"You know, I never thought I'd be this unhappy in a place where there's no immediate threat on my life."
Derek laughs at Meredith's sarcastic comment as he enters her hospital room, chart in hand. In the past week since her surgeries, she'd been moved from ICU to a top priority room instead.
"I also never thought I'd wish for the radios we used to entertain ourselves overseas back. Anything is better than the shitty channels you get on the TVs here."
"Time passes ten times slower when you're confined to a bed, huh?"
"If I don't die from my blast injuries I'm going to die of boredom."
Derek laughs again as he goes over her stats. "Don't you think you're being just the slightest bit overdramatic?"
"Not at all." She replies indignantly. "I literally can't move. Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to sit in the exact same spot for days?"
"You've got me there." He shrugs, now turning to face her. "I need to check your incisions."
Meredith makes eye contact with her surgeon as she moves the blankets covering her midsection down and pulls up the gown, exposing her scarred abdomen.
Not only is there a nasty gash across her whole stomach from the shrapnel, but there's also a stapled, smoother-looking cut from her midline incision to repair her organ damage.
Derek has to force his gaze away from her mesmerizing green one and tenderly palpates the wounds. She bites her lip, doing her best to stifle the groans from searing pain shooting through her body as he presses
"Your temp is high and there's some unusual swelling around your incisions. Are you feeling nauseous or dizzy?"
She shrugs. "Not really. You're thinking post-op infection?"
"I'll increase your IV antibiotic dosage and see how it goes." He nods, then moves to check her neuro reflexes.
"When can I get up?" She asks as he writes in her chart.
"At least another week, I'm afraid. You can't move at all right now, can you?"
She makes an effort to sit up on her own, but instantly falls back with a gasp. "Apparently not."
"Give your spine a little more time to recover." He nods and she rolls her eyes.
"Will you come and entertain me at least?" She raises an eyebrow. Derek Shepherd is much hotter in person than in the pictures she'd seen of him in medical journals. Those bright blue eyes sparkle when he talks to her and she finds it incredibly dreamy. Also, every time she'd been awake when he came in to check on her, she'd flirted, and he'd flirted back.
He stops, leaning against the side of her bed and crossing his arms over his chest. "Is this your idea of a date?"
"It's the best I can do from this bed. C'mon, share your cases or something with me. It'll be fun."
"You're my patient. I'm your doctor." He says, reminding himself more than her at this point.
"Who said I was going to jump you? It's just a fun hangout. As friends. Friends?" Meredith thinks that if he's seen the inside of her body, saved her life, and flirting with her shamelessly, they deserve to at least be called friends.
"As friends." He confirms, a smile creeping onto his face.
Meredith raises an eyebrow. Yes, she has been in the military for the past seven years, surrounded by mostly men. Tall, strong, sweaty, smart, hot men, which does have its perks. But she's a colonel, she can't go around getting into relationships with soldiers and subordinates.
Although, as long as she was a patient at this hospital, she couldn't be in a relationship with Dr. Shepherd either.
That doesn't mean she can't have some fun.
"Okay. I'll come by later. I have some charting to do, and I don't see why I can't do it here instead of in my office. It might be fun to have a little company for a change." Derek agrees. It hadn't taken much to convince him to spend more time with his patient.
On the outside, Colonel Grey is a hardened, stern, badass Marine, but Derek can already see past that wall, and he feels drawn to her.
He walks out of the room with a promise to be back soon, and Meredith lays back and closes her eyes, listening to the annoying sound of her heart beating on the monitor next to her. The door opens again and she smiles, expecting Derek to be back already, but it's Cristina.
"I brought some of your crap." The cardio surgeon grunts, dropping a box at the edge of Meredith's bed.
"My crap?" She frowns, she hasn't been to Seattle for five years, at least.
It's not really even home. Meredith doesn't exactly have a home at the moment.
"Your storage locker is untouched. I brought back some stuff. I don't know if you'll still want it or if it'll fit you, but it's here."
When Ellis Grey moved into a nursing home, her belongings were placed into Meredith's storage locker. Ellis had a house in Seattle, sold a few years ago, which is why Meredith chose Seattle to put the small number of things she owned in before she enlisted.
