"I told you, Kathleen. I told you not to let the kids into the kitchen barefoot incase you left any glass!" Derek shouted, a fire burning in his eyes as he looked up to his sister. Furious couldn't even cover how he felt in that moment.

Her crossed arms split so she could gesture to the kitchen angrily. "I thought I picked it all up!"

"Yeah, all of it minus the massive piece now lodged in son's foot!" He shouted back. "And before you ask me why I didn't do it, I just know that if I tried then you would have stopped me and shouted at me like you've been doing all day whenever I try to just move!"

"Because you're wheelchair-bound, Derek!"

"You think I can't pick up glass because my legs don't work?"

"I think that you need help."

"When do I need help, Kathleen? When do I ever need help? I can transfer by myself. I can push myself around a hospital for 8 hours a day. In fact, I can go up stairs by myself. Why do you think I need help?"

"I don't know, maybe you need help with, say, getting a glass out of the top kitchen cupboard."

"Well if you just left me to do it myself instead of following me around all day, then it never would have happened!"

"Dada-" Bailey moaned, pushing on his ears with the palms of his hands. "Stwop it."

"Sorry, baby. Daddy is so sorry. I didn't mean to shout." He apologized, a hand settling on his back affirmingly. Derek had placed the boy on his lap – Carolyn had taken Elle and put her back into the crib – and brought him to the living room where Meredith could sit on the sofa to analyse the cut. From the look on her face, it was an awful lot worse than his. "Neither did Auntie Kathleen, did she?"

She sighed at Derek's stare. "No. I didn't. I'm sorry Bailey."

"Do I hospitals?" He asked, unsure of what the protocol was for this. He knew if he scraped his knee, there was no need for a hospital. But he also knew that if he fell over and part of him still hurt after a long time, as it did with Sarah from day-care when she broke her arm, he should probably ask his parents for more help.

"I can remove it myself Bails, let me just go and get something to help me do that."

He nodded slowly. He looked worried, but Derek couldn't see that, seeing as he was facing away from him on his lap. He could presume his emotion though. And he was right. Apprehension.

"Mama is very good at being a doctor. And this is what doctors do." He reassured him, giving him a kiss on the top of his head.

He nodded again. "Okay. Mama is good doctor. I knows that." He said affirmatively as Meredith returned from the bathroom and settled back on the sofa on front of him.

"Hand?" Derek offered, placing his hand by his son. He grasped it thankfully, his grip tighter than usual.

Derek watched his wife examine the glass once again, swallow and pick up the best instrument she could find in a common household bathroom. And stopped.

"You alright Meredith?" Carolyn asked, concerned that she froze after selecting her tool of choice. Although she wasn't moving, the tweezers were vibrating in her shaking hand.

She stared at her son for a few more seconds before looking up to her husband, defeated. "I- I can't."

"Mer-" He sighed, hoping to reassure her before she interrupted him.

"It's my baby- please-"

"It's okay Mer." He soothed as he nodded, picked up Bailey and placed him on the sofa besides Meredith. He tried to do it as quickly as he could, before his son noticed that Meredith was freaking out. Plus, the last thing he needed was for his parents to start arguing too. "Dad is gonna have a go now, okay?"

"And Daddy is better than Mama, okay? He's really good." Meredith reassured her son. She thought she would be able to do something as simple as removing glass for her son but, apparently, she couldn't even do that.

Derek had no idea which one of them was better at removing shards of foreign objects, but he wasn't going to object in front of his son. "So, it might hurt a little. But then it will be better right afterwards."

"Okay." Bailey agreed with an awful lot of hesitation, eyebrows dropped and mouth dropped open in fear as he watched his father do his best to remove the glass.

No one talked.

No one moved.

They just watched.

Derek was still fuming and Kathleen knew that. She also was praying that the boy would he fine because, if he wasn't, it would be her specifically that he would he screaming at about it all. Meredith and Carolyn were praying he was fine too. Mostly for the boy himself, but also in the hope that they wouldn't have to watch a sibling fight break out between them.

"You okay Bails?"

