The Grey-Shepherd family have a day at the park together and Meredith 'surprises' Derek with a gift.
They didn't go to the park often. There was no point. The forest surrounding their house was practically a park with the high trees and the trails and the woodland creatures. But it lacked the massive set up of playground equipment and concrete paths through the gaps in the trees and the ice cream van that a recreational forest space did. As well as, of course, the ferry boat trip they took to get there; he was glad to see his children smiling on that adventure.
Derek could have just pulled some ice cream out of the freezer and dumped a couple spoonfuls into a bowl but the ice cream man with the rainbow bow tie at the park clearly made better ice cream scoops than him, from the looks on their face at the park's mention. It was weird. He could cut precisely into brains to avoid literal death...but ice-cream? Even when he left it out to soften, his supposed spheres of ice-cream were simply awkward little half-rolls.
So, the park it was.
"Daddy! Daddy, look at me!"
He couldn't help but exchange a smirk with his wife. "I'm watching baby!" He shouted back.
She nodded, then hurled herself down the slide on her belly, giggling the whole way.
"Did you see that? Did you? Did you see it? Did you?" She asked excitedly, bouncing over to where one of her parents were sat, and the other one was stood.
"Yes. You went down on your stomach. And you were making an adorable little face the whole time."
She smiled, making a similar face. "Will you play with me?"
He swallowed. "Uh- I'm not sure I can. I'm sorry."
"Baby means you do no play too, right?" Zola asked, turning to her mom with a frown. It was odd how she could go from bouncing-off-the-walls-happy to on the verge of tears. A kid thing, he supposed.
"Maybe...maybe dad could try." Meredith suggested, knowing why he said no. He hadn't said that because he couldn't play with her, it was because his wife had scolded him for being so irresponsible with his life (this wasn't life-or-death, but it could still go horribly, horribly wrong).
"Really?" Zola asked, hope making her whole soul light up.
"Really?" Derek parroted. He wasn't happy. He was confused and surprised. Astonished, even.
"Careful playing though. You know adults aren't supposed to be on that stuff anyway."
He shrugged. "Good job I'm your fourth child then." He replied. Brakes released, he followed his daughter to the play park. The ground was the peculiar-coloured plastic thing that most parks had. He had no idea what it was called, nor if it was soft and squishy, but he imagined that it was from the look of it. It was an easy surface to move on, but anything but sand or bark chips made him smile. He'd be able to deal with any surface as long as it wasn't those ones.
Meredith followed, taking the route around the huge metal structure in the middle, not through it. He was basically the height of a child now, so he was fine getting through it without hitting his head on anything. Bailey appeared from...somewhere, and joined her. Her hand latched onto his instinctually.
"How bout this?" Zola asked, pointing up. She was trying to figure out what her dad could do. If the park was empty, he used to join them. But he couldn't now, other than what she suggested.
Monkey bars.
No legs required. Just arms.
He looked from his daughter to his wife. Surprisingly, Meredith didn't look totally disgusted by the idea.
He glanced around for a second. It wasn't tumbleweed-empty; there were about four other kids there with five or six parents but there were multiple wooden and metal structures scattered around and no one was too close. He paused at one side and analysed it for a second. Ladder. He could climb a ladder, right?
"Careful!" Meredith exclaimed, surprised when he grabbed the furthest rung that he could and pulled himself up. His legs were touching the floor and his joints did their best not to let themselves tumble, but that certainly wasn't how he was keeping himself upright. She swallowed when he released one hand to grab the next one, scared he wouldn't be able to hold himself, but he did perfectly well. Before she even realized that he had grasped another one, he had reached for the highest rung and pulled himself up to perch on the top of the playground frame. "Please be careful up there."
He nodded, and glanced to his kids. He would have loved to stop to stop his wife's concern, but he couldn't. Not with their wide, bright eyes that were so damn impressed and proud and...it was odd for them to be so happy that he was up there, but he didn't think about that. He didn't let himself.
He gripped one bar, hung, moved.
Now, he was impressive for managing to pull himself up an awfully inaccessible playground frame. It didn't matter that he used to be able to do that with no trouble. That's what he was learning. Screw his old self; he was incredible for doing what he could now.
"You and Mama in team. And I by myself." Bailey instructed, chucking the soccer-ball up and down in his hands.
