Derek has to deal with his second difficult patient.
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A/N: So none of the new interns are massively significant to the story line but now that there are a lot more hospital scenes, I thought I'd introduce them so you can keep track of them. Dr Mia Coe - the one Derek bonded with because she has a brother with paraplegia/ the one that turns up the most. Dr Tilbury - the one who knows a lot about the doctors she works for (chapter 14). Dr Holtz - From chapter 5. Dr Murray - He'll turn up later. Dr Imogen Troy - the one from chapter 3 who has since been kicked out of the internship programme for her attitude and behaviour, unsurprisingly. Dr Charlie Williams - From chapter 82. Thanks for the reviews as always, :)
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The arrhythmia rang out for the whole room to hear, and it had been doing so for what felt like several minutes.
"Dr Grey?" A familiar called as he watched the clock tick again and again and again. She wasn't listening to him. He had been shouting for so long that his voice was getting a little raspy and she still wasn't listening.
"Clear." She shouted.
No one moved. No one had to move.
She was the only one going now, practically operating the whole crash cart by herself. She charged it. She picked up the paddles. She shouted clear.
It was just her and the patient, alone in the room. Everyone else was just watching her. Dozens of pairs of eyes rested on her. As if she was a zoo exhibit. A crazy woman who caused people to pull out of their phones to record in the hope of a viral video.
She had lost her mind – to put it simply.
Shock.
"Dr Grey?" He called out a little stronger.
She clearly heard him as she looked up, eyes meeting for the smallest part of a second before shooting back down and proclaiming that same word again. "Clear."
Shock.
The man was dressed, unusually, in dark scrubs. His scrub hat was so white, she couldn't imagine that a grain of dirt had ever even brushed its surface. But his top and pants were this all-consuming black hole kind of shade.
"Meredith." He almost shouted, not baring to watch her shock the poor woman again, her shifting asystole and v-fib relentless.
She shook her head, not looking up this time. "I will not let my husband die. Okay?" She shouted back.
Husband?
Her husband?
She didn't realize that's who it was before the word fell out of her mouth.
She looked across the table to take a quick glance of the man's face. Her husband. Derek Shepherd. Not some random woman. Now she knew what was drawing her so desperately to shock him such a high multitude of times.
"It's been over ni-" He started before being cut off by her shout.
"Clear!" She called again.
Shock.
She looked to the monitor. The defibrillation hadn't worked. The defibrillation never worked. The troublesome line didn't disappear and it certainly wasn't replaced by a strong, vivid heart beat she waiting for.
"He's dead Meredith."
She shook her head vigorously, pressing against the button on the side of the machine once more. "No. No he's not. This is what he does. He almost dies. Then he doesn't. This always works. He always lives. We always live, don't we? That's our thing. Surviving an unusual amount of bad things."
Shock.
His whole body jumped with the shock, as it had been doing each time she brought the metal surface of electrical charge to his bare chest.
Charge. Shock.
Charge. Shock.
Charge. Shock.
Asystole rang out. The unshockable rhythm. She didn't care. She had to keep going. Something had to work. It just had to.
Charge. Shock.
Charge. Shock.
Charge. Shock.
She was almost making him dance with the electrocution. The current was forcing him to move. The epinephrine was telling his internal systems to get a move on. But he wasn't doing anything.
He was dead.
Charge. Shock.
Charge. Shock.
Charge. Shock.
"Another round of epi!" She demanded. "Someone? Please."
Charge. Shock.
Charge. Shock.
Charge. Shock.
"He. Is. Dead!" The man in completely black scrubs called once again.
He was done with seeing her torture his corpse like that. No one wanted to see that and, once she had time to process what she was doing, he knew she wouldn't want that either.
Why didn't anyone stop her?
No one really knew what happened in the afterlife. But if he could feel the active pain inflicted to his body, he was in an awful lot of it in that moment. She hadn't even taken second gaps between the electrocution. Just reaching for the button, shifting the paddles. Over and over.
"What?" She inquired, eyes clearly not brushing the timer.
"It's been too long. Nine h-"
"Nine minutes, and what? How many seconds?" She inquired, mouth dropping open behind her mask as her lungs refused any nasal breathes. They didn't have enough entering oxygen to retain her anymore. "How many seconds?"