He nodded again, unusually quiet.

"You wanna try walking?" Meredith asked.

He swung his legs quickly and thoughtlessly over the couch, an ability that Derek was, admittedly, jealous of, before placing a timid foot on the floor. His non-sharded foot. Then the other foot.

"See, he's fine." Kathleen stated unhelpfully. "It's not a big deal. It was just a little accident. He's fine."

"Mmm, no thanks to you." He retorted before softening as he turned to his son, standing in front of him. "Bailey, you sure it doesn't hurt?"

He hesitated for a moment. "Maybe." He shrugged, unsure. He started a loop around the sofa.

Derek sighed as he looked up to his wife, only to hear him cry out in pain. Carolyn scooped her hands under her grandson's armpits so his foot would no longer be touching the ground as quickly as she could after that wail. Luckily, he was still so small and light.

"I don't think he's fine." Derek's eyes found his sister, his whole body radiating a passive aggression. "Do you?"

Bailey didn't cry when he pulled the shard out of his foot. He didn't cry when he tried standing on his feet. Then he tried walking. Then he cried. His father may have been excellent, but there was only so much he could do in a home environment.

"Hi. I need a CT fo-" Derek started as the trio approached the reception desk.

"Are you okay sir?" The man asked, looking him up and down.

He tried not to roll his eyes or sigh, and he just about succeeded. "I'm fine, the CT is actually for my-"

"Are you struggling to walk? Have you experienced a trauma recently? Did you-"

"I'm paraplegic." Derek stated abruptly. A half lie. Really, he had incomplete paraplegia, but he saw no need to elaborate on that. It didn't feel rude to interrupt the man, he had done it twice already. Considering the fact that they were in a hospital, at least he had a reason to ask; he supposed that was one positive. That was, in fact, the one time when those questions actually made sense to him. But it was still a bold assumption.

The man swallowed as his look of concern, but also that surgery-craving hunger glint in his eyes, faded.

"I need a CT for my son." Derek requested again, this time without interruption.

His eyebrows dropped as he examined the boy on his lap. Meredith placed Bailey on his father's lap when they got out the car so there would be no pressure on his foot. She had two shoes in one hand, optimistically hoping that she would be sliding them back into her son's feet in an hour or two (she knew ER waits were long). "Why?"

"Stepped in glass."

He nodded. "I'll uh- find you a bed."

"You want an CT? For a piece of glass?" The man asked, eyebrows creasing as he skimmed through the chart.

Meredith nodded. "Yes."

He smirked. "Did Google tell you to ask for that?"

"No- I-"

"Generally, CTs aren't done for glass shards." The man interrupted, settling the chart and looking at the boy.

"Generally, you aren't still in pain after a simple glass splinter removal." Derek returned pointedly.

"Do you know how much a CT costs? And you wanna pay that much when an x-Ray is the fraction of the price?"

"Yeah. We do. And I don't care about the fact that it's cheaper, because it's not gonna show the glass. So yes, I want a CT." Meredith returned. She wasn't ever going to budge on that, even if she had to hijack a radiologist and CT machine to do it.

He sighed. "Sign these, I'll ask my attending." The man offered as he handed her a clipboard and pen. He wasn't sure what else he was supposed to say to them. They were both awfully insistent.

Meredith took the writing utensil, only to falter as she read the design over it. It was a custom pen, that read four very familiar words. "Grey Sloan Memorial hospital? You know where that is?"

"It's actually where I plan to do residency." He said before realizing – or rather, assuming – that non-physicians like them would have no idea what that meant. "That's uh- you know, the thing you do after internsh-"

"Do you know how Derek Shepherd is?" Meredith interrupted. The referenced man looked up to her at the sound of his name, but he didn't ask why she had asked the question. Clearly, she had some kind of plan.

"Uh- oh, yeah. He's the guy that removed that tumour- uh, diffuse astrocytoma. The inoperable one that was in the parietal and occipital lobe. The guy had absolutely zero defects, despite the fact it wasn't even suggested to be removed by any surgeon he went to. Biggest and most impressive tumour removal on record." He said, eyes lighting up a little at the request to gush information about such an impressive surgeon.

