April returns from Jordan and Meredith talk to Derek about her parenting fears.

"Kepner, I need you to man the pit as lead by yourself for a few hours." Owen instructed as he ran over to her.

She nodded, but faltered as she read the panic written all over his face and considered the rushing speed of his jog. She could tell something was wrong. Something serious. "What's going on?"

"Derek was in an MVC. Broadsided by a semi-truck."

"Oh my-" She swallowed. He certainly wasn't her closest friend, but that still hurt. He had re-employed her when he was chief. She had had an embarrassing crush on him. He was the husband of a same-year attending who she had gone through residency with. And he was a parent. That. Hurt. "Please tell me he's going to be okay."

"Full body X-ray showed a lot of serious fractures. Bailey and Webber are setting up for an ex-lap, possible bowel resection and splenectomy. He's getting a head CT right now for a possible brain bleed."

"So?" She prompted softly, wanting a further prognosis.

"Honestly? It's- uh, it's not looking very good." He sighed as he shook his head. Slowly. Seriously. "It's not looking good at all."

"You mean-" She started, her words fading to nothingness.

"He's just about hanging on. If he fights for it, he might have a chance but otherwise..."

She nodded solemnly, no need for him to finish that sentence. "I- I'm praying for him."

"April." Derek greeted, surprised when the smiling woman walked into the room with dark blue scrubs.

She, for a second, was obviously surprised to see him too. She purposefully cleared her facial expression after her eyes dipped to his chair, looking back up to him as if she hadn't just made the obvious observation. He was perfectly aware of what she was looking at though; she had no need to pretend.

"Hey, Dr Shepherd." She greeted, leaning against the doorway of the radiologist's room and shooting him a quick smile.

"Heard you've been all over the world. How are you?" He asked, eyes darting back to the screen for just a second before looking back to her. Still blank.

He was rather surprised when Meredith told him that she had joined the army. Rather surprised meant that his jaw dropped and for a second, he was sure she must have been talking about some other person with the same name. She wasn't. April Kepner really had joined the army.

"Well, not all over. Just a couple countries. It has been fine. Met some nice people." She responded. "Anyway, how about you? How have you been? And Meredith, I haven't seen her yet."

"I'm good. Mer is about 8 months now so...baby is getting alarmingly real."

April raised her eyebrows. She had found out Meredith was pregnant from Jackson just before she left, but it didn't really compute in her mind that she would be that heavily pregnant upon her return to Seattle. "Is she being careful?"

"No. She doesn't know the meaning of the word…then again, neither do I."

She peered at him inquisitively for a moment, eyes asking for an elaboration.

"The kids like sitting on my lap while I do wheelies – which they think they invented, but they most definitely did not – and I'm not so great at them without them there, never mind with them on my lap. It results in an awful lot of laughter. As well as maybe a few bruises" He only half-joked.

She smiled. "They got the presents I brought for their birthdays?"

"I know Zola did, I don't know about Bailey's presents…I was still in hospital at the time. I'm sure they would love to both say thank you, if you came over some when."

"I'd love to. Me and Jackson might want to come over some time."

"Are you two okay?" He asked, worried by the slight off tone in her voice at the mention of her husband.

She shoved a smile on. "We'll be okay." She reassured him, although he knew she was just telling that to herself. "We haven't talked- at all in fact, I've barely talked to anyone. But we're talking now and I'm determined to make it work between us."

"I'm glad."

"Anyway, you have surgery now."

"I do?" He asked, confused. He had no scheduled surgery and he wasn't even sure how she would know that unless she was analysing the OR board and specifically remembered his name.

"Yeah, you do." She gestured to the CT scan that had just come up.

He turned his head to observe the computer screen, analysing the aneurism consuming the man's temporal lobe on the screen. Now he had a surgery then. "Mmm, I most definitely do." He murmured before turning to his – or his sister's intern that he had stolen when she offered her surgery – for the day. "Book an OR, scrub in."

"Thanks Dr Shepherd." The intern said eagerly. April smirked at that.

