Down for Love-
chapter 6
by greyeyedgirl
Nine times nine is eighty-one. A polynomial with three terms and a degree of 3 is a cubic trinomial. Every set is a subset of itself.
Meredith had always loved math. Even when she struggled with something for awhile, she was still blown away by the simplicity of complications that existed in mathematics. There was a formula for everything. There was always an answer, and only one, complete, simple answer.
Life was slightly more complicated.
She brushed her hair out of her face with her hand, trying desperately to get out of a half-awake, half-asleep, aware-of-nothing phase of consciousness. Derek's surgery was in six hours. It was now 9:13 AM, at least according to the delicate silver watch that embraced her slender wrist. It was kind of beautiful, if you looked at the watch without abandon. Like math. Simple complications. A contradiction in terms.
Derek was lying asleep in his hospital bed only inches away from where her watch on the outskirts of the scratchy cotton pillow. It was the kind of pillow that makes your hair static-y and your face turn red if you sleep too long on it. The bandage on Derek's head blended smoothly against the corner of the pillow, the colors shades apart. Shades of white. Meredith hated white. It was a empty color, desperate for something to make it more, better, than what it really was...nothing.
The thought hit her despicably. Derek was so much more than white. He was so much bigger than she was. More important. A simple complication.
She put her finger ever so lightly on the bottom of his jaw, on the right side. She could feel a tiny bone popping out.
"How's he doin'?"
Meredith jumped, startled, to see Alex standing just inside the doorway. "He's fine," she said hoarsely.
Alex walked over to check Derek's BP and temperature, writing carefully on his chart. "Fine, Grey?"
He seemed to regret his words as an unreadable expression crossed over Meredith's face. "Sorry," he muttered.
Meredith kept her head bent towards Derek as she stood up. "I have to go. I told Cristina I'd-" she didn't bother to finish her sentence as she left the room, seeing Alex page Dr. Burke out of the corner of her eye.
"Code red! Third floor cardiology, code red!"
Meredith sat up in the on-call room, hearing the announcement over the speakers. Derek. Noooooo.
In later days, she would not be able to remember her race to the elevator, her frantic pushing of the button, '3,' and the way she bounced loosely on her heels as she waited for the elevator to move. How could it take so long for a huge box to travel one freakin' floor?
Cristina was waiting outside of the door to Derek's room, staring with an almost angry look on her face at the painting in front of her.
"Mer!" Her voice came out panicked, which was not reassuring. Cristina was an expert at keeping her cool.
"I was with Burke when the code was called. I came up here with him, I said I'd wait for you, I-" Cristina was spitting out collections of letters, but none of them made sense to Meredith. Her vision wasn't allowing color in, and she felt panicked at the gray surrounding her. It was all the same. Not even different shades.
Cristina was rushing her back towards the elevator. Meredith didn't think enough about all that really went on inside hospitals. People regularly ran through the halls. And for each runner, there was one person who was in pain, one person who's life was on the line.
There they were. Dr. Burke and a group of doctors were pushing a gurney towards the OR, and Derek was sitting halfway up on top of it, his eyes, such a lovely bluish green, seemed uncharacteristically dull. The blood gushing from his mouth in large bursts was the only color besides gray reaching Meredith's version. Ohhhhhh. It was so, so red. Gleaming under the harsh hospital lighting.
"Meredith." It was Derek's body that grumbled out Meredith's name, but it was not his voice. Not the soft, sweet, playful voice she had fell in love with, anyway.
"Derek." She realized she was crying, her body shaking, and she couldn't breathe. Derek, Derek, Derek. Her teacher, her teacher's teacher. Her sister, her daughter. The man kind enough to offer her a marker.
The one who'd lied about having a wife. The one who had needed her, who she had saved, who had fallen in love with her without even knowing what was happening. It hadn't been the Chase.
Dr. Burke was wheeling him into the room, but Meredith knew that it wouldn't be to any use, just as Preston did. She knew it as simply as she knew multiplication, and polynomials, and the difference between equal and equivalent sets.
The one she'd fallen in love with, the one who'd brought so much beautiful color to her dark, empty, bland world, was gone. God shouldn't be able to give out angels if he's planning on taking them back. You can't tempt a mouse with cheese then expect it to go back to eating whatever crap they'd had to taste before that.
It wasn't fair, all this pain, all this slicing and incising right into her skin, causing the unliving blood to escape and malnourish her. Was it so, so bad to ask for anesthesia?
All the softness that was Derek was being crushed by the harsh reality of all the bad, sucky things that can happen in life. It seemed backward in Meredith's mind. Darkness couldn't overpower light, could it? Wasn't heat more powerful than frost?
One more glimpse of Derek's face was offered to her right before he entered the OR. His face was settled, but tortured in a quiet, deathly sort of way. A simple complication.
All the memories, the overpowering love and betrayal and denial, washed over her. Her tears weren't just warm, they were burning, a salty fire escaping from her deepest depths. She didn't realize she was shouting until it was too late, and she sunk desperately to the ground, the wails escaping her in loud, heart wrenching bursts, as her world went gray around her.