Derek was just glad that he didn't go with the aspect of him everyone else always went with. He was so many more things than that. He would give anything for the hospital to start calling him McDreamy again. That or the man didn't know and only read the articles about his work specifically. He pretended it was the former.

"Do you know who he's married to?" Meredith posed next.

"What kind of questions are these? Derek Shepherd doesn't work here."

She sighed. "What's your patient's name?"

"Uh- Bailey." The man answered hesitantly. He knew the patient's name; he just didn't know why she was asking.

"Full name." Meredith snapped.

He looked at the chart that Meredith had just filled out, only to falter when he read the surname she had entered. "Grey…Shepherd." He looked back up to her, mouth dropped wide. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. He couldn't believe he had just said all that in front of the man, nor his wife. "You're Meredith Grey."

"So when I say my son does not need an x-Ray, it's nothing to do with Dr Internet. I'm saying it because my husband knows how to remove glass if he knows how to remove tumours and my son is still in pain!" She exclaimed. "So, for the love of God, can you page someone else?"

The attending (well, he was actually the Head of Paediatrics, but the people in the room didn't know that) paused when he opened the door. He saw the little boy sat on the gurney and didn't falter. He saw the woman sat beside the gurney and didn't falter. But he did at the man, who was now smiling.

"Woah, hello." Derek greeted, still grinning.

"Blast from the past much?"

Derek looked to his wife and gestured vaguely to the man. "This is uh- Dr Chalmers, I guess. We went to med school together." He explained. Last time he had seen him, they were barely doctors and called each other by their first names, as they had been doing it for years.

"And you must be uh- Mrs Shepherd." He greeted.

"Dr Grey. She hates people who call her that." Derek corrected before she could even speak. He knew that the words were going to come out of her mouth, he just thought he'd jump the gun for her.

"So, this is your boy?" He asked, gesturing to Bailey.

He ruffled his son's hair. "Bailey. And we also have two daughters."

"Wow." He muttered. He couldn't imagine having three kids. "What uh- what happened to you and Addie?"

"Divorced. A long time ago now."

He nodded a little awkwardly. He supposed that that was the case, but he wanted confirmation. He was hoping to have something other than the information he was given though. Like why. Or how. Or when, more specifically. "How about Mark? How is he?"

"Mark-" Derek breathed. "He…he doesn't-" He placed a hand on his son's head and brushed through his hair as he looked at him, trying to make his point clear to the man. "He moved away in 2012. We don't see him anymore."

"Oh." His face told him Mark most definitely didn't move away. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know."

"It's okay." He reassured him, forcing a quick smile.

"So, little man, would you like to have some pictures taken of your foot? It will help us see all that naughty glass that didn't want to get out your foot, okay?"

"Mmm mmm." He agreed with a slight smile.

Max turned to Derek. "You wanted a CT?"

"I did it myself, anything that is left has to be tiny."

He nodded. "I'm going to trust you on that. According to an awful lot of medical journals, you are like- the best surgeon on the planet, even with all that…stuff you've got going on."

He knew what 'that stuff' was. At this point, he knew that any vague noun that someone said around him was just them trying not to say anything truly relating to him. "I wouldn't go that far."

"Mmm, the articles disagree." He said with a shrug before looking back at Bailey. "Bailey, do you think your dad is the best brain doctor ever?"

He smiled. "Obvioosly!"

"See. I cite credible sources!"

"So, when's your next football-sized-tumour-removal scheduled?"

Derek smirked, looking from the blank computer screen to the man besides him. "Paternity leave. I deal with football-sized disasters in nappies now. Not quite as fun."

"How long?"

"Oh. Probably don't want to ask that. It might spark a fight." Meredith muttered. She didn't dare talk about work. She didn't know when he wanted to go back to work, nor if he wanted to go back first.

"Eh. You go back whenever you want."

Meredith stared at him, dumbfounded for a second. "What?"

"If you wanna go back to work, I don't mind."

"Seriously?"