"Uh- I don't want to be rude...but can I have a...can I request a different doctor?" Her patient requested as she settled back besides him, collecting up the next roll of gauze.

April tried not to look hurt. She couldn't remember the last time someone didn't approve of her care and bedside manner. She was good at that. "Sir, I-"

"It's just- you really shouted at that poor girl and-" He tried to elaborate, feeling suddenly bad about it. Although, it was his choice. And watching the doctor that was plastering his arm scream at another doctor really didn't make him feel safe.

"I know. I'm sorry." She apologized and stood up from the seat by his side, dropping the wrapping of gauze back down onto its tray. "Of course I can get someone else, just give me a moment and I'll-"

"Wait-" He called.

April paused.

"What happened?"

"What?"

"I mean- you shouted at that girl and everyone just seems so...sad? Did you like lose a patient or something?"

She swallowed. "No...not exactly."

"But someone- someone died?"

"One of our doctors, he's a neurosurgeon here...he was...he was in a really bad car accident. And now he's in surgery. No one knows whether or not he's going to make it." April confessed.

"Were you close?"

"The thing about this hospital is that everyone knows everyone. You don't really have time to go out and have other friends so your colleagues become your best friends and he...he's-"

"A really good person?" He suggested with a sympathetic smile at her loss of words.

"I made a mistake- uh, years ago, I mean. I made a really, really stupid mistake. And I almost quit. I remember crying in the scrub room of an operating theatre and him being there. And he told me to stay. And...I did. And now I save lives for a living." She swallowed." Because of him. Because he...because he was the only person in the world that was willing to offer me a second chance." She sighed before mentally shaking herself out of the pit her despondency had apparently dug and shoving on a quick smile. "So, uh- I'll go and get you someone else to finish your arm-"

"No. Stay. It's okay."

April stepped out of the way of the door to let the excited woman practically run out the room, but didn't leave completely. "Hey, and Derek?"

He looked back to her. "Yeah?"

"Nice to see you're happy and, you know, still smiling after everything. I'm glad."

He smiled. A real, genuine kind of smile. "I am. I really am. Thanks."

Amelia exchanged a frown with Meredith as the door rung. They weren't expecting anyone and they had only just finished tea.

Bailey and Zola were sat beside each other but playing independently, Bailey deciding it wasn't a day to let his sister play with his toys as he gathered them defensively on the side opposite where she sat.

Amelia got up to answer it, saving Meredith the work of pulling the weight of her stomach with her.

"Hi." She greeted as she opened the door to a brown-bearded man, the dark green hood over his head obscuring his hairstyle from her view. His eyes shone as he smiled at the sound of the door opening.

"Uh- hi." He returned, equally as confused as her.

"Who is it?" Meredith shouted from the sofa at their more than awkward greeting.

"Just me…and Jake too, actually." David corrected, releasing the boy's hand and allowing him to run to his friends. He was two years older than Zola, but the age gap didn't matter.

Amelia let him in. She had no clue who he was but judging by the fact his child had so freely run into the house and both Zola and Bailey smiled at his presence, he very obviously wasn't a stranger.

"My name is David." He said, offering a hand. Amelia took it, shaking it as she analyzed his face.

She pondered the name for a second, not releasing his hand even when the greeting was over. "Ferry boat David?"

He sighed. "Yes. Fine. Apparently, I am forever enslaved with the bloody name."

"Yeah. Ferry boat David sounds about right." Meredith said through a quick laugh.

"My best quality." He joked. Or half-joked. He was perfectly aware the only reason he was friends with the Shepherds and Henry was friends with Zola and Bailey was because of Derek's obsession with ferry boats.

"Derek is in the garage, if you came to see him."

"The garage?" He repeated. Out of all the places he expected to find him, that was most definitely not the place he would guess.

He remembered them discussing plans for a mini wooden kitchen he planned to build the kids. David stole his plans once Derek had made it, saying that it was so they could have identical play sets (but he knew really it was just because he had made so many attempts that failed already).

He was surprised when he opened the door of the garage to find it wasn't like it was when he was last there.