"Nine hours Dr Grey. Nine hours, forty-seven minutes and twelve seconds. Not nine minutes. Nine hours. Nine long, long, long hours." He corrected, ripping his pure white scrub hat off. No one ever had white scrub caps. Not ever, that was just weird. "You've been re-killing your husband for almost five hundred and forty minutes now."
"I was helping him." She claimed desperately as she shoved the crash cart out of the way, stepping towards him. "I was helping him live."
"No one can help him, Meredith. He's dead."
Her legs crumbled at the statement. She couldn't stand. No way could she imagine being able to hold herself up.
She wanted to be sick. No…she needed to be sick. She desperately, desperately, desperately needed to empty the contents of her stomach. The only thing she needed more than that was for her husband to live. And that certainly wasn't ever going to happen again.
Because he was dead.
Derek Shepherd wa-
She was in her bedroom. In bed. At night.
A dream. A nightmare perhaps. But it most definitely wasn't real.
She sighed at the thought.
He was safe. And alive. And breathing.
He wasn't on her OR table and there was no one trying to convince her to stop doing CPR.
She nestled herself back into bed after a second, only pausing her attempt at relaxing as she turned over to her husband.
"Derek?" She called out in a harsh but hushed whisper. She frowned as he refused to stir. "Derek!"
He didn't even flicker his eyelids or groan at the next call, amplified slightly louder than the first, and she couldn't help but sit back up, one hand searching for a vessel in his neck. She told herself not to panic. He wasn't a particularly heavy nor light sleeper but if the thunder of her snores could wake him, she didn't see why her shout-whisper wouldn't.
Her hand jumped nervously as she felt nothing.
Nothing at all.
She swallowed, telling herself that she had just missed the artery and to try somewhere else instead. He had to have a pulse.
So that's what she did. She gave up after a moment, pulling off the duvet his body so she could search for a radial pulse instead. She shivered, although she wasn't sure whether it was because of the cold she had just threw onto herself too with the removal of the blanket or simply from the fear.
She didn't realize how fast her heart had started to hammer in her chest and how hard it was to breath until her trembling hand grasped a hold of his arm, two fingers settling against his wrist.
He had to have a pulse, right?
She stared at her wrist as if it would do anything to help the rapid vibrations of her hand, but of course it did nothing. She employed her other hand to wrap around her own wrist in an attempt to steady it enough for her attempt at identifying a pulse. It stopped, or at least enough for a pulse check. Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Resisting the urge to make an outburst of panic, she practically jumped out of the bed, one hand quickly finding the light switch in the dark before sitting back down beside him.
"Derek, you've got wake up now. Please." She pleaded as she tapped against his shoulder. Nothing. "Derek. Derek…please."
Nothing at all.
Her eyes fell to his chest only to see him take a steady intake of air when it was too late, both hands already clutching at his shoulders and shaking him violently.
She had no idea how she forgot that, inherently, a pulse came with breathing. She was a doctor, and forgot that the very idea that inhaling and exhaling brought air in and out of a human's lungs even existed.
A doctor that forgot about breathing.
His eyelids opened instantly, exposing pained and terrified blue orbs, blinking a couple times as he felt himself released from her harsh grip. Startled didn't even scratch the surface of what he felt as he was dragged into consciousness by the harsh shake. He took a deep inhale, dispersing it with shuddering, broken blocks of exhale as he looked around the room to try and place himself. He was in his bedroom, presumably pulled from sleep.
And his wife was hyperventilating besides him.
"I- you didn't- I couldn't find- heart-" She faltered as she collapsed back onto her side of the bed from her knees, her breaths dragging more than his. "You- breathing- you suppose to- and- I- I couldn't-"
Despite the way he had been woken and the fact that none of the words she had said really made much sense at all, he knew what had happened. He took another moment to breathe himself, still struggling to comprehend the world around him himself before turning to her.
"Meredith…" His voice was so broken as he called her name, a hand scavenging for hers. She refused to let it open, shaking her head as her lip quivered at her upper chin. "Hey. I'm okay."
That was a lie. He wasn't okay. He was struggling to breathe as much as she was.
One second, he was floating around in a dream he couldn't even remember and the next he landed back in the real world with two hands gripping tightly at his shoulders and his while upper body being thrown backwards and forwards. It really wasn't the best way to be awoken when trying to avoid both fear and pain.