"Why you by yourself?" Zola asked, trying to knock the ball out of her brother's hand. "You no better than me."
"Because Mama is not going to be running, or walking quicker than 0.2 miles an hour." Meredith answered for him.
"Is 0.2 miles an hour fast or slow?"
Right. She was talking to a four- and six-year-old. "Very slow."
"Oh, right." Zola breathed before taking the ball from her brother and sprinting to the middle of the pitch, placing it on the ground.
Meredith didn't move much. She wasn't going to play. She only agreed to it because Derek couldn't and she didn't want her kids to feel like they were just going to be dumped on the field, left to their own devices as their parents watched.
It wasn't real soccer. They knew that handball wasn't allowed and that there were two teams, but that was it. They had no positions or had ever heard of red or yellow cards. They flicked in-between goalie and player whenever their hearts desired, even when they were playing with friends so there was enough of them to spread out across the pitch.
Derek watched the kids kick the ball to and from each other's feet, occasionally hitting against Meredith's foot too. She kicked it away instantly, never holding onto it for long. She didn't try to score, just watching her two kids chase after the ball desperately as if it was a life-or-death game. It wasn't. But both were sweating as if it was.
They had played for a good ten minutes when Zola kicked the ball towards him by accident. Neither of them moved as it rolled to their father's side.
He stared at it for just a second before sitting forward a little and scooping the ball off of the ground.
He could do this, right? Even if it was technically an illegal hand-ball.
He ignored the mud, and chucked it as hard as he could in the direction of the netting.
Although there was nothing wrong with his arms that incapacitated the throw, he was a long, long way away from the net.
All of them watched it as it rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled down the pitch.
"Quick! Bailey, Run!" Zola screamed from the other side of the field, running herself too.
It was the slowest tumble he had ever seen but the bounce pushed it on a little and eventually it rolled past the white line of the D, past the bar and into the net. Barely. Very, very barely. It hardly even rebounded off the mesh of the goal. But it went in.
Derek Shepherd scores a goal!
"Woah! Dada!" Bailey exclaimed. He paused besides his father, looking up at him with wide eyes.
"You know you're good at football when the guy who isn't even playing scores more goals than you." Meredith joked, kicking the ball not very accurately towards them. She could barely see the ball, like how she could barely see her toes over her stomach.
"I'm just that good." He returned sarcastically, smirking.
She shook her head at the lack of humour in his joke. "Sure you are."
"Technically, you're not in goal." Zola pointed out defensively. "And only goaling means that you allowed to touch with your hands."
Derek smirked. She had a good point.
"We play again?" Bailey asked.
Meredith shrugged. "You wanna play again?"
"I don't minds." He answered, picking up the football from his mother's inaccurate kicks.
"Zola?" She said, turning to her.
"Me neither."
"So, ice cream?" Derek offered, knowing that would solve his kids' indecisiveness in no more than a second.
"Ice cweam!" Bailey exclaimed, jumping up and down. That was most definitely a yes then.
"What flavour do you want?" Derek asked, looking to his two kids.
"Vanils?" Bailey answered, settling on his regular choice.
"I don't know." Zola shrugged, looking to the board and attempting to read through the options.
"You could have vanilla like your brother or ch-"
"Vanilla is boring. Bails is boring." She said, shaking her head before looking at her brother with disgust.
"Okay." He sighed. That sounded like something he would have rebutted with as a child with his own sisters. "Well, you could have chocolate or strawberry or caramel – that's what mom is having – or maybe mint. Whatever you want."
"Stawbies?" She suggested. "I like strawbies."
Meredith nodded, smiling in thanks as Derek passed him a couple dollars of bills. "Coffee, caramel, strawberry, vanilla please." Meredith requested to the man.
"Tubs? Single scoop?" He asked as he took the money, the till pinging as he opened it.
"Uh-" She turned round to look at her kids for just a second, unsure. They had those faces. Those damn we're-getting-the-chocolate-cone-with-double-scoop-ice-cream-right? faces.
Derek handed her another note. "Make the last two double scoops. Chocolate cone. Yours too. I'll keep the tub."
"Oh, okay. Thanks." She nodded, handing the man the money. "What he said."
He smiled. "Of course."