Obviously, there was a car missing. His Porsche Cayenne was never replaced. He had no need for a replacement if he couldn't drive. He supposed he could buy a new car with some kind of alteration so he could use it but, if Derek was honest, the mere idea of driving still terrified him.

So instead, that space was taken up by what he could only describe as a miniature gym. Derek was high on the pull up bar, arms straight, simply holding himself up there with no strain apparent on his face.

"You sure I can go in there?" David asked, worried. He had been texting Meredith since he found her (only just resisting tears on his ferry boat) about how he was doing and she finally suggested that he could visit.

"You are his friend; he'll be happy to see you." The kind doctor said. He didn't ask for her name.

He nodded before his hand settled on the door and he slid it open. When he turned, the doctor was gone and he was alone. That was exactly what he didn't want.

He was sat up and awake, which he was glad to see. He took a moment to absorb the thick bandage around his skull, white wrapping of his arm, tubes, wires and machines around him before opening his mouth. He had known that Derek was a surgeon from about one week after he first met him, and he knew that this was exactly what he dealt with every day of his life. "Uh- Hey."

He looked up to the man, registering his presence before creasing his brows. "Who are you?"

He swallowed. Meredith had said his memory could be a little patchy about minor details but, apparently, he was mostly fine. He wasn't a minor part of his life; they had been friends for a long time. "Derek, it's me. David."

"Who...Day...vid?" He murmured, his words and eyes so lost.

"Derek..." He breathed. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. Was he supposed to call a doctor and tell them there was something wrong with him?

Derek smirked before he could come up with the answer to that question. "Oh my god, Day, I'm kidding."

He smiled back. "Jesus Derek! Don't do that! It's just a good job I'm in a hospital, I think I might have just had a heart attack."

"Hey. Odd to see you not surrounded by water." He remarked. It was odd to see him not on a ferry boat, although he had been to their house a dozen times. It was the finding him mid-workout – if that's what he was supposed to be calling it – that was the weirdest.

He smiled, dropping down and sighing as he sank into his chair with relief. "I could say the same to you."

"Since when could you do that?" He asked, looking up at the pull-up bar with a thinking brow.

"Since my arms became the replacement for my legs." He answered, the fingers of both of his hands folding into his palm a couple times, evidently cramping.

He had brought it online and asked Hunt to help him, as he very quickly realized that large package deliveries were just another thing that he couldn't do by himself without great difficulty. Meredith made some joke about him getting muscly arms. He was just offended that she didn't think he did to begin with.

"Gotta do some kind of exercise, right?"

"Impressive."

"Eh, not really." He shrugged, lifting one leg at a time from the floor in front of his chair's foot rests onto them.

"It is." He insisted, eyebrows raised. His eyes dropped to where he was looking, watching his right leg lift itself to the rest at the bottom of his chair.

"Me doing that without using my hands is more impressive." He corrected. He knew David knew what he was referring to, seeing as his eyes still rested there when he looked back up to him. "You're making that face again." He sighed.

"What face?"

"The oh-no-my-friend-is-in-a-wheelchair face."

He smirked. "Actually, best friend, not friend. You seriously think I have other friends?"

"So, best friend, how long do you think a can of beer lasts?"

"Unopened and refrigerated?"

"No, I'm offering you that one that I started, forgot about and has been sat outside on the picnic bench outside for the last eight months." He answered sarcastically. No one in the household drank so the very little collection of alcoholic beverages just hung out on the bottom shelf of the fridge, alone.

"I'd say it's safe to drink."

"Sure you would," He said, turning off the light switch to the garage and returning to the hallway.

"How's Meredith?"

"Maternity leave is not fun." He replied before sighing. "She's so bored. All the time. Or, at least, that's all she tells me. I literally get the same three words over and over. I. Am. Bored."

"Mmm." He agreed with a smirk. "I mean, I'd love a free month and half off of work but, hey, we're very different people."

"Yeah. Resting and relaxing does not sit well with Mer. Or me, even."