In case anything were to happen while deployed, Cristina and Alex both knew the code where all her documents and everything was stored.
Cristina goes about showing off the contents of the box, finding Meredith's old clothes, belongings, and at the very bottom, a single, hard-cover journal. "I don't know what this is, but it was in the very back corner behind some other boxes. You have a secret diary?" She smirks.
Meredith takes the journal and opens it, frowning as she skims the first page.
"I've never seen it before- oh my God!"
"What?" Cristina moves to the head of the bed, leaning over Meredith's shoulder to try and see what's written.
"It-it's my mother's."
"Ellis kept a diary?"
"It's just a journal. Cristina, oh my god." She flips through the pages more. "Look at the dates. This is before she was diagnosed. She wrote down everything."
"You think there's more?"
"If I know my mother, probably."
Cristina almost asks how well she even knows Ellis Grey after not seeing her at all for years, but stops herself. Her friend doesn't need biting, sarcastic remarks about her dying mother after almost dying herself. "You want me to go look?"
"Uh, not now. I can't believe this. You know Mom and I never really..." She trails off.
Ellis' Alzheimer's was early onset, the last time she was really Meredith's mom was when she was trying to convince her daughter not to go to medical school and become a surgeon, as she'd never make it.
To put it simply, Meredith and Ellis didn't have the best relationship.
Which is why Meredith hasn't been to visit over the seven years of her enlistment. She'd gone on pretty much back-to-back tours, with the exceptions of her leaves of absences when recovering from an injury and the mandatory time off after a certain amount of years.
Part of Meredith wishes that she could yell at her mother, "Look at me now!" She's a highly respected decorated military surgeon. Multiple medical breakthroughs and countless lives saved. But Ellis is sick, and from the way Cristina describes it, she doesn't have much longer.
She's still Meredith's mother, no matter what. As much as the colonel hates it, she feels a longing to see her mom again and be there with her.
Meredith had been so lost in her thoughts that she didn't realize Cristina quietly left the room. Meredith closes the journal, running her fingertips along the bruised hardcover. She sets it back in the box, not having the energy to deal with that at the moment. Falling back into bed as her mind swirls, it's not long before she hears the door open yet again.
"I didn't realize how much charting I had to catch up on," Derek says, sitting in one of the plastic chairs and opening a chart in front of him. "I'm afraid me charting isn't the most entertaining thing."
"Your company is enough." She replies, turning her head to meet his bright blue eyes. As head of neuro, Derek could have just handed a lot of this grunt work off to interns and residents as scut, but he had wanted an excuse to sit with Meredith.
"So, Dr. Shepherd. Tell me about yourself. I'm curious to know more about the god who has poked around in both my brain and spine."
Derek smirks slightly. "My mother's maiden name- Maloney. I have four sisters. I have, uh, nine nieces, five nephews. I like coffee ice cream, single-malt scotch, occasionally a good cigar. I like to fly fish. And I cheat when I do the crossword puzzle on Sunday. And I never dance in public. Um, favorite novel, The Sun Also Rises. Favorite band, The Clash. My favorite color is blue. I don't like light blue, indigo. The scar right here on my forehead? That's why I don't ride motorcycles anymore. And I live in a cabin with acres and acres of land. I have no idea what I'm gonna do with it."
Meredith raises her eyebrows, shocked. "I'm not easily surprised, but I was not expecting that."
"How about you? There must be more to you than the military."
She shrugs. "Honestly, not really. I've dedicated everything to the Navy and my achievements there are being used by other military surgeons everywhere to save more lives."
"I know all about the medical and awards side. I may or may not have Googled you." He blushes slightly.
"You Googled me?" She breaks into a smile. He nods, and she has to hold back a laugh, knowing it will hurt. "I can't really blame you. If I had been in a better state before coming back to the US I would have don't a hell of a lot more research on you. I figured if USMC had me transferred here to you, you must be pretty damn good."
"I am."
"I should not have boosted your ego. It's insufferable enough as it is." She rolls her eyes, smirking.
"What can I say? I'm great at my job." He smiles, and she rolls her eyes. "So, I assume you've traveled?"