"Keep the change." Derek instructed as he watched the man collect a scooper and flip open the protection over the colourful tubs.
The kids watched the man scoop them, dumping them on top of the cone with intrigue. Meredith was better at scooping them, so it was Derek that was staring at his technique, wondering how in the world he could do that.
"Why didn't you want a cone?" She asked as she handed Zola the strawberry ice cream – a double scoop on a cone dipped in chocolate – then the vanilla one to Bailey – a double scoop on a cone dipped in chocolate. Derek couldn't imagine the chaos that would occur if they had different setups of ice-cream. The only difference they didn't fight over was flavour, seeing as they simply chose their favourite. He liked the cone. He loved the cone, in fact.
"No hands." He explained, placing the tub carefully on his lap before placing both hands on the rim of his chair's wheels, pulling himself away from her a little and continuing down the path they were on before they met the ice-cream stand.
He was one of those people that Meredith dreaded him turning into, and had been for months now. When she looked through his chart properly for the first time, she tried to picture it in her mind. Her husband, father of her children, Derek Shepherd, neurogod, in a wheelchair. She had looked at his scan, then him, then that endotracheal tube that she despised so much, then the little slither of the brace around his torso that she could see, most of it covered by his blanket. She told herself that she wouldn't mind, she would still love him no matter what and, of course, she would much rather have him hauling himself around in a chair for the rest of his life than have to explain where her children's dad went, bury him and then spending the rest of her life battling her own mind about whether or not she should move on. But that was the thing. He didn't haul himself. It wasn't painful to watch. He didn't struggle and he didn't even seem to think about it. Not anymore. The way he just pushed himself about without a second thought really was as simple and carefree as walking to him. She didn't mind the simplicity now that they knew it was a permanent change and had accepted that. She was glad that it had become second nature, of course. She wouldn't want him to find it hard. Well, most days. Some days, she would watch him with the kids as they did odd but rather dangerous-looking 360° turns and wheelies and found herself wishing that he hadn't got quite so confident. But if meant their kids cared even less about their dad's chair, considering the fact it was simply more entertainment, she supposed she couldn't really complain.
"I could have held it for you, if you asked."
"I didn't want to give you more to carry." He elaborated.
She smirked. "Cause god forbid you give me an ice cream, the heaviest item on earth, and I topple over."
"It's fine," He dismissed quickly, although he did take a second to smile at her joke. "We gonna sit by the water?"
"Can't we walks and eats? Then we get to see more of the trees!" Zola exclaimed happily, looking to the towering trees above her, neck craning to see them at their magnificent height. It really was a beautiful piece of land. Almost as nice as his, but the kids saw that every day.
It wasn't like they weren't aware of their father's limitations. Most of them, they had figured out themselves.
Children tended to pick up a lot of things unconsciously. Both noticed that, in the things he did do with or for them, he always tried hard to make them happy. That meant that they could conclude that, if he didn't do something, it was simply because he couldn't. Otherwise, they both knew he would try.
Zola was perfectly aware that his version of walking incapacitated his hands. She learnt that when she handed him her lion – Nala – and told him to carry her from the lounge to the kitchen for a game of some sort. He couldn't quite remember why. He settled Nala carefully on his lap but Zola looked at him outraged.
"No. No you can't do that. You have to hold. In hand. So she doesn't fall over." She had insisted, picking up the stuffed animal from his lap and holding it out to him for his hand to grasp.
He looked at her, lost for a second. He wasn't used to it yet. He had only just been discharged from the hospital a week prior and, despite the fact he was perfectly aware that he wouldn't be able to escape from the mobility aid for some quite time, if not, ever, he still wasn't really used to the idea of being in a wheelchair and what that meant for him as a human. As a dad. As a husband. As anything really.
The majority of patients were walking by the time they were discharged. It was one of the tick-boxes doctors considered when posing the question of whether or not a patient should be allowed to return home.
Is it safe? Is it likely that they will need emergency medical intervention? Will they need a full-time carer? Are they independent enough? Is their house set up for their needs? Are there dependents on the house? Will they be mobile enough by themselves, without the assistance of nurses and other hospital staff? That was his question. But they couldn't keep him locked up in that ward forever.
