Chapter 8: Where You Belong
Derek's Point-of-View
I sat there pinned to my hospital bed, thinking, holy shit! No one has ever spoken to me like that. Ever since I got cancer, everyone has been walking on eggshells around me. People have been painfully nice. Just in case I don't wake up the next day. No one's ever told me to get over myself.
Honest to God, it was refreshing.
It was the slap in the face that woke me up. I still had a desire to die and just get this shit life over with. I had no reason to live, so why whine about it. However, I wanted to see her again before I did, so I was anxiously waiting for her to return. I was flipping through a magazine, but too anxious to read it.
Three hours and two minutes later, I heard sneakers stop at my doorway. I looked up with relief to see her standing there with her hands behind her back.
"I'm sorry." She mumbled, "I lost my temper and I owe you an apology, you didn't deserve that."
I gulped and gave her a nod, "Actually, it was kind of nice hearing someone's actual thoughts for once. As opposed to people just sugar coating everything."
"Well regardless of you dying or not, you didn't' deserve that."
"Meredith." I sighed, "In a way, you were right. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself. So please, don't apologize for being right."
"I was right, and I'm not apologizing for that." She said with a stubborn chin, "I was apologizing for how I handled myself, I was wrong to yell at you."
"Oh." I smirked, "well apology accepted."
She took a step into my room and shook her shoulders as she looked at me sheepishly, as if she were a five-year-old that stuck her hand in the cookie jar. I had to say it was quite adorable, but I wondered what engineered the look.
"If I tell you something will you promise too not be mad at me?"
"What are you twelve?" I scoffed, "If you need to tell me something, just say it."
She chewed on her lip nervously and sighed "I went through some of your stuff."
"You, what." I gasped as I dropped the page I was flipping.
"I was trying to find something to help you, and you were all woe is me. It gives me information, but not enough to help you so… I sort of went through your things."
She pulled her hands out from behind her back and dropped a very familiar item on the bed. I gulped as I looked at the ferry boat scrub cap, it was my favorite. I had a thing for ferry boats. Taking them into surgery with me brought me good luck. I thought I tossed it long ago, but obviously it was still amongst my things.
"Thief." I shook my head, "How did you find that?"
"I can be very sneaky when I want to be." She waggled her eyebrows, yes that turned me on. "You need to put it on."
"I'm not putting it on." I scoffed, "I have no need to put it on, I'm not performing surgery. Not right now and probably never again."
"Just go with it." She sighed with an eye roll.
"What am I going with?"
"Just put it on, you'll need it for where we're going."
"Where are we going?" I asked, "I'm not going into an OR, I am in no condition to perform surgery so if that's your plan the answer is no."
"I'll make you a deal." She smirked, "If you wear the scrub cap, I'll take your folie out."
My ears lifted in delight at the thought of that. I looked warily at her as I contemplated the idea of losing my bag of urine. I looked at the scrub cap and then at her and pressed my lips together.
"On one condition." I skepticized.
"What?"
"You can lead me to the bathroom, but I will be the one taking out the catheter."
She rolled her eyes "Derek seriously, I'm a doctor, I've seen plenty of penises before."
"I realize that." I sighed, "You haven't seen my penis. With all the times I fantasized about you seeing my penis, trust me, it wasn't like this."
She grinned flirtatiously, "You fantasized about me seeing your penis?"
"When you have nothing to do but sit in bed all day." I grinned, "You kind of develop thoughts for a hot young intern."
She rolled her eyes, "I am helping you to the bathroom, and if I hear a tumble, crash, or groan of any kind, I am coming in there."
"Deal."
She helped me up and out of bed, taking my IV's off the stand and helping carry them as I walked slowly but steadily to the bathroom. I turned and smiled at her before shutting it. I took a few deep breaths and bit my lip as I did it quick like a Band-Aid and yanked that puppy out. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief and I could practically hear my boy shouting his thanks from below.
I washed my hands and turned and walked to the door, she was waiting nervously for me just outside it and looked relieved to see me.
"Everything ok?"
"Yep, it's out." I grinned. "Where to?"
"To the wheelchair." She said pointing at it in the corner. I groaned, but she looked at me like she wasn't taking any exceptions. I walked over and lowered myself into the chair, she tossed the scrub cap at me. "Hang onto this for a minute."
She pushed me out the door and came to a halt as a brunette nurse almost collided into us.
"Oh!" she gasped, looking at me and Meredith and narrowed her eyes, "Where are you taking him, he's supposed to be on strict bed rest."
"I'm taking him for tests." Meredith answered.
"There are no tests ordered." She frowned.
"I ordered the tests." Meredith said firmly.