"Maybe one day, when I finally get kid two, I'll go on paternity and enjoy the life of...uh- a screaming baby- okay, nevermind."

He smirked. They'd already agreed what they were doing about their third child. They'd take joint leave for a while, and then see how they felt after a couple of weeks. She wanted them to parent their child equally, but she was also inclined to let him go back to work earlier than her to make up for the seven months he missed.

"So, you here because Jake wanted to see Zola or because of what happened today?" He inquired abruptly.

"Take a guess."

"Mmm." He sighed, watching him as he took his first sip of the beer. He seemed satisfied enough after the first, daring a second. They exchanged a quick smile, David confirming that the drink at least didn't taste like it could be poisonous. That was something. "He's alright by the way."

"The guy?"

"Yeah. He's fine. Well, he's fine…apart from the fact he's ableist git who told me I worked there so my sister could have a better parking space."

"Seriously?" He exclaimed.

He nodded solemnly, taking a sip of his own non-alcoholic apple juice, pretending to be cider. "Makes your uncomfortable face look like nothing, huh?"

"Does that happen a lot?"

"I can't remember the last time I left the house without meeting at least one person who stares at me or says something stupid. Heck, sometimes the kids forget and get confused when they call me over to play with them, wondering why I take so long to get off the sofa." He sighed. Again. "But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about…"

"What does 'there's nothing actually wrong with me' mean?" He interrupted.

Derek's head shot back to the man from the lawn he was previously examining. A hedgehog had been dawdling across the lawn since they settled outside and although neither of them had mentioned it, he was pretty sure both pairs of eyes had been trailing its path for the last couple of minutes. "Huh?"

"On the boat. When I offered to do it instead of you, you said I couldn't because I broke my arm and you could…because there was nothing wrong with you."

"I'm not healing anymore. That's what it means."

"Oh. Right. You mean..."

"I know it's been a while since we talked with me being busy with work and all but...yeah. My spine...Day, it's never going to heal."

He swallowed before nodding. He understood what the man meant by that, even if he had no medical knowledge.

"But it's okay. I mean, today...today was great if you ignore the start."

Arizona and Derek were working together again for a young boy with a spinal cord injury. He couldn't imagine being paralyzed at seven. When he was seven, he bounced off of walls and around the sofas and ran around parks and fields all day, every day. Physical activity was what he did as a seven-year-old. And as an eight-year-old. Probably as a nine-year-old too.

They were removing and replacing his spinal fixation, seeing as he was growing so rapidly.

"Oh my god!" The nine-year-old shouted as Derek entered the room behind Arizona, her hand lingering on the door for him.

"Uh- hi." Derek greeted awkwardly.

"Who are you? What do you do?" He asked excitedly, his eyes wide as he sat up in bed.

Derek swallowed. "I'm Dr Shepherd and-"

"What do you fix? Eyes? Arms? Guts? What doctor are you?"

He smiled. At first, he was just freaked out by the boy's screams, now he was starting to register that the boy was physically excited by him...for some reason. "I'm a neurosurgeon, so things with nerves. The brain and, of course, the spine."

"Oh! Add it to the list Mama! Add it to the list!"

He wheeled himself into the room and paused beside the bed. "What list is this Noah?"

"Jobs. Dreams. I wanted to be a firefighter and save people but I can't do that. So I...I want to find something else. But I never see people like me ever, you know, doing proper things, so I never know what I'm allowed to do and what I'm not allowed to do but you-" He looked Derek up and down, gawping at his wheelchair with...pride? "How do you start...neurosurgeoning?"

"Well, you have to go somewhere called medical school when you finish regular school. Then, you get to learn some more as a proper surgeon. Then, you specialise. That's when you go into neurosurgery and brains or orthopaedic surgery and bones or cardiothoracic surgery and hearts. Then you're a surgeon. Like a proper surgeon."

"Woah! Is it cool? Is it fun?"

"It's uh- I get to help people, every single day. Like a firefighter."

"Did you want to be a firefighter when you were small?" Noah asked, still gawping at the man with happiness.