"What? What's wrongs?" She had asked, shaking Nala up and down a little before she let the lion fall to her side. He couldn't help but continue to look at the lion with the same sad, confused, lost eyes. She called his name – or what she called him at least – half a dozen times. Then he explained. He needed his hands. He would always need his hands. Zola asked him what the point in having legs was if he did everything with his hands. It was a fair enough question. In fact, it was a very good question. At that time, he wasn't even standing. They were completely and utterly useless to him. He managed to get her to focus again on his explanation and from that moment, she knew.
Rule number seventy-three (or some other big number, she couldn't count that high) – no asking daddy to hold things while moving, unless it's on his lap. That cemented in her mind.
But in that moment, it just slipped from her mind.
Meredith exchanged a look with her husband, not quite sure how to dismiss her idea. "Uhh- mama is a little tired after all that footballing. How about we sit down?"
"But you didn't even play Mama!" Bailey wined, pouting a little. "You just stood there!"
"I know, I know. But it's nice sitting by the water, right?"
"Guess so." He sighed.
Bailey and Zola ran to the side of the water, knowing the quicker they got there, the quicker they could eat their ice-cream. Neither of them were particularly content with the idea, but that still didn't mean they were going to dawdle and mope if it meant it would just take longer for the ice-cream to brush their lips.
"Can we go down there?" Zola requested, pointing down a child-made path through a couple trees. The ground had been trampled into a walkway, but the ground was anything but a real path.
"What's down there?" Derek asked, trying to look down the shaded trail.
"It's like a little den that some kids built. You know, the laying-the fallen-branches-against-a-tree-tepees. We went there a while ago…when you were still in hospital."
"Right."
"So, can we?" Bailey asked, sliding off his father's lap, his legs not clearly aching as much as he made them out to after a vigorous game of football. He wasn't sure his kids even got tired anymore. They just used it as an excuse for a free ride. Not that he minded, generally. However, he did mind when their presence against his legs hurt.
He minded today. He minded a lot.
"Stick together. And be safe. Come back if there are other kids there. If there isn't, be back here when the big hand on your watch points to the ten." She instructed. "Show me the ten Zola."
She nodded, rolling up her t-shirt sleeve a little and pointing to the number. Meredith nodded and Derek could only presume it was because she had pointed to the right one.
"Aren't you- do you not want to go with them? I'll be fine to- wait."
"I don't really think it's safe for-" She started, placing a hand on her belly to finish her sentence.
It was a fair point. The last thing they needed was her to fall or get hurt while so heavily pregnant. He sighed. He didn't like it, but they were mature enough. He hoped. He placed a hand on his daughter's shoulder for a second, shooting her a smile. "Go on then."
The two kids ran down the path. He could see why Meredith going down there would be a bad idea. The ground was littered with roots that they managed to leap over with ease. But they were kids. Sub-five-foot, tiny little humans.
"Can I leave you alone?" He asked after a minute of waiting for the discomfort Bailey had caused his left leg to fade. It didn't.
"Why? Where are you going?"
"Toilet." He answered as he pulled himself back a little.
"Well, I better let you go then." She returned, only half-joking.
There was toilet block just a little way down from where they were. That's where he retreated to. He missed the lady's, obviously; the men's, which still felt a little weird; before pausing at his own door. Locked.
He sighed, waiting for the door to open. His ears perked at the sound of the door unlocking and a woman stepped out.
He gave her a quick, genuine smile as their eyes met. He didn't form an opinion. He was perfectly aware of the fact that invisible disabilities existed. She could just have one, he had no idea and he certainly couldn't tell just by looking at her. That was the whole point of the term.
Well, that was what he presumed until she frowned at him, apologizing clearly just out of duty, "Oh- sorry. The line to the ladies' room was like super long and I couldn't wait. I really needed to get back to my boyfriend, I-"
"Does it look like I care?" He cut her off, surprised by the spite in his own voice. Although, he was one of those people; he had the right to snap.
"I- no." She breathed, finally stepping out of the way of the door. "Sorry again."
He gave a sarcastic smile as he pulled into the room. "Thank you. Hope your boyfriend doesn't think you took too long."
