Aftermath
Chapter 18: Love Your Memory
She'd spent entirely too much time preparing for this session. She'd purposely chosen the most conservative suit she had with her, kept her glasses on, pulled her hair back, did everything she could to keep from looking anything less than professional.
Unfortunately for her, Derek seemed to find this attractive. He stepped into her office at precisely 11:30 the following morning after Addison's session. "I think this is the most professional I've seen you look. I like it." He complimented as he settled down in front of her.
"Derek, we're here to discuss the events of the explosion, not my wardrobe." She reminded, trying to curb her sharp tongue.
He nodded silently and waited for her to speak. "You were told to evacuate. You refused. Why?" She asked, putting on her professional tone.
"Tucker Jones – Miranda Bailey's husband, was on the table. I wasn't going to let the man die. I was operating on his brain." He explained.
"Right but the man was equally at risk for dying from the explosion." She pointed out, glancing over the rim of her glasses.
"True but I'm a doctor. I do what's in my patient's best interest. If we had moved him, he would have died." Derek told her.
"Could have." She said, not even glancing up from her writing as she corrected him.
He was silent. She looked up, he had confusion written all over his face. "Could have. You don't know for a fact that he would have died if you moved him. You only knew it was a possibility." She told him.
She was right. He knew it was a risk to move the man with him attached to so many machines and with his brain exposed, but he'd be lying if he said he knew for a fact that Tucker would have died.
"How long after you refusal to move did you find out Dr. Grey was the one who was holding the explosive device?" She pressed, raising her eyes to meet him.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "15 minutes maybe." He replied uneasily.
"Tucker crashed within moments of you finding out this information. What was your reaction?" She asked, her tone soft and neutral.
"I wasn't about to lose Bailey's husband, there was no way I was going to tell her that I couldn't save him. But when I found out it was Meredith… My heart stopped." He admitted, his voice tight and low, very nearly cracking with emotion. She knew this was taxing on him, he knew she knew that. They'd been through too much not to know when the other was struggling.
She gave him a moment to collect himself. "In that second, in that moment, you weren't a surgeon. You were a man who loved a woman who was in trouble." She said, her words not a question, but a statement, and more importantly, a fact.
He nodded, not even bothering to attempt to deny what she said. What was the point? She was right.
"It's not a bad thing… Derek, it's actually a good thing. It means you're still human, that you have real emotions. You know as well as I do that it's very difficult to hold onto the 'human factor' sometimes. And you did. You held on." She told him, needing him to know that he shouldn't be upset or ashamed at his feelings.
"I didn't think I was… Human I mean. Not until I moved here. I think I stopped being human after… After we ended. I wasn't even all that human with Addison. It goes worse as our marriage went down the drain. When I moved here, I felt robotic, like I didn't even need to sleep or eat to make it through the day. But I came here, I met her, and everything changed. I was human again, I had feelings, something excited me. But then Addison came back and I expected that robotic feeling to come back, but it didn't. I still felt human, even around Addison. I thought it meant something. I thought it meant I still had feelings for my wife. So I left Meredith. I was wrong." He'd just poured his heart out to his ex-wife/therapist for absolutely no reason at all and was now feeling slightly embarrassed about it.
She always felt like she was being hit by a brick wall when Derek let his feelings fly. They were always powerful and heavy and this time was no exception.
"I'm glad you're feeling this way. Doctors struggle with the humanity concept. You knew right then and there, when you found out it was her, you found your true key to humanity. Loving Meredith. What did you do when you found out she'd been part of the explosion?" She asked, choosing her words carefully. Truthfully, she knew exactly what he'd done.
"I went looking for her when I came down. I ran into Addison instead. So I waited until I knew she'd be off and I went to see her at home. We talked." He told her, his explanation vague.
She hated that she knew what his evasive explanation meant. She knew it meant he was hiding something, something he didn't want her to know, usually because he thought it would hurt her.
"You need to be straight with me. You can't speak to me like I'm your ex-wife right now. You need to speak to me as a psychologist." She informed him, her voice stern.
"The conversation wasn't long. More than anything, I had to see her, I had to be in her presence, I needed that feeling. I was going to go, make it fast, but she stopped me. She couldn't remember our last kiss. She said it was her last thought when she thought she was going to die. It was mine too. I didn't tell her that, but our last kiss, our last real moment together, was my first thought when I found out she might die. It was my first thought when I thought she had died. So there she was standing in front of me, telling me she couldn't remember. I told her… I told her because I had to, I wanted to her to remember, to remember what it was like with us…. I wanted her to know that I remembered. The only thing I didn't know was the scent of her conditioner…. I know that seems insignificant, but it haunted me. She told me what it was. And for that moment, for that small amount of time, that was enough." He finished. He hadn't held anything back, he'd let her have the full blow.
And this time, it was Derek letting Erica process. She exhaled and forced her breathing to remain calm. It was difficult to hear him speak this way. She wanted him to be happy, she truly did, but she wasn't sure if she was ready to hear every little detail of his encounter with her.
Speak, you have to speak. You have to be professional. She coached herself back to being able to speak professionally. "You have this moment… How does it affect you now?" She asked.
"I think the better question is, how doesn't it?" He returned, meeting her eyes with his deep blue ones. As soon as she did, she was what he was feeling. She did everything she could to keep from losing it right there. He loved her. He really loved her.
He did have a point. Based on what she'd observed and overheard, it had done more than just affect him. It had consumed him. A surgeon couldn't be consumed with issues like this. They needed to be clear minded. It was no wonder he wasn't operating. He wouldn't be able to keep his mind on the patient long enough. She knew what she had to do.
"Derek. I'm sorry but I can't in good faith clear you for surgery." She told him after several moments.
"Can I ask why?" He asked, his tone tired and frustrated.
"Well, first of all, I don't think it would do any good, seeing as you'd still be following Meredith around, avoiding your job. And secondly, because you need your mind to be free of clutter. You're responsible for human lives. Quite a few of them, and you shouldn't be operating when you can't get this predicament out of your head." She informed him, writing up her evaluation to Dr. Webber.
"When can I return to rotation?" He questioned as she stood up, him following her actions.
"When you pick one." She said as she held the door open for him.
MEANWHILE IN DEREK'S OFFICE
"Beth!? Have you seen Dr. Shepherd's copy of the Schaeffer chart? I need to update it." Addison called to the young nurse milling around near Derek's office. Halle Schaeffer was a 3 month old patient with spinal cord damage from a car accident. She and Derek had been treating the little girl for 2 days so far.
Truth be told, Derek had barely looked at the child. It had been mostly Addison's case, with little input from Derek. He knew, despite his current state of mind, that it wasn't right to ignore the child, so he'd taken his copies and stashed it in his briefcase to review that evening. He'd dropped his briefcase off in his office before his session with Erica.
"I saw him putting something in his briefcase as he was walking into his office. And I didn't see him walk out with it." She dutifully reported.
Addison nodded and headed into her husband's office. Sure enough, his briefcase was sitting on his chair, unopened. She strode over to it, new paperwork to add in hand and pulled it open.
After sifting through, she found the copied chart and pulled it out. Right away, she noticed it felt heavy, heavier than the whole chart, even with the new papers she was about to add.
She dropped the papers on his desk, rifling through them. All of it was the case. Just as she was about to drop it back in, her fingers hit a staple. A staple that didn't go through the patient's information. She closed her fingers around the stapled papers and pulled it out.
"Writ of Divorce" Was printed at the top of the page. "Divorce?" She muttered. One quick look at the first page told her they weren't their divorce papers. She flipped to the back page and froze. One name… One named jumped off the page… Dr. Erica W. Shephard…