"Uh-huh." The nurse scrutinized as she lifted a chin, "Well, I'll just have to call Dr. Grey and ask about that."
"Rose." Meredith hissed, "You're going to argue with me over what I am doing for my patient? You really want to go there. For your information, I am Dr. Grey. If you were referring to my mother, she is currently in OR 3 performing a bowel resection, which will take a minimum of 5 hours. If you knew her in the slightest, you would know that she doesn't like to be bothered when she is in the OR. If you feel like interrupting her, it's your ass, not mine. By the time your ass gets done being reamed, we'll be back with his test results. If you wouldn't mind getting your ass out of my way, I'd like to do my job."
Rose's jaw hung open for a moment before she stepped out of our way. Meredith pushed the chair down the hallway and to the elevator.
"Jesus." I hissed after the doors closed, "remind me to never get on your bad side."
"Bitch was striking a nerve." She muttered, "She's always hanging around your room, checking your chart, like she has some kind of sick twisted crush on you."
I grinned, "Dr. Grey, are you jealous?"
"What." She gasped, "No! That's not what I…I mean, I just… I don't want you having any stalkers while you're lying there in pain, you know?"
"Uh huh." I smirked, "I know exactly what you're saying."
"Oh, shut up." She muttered.
The elevator doors opened, and she breezed us down the hall then took a sharp right into a familiar room. It was dark; I knew that it was an on-call room. She closed the door and locked it behind us. I gulped as I felt very nervous.
"Meredith," I mumbled nervously, "As much as I have dreamed of doing things to you, I really hope you didn't bring me here to do what I think you brought me here for."
"What?" she frowned, then narrowed her eyes "No! God, seriously? Here put these on."
She tossed a pair of navy-blue scrubs at me, I looked at them and then at her with a raise of my brow.
"Just put the damn things on!"
"Not with you watching."
"Oh, you big baby!" she hissed, I shook my head stubbornly, she sighed "Fine!"
She turned around and crossed her arms stubbornly. I carefully slipped my feet into the legs of the scrub pants and maneuvered them up to my waist. Then, I stripped myself of my hospital gown and pulled on the scrub shirt. I breathed in the hospital smell that was stuck into the cotton scrubs and for a second, I almost felt normal again.
"Done." I said, she turned around and her eyes sparkled for a moment in awe before a wide smile spread across her face.
"Blue is definitely your color." She said, "You are missing something."
"Do I have to?" I whined, she nodded sternly "Well, will you help?"
She rolled her eyes and leaned over in front of me to help place the scrub cap over my bald head and fasten it, I closed my eyes for a second and breathed her in…god she smelled divine.
"Seriously." She muttered with annoyance, "After all the years of you doing surgery, you can't remember how to put on a scrub cap?"
"Well, maybe I can't, but if I did then I wouldn't have had the opportunity to look down your shirt."
She gasped as she stood straight up quickly to glare at the smirk across my face, her boobs were divine.
"Derek freaking Shepherd!" she hissed, "You should be ashamed of yourself."
"I am." I grinned, "I am an ashamed man who has now seen your boobs and let me tell you, they're perfect."
She twisted her lips as if she weren't sure how to react, "Thanks." She mumbled.
She stepped back and looked at me, her eyes twinkled again, "Wow."
"Be honest." I said, "How hideous do I look right now?"
"You don't look hideous." She smiled, "You look like a surgeon."
I rolled my eyes and shook my head; I didn't want to hear it. There was so much joy on her face, I couldn't bring myself to crush it.
"Yeah, well do you ever let attendings take advantage of you in on call rooms?"
"Ugh!" she huffed, "Will you ever stop?"
"Only when I'm dead." I smirked, she sighed heavily as she pushed my wheelchair out the door.
"Well in that case I'll just have to put up with it." She said, "You're not dying."
She pushed me to a set of stairs that I knew where they led; I'd traveled up them many a time when I was an eager young intern. She held out her hand offering to help me up, I took it with a heavy sigh.
"Meredith, I don't know what you're doing but whatever it is…it's not going to work."
"I'm taking you to watch brain surgery." She admitted, "I'm taking you back to the OR because I know how much you miss it. And fuck me if it doesn't work, but I am just trying to make you feel better. So, either come upstairs with me or go back to your stale empty room."
I pursed my lips together, "Did you just tell me to fuck you?"
"Horrible." She muttered under her breath, "horrible dirty nasty minded man."
I chuckled as she and I walked up the stairs, she supported me as much as I would let her. We got to the gallery, and it wasn't too crowded, there were a few front row seats. She let me sit down on my own and she sat next to me. I sunk into my seat as I tried not to think about the curious eyes that were on me. Probably wondering who the new attending was.