He locked the door behind him before pushing off his shoes by placing his heels against the two footrests of his chair and drawing his knees up a little, slipping the slack shoes off. With both shoes removed, he pulled off his pants, getting to the layer he was looking for. He used both hands to pull of two strips at once from his left side, sighing as all tightness released at the last strip. The orthodontic was still engulfing his leg, but it rested around it, rather than being crushed by it. His ankle and knee relaxed. His muscles. He relaxed. He pressed a thumb deep into his thigh, above the gradient compression stockings covering the leg and he could feel again. Something real.
Allodynia is extreme pain to a stimulus that shouldn't be painful was what his intern had defined it as. He was accurate in his conclusion. Bailey sitting on his lap for ten minutes shouldn't have caused him so much pain. But it did.
He turned around in his seat to grab at the backpack Meredith had placed on the back of it when they first got out the car, finding three different packets inside.
One hand picked out the water bottle, placing it between his right leg and the side of his chair while the other one held the three that he was considering. He looked between the analgesics, settling on the strongest after a second.
He didn't want to, but he didn't really want to draw attention to it, especially with Meredith so close to the end of her pregnancy. The last thing she needed was him in pain.
He checked the time: forty-five past. That was five minutes before his kids were supposed to return from the den.
He sighed, wishing he didn't have to stretch so far to reach the bottom of his foot. He reached, pain trickling up his leg, reaching across his pelvis then growing up his spine. He knew the painkillers would take a while to kick in, but he still really just wished they would hurry up.
The minute hand was almost pointing to ten when he got back to her and Bailey's shouts could be heard from the forest besides where he stopped with his wife. "I love that den, can we be here tomorrow?" Bailey requested, leaping over the same branches and roots he had to get through the forest.
"Please!" Zola exclaimed.
Meredith exchanged a look with Derek. "Not tomorrow. But on our next day off."
Bailey smiled before looking to his father. "Can I have ride to car?"
He swallowed. No. The answer was no, he couldn't. He had just had to rip of his leg brace and take another dose of analgesics because of the pain that his son sitting on his lap caused him.
So why a positive answer dropped from his mouth, he had no idea. No idea at all.
"Yay!"
"Oi!" Meredith called poking at his arm. "Wakey wakey, sleepy head."
He groaned at the jabbing of his left arm. He knew she was aware there were much less aggressive ways to pull someone from sleep.
"I 'ad the night shift. No wakey wakeys." He murmured, grasping the pillow on her side of the bed and dropping it over his own face. Two palms placed themselves over the pillow on each end.
"But I have a surprise for you!" She exclaimed, poking his arm again.
"It's not a surprise-" He groaned, pushing the pillow off of his face. "-I'm so tired because I know what he just finished doing because all I could hear while I was trying to sleep was hammers and nails and machiney noise and all that stupid stuff…"
She raised an eyebrow. He was being a surprisingly terrible morning person. Or, she supposed, not-morning person, seeing as he got in at nine in the morning and it was now one pm. "C'mon. You can go back to bed later. I'll join you."
"Now that sounds good." He muttered.
She smiled at how much more awake he became at the promise. "But only if you come see the not-surprise I got you. Then we can do it upstairs."
He grinned. He liked that idea. He liked that idea a lot. "Fine...let's go see this surprise that I totally haven't seen being installed for like a week."
"So…we gonna say something or just stare at it for another ten minutes?"
He smiled, looking up to her. "I can't believe you did that." He remarked.
"You said I could." She reminded him. "You asked me to find some way of you doing the things I wanted you to do and this is what I suggested. You wanted to make my life easier. You wanted a change. You let me call Collin. So, you asked for this."
"But seriously." He sighed. "Any idea where we're putting all those books yet, seeing as you destroyed my study?"
"You never even went in that study." She dismissed, shaking her head through a smile. Her husband was unbelievable.
"Well- it made me look fancy." He said defensively, unable to stop his lips from curling upwards.
She laughed properly at that one. "It made you look fancy? Really?"
"Don't you think it sounds fancy if I say I have a study in my house?"
"I think you saying you have a whole freaking elevator in your house sounds much, much cooler."
He shrugged. "Guess so. Would be a lot cooler if we had it for fun, not because stairs are my greatest enemy though, wouldn't it?
"I suppo-" She started, trailing off as she heard the set of footsteps patter down the stairs yet again. That was the seventh time Zola had done that since they introduced her to the replacement to his study. And the fourth time Bailey had come down the stairs since his sister informed him.