She shook her head again, the tears in her eyes accented by the glisten of the sun that was just rising outside, creeping into their room through the gap in the curtains.
He opened her hand with a little more force than he would have liked, grabbing her wrist carefully when he was sure it wasn't going to close by itself the instant his palm left hers.
He placed her hand against the side of his neck.
"See, I'm alive." He said, his voice broken purely by how distraught his wife was.
She gulped as she felt his jugular battle against her finger. There was a pulse there then, after all. It was fast, but she supposed that was her fault.
He moved her hand, limp and accepting of any suggestion of adjustment, to his chest. Her palm spread across the middle of his chest, feeling its raise with each breath he took. She felt her own intake of air reach the same tempo as his.
"Alive, and breathing."
She nodded quickly; her face still creased with anguish. "Breathing." She murmured, surprised a sound even came out of her mouth at all.
"Breathing." He copied with a smile, although the eyebrows that had moved with concern still refused to settle back to where they should have been.
"Derek, I'm so sorr-" She started, only for her unnecessary apology to be cut off by his words.
"No apologies. Not for something you can't control."
"But…"
"Lie back down." He instructed softly, not even bothering to make a reply to her attempt. She had nothing to be sorry for. It wasn't her fault she feared the moment when his chest would stop rising and his heart would stop pumping oxygenated blood round his body.
"I didn't mean to-"
"Meredith." He stated, his call soft but firm. "Just lie back down."
"I- I can't. This was stupid. You told me before and I ignored you. I went and did the stupid thing again and now-"
"And now," He cut her off, pressing his finger to her lips. "Now we're going to go back to bed. And you're going to sleep safely. Because you're going to be in my arms, okay?"
She nodded again, repositioning the blanket before settling back down into bed.
"Comfortable?" He inquired.
"I- I guess so." She responded hesitantly. She wasn't sure she could be comfortable ever again.
"Good." He murmured as he lied back down too. He placed his arm over her waist, hand resting limply against her extended stomach as he shuffled as far as he could into her, no gap between their bodies.
"Warm." She whispered, the word barely breaking her lips.
"You're too warm?" He questioned for an elaboration, pushing himself up on his elbow a little and pulling his body away from her.
"No." She answered, her voice light. "You're warm. Nice. Comforting." She listed, although her voice was still a little dazed. "It means I know you're still alive."
He swallowed at her last comment but placed himself back against her anyway and said, "I love you."
"You're alive." She murmured again.
"I love you Mer."
She sniffed away a kilo of tears. "You're alive."
"I am."
She squeezed a few more silent tears out of her eyes. "You're alive."
She was like a stuck record. Over and over and over and over.
He could only presume that the voice inside her head was too loud, shouting over the more rational side that was endeavouring to tell her he was okay. So she said it out loud instead. That voice was always just that little bit louder.
He bit at his bottom lip at her forth reincarnation of that word before whispering, "Yes Mer. I'm alive. I am alive and I'm here. I'm staying here until I'm a hundred and ten, okay?"
She swallowed. "You're alive."
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"So, I want to start with our usual, one thing about each other. Meredith, would you like to go first?"
"It's been a bad week."
She sat forward a little at that. Most weeks between them were quite bad, considering what had happened to them, but it wasn't often Meredith stated it. "Worse than the first week?"
The answer to that question was no. Nothing was worse than her staring at his mostly-dead, pale, unconscious form with half of his body wrapped in gauze and a tube running into his throat. She had no idea if he would survive that. But this...this was pretty damn close. "Derek was told he would never walk again. He's going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life."
"Meredith has had several nightmares about me dying and wakes up to check I'm still breathing." Derek added before she even had a chance to acknowledge and process the first piece of information. "She had a panic attack last night because she couldn't find my pulse."
She couldn't help the fact that her jaw dropped just a little. "Right...uh, we normally start with the most pressing issue but I think we'll just start with the first one stated today."
She was used to couples fighting because their marriage fell apart from neglect or because they had kids too soon or because one of them had dodgy parents growing up and feelings that weren't expressed. It was normally just one of those things. But they had neglected each other with the DC fiasco, Meredith was pregnant at the worst possible time for them, one of them had divorced parents with a run-away dad and an overly-committed work mom while the other had a dad who had been murdered and a mom who had distanced herself from the world as much as possible after said death. Plus, they had the deaths they had discussed and Derek's most recent trauma to deal with too.
