Chapter 49: The Missing Pieces

Derek shuddered at the thought and let himself be steered out of the living room. "Let's say hi to everyone while we can be sure the little devils won't demolish the house unsupervised."

"Derek, we thought you wouldn't grace us with your presence tonight!" one of his sisters, Lanie, laughed from her chair when he and Carolyn entered the kitchen. Derek frowned as he eyed the room, it was packed with his sisters and their spouses who looked at the small TV with curiosity. Only Addison, who had come over with Mark, seemed apologetic.

"What are you watching?" he asked suspiciously and glanced at the screen. He already knew a part of the answer. The person on the video, whose only visible part was their hands, which were closing up after a brain surgery.

"That was a tumor resection," Mia announced to him with a big self-satisfied grin on her face as she stopped the video and took out the disk, "performed by your girlfriend."

Derek felt as if all wind was knocked out of him, the second time that day. "S-say again?" he stuttered.

"Dr. Meredith Grey," smirked Amelia. "Yes, I know all about her. That's quite a score, dear brother. You're dating a medical genius. Why didn't you say anything? The woman is a freaking legend!"

Derek barely took notice of all the compliments and praise Amelia was giving Meredith. "Why I didn't say anything? Maybe because it's my private life? I don't have to make a confession of everything I do and all the people I meet!"

"She's not just a regular person, Der," argued Mia. "She's your girlfriend! Meredith Grey is your freaking girlfriend! Do you know how psyched I am?"

"I really don't care," he said brusquely as walked he over to a stack of surgery DVDs lying on the counter.

Amelia seemed not to notice as she carried on twittering about the tumor resection they had just watched. "It was brilliant! Her hands… she's not human! She was perfect!"

"How… how do you know?" he asked interrupting her, a blind panic starting to course in his veins.

"How do I know that she's perfect? I haven't been doing anything else for the last two days but watching her surgeries. Let me tell you this, she's a god!" she gasped inserting in another disk.

"Where did you get these?" he demanded scooping the DVD cases into a neat pile with the clear intention of taking them.

"From Helen Crawford of course," shrugged his sisters. "She's her BFF, but you know that already, don't you? You've operated on her with your girlfriend."

"Give me back the one you've just put in," he hissed at her, his hand outstretched. He would have taken it himself, but he wouldn't get on the other side of the kitchen table unless he crawled over it. Every other way was blocked with a chair and either his sister or a brother in-law sitting on it.

"Oh, come on, man," Mark whined behind him. "Don't be a spoilsport. Grab a chair and watch with us, you too, Ma. Kiddo's right, Derek, your girlfriend is genius. Even I picked some swift moves. Me, Mark Sloan!"

Derek would have kept on protesting, but he was momentarily immobilized as the screen flickered and a woman appeared on. It was Meredith, he knew at the first sight. But… it was not his Meredith. She could well be from another dimension.

He had never complained about Meredith's looks, he didn't have a reason. She was beautiful in a casual natural way, without even trying. Everything about her aroused him, it was just the way it was. However, Meredith a couple of years prior, she was a different kind of beauty. Every little detail of her appearance had screamed high class. Her hair had been a shade darker, shiny and slick, and at least two times shorter than it was now. Her adorable freckles had been barely visible, skillfully covered with a flawless make-up. There was also something about her face he didn't quite recognize, the constant expression of smugness, pride, and self-confidence on her features. It flickered sometimes when she got the upper hand over him when they fought but it always vanished as fast as it appeared. The woman on the screen, on the other hand, she had truly been the one to wear "God" scrub cap. However, it was not the most important element that captured Derek's undivided attention.

Meredith's eyes, her gorgeous expressive eyes. They had been so different… He couldn't see pain lurking behind them. They had shone with fire of life. She had been a whole happy person…

It was clearly not a surgery video. The camera followed Meredith as she strolled along in some kind of laboratory, a group of young doctors in white coats in the background.

"Mount Sinai is a hospital like no other," her clear confident voice filled the kitchen. "Every day in these walls, the best specialists in the world save hundreds of lives-"

"Cut! Cut!"

Meredith and the people behind her relaxed, though the camera was still rolling. The back of a stout man with headphones appeared in the film frame, he was probably the director. He tried to give Meredith some tips about her posture and appearance, but she would have none of that.