"Oh, yes. Most of my time in the Marines was in Afghanistan. I've been deployed to Vietnam, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Iraq. You name it. Though, when you say traveling, I hope you don't think I spent my time touring and taking pictures and sleeping with random men."
"That's not what they do in the military?" Derek jokes, and they both laugh.
The two continue to talk an hour, and Derek gets much less charting done than he intended. "Can I ask you more of a personal question?" Derek requests out of the blue. Meredith hesitates, but nods. "Most veterans I see have family around constantly. Where's yours?"
"Cristina and Alex are my family in Seattle." She answers.
"Ellis? A father?" Meredith is quiet, and Derek cringes internally. He hit a nerve and instantly regrets it. "Sorry, you don't have to answer that, I just-
"Ellis and I don't have the best relationship." She cuts him off, not meeting his gaze.
He struggles to wrap his mind around her words. "She's your mother, surely she'd at least visit. Does she even know you're back and alive?"
Meredith shakes her head. "I doubt it."
"No one called her?"
"Even if they did, it wouldn't make a difference." She admits. Then, after a long internal debate on whether or not to continue, Meredith studies her hands on her lap. "My mother isn't traveling the world or writing a book. She's in a nursing home twenty minutes from here with Alzheimer's."
Derek softens. "How advanced?"
"Very." her voice wavers, "She doesn't have much time left. I haven't been to visit her in years."
"I'm so sorry." Guilt floods over him, this obviously wasn't something she liked to talk about.
"She made me promise not to tell anyone the last time she was lucid."
"I'll keep it to myself."
"Thank you." Meredith bites her lip, unsure of why she just told him that. It would have been so easy to lie, but something about Derek made her feel like she could talk to him.
The neurosurgeon takes this opportunity to reach a hand out, gently cupping her face and caressing her cheek. She leans into the touch, both of them very much aware of the tension in the room.
"So, where did you come up with the idea for the abdominal wall transplant?" Derek pulls away, changing the subject to something lighter.
She snorts. "A hole in a wall."
This makes him laugh as well, and they both fall back into light banter. Conversation flows so easily between the two of them, and she is quite distracting from Derek's work.
But after some time, he realized she's exhausted. And his shift ended half an hour ago.
"I should go. You need to rest."
"Thanks for coming by, Dr. Shepherd. This was the most fun I've had since I got here."
"I enjoyed it. I'll try to stop by more often. See you, tomorrow Colonel."
"Call me Meredith. Colonel Grey makes you sound like a military brat."
"Then it's Derek." He nods and smiles, leaving her room to change and head home. But of course, he is stopped in the attending's lounge.
"What's with you and GI Jane?" Mark asks, shutting the door behind him and sitting on the couch.
"What do you mean?"
"Cmon, you just spent like three hours in her room alone."
"She wanted someone to talk to, Mark. She has no one."
"I'm three-hundred percent sure that's not the reason you were in there. I can't blame you though, she's pretty hot."
"That's not what's happening!"
"Have you mentioned me yet? You said you would tell her I could fix the scars."
"She's two weeks post-op."
"And? She's already been published with yours, Torres' and Bailey's names."
"Wait, what?"
"You didn't see? Medical Monthly's edition came out today with a whole article on her and her team of surgeons here. The chief's happy, he thinks it'll bring in more patients."
"You just want the fame. She's not some toy you can use to boost your ego."
"Isn't that what you're doing?"
"Mark," Derek warns, facing his friends.
"Okay, okay. My bad." He raises his hands above his head in surrender. "Is she good company at least?"
"She's great company. You're jealous."
"I could score any woman I want, I'm not jealous of yours."
"Is that so?" Derek laughs. "And you wonder why they call you a manwhore."
"Don't believe me? Let's hit Joe's."
Derek, unable to keep a certain blonde off his mind, agrees instantly, wanting to drink the highly inappropriate thoughts out of his head.
Later, at the loud bar, Derek sits, nursing his scotch in silence. After two games of darts, Mark had gone off to hit on some woman across the bar. Normally, Derek would do the same thing, but for some reason, today there was only one woman he could think about.
One woman; and a relationship between the two could never happen.