How in the world they were sat there, hands engulfed in each other's in a partially-happy marriage, she had absolutely no idea. No clue at all.
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"So what you have is called an oligodendroglia," He started, fingers tapping against her chart for no particular reason as he spoke. The folder had been chucked to his lap as he entered the room to consult on a forty-three-year-old female by the name of Elizabeth White. He didn't need to read through it, seeing as he had already memorized the entirety of it.
"Say it again." The woman instructed, not bothering to pose it as an inquiry or even request.
She seemed a little…off, but he wasn't surprised by that. Not anymore. Not when it was the same confused 'seriously, you're my surgeon! Seriously?' look every single time.
Every. Single. Time.
He was always in scrubs, wearing a lab coat that proclaimed his name in royal blue embroidery most of the time and he felt like he was always doing something doctorly. He couldn't look through charts and scans on his way to consults anymore, which was annoying and meant he always had to spend a minute either looking over the folders before leaving to go to the patient or loitering outside their room to skim through them. Either way, it was an inconvenience.
He could attempt to read and walk as he used to – although he supposed it would be read and wheel or push or whatever word sounded best - but he felt that crashing into someone would be much more chaotic now than before. Firstly, it would hurt an awful lot more for someone else to skim their knee on a piece of plastic or metal comprising his chair than the kneecap of another human being. Secondly, two, walking, humans could bump into each other with no consequences or grievances. He couldn't imagine the attention he would get for slamming into another human because neither one of them was watching where they were going. More attention was the last thing he needed.
"Oligo-den-droglia." He repeated per her request. A rare, malignant neuro-epithelial tumour that was known to degenerate to a grade IV glioblastoma. They very infrequently shared a common thread, meaning trying to predict who was at risk of developing one and who wasn't was a task that, literally, could not be taken on. Hence why hers had developed to take over so much of her brain. "Technically, it's actually what we would call an anaplastic oligodendroglia but I think the tumour itself is hard enough to say."
She smiled a little, the first time her lips had curled upwards since he entered the room. They had turned downwards though – frequently, in fact. "Right. An oligo-den-droglia. Could I just say tumour-that's-gonna-kill-me instead?"
"You can say tumor-that's-not-going-to-kill-you-because-I'm-going-to-remove-it-and-after-all-these-long-months-of-chemo-leading-up-to-this-surgery-it's-highly-likely-you're-going-to-be-just-fine-and-tumor-free but I think that's actually longer."
"Right." She nodded before murmuring to herself, "Not gonna kill me."
"I'll do my best."
"You're good at this, right?" Mrs White inquired, eyebrows creased in concern and a light frown on her face.
He hesitated for a second before saying, a little tentatively. "Yes." It was nothing like how he would have answered it before. He wouldn't have hesitated. His voice wouldn't be shaded by even the smallest ounce of unsurely. A simple, plain, obvious 'yes'.
Her face didn't shift at his uncertainty, already too deep to change. "How many of these have you removed?"
"Tumours?" He said, pondering the question for just a second, although it felt like nothingness in comparison to his previous pause. "Too many, thousands. Oligodendroglias, maybe a hundred."
"And how many of those have you removed while…you know." She inquired, looking him up and down twice.
"Sorry-" He swallowed. "-what?"
"I just want to be sure that you're competent enough for this. It's my brain you're cutting into." She attempted to justify.
"Right. That is true." He agreed, his voice a little startled by her comments.
She frowned, still not receiving an answer. "So?"
He had no idea how she could even make the assumption that the thousands of tumours he had offered as evidence were done before the obvious shift in his life he was referring to, but he decided to be truthful anyway.
"This is my seventh tumour-removal surgery while…you know." He responded, imitating the woman's hesitation to a tee and almost pressing a laugh out of the intern besides him. He didn't mind that it made her laugh, in fact, he was almost hoping it did before he even made the impression, intentions of the joke already set up his mind. "Are you okay with that?"
She swallowed once, at least starting to feel just a little bit of emotion for her bluntness. "I- yeah. Sure."