Dangerous flashes lit her eyes like a bolt of thunder when she rounded on the man. "Excuse me? I should take my lab coat off? I didn't know we were shooting a porno here, I thought it was a documentary-"

"And I think we all deserve a break!" Helen waltzed in from the right, her fake smile apologetic. "It's nearly lunch, we've been working since morning. Let's reconvene in an hour."

"Do we really have to prolong this torture?" Meredith rolled her eyes at her friend as the people in the lab queued for the door. "Remind me why I am doing this exactly? On my very rare free day?"

"Maybe because you owe it to the hospital which made your career?" quipped Helen.

"This hospital didn't make my career! My talent and my own work did," argued Meredith. "Besides, Mount Sinai is the best you can get-"

"It's in your contract," Helen interrupted her again. "Oh, and don't try to guilt talk me with that free day excuse. You don't know what a free day is!"

"I can cut down on work every now and then!"

"Sure…"

"I can! For sex," smirked Meredith and Derek's insides recoiled. His Meredith was talking about sex with another man.

"And you need a whole day for that?" Helen asked sarcastically.

"When it's to celebrate an engagement? Yeah, I'd say a whole day is in order…"

"What? What did you just say?" Helen gasped, beaming at her. "Did Mitch propose?"

"Not yet, but I discovered a ring among his things…"

"Oh my god, Mer, it's huge! Are you going to-"

They were both interrupted as the door opened out of a sudden and the very subject of their conversation peeked in.

Derek knew he should have stopped this madness that was Mia's fault, he should have prevented his family from seeing it all but he was immobilized… For the first time, he was looking at the man he had never met yet whom he despised from the bottom of his heart. Precisely because Meredith had given her heart to him. That man had stolen everything from him years before Meredith entered his life…

He had to admit Mitch was a good-looking guy, well-built, his head full of blond locks that were even curlier than his own. Derek's chest seemed to collapse and his lungs shrink as she looked at the man mischievously, with that feral expression he knew only too well.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" she grinned at him as he walked up.

"Came to see if I can take my girl home already," he replied flirtatiously though his eyes anxiously darted to the camera. "Am I interrupting? Are you still filming?"

"No, we're having a break," Helen answered and quickly decided to leave the pair alone. "I'll leave you to it but Mer, you owe me," she winked at her best friend.

"So, you have to stay bit longer," Meredith snorted as she put her arms around Mitch's neck, his own moving to encircle her waist. "But you can still take me… here…"

"That's enough!" Derek growled out and something in his voice told Amelia not to rile him up further. She obediently paused the video.

Mark wanted to throw in a joke that it was just getting interesting, but Addison wisely put her hand over his mouth, knowing he wouldn't notice her subtle hints.

"That was the last time you violated mine and Meredith's privacy!" Derek was close to yelling as Amelia handed him the disk, looking honestly sorry.

"Derek, I didn't know what was on it. I… thought they were all surgery recordings," she tried to explain. She had never seen Derek so livid, ever.

"No, what you thought was how smart you were and nothing else. I don't want to hear another word!" he spat. "And you will never meet Meredith, I can guarantee that!"

"Son, don't walk out of here angry," Carolyn pleaded with him but he just maneuvered around her. He had more important things to do than fighting with his family.


Helen was startled up from her paperwork when the door to her office opened abruptly and closed back with a thud.

"Derek, I don't think we had another consult in the schedule?" she asked cocking her eyebrow when she realized who the late rude visitor was.

"Cut the crap, Helen," he snapped. "Are you nuts?"

"You expect me to answer objectively?" she quipped though she knew she was walking on this ice. She knew well enough the reason for his sudden intrusion and his anger. Maybe she should have warned him… She shrugged mentally; the milk was already spilt.

"What were you thinking, were you even thinking at all, when you gave Mia Meredith's private recordings?" he yelled throwing a DVD case onto her desk.

"Calm down," she admonished. "And yes, I was thinking-"

"Oh, really," he snorted, pacing up and down the office, one of his hands combing his already messy head frantically. "How could you be so thoughtless to tell my sister, to tell a fellow doctor, about Meredith?"

"I didn't tell her!" Helen raised her voice so that Derek could hear her over his own yelling. "She's not stupid, she figured it out. She saw you here two days ago, she saw you with Lexie, who tried to dodge her but… she figured it out."

"And you assumed it was best to give her Mer's tapes?" he asked sarcastically.

"Yes, I did. It was the only way to convince her not to dig further," Helen explained patiently. "She wanted to call her."

"Oh, no," he groaned.

"I talked her out of it. I told her Mer was a very private person and that you should be the one to introduce her to your family. I managed to placate her with surgery recordings.