She had asked a lot of questions before when some guy turned up with massive tool boxes and sheets of metal and other things she couldn't even begin to name, nevermind describe. There was a lot. But Meredith always just dismissed it as simple construction.
"Zola?" He called.
She didn't respond. Her ears didn't even perk to his shout.
"Zola, come here." He instructed as Zola came sprinting down the stairs, pressing the button on the wall and hopping up and down between her feet. She couldn't ever stand still. Which seemed more than ironic, considering the reason people, including her own father, used the machine.
"This is the best toy ever!" She exclaimed as she turned to face her parents.
"This isn't a toy, baby." He said with a quick shake of his head, watching as Meredith slipped to the other side of him to stand in the door way of her not-toy so she couldn't enter, even if she wanted to.
"Well what is it then?"
He smiled a little, knowing the exclamation that would follow his question. "You want ups?"
"Oh! Ups!" She exclaimed, taking a couple more steps towards him. She was used to knowing where she had to stand when he was going to pick her up now.
"You're growing, Zozo." He stated as she settled on his lap. The angle he had to pick her up from always tugged at his lower back. Luckily, it was never enough to wince or grimace or, heaven forbid, drop his child mid-pickup but he knew Zola's microscopic weight was most definitely not the reason he struggled to pick her up.
"Now what?"
"Now…" He trailed off as he released the breaks of his chair and tried his best to pull backwards.
He hit the wall. Dammit.
Zola laughed, jerking a little on his lap. Zola laughed…at him. God, she was a troublesome one sometimes. "Silly Daddy!"
He tried again, and this time didn't fail. "Say bye to Mama." He instructed as she shut the door on them.
She waved vigorously and Meredith offered a less passionate wave back before dissappearing.
She shifted on his lap so she was now just sat on his right leg. "See why I think fun yet?"
"Mmm." He hummed, stroking at her hair.
Elevators were fun.
Meredith suggested Katie Bryce's aneurism when he got in the elevator, although that was technically a breach of conduct. He proposed-but-not-proposed to her in an elevator. Had the fertility shots he gave Meredith worked, they could have almost created a child in an elevator. Heart in an elevator. Rose, Meredith, Addison and Mark in an elevator. All at once. General chart-dropping make out sessions in an elevator. A lot happened in that one tiny metal, linearly-moving box. Granted, this one wasn't a hospital, gurney sized elevator.
He pushed the door open with one hand.
"Ooooooooh." She exclaimed, one very, very long realization spewing from her mouth as she registered where the elevator really led to. She knew it went upstairs, of course she did. But she didn't consider that it got her father upstairs, the place he only ever went about once every week when either her or Bailey would suggest the idea and he would have to use his long (and a little painful) method to get up the stairs.
"See, not a toy."
"Does this mean no more bum shuffle?" She questioned, making the connection quickly.
"Mmm mmm."
Her father used to sleep upstairs, wake her and her brother up in the morning from their upstairs bedroom to get them dressed and ready. He used to live upstairs. Then he disappeared for a while, her mother only letting her see him every week or so. He came back rather different. Although, Zola didn't really notice that anymore. It was just kind of part of him in her mind now. Considering this, it was obviously enough - even to a six-year-old - that: accident equalled no more stairs. She could guess that one.
She had bum shuffled up and down stairs with her brother when she was bored but she had never even considered it a legitimate method of movement.
A week after his first, pained attempt at ascending and descending the stairs with said method, she planted herself purposefully at the top of the stars. She looked around her. No one was nearby. That was good.
She took it seriously this time. It wasn't a game. It was an experiment.
She could remember various people telling her that her father had hurt his legs, hence why he struggled so much to walk. She had once heard someone mention the fact that he had broken two vertebrae, but she had no idea what or where that was. In hindsight, she supposed that was why no one ever mentioned it to her.
She was sure she would get an answer from him if she asked but, whether or not it was because she was present, they never seemed to talk about it anymore. She just supposed he had grown to understand it better, like she had too.
It took a while to get down the stairs with only the use of her hands, making her legs do their best at staying limp. It hurt her arms a lot more than she expected. That meant it hurt his arms too. Which was not good. Not good at all.