"All seven of Dr Shepherd's surgeries were massive successes. He had a high success rate with tumour removals before…that too." Mia added enthusiastically. She didn't have to gesture for the woman to know what she was referring to, seeing as she was the one who brought it up. In total, he had actually done eleven surgeries. Seven tumour-removals and four bleed evacuations. Only one out of four of these had ended in tragedy, and Mrs. Thomas' brain death was not even his fault, seeing as it was the internal bleeding in her gastrointestinal tract that had caused the devastating blood loss. Her brain-dead brother-in-law wasn't even his patient, so she didn't include that in her calculations.
"So you'd say my survival rate is…" She prompted, waiting for an answer.
"With me at the helm of your surgery, I'd like to put it as something quite high." He filled in for her. "So, good. Very good. I might even ask Dr Coe here to scrub in with me and she's only an intern."
"Seriously?" She almost jumped out of her skin at the offer.
He raised his eyebrows at her excitement and she settled a little, muttering a quiet apology under her breath.
"Well, I suppose you better prep Mrs White here for surgery."
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Derek was pouring over a chart when Mia approached with a grin on her face. His hand was grasping at the tousle of his hair sat atop his hair, elbow on the desk and pen tapping against the ridge of a closed chart in perfect time to a silent metronome in his head.
"Hey, you know, what you said to that woman was pretty funny." She commented, confusion flooding her face as he lifted the chart that he was previously hitting against with his pen to her. She continued anyway, "You're good at getting those people to-"
"Give this chart to Amelia Shepherd. Or Dr Shelby." He instructed, holding out the chart in his left hand while opening another one with his right, scribbling down notes. He didn't look up to the intern. "Tell them that I said, had she wanted me for the surgery, you were going to scrub in. Whoever takes the case should take you from me for today."
"But this-" She hesitated, rereading the name on the chart once more to be sure. "This is Elizabeth White's chart."
"I know." He shrugged, looking up to her only because he didn't feel the weight of the chart lift from his hand. He didn't particularly want to look her in the eye. Especially not after her joyous greeting of compliments about how she had handled the woman.
She grasped the chart, but didn't take it from him completely, hesitant of his command. After a little faltering, Elizabeth White seemed perfectly content to have him doing the surgery. "But I though she agreed."
"She changed her mind." He explained, looking back down to the other paper he was writing on. "Just didn't want to say it to my face."
"Oh- well, I don't think she deserves this surgery then." She said, sure of herself.
"It's not our place to pass judgement on people because of who they are. She is still a patient. And she still needs that brain tumour removed."
"Any preference?"
He shrugged. "Dr Shepherd will do a good job."
"Right, and do you want her to have a good surgery or-" She trailed off as she saw him grow in anger just a touch. He had already answered that question, it was just a shame she noticed that after asking, not before.
"What did I just say?" He inquired; his voice somehow remaining calm.
She sighed, taking one step down the hallway that led to the elevators. "I guess I'll go find Dr Shepherd now then."
He nodded before returning to his chart, only to be interrupted again.
"Hey. Just so you know, I'm actually going to properly scrub in for this oligodendroglia surgery you're doing in an hour so if you have an intern who you were planning to let assist, they'll have to take a ste-" Dr Croft tried before being interrupted herself.
"Not doing it anymore." He murmured, not looking up.
"Oh. Was it pushed? Cause I'm supposed to be home for five."
"No. I'm not doing it full stop. You can still go and watch if you want. Same time. Same OR. Same assisting intern. Same patient. Same tumour."
"Why didn't you want to do the surgery?"
He sighed. "I would have loved to do the surgery. Shame she didn't want me to."
"Oh." She breathed. She seemed to have a tendency to keep accidently offending him or saying the wrong thing. "Okay. Uh- next time then."
"Mmm." He murmured. When was he actually going to get a surgery that had no drama attached to it? "Next time."
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"Derek, you've been quiet." Kate said pointedly as silence hung between the group, her eyes on him. She was worried about him. It wasn't that he was normally particularly talkative. She knew he was still a little uncomfortable there, it was a weird setting after all, but he had at least come out of his shell a couple of times.