"Do you know what this is?" Derek walked back to her and tapped the DVD he had earlier thrown on her desk.

"One of Mer's genius surgeries?" she shrugged questioningly.

"No, it's not a surgery," he said quietly though his voice was very far from being calm. "It's from the time you were shooting some promotional materials for the hospital."

Helen frowned pensively for a minute. "Oh, yeah, I remember. I do that every other year, Meredith only agreed to participate one time."

"You remember when it was exactly?"

"Yeah… I think so," she said slowly, not quite following his line of thinking. "Derek, what does it have to do with anything?"

"And at the time… she was with him?" he spewed the question on one breath.

"With… oh…" she sighed realizing who he was talking about. "Yes, it was around the time of their engagement I believe… Why are you asking me this? Is…" she glanced at the DVD and then back at Derek as the realization hit her. "He's… Don't tell me he's on the recoding?"

Derek nodded silently, heavily sitting down in one of the chairs near the desk.

"I can't believe this," Helen shook her head in disbelief. "It's unbelievable… You have no idea what we went through… We looked everywhere for a trace of him, we searched through every paper, every photo, every file… We found nothing. And he was here, all the time…"

"Would it be… I mean…" Derek struggled with the words he was afraid to utter, he was afraid of so many things – hurting Meredith, reopening old wounds, being accused of betraying her trust. He could just be opening a can of worms. On the other hand, maybe it could be the closure Meredith needed. "How far did the investigation go? The police investigation. Meredith only told me that he'd got away and I didn't push for details."

"He'd got away," nodded Helen, her voice subdued. "Not really from the police. These types of crimes are looked into by the FBI."

"Oh, and the FBI…"

"They couldn't find him. The man vanished into thin air. There were hardly any leads. Of course, they suspected one of the rival companies but they couldn't establish a link."

"A link… Him?"

"We really thought he had left no clues, zero, nada. We only could provide a sketch."

"Do you think it might have any impact… Do you think the video can help catch that scum?"

"I have no idea, Derek," Helen answered honestly. "It was almost four years ago… But we now have his face, with details, at every angle… We have his voice; did he say anything?"

"Yeah," he said curtly, disgust in his voice.

"So, what do we do now?" she asked almost fearfully.

"I don't… I…" he stammered hiding his face in his hands for a moment only to collect himself and say strongly. "It has to be Meredith's decision."

She nodded slowly. "So, you want to tell her?"

"I don't think we can keep it from her forever, and I don't even want to."

"There's no way to predict how she's going to react… and what if we rake it all up for nothing? What if it's completely useless?"

"We can't give it to the FBI behind her back," argued Derek.

"I know we can't, they would want her statement anyway…" Helen trailed off.

"I agree it's not the best moment to tell her," he agreed reluctantly. "I don't want to keep secrets from her, but I don't want to tell her now. Not when I'm not with her."

"Derek, what exactly is your plan?" Helen leaned back in her chair observing him closely. "I know you have one, but I can't guess how exactly it's supposed to work. The trial-"

"Not now," he swallowed hard. "My first patient died today; I don't want to talk about it again.

"Okay," Helen conceded quietly.

"Meredith, she looked happy… with him," Derek took up vocalizing the irksome thoughts that were plaguing him since he saw that video. "You saw what she was like… when she was talking about him. There was no hesitation… She was so sure, I've never seen her that confident!"

"Derek don't compare yourself to him, you're being unfair. To Meredith and yourself as well. She was a different woman back then, a different person. She had her issues, but they were a fraction of the ones she has today. You know that…"

"I… I do," he chuckled but there was no amusement in him. "I can't believe… I think I actually felt jealous of him. How sick is that? This man… he was a sick animal. You wouldn't ever guess he was dishonest… And I felt jealous of him. Because she was capable of letting him into her life…"

"She let you in, Derek," Helen said gently.

"Not completely, she didn't."

"Not because she doesn't want to, not because she doesn't love you either!"

"I… do know that," he sighed heavily.

"Derek, I'm going to dance at your wedding one day," she grinned.

"Oh, yeah?" he couldn't help but laugh.

"Yeah, I didn't have the chance to pull off that bachelorette party and I don't like leaving things hanging. So, you know, move your secret plan along. Go get her."

"I'm working on it," he assured her. And he would work even harder. He had lost one patient, but he would draw conclusions from that, it would help him save people in the future, and get him closer to Meredith.