She didn't go back up, but she could only imagine that doing it that way was harder.
Her experiment was complete.
Her father decided to put himself through an awful lot of pain and stress and effort just to sit and drink their imaginary tea. But it meant he cared.
No one saw her do it. No one saw her imitate her father in an attempt to get a better look at his life, like Meredith had done with the office chair before he returned home. No one saw her make her conclusion. Her analysis. Her summary. My father loves me so much, he does things that hurt him so he can love me extra.
"Does that mean you can play whenever you want? Cause it take forever to take toys up and down the stairs." She asked, not breathing a word of the investigation she had carried out.
"Of course. We can play in just a minute if you want." He offered.
She frowned a little. "Not nows?"
"Just find your brother, get your toys out. Be there in five."
"Okay." She replied, giving one short nod before running into Bailey's room.
He entered their bedroom. Their bedroom. Not the one he and Meredith had claimed downstairs so they could still sleep together.
No, it was their real bedroom.
He smiled at the post it, as if greeting an old friend. He supposed that was what he was doing. They were good vows. Obviously, they worked. They shouted them at each other an awful lot while he was in hospital, and for a little while after. Mainly the one about running. He thought she had every right too. He wasn't even close to the man she married anymore, some days he was pretty sure he might have well had a personality transplant. But she stayed, because no running, this is forever. Plus, the sickness and health part of the wedding they only performed for Zola's adoption.
He was painfully aware of how much their first vow, to love each other, even when we hate each other, was enforced in that time. In fact, he was ninety nine percent sure that the majority of the love he had received then was hate-love. Looking back, he couldn't be surprised by that. He was hurting, an awful lot, but he also said a lot of things that he most definitely wouldn't endorse any more. A lot of things.
He paused by the side of the bed. Even its height was better than the bed downstairs. The whole room was just perfect.
He transferred, giving a satisfied sigh as he led on top of the bed. He didn't bother getting under the covers. It was the sensation of familiarity that he was after, not a quick rest.
"Hey."
He didn't sit up or shift his head. "I forgot how much I love this bed."
He smiled as she sat beside him before lying down and looking up to the ceiling too. Their hands joined.
"Since I can get up here now, would you mind not going in baby's room?"
He heard her head shift besides him. "What?"
"It's practically empty, right?" He questioned rhetorically, not even pausing to let her answer. "I want to decorate it."
"A surprise?"
"A real surprise this time." He confirmed.
"Mmm mmm. Sounds good." She murmured, lying on her side now with one hand propping up her head. He didn't realize that her other hand had crept to his jean's top button until he felt them slacken abruptly.
"Hey!" He almost exclaimed.
"You can't tell me the first thing you want to do in this bed is sleep. Honestly?"
He beamed. God, he loved his wife. "Zola! Can I hav-" He started, pausing abruptly as her hand slipped through the space she had created with the undoing of the button. He wasn't ready for…that. That feeling.
"What? You wanna wait?" She whispered back when his eyes shot from where her hand was to her smirking face.
"I- uh- we..." He heaved and, before he could figure out how to speak again, the door clicked.
"Wat?" Zola asked, shoving the door open.
Meredith managed to slip away from him just in time to smile innocently at their daughter. He didn't do his jeans back up, but that hardly mattered.
"Uh- hey…Zozo." He greeted awkwardly.
"What did you says? Couldn't hear you."
"Can we have ten minutes, baby?" Meredith requested, wondering if her husband could form a real sentence yet. If he couldn't, she didn't want to have an excuse to cover for that.
"Yeah." She agreed, eyes flickering suspiciously between her two parents. It was hardly like she knew what they were doing though, she just thought they were being a little peculiar.
"Thanks Baby." She responded as she left the doorway. Meredith hurried to close and lock it before looking back to her husband. She wasn't going to strip, thanks to the decision they had made. No more sex. Considering the fact that her bump had grown far too much in size, width, diameter, circumference, annoyance, KPH (an average amount of kicks per hour, similar to miles per hour) and pressure-on-the-bladder, they decided to stop two-way pleasure.
"Ten minutes, eh? Sure that's long enough?" He asked, slipping his thumbs into his pants and pushing them down.
"I can do all sorts in ten minutes-" She murmured, pulling them all the way off, taking just one sock with it. "-you know that."