He would say a couple of things in each session. A comment or reply to someone else's story. A short recount of his own. At least something. But the hand of the clock was getting nearer and nearer to the 6, indicating half past, the supposed end-time of their meeting, and he had done no more than utter a quiet hello to her as he first entered the room.
"I know." He murmured in acknowledgement, although he didn't make any attempt to stop that statement being true.
"Tell us about your week." She prompted. Kate, really, was asking about half of his week. She knew the first half already.
"I uh- I'm really sorry to bother you with this. If you were busy or something-"
"Derek, I don't have a job." She reminded him before smirking. She was dying of boredom. "Actually, can you bother me more often?"
He smiled back. He wouldn't mind doing that. "I just- I had some...news. And I don't know anyone else at the group well enough really, even if they'd probably be...better to talk to."
"Someone better than me?" She exclaimed. "God, that's outrageous!"
He almost spat out his drink at her exclamations. She certainly wasn't afraid of being herself, which was nice. Refreshing. Especially when she so easily accepted her chair into being part of herself.
"Anyway, I might have maybe accidently possibly invited someone else to join us." She said, wincing a little as she spoke, seeing as she had no idea how the man might react. "It's just- you sounded worried on the phone and I'm sure you have other uh- non-chairified friends so my first guess was that it was something chair-related and I'm not great at that so I- you know, invited someone else. Who actually knows things."
"Right. Makes sens-"
"Derek Shepherd?"
His head shot round at the call of his name to find a man quickly approaching. He was a man he knew for a completely different reason than Kate. But also because of the exact same reason. "Oh my god, Robbie!"
Kate raised her eyebrows, totally lost.
He stopped at their table. "This is the guy that took the tumour out of my spinal cord Kate! Dr Shepherd! Before-" He trailed off, looking between Derek and the chair he was sat in. "-apparently, paralyzing...himself."
"Yeah...uh- that happened." He said awkwardly before turning to her to explain what was happening in a little more detail. "Rob was one of my patients in New York. Had this horrendous tumour. I took it out, saved his life. We were friends before I moved to Seattle."
"For clarification, I was completely paralyzed at this point already. The surgery was to save my life and the SCI from getting higher, not for my legs. So, you know, if you need surgery, I'd recommend. Five-star experience. No- six stars, out of five."
"It was the first inoperable tumour I ever removed. Did a good job too, shame I couldn't reverse the whole paralysis thing though."
He shrugged. "I'm better now." He reassured him. Better meant he wasn't slitting his wrists and sobbing in Derek's lap in the ER, begging the world to change their view on him. "But how are you and how is your lovely paralysis going, Derek?"
"I'm good. The paralysis is uh- paralysy. I don't really know. It's fine but...still hoping for that magic cure to appear, you know?"
"Well I was hoping that you were gonna be the one who fixed me! Found a cure for SCIs...but-" He swallowed, only just realising the hole he had dug. "I suppose you don't operate anymore."
"I actually just started operating again. Like, days ago."
"Woah, they let you operate in a chair?" Kate asked, genuinely impressed at the idea.
"Yeah. They do."
"Why weren't you operating before that then?"
"Derek had a lot of injuries from his crash." Kate explained, seeing that he was mid-sip of his drink. "So, it was a lot of healing time before he could do stuff. Only just started coming to group. About two sessions after you waltzed off."
"Actually, no." Derek disagreed, settling his cup.
"No?" Kate repeated, dumbfounded.
"The reason I didn't operate before - and the reason why I called you - was because I was waiting for my final prognosis." Derek clarified. "I didn't want to ask for my job back and be really awkward with the chair and stuff, only to realize that if I waited a month or two, I could go back to doing it...like a normal person."
"So Emily gave you your prognosis then?" She asked. Then her smile faded. Emily gave him his prognosis. Crap. Double crap. "Emily gave you your prognosis?" She repeated, her voice completely different than before. It was cheery enough, and ignorant. Now it was worried and apologetic of her blindness.
"Yeah. I am now a permanent member of the gang."
Robbie didn't know how to react. He had just experienced the most surprising minute of his life as he found out that the surgeon that had saved his own life in New York had both relocated to the same city as him, and been through his own spine-destroying event. But he knew enough from running the group to switch easily to who he knew Derek needed in that moment. "And how do you feel about that? Are you okay?"
"I-" He started before...smiling? "I actually feel...okay about it all."
