Authors Note: So this is the third chapter of "What we should just say" I haven't been able to write that much lately due to a report I had to do for school but I have finished the fourth chapter and hopefully be able to find some time to write more this week. As always have fun reading and if you like it I would really appreciate a review;)
Disclaimer: Since I still don't own any parts of Grey's Anatomy I started to become pessimistic about ever owning them, but will Derek be able to remain optimistic while the Meredith is recovering? Read to find out.
People often say that if someone is in a coma it looks just as if they were asleep, but although I am known as an optimist I really can't see that. For me, it looks much more as if they were dead because I can't look past all these tubes and wires that are keeping people alive. I can't see the peaceful slumber everyone is talking about, not when it is about her. Then the only things I can see are machines breathing and doing other stuff to prevent the love of my life from dying. - Derek Shepherd
When Derek entered Meredith's room he could almost not recognize that fragile, still intubated person in front of him. She didn't look like Meredith, well she did but not like his Meredith. She looked so lifeless as if somebody had just come and pulled all energy left out of this small human being. She had tubes and wires all over her body and was wearing a spinal brace, as well as a cast on her left leg. Derek suddenly realized that he hadn't talked to any of her doctors. He did not know a single thing about her condition. He got afraid, what if she never woke up? What if he would never be able to look into those beautiful grey eyes ever again? Just for a second, he started to think, what if she had stopped swimming? What if she gave up again? But he knew he couldn't think like this because Meredith needed him to be strong for her. She needed him to believe in her. She needed him to be her knight in shining armour.
Just as Derek had started sitting down in the chair next to her hospital bed an intern entered the room. He took Meredith vitals and changed some settings on her machines. He noticed how the man sitting next to his patient was staring at him, it made him anxious, so as soon as he was finished with the exams the intern exited the room quickly.
Two hours later Derek had fallen asleep with his head on the hospital bed and his hand in Meredith's. It was in the middle of the night when Alex entered the room. He hadn't seen Meredith ever since she was brought up for surgery. He didn't know that the only other intern left was laying there in that bed so vulnerable that she could fall apart by the lightest touch. He wanted to tell her that she couldn't give up, that she had to fight, that he needed her but he thought to himself that it was pointless, she was in a coma and although it was medically induced, he knew she wouldn't be able to hear him.
As Dr Bailey, Dr Webber, Dr Torres and Dr Nelson came into the room of the ICU, where one of their colleges was lying unconscious in a hospital bed, they weren't surprised to find Dr Shepherd sound asleep in an uncomfortable chair, however they were surprised to find Dr Karev laying on the hard floor. He started to wake up by the noises the doctors made while entering the room. They didn't want to awake Derek, because if they did so, he would probably not close an eye until Meredith was out of the hospital, but they had no choice.
Derek was still tired, he had only slept for five hours in the last three days, but when he realised where he was, and why he was there, he was wide awake. Bailey and Webber told them about the splenectomy, the damage her liver had suffered from and the amounts of blood she had lost due to that. Then Dr Torres continued and talked about the surgery she did on Meredith's knee. Last to present was Dr Nelson. He was scared, not because he had made any mistakes, he hadn't, the surgery went textbook. He was scared because there was no way of knowing the results of this procedure, up until the patient had awakened. So he started talking, "I repaired the spinal cord as good as possible. We don't know whether the damage was great enough to paralyze her" he stammered, "and we won't know until she wakes up." Dr Nelson looked down to the floor and then continued, "If she wakes up and can't feel or move her feet anymore, that does not mean it has to be permanent." He looked over to his boss, the world-renown neurosurgeon who was definitely not able to understand a single word that was just said, not in that particular moment, in that moment which could forever change his life and more pivotally forever change her life.