"I haven't been like this for that long. But this was my dream job and when I almost lost it because of a car accident, I did everything I possibly could so I could do it again."

"Do you have-" He glanced to his mother, eyebrows creasing. He only just learnt the word. "-uh, pah- paraplegia too?"

He nodded. "Mmm mmm. In fact-" He slid his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through it quickly. "-we actually have the same break in our vertebrae, in the same place."

He passed it to the boy and his mouth dropped. His eyes flicked between Derek and his phone, intrigued, as he manoeuvred himself so he was right beside the boy in the bed. "Oh! Cool!"

"See, these white lines are the screws I have in my back. And this-" He scrolled across one. "-is what my spine looked like before I had the metalwork put in."

"You have two." He observed.

"I do."

"I have one." He said next.

"Yep. At what a fancy-pants neurosurgeon would call Lumbar Two." He agreed. "My other one is at Thoracic Eight."

"What about this one?"

"That's the second cervical vertebrae."

"Is this the third cervical vertebrae?" The boy asked, moving his finger just a little further down.

"Mmm mmm."

He beamed. "Am I a fancy-pants neurosurgeon yet?"

"He sounds like a sweet kid."

"Yeah, he was. Then we had a race down the hallway. I let him win, of course."

"Also known as, he was faster than you and you're pretending that you were just being nice."

He smirked. "Definitely not. Anyway, that's not what I was going to talk about, tell me about Jake. That's what I was going to ask about, like twelve hours ago. How's his piano lessons going?"

"Good. Very good. I was kinda scared that he'd just bang on the piano all day but he really changes while he's playing. He plays lightly. Sometimes he's practicing and I don't even notice."

"Henry and quiet? Really? Those aren't two words I'd put together." He murmured, pretty sure he heard the little boy speaking loudly through the open door in that very second. Jake had a reputation for being a loud child and whenever he was around his kids, they always turned loud too, the amplitude of their conversations turned generally a few notches to the right.

"How about Zola? Thinking about piano lessons?"

"Oh, you wait till Zola starts music lessons. All good neurosurgeons have that one artsy hobby and I know what Zola's is going to be already. You can just tell."

"You're challenging me to a kid-talent duel now?"

"Well, not yet. She hasn't actually started. But she has an in fascination with my guitar and liked poking the keys of my saxophone when I got it out like two years ago. I had no reeds, otherwise I would have let her play. Well- I did. But they were like…green. And mouldy."

"Ew, saxophonists." He responded, shaking his head at the man as his face cringed jestingly.

He grinned. "Okay, Mr orchestra-is better-than-concert-band man."

"Just because no orchestra likes the saxophone, doesn't mean you get to hate the cellists."

"Debussy liked the saxophone." He pointed out. "And since when have there been jazz cellists?"

"Ah, the impressionists." He returned. "You're just sad that you never got an Elgar concerto."

"Fine," He sighed, smirking. "I am."

"You okay?" He asked as he watched Derek's smirk fall away.

"There's something I really want to do...that I haven't done since the accident and Meredith- she can't, and won't, do it with me. Not that I've asked. It's just- unsafe for pregnant people. And boring to her anyway."

"And you have no other friends?" He suggested. "So you're going with me."

"Do you want to be my friend or not?" He asked, smiling again now.

"Depends. What is it that you want to do?"

Derek was too engulfed in the book he was reading to realize Mer had sat at end of the bed, not by his side. The warmth in his heart that occurred as she walked in told his brain she was there and he smiled quickly but his eyes didn't stay on her pregnant figure for long.

"Hey, what are you doing?" He asked, surprised when her cold hand brushed the bottom of his calf. He would have described it as a jump at the temperature, but his leg barely shifted. Despite the fact he could feel things against his skin, his reflexes were a little peculiar. That, along with the fact slight bends in his joints had become the equivalent of the old complete fold in his left knee in terms of energy taken to convince it to move meant that she didn't even notice the movement of discomfort.

"Massage?" She suggested.

