was interrupted by Meredith, who finally spoke: "She fell. When she twisted her ankle, she fell." The other intern kept going: "It was no big deal, not even a bump on the head. She got up, iced her ankle, and everything was fine. It was a fall so minor, her doctor didn't even think to mention it when I was taking her history, but she did fall."

It was still not enough proof that it could have caused an aneurysm. Also, the other people in the elevator were becoming more impatient.

"You know what the chance is that a minor fall could burst an aneurysm? One in a million ... literally." While the doors were finally closing for good, though, he realized he didn't have anything else. That was actually the only clue he could work on at the moment. So, he pressed the button to open the door once again: "Let's go."

Meredith and the other intern turned around.

"Where?"

"To find out if Katie's one in a million."

Derek took Katie to have another examination, followed by the interns. Meredith kept standing behind the other one and he wondered if it was because of him.

And there it was.

"I'll be damned." He couldn't believe it: Katie was, in fact, one in a million.

"It's minute, but it's there. It's a subarachnoid hemorrhage. She's bleeding into her brain." A smile appeared on his face from relief, because now he knew he could save her. Meredith and the other interns were smiling, too.

"She could have gone through her entire life without it ever being a problem. One tap in the right spot ..."

"And it exploded."

"Exactly. Now I can fix it. You two did great work. Love to stay and kiss your asses, but I got to tell Katie's parents she's having surgery." Derek was extremely impressed by Meredith and the other intern. During his first day of internship he didn't even got close to save a patient's life.

"Katie Bryce's chart, please."

"Dr. Shepherd, you'd said that you'd pick someone to scrub in if we helped?" Oh, right. The other intern had just reminded him of his promise.

"Oh, yes. Right. I'm sorry I can't take you both. It's gonna be a full house." Meredith was still standing one step behind and her colleague look over eager to scrub in.

"Meredith, I'll see you in O.R."

Then, he rushed to give Katie's parents some answers. Her father, who'd been harsh earlier, was relieved, after he'd realized that his daughter was not in danger. Katie, on the other hand, was not happy that she needed to have her head shaved. She reluctantly accepted to go ahead, only after Derek himself promised he would've taken care of it personally.

While he was fulfilling his promise to Katie, Meredith came in.

"I promised I'd make her look cool. Apparently, being a bald beauty queen is the worst thing that happened in the history of the world." She didn't look too excited for an intern, who was going to scrub in an advanced surgery.

"Did you choose me for the surgery because I slept with you?" Oh, that's why she wasn't that happy. She thought she didn't deserve it.

"Yes!" "I'm kidding."

"I'm not gonna scrub in for surgery. You should ask Cristina. She really wants it." How could she not see that she'd done more than many other interns?

"You're Katie's doctor. And on your first day, with very little training, you helped save her life. You earned the right to follow her case through to the finish." He saw why she was thinking he was favoring her, but their involvement was clouding her judgement and making her not realize what she'd done. She was actually self-sabotaging because of it.

"You shouldn't let the fact that we had sex get in the way of you taking your shot."

While Derek was preparing for surgery, Richard approached him.

"So, apparently talent can be inherited after all!" At his confused look, Richard explained: "The intern that helped you solve the kid's mystery is Meredith Grey, the daughter of the famous Dr. Grey! You know Harper Avery award winner, medical trailblazer?"

Derek smiled. The more bits of that girl he got, the more she was getting interesting.

Everything was ready in the O.R.. Katie was being prepped, Meredith had just come in. All that was left to do was saying his catchphrase: "All right, everybody. It's a beautiful night to save lives. Let's have some fun." He'd say it before every surgery. It was kind of a superstition.

The surgery was going smoothly. Luckily, Katie didn't pull anything funny, as sometimes could happen.

As he'd predicted, there were many people in the room, curious to see how the mystery was being solved. Among them, Meredith was trying to peek as much as she could. Her eyes were wide open. It was time for her, as she deserved, to see the magic happen. At his nod, she came closer. Derek could see the enchantment of the surgical floor lighten her eyes. It was all he could see of her face, but it was enough. They had a natural sparkle.

All in all, it had been a great day. He'd successfully clipped Katie's aneurysm. He'd save a life. All he had to do left was go to tell her parents the good news. While telling family members bad news was the worst part of his job, telling them that they could still hug their loved ones thanks to him was the best feeling in the world.

He was filling in a chart, when he heard the voice he was starting to be drawn to.

"That was amazing." Meredith was looking at him from the chair she was sitting on. She'd probably been sitting there since the surgery had ended. He could now see her whole face: it was still lit.

"You practice on cadavers ... you observe ... and you think you know what you're gonna feel like, standing over that table, but ... that was such a high. I don't know why anybody does drugs." It was exactly how he'd felt, while standing for the first time over the surgical table.

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

Her words, her eyes, her passion were igniting something in him.

"I should, uh, go do this." He really had to go talk to Katie's parents, but at the same time he didn't want to break this moment.

"You should." They locked eyes for a second.

"See you around." Now he knew that they were going to meet again, that they were going to work together again.

It had been a really great day, after all.