Rob smiled a little. "You know what it was like for me Derek. But you know how much accepting it helped. So, please, embrace it."
"Mmm. I plan to."
His eyes finally shifted from his knees, eyes raising. It felt like she always sat opposite him for that precise reason. Easy eye-contact for him to make. She had soft eyes, especially considering her previous career. Easy to meet. "I don't think I want to."
"Remind me what it is you do, Derek." A voice inquired from besides him, a man he recognized only from the very first session he had ever been too.
"I'm a neurosurgeon. I operate, not very appropriately, on the brain, cord, anything to do with the nervous system basically." He explained, although he knew it was some kind of trick to get him talking. He could hardly ignore the man.
"It sounds difficult." He noted. "Harder than being a teacher for the fourth grade."
He nodded. He could only assume he had stated his own profession, although he didn't think he even knew his name. "It is."
"We're here to help you with whatever problem you have. You know that, right?"
He swallowed, hoping they would eventually leave him alone as hands wrung.
"The husband of a patient," He started abruptly before looking up, pausing awkwardly. "I mean, all the patients, all the next of kins, heck, even all the doctors like to do their thing. The staring and the talking and the things you're all used to. But there was this one guy, he just…" He trailed off, eight crescent shaped fingernails digging hard into his palms. "There was this one specific guy. My second surgery, first day back. We, later, proclaimed his wife brain-dead and he was angry. Told me that the hospital had no business letting someone 'like me' in charge of a life. Assumed I was paralyzed and told me that my injury must have screwed up my hands too, if I let his wife die. So then, to prove his point that- actually, I don't even know why he did it. I mean, maybe he just wanted to..." He sighed, finally looking up. He had no idea why the man did that to him. His eyes settled on Kate's. They were always affirming, telling him that whatever he was going to say was going to be alright. "…he kicked me in the leg. Hard. Like bruise-making hard."
She didn't react to that. He knew she would be used to keeping a straight face from her three years on the police force, eight as an authorized firearms officer.
But the man who had posed the question of his career dropped his jaw in shock.
He was just glad Meredith wasn't there. He had dismissed her pretty quickly when she shoved a truckload of inquiries mainly consisting of the words 'okay' and 'alright' at him. He didn't want to discuss the dark patch on the front of his shin. The man was wearing safety boots when he decided it would be a good idea to shove his foot into his leg.
"Obviously, I felt it. My SCI is incomplete. But I just- I'm not even sure if it would have been better or not if I couldn't. You don't think people would react that way. I don't mean the whole 'kicking thing'. Just generally. You think people have changed. It's old-fashioned thinking, no one thinks like that anymore. But they do." He paused, eyes returning to his hands as he cracked one knuckle at a time with the sweating palm of his opposite hand. "They assume things. They assume that wheelchair equals paralysis and anyone else is either lazy, or just trying to get some free money. And I mean- it's not even like I've got some chronic problem that means I can still walk. If you have something like that and a chair is easier for you, then use it. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but I do understand why some people say those people don't need one, they don't get it. But black and white, there were two completely crushed bones in my spine and my leg was a mess, and now there is twelve screws in my back and metal in my leg too. And I get that he doesn't know that from looking at me but...he called me a fake. I physically can't walk anywhere by myself, more than about seven steps in a row with a harness and braces and he called me a fake. I thought being in a chair was my biggest problem. But no. Apparently, I'm not paralyzed enough. Not. Paralyzed. Enough. I don't- what, fill the quota? Is there a line I need to cross to signify that my life is rotten enough for me to be considered disabled now? Is that how it works if I want people to believe me? People have two mindsets. Either I'm a fake because my knee moved one whole centimetre to the right or I can feel it when you boot me in the shin, or I'm so broken that I shouldn't be here. Doing things. Having a job. Being a father. Being a husband. People just- they-" He faltered, unable to find the words anymore.
"It's okay Derek. You don't have to keep going. We get it. We understand." The teacher-guy reassured him, a wash of tears in his eyes. It was horrible to watch someone break down at something he was affected by too.
He understood. Of course he understood. That's why he went. Because he could talk about something that had happened and, although they had never experienced that precise circumstance before, they needed no explanation. Meredith was right; it was good for him (even if what he talked about was horrendous).