"I should be the one massaging you." He returned, putting his book on the bedside table besides him and sitting up properly, back no longer against the pile of pillows he had created behind him in an attempt to make a comfortable place to read.

"Why? I'm not the one kneeling on the floor of a ferry boat with legs that have like twenty percent ROM."

"Told you that you were mad." He sighed.

She shook her head, thumb digging into his muscle now. "I'm not."

"You can be mad if you want. In fact, I'm pretty sure you should be."

"I had a session with Sears today." Meredith stated abruptly.

He swallowed. "Was that...was it a scheduled one, or did you book it because of our fight and me?

"Oh- just my regular one. And, today, she told me about Freud. A lot about him, in fact. Apparently, I have a lot of mechanisms going on all at once."

"In what way?"

Her hands dug even tighter into his skin, scraping bone. "Apparently, my mind is totally okay with the fact that you are an idiot who keeps hurting yourself to stop other people from dying, hence why I was happy yesterday, but, apparently, my unconscious mind is rediverting my repressed sadness about the fact that you're in a chair and, well, the accident generally into anger against your actions so, apparently, it doesn't have to deal with it consciously. Sounds so stupid. I mean, it's fine now. We both know that, right?" She asked rhetorically, smirking to herself at the outrageous idea. "I mean, that's not how it works. I'm just- pregnant and hormonal. That's why I'm so...whatever-I-am-y, right?"

Derek sighed. "What's with all the 'apparently's?"

She smirked again. "Well, she's not right. I can't just bury things like that and then have them pop up in something that was totally unrelated. That's stupid."

"So...never in your life have you been mad about one thing, and taken it out on someone else who isn't anything to do with it?"

The massaging hand stopped again. "This is different."

"You feel like you can't talk about the chair because I'm okay with it and you think that not being okay with it is some kind of crime."

"No." She denied simply, not even trying to add onto the refusal. Mostly because she had nothing to add on; he was right.

"Just because you don't say anything about it anymore, that doesn't mean I don't know what's going on in your head Mer." He said pointedly. "I'm still not expecting you to be okay with it. I'm hoping you are in the next, you know, few months because I hate seeing you like his but...Mer, really, it's okay. You can just talk to me instead of exploding about something else."

She sighed, and moved on the bed so she was a little closer to him, legs crossed. One palm rested on her stomach. "I'm scared."

"Of-" He pushed, keeping his voice soft.

"We're not ready to have a baby. You're not. I'm certainly not. And what...what if-" Her lip quivered a little as her eyes drifted away from his face and to the side of the bed. "-I don't...parenting children is hard. But- a baby? How do we raise a healthy, happy baby when you can't carry them and I'm an emotional wreck?"

"Okay, first of all, baby carriers exist. In fact, there is one in the baby's bedroom upstairs right now because Amelia put it in there. I can carry our baby, okay? I can't do milk, but I'm pretty sure I can do literally everything else. And you are going to be fine. We've still got a few more weeks until they arrive-" His hand joined hers on her bump. "-and you're already doing so much better than when I first told you that I'm sure you'll be fine by then. Then we'll have a baby and cry of sleep deprivation but...well, you know, that's a normal parent thing."

She nodded slowly.

"That was something else that you were bottling?" He guessed after a few seconds of rubbing her stomach with his thumb.

Meredith grabbed the mobile hand and squeezed it. She didn't say anything. She didn't do anything. He just held her hand with a half-smile, trying not to fall apart again.

"Can I ask you something?"

She nodded, uttering, "Okay."

"Go back eight months in your mind." He instructed. He did it in his mind too. He wasn't quite sure whether the fact he struggled to picture a world at 5'10: running, walking, standing, was a good thing or not. Dr Sears would probably say it was a good thing because, he could only presume, it meant that he had adjusted to the way things were going to be. That, along with the fact his hands were free to do whatever they wanted while he was ambulatory, just made his own flash back to his previous life even stranger.

"Right."