As soon as my eyes diverted down into the window and saw that the skull flap was just being lifted, I couldn't see, hear, or feel anything else in the room.
"That's Dr. Nelson." Meredith whispered next to my ear. I felt goosebumps roll across my neck where her breath had touched me. "He is the interim chief of neuro, he is a decent surgeon, but…"
"He is safe." I mumbled, "He doesn't take on impossible cases, he doesn't do any new procedures, he just does the job and whatever happens next is in the patient's hands."
"Yeah." She frowned "You know him?"
"Never heard of him before." I answered, "Judging by the basic tools he's using, and lack of monitoring devises he has in his OR, he is old school."
"He is annoying." She giggled. "Boring, I was kind of leaning towards neuro when I was in med school, but this guy is totally ruining brains for me."
"You deserve to be taught under a more cavalier teacher." I said, "Your talent is too great to be degraded by his teaching."
"Funny." She mumbled.
"What is?"
"Just that you used the word cavalier." She sighed "The same word that countless medical articles and journals used to describe…you."
I gulped as I suddenly didn't like where this conversation was going. But before I could answer further something in the OR got my frantic attention.
"Oh no." I gasped "Oh that scalpel is way too big for that aneurysm. No, no, no you're going to knick an artery!"
A minute later Nelson was trying to stop the blood spewing out of the patient's brain and trying to control the swelling. I knew it was too late. I cringed as he finally gave up and looked at the clock and called time of death. He turned and left the OR, leaving the rest of the surgical team to clean up his mess.
"I miss surgery." I mumbled just above a whisper as I gulped at the lump in my throat, "I don't miss the death."
Meredith's eyes sunk with remorse as she stood up and held her hand out. She helped me down the stairs and back into the wheelchair. She pushed me down the hallway towards the elevator, but stopped and turned into a door that took us into an empty OR. She stopped my chair in the middle of it and walked around the OR, rubbing her hand over the cold table.
"When I figured out that I wanted to be a surgeon, I tried to talk myself out of it." She said, "I told myself that it was just because I grew up here. I was raised in this hospital, and it was familiar territory. The more I dipped my foot into the pond, the more I realized that I had a genuine gift."
I gulped as she came around the table and stood in front of me, crossing her arms with a soft smile on her face.
"There are two kinds of doctors here Derek." She continued, "There are those who are just in it for the power, title, and the money. Who just do what is safe. They win some and lose some, but they don't care they're just slabs of meat. Then, there are surgeons who possess a true gift for surgery, who can map out an OR they've never seen before like the back of their hands, who can spot talent from a mile away and crave to teach it, and who hate death, even if it was a lost cause to begin with."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying that you're too good of a surgeon to die." She sighed, "I'm saying that if you can't seem to find enough fight in you to live for yourself…then live for them. Live for the patients you will save when you get back, live for the one that died today, that could have been saved had they had a surgeon like you who actually gave a damn. Live for the thrill of being in the OR again..."
"Meredith."
"Shut up and take my hands." She ordered and stuck her hands out.
I let out a resentful sigh but complied, she helped lift me up out of the wheelchair, then she pulled me over to the head of the OR table and turned me to face it as if I were in surgery.
"Close your eyes," She whispered from behind me. As I did, I felt goosebumps erupt across my skin, she reached around me and placed her hands over mine. She pulled my hands into a position as if I were about to start operating and pressed her chin to rest on my shoulder, so she could talk into my ear, "Now, you've got a 17-year-old female patient, she wrecked her car trying to put her make up on as she was driving to school, and put her head through the windshield. She's got a subdural bleed on her right temporal lobe, minimal swelling, but her pressure is starting to drop. How do you proceed?"
I sucked in a deep breath as I tried to picture what she was saying, "I'm going to need a surgical drill to make two burr holes, one just above the bleed, and one off to the side to release the pressure. Then, I'm going to need suction, find the clot, evacuate it, clean and pack. If her pressure stabilizes, I would close up and watch how she does."
"Why not slice her head open and do a full on craniotomy?"
"She is a teenage girl and probably values her looks over life itself. Minimally invasive is the best route for the patient's interest. She'd probably stroke out if she woke up to find all her pretty blonde hair shaved off."
"I never said she was blonde."
"Oh." I smirked, "that's what I pictured… I have a thing for blondes."
I felt her smile and a chill went up and down my spine, "How do you feel right now?"
A grin spread across my face, "High."
"You were right." She whispered, "You don't belong in that hospital bed…you belong here, in the OR. Whether you like it or not; I am going to fight like hell to get you back here, where you belong."
Right then and there, I believed every word of it.
This took be a couple hours to edit. Enjoy!