"I don't get hit by a truck, I go to DC for the last time, I come back and it is all magic and rainbows." He started, closing his eyes as if he was really imagining that life. "We fight about something, although I was kinda hoping in this dream land where this didn't happen but...the next morning I leave you a note that says I took one of the cars and I'm going out, see you soon, love you, call if you need anything – that kinda thing. Do you worry?"

"Yeah. I worry. Of course I worry." She returned, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. "You're probably upset about whatever we were fighting about in this weird dream world thing and I don't want you to be. I want you to be with me. I want you to work out this thing with me, not brood on a ferry boat."

"Do you worry more or less than you did when I disappeared, leaving the exact same note?"

"More." She answered, her tone sure.

He didn't frown nor smile, not at all astonished by her answer. "Why?"

"I don't mean to. You know I don't mean to." She answered. She knew what he was going to ask her next and she jumped the gun. She didn't need to be guided through this with questions as if he was trying to persuade her to slip the answers out one at a time. "I try my best to- well, not ignore it, it's hardly something I can ignore, but it is hard. I want to worry. I need to worry. And I'm aware that I worry more now than ever because you're different than you used to be. There are things you can't do which mean of course I see you differently."

"What can I change?" He implored.

"What?"

"What can I do for you that I'm not doing right now? I'm different that I used to be. You just said it and it's all I think about. So, let me be different in a good kinda way."

"Derek-"

"If I can't do a bunch of the old things I used to do, let me find new things to do."

She sighed, thinking for a moment.

"Anything. Anything at all. The first thing that pops into your mind."

"Let me phone Collin without you shouting at me. Then you can go upstairs without bum-shuffling or whatever the kids call it – which I know is hell for both your arms and your legs. Then you can help with the kids in the morning. Wake them up, get them dressed and ready for breakfast. We could go back to sleeping in our own bed. It's much more comfortable. We could have the actually good taps in the en-suit that aren't always just a little warmer than luke-warm."

He swallowed but didn't make any immediate rebuttal nor shift in his facial features. "Okay."

"Okay?" She repeated, surprised by how quickly she submitted to her suggestion. She thought she was shooting too far with that request.

"You know why I didn't want it before, right?"

"It would make it permanent. But now it really is." She answered, sure she was accidently quoting his words. He had told her enough.

"So?" He asked, looking at her expectantly.

She frowned. "So…what?"

"I imagine Collin is still awake at this hour, there's no time like the present."

"Oh, right." She slid her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her contacts until she reached the letter 'C'. Meredith had simply named him 'Collin Stair Guy' in the fear that if he was to pick up her phone, any other name she could have chosen would have started a fight or at least another painful conversation about it.

"Hi, my name's Meredith Grey. I called you- uh, quite a while ago now...Yeah, he's liked finding alternatives to getting up the stairs…mmm, mmm...T8 incomplete paraplegia…heh- yeah, my kids call it that too…"

Her voice faded into the distance as she, presumably, walked to the kitchen, leaving him to get up.

He sat up, pausing when his feet touched the ground below the bed as his eyes wandered up to the empty space above their bed. It wasn't empty above their real bed. That space was occupied by a picture frame that contained a blue post it note: their something old, something borrowed and something blue, all in one. It came from the half-used pad of blue post-it notes that Cristina had shoved Meredith's way when she heard their plans of getting married. Although, when she offered the pad, that wasn't quite the wedding she had in her mind.

In their real room, the lights by the bed were the same as the ones she refused to turn off for safety after the plane crash. He never liked sleeping with that much light infiltrating through his eyelids but if it meant she could sleep, he would settle on a thousand lights illuminating their room.

He even missed the layout of his wardrobe and the fact that his bedside cabinet was deep enough to fit everything he wanted it to. It was just…his bedroom. Well, their bedroom, really. But it was right for him.

And the tumour on the wall, of course. He could picture it in his mind still – it would be alarming if he couldn't, considering the fact that he had stared at it for a good ten hours before even performing the long surgery – but he still missed the reminder of that each morning and each night.

Although, now, Meredith could send him to shake dreams away from their kids so they could be ready in the morning. That bit didn't sound so nice.

The rest of it though...he couldn't bear to wait another second for that.