He shrugged. "Seriously. Astor says I can work from home until March when he's going to run off and dump phrase 2 on me anyway."

"Who is Astor?"

"Astor Kron. My new boss. He gave me a whole freaking lab, and a sweet but very awkward polygot German resident." Derek explained.

"To do what?"

"Cure Alzheimer's."

Cogs clicked behind his eyes for a second before he stated, confused, "But you were blacklisted by the FDA. I read about it."

"It's in a German Embassy building. So, technically, I'm not on American soil. Smart, right?"

"Jeez. That is..." He paused, thinking. "Really, really weird."

Derek smirked, and nodded. "Yeah. I know. But I'm a very complicated person already so, you know, who cares about some more?"

"So no more tumours?"

"Two part time jobs, instead of full time at the hospital. So, yes, of course I'm still doing the tumours.

"Actually- uh, now that I think about it…"

"Mmm?"

"The hospital you work at…it's called Grey Sloan Memorial hospital, right?"

Derek swallowed and nodded slowly. Meredith's hand crept to his back to rub against it slowly. She was stood next to him, as there wasn't enough space for three chairs.

"I took a break, from work, so…I kinda missed it. That plane crash was, apparently, a big thing that went round the hospital, and every other hospital, but it happened after I left." He explained, trying to prove that he didn't live under a rock. "And…Meredith, your name-"

"My sister, Lexie." She interrupted, already knowing where he was going to go.

He pulled a painfully sympathetic smile for the woman. "And then there's you Derek. Who's been uh- let's see, hit by a car, life-threatening respiratory illness, I guess there was that time that Mark defibbed you as well, come to think of it- and- God, what else have you even done?"

"He almost drowned pulling me out of a bay once. Then he was shot. Then we had the plane crash. And now this-" Meredith listed off, settling both hands on the backrest of his chair to signal to it at the end of her sentence. "Oh, and the post-op complication too."

"What I want to know is how in the world it took you like seven attempts to actually end up permanently injured or affected by one of these things." He said, looking him up and down. "Honestly, I am so, so impressed. You got some drug you're hiding from the rest of the world? Is…woah, is that why you have such good outcomes all the time? Did you use it on that tumour guy?"

Derek smirked. "If I did, I think I'd share it."

"Maybe develop something to get yourself out of that chair and walking again, huh?" He asked as he eyed his chair. "Actually- why Alzheimer's? Surely you'd wanna do a nerve regeneration project or something? I mean, you could invent your own cure!"

"Mmm." He smiled awkwardly and he felt his whole body stiffen a little, eyes suddenly uninterested in the man.

"Oh-" He breathed, witnessing the movement that shoved how uncomfortable the suggestion made him right in his face. "Oh, crap, sorry. I uh- shouldn't have said that. There are so many clinical trials out there already that aren't working. I didn't mean to upset you by- jesus, shoving the fact that you have no cure right in your face."

"I don't want a cure."

"You...don't want a cure for SCIs?"

"I mean, if one was offered and guaranteed to work then...yeah, I guess I'd take it, for the sake of convenience for my family and so I could go back to being 'normal' to my patients but...no. I'd much rather cure Alzheimer's than fix SCIs."

"Why?"

"Because people die of Alzheimer's. People don't learn to accept it and everything goes back to sparkles and rainbows. It lasts forever. In fact, it gets worse over time. It destroys lives and families and kids and...it's horrible."

"Well, yeah. But SCIs...Derek, you are in a wheelchair. And you don't have Alzheimer's. You could fix yourself."

Before he had a chance to come up with a reply, the scan loaded.

"Tiny, tiny shard, almost on the medial plantar. No wonder it hurts so much. No way you would have been able to find that." Max observed.

"But you can take it out now?" Meredith asked desperately, placing a palm on the desk to look at it closer.

"Call your taxi now-" He smiled. "-you can go home in ten."

"Uncle Derek?"

"Mmm?" Derek murmured, looking up from his son's art work. After they left, Carolyn had set up an art table for the younger children. Zola was already sat there, accompanied by a very anxious Kathleen, when they came back but he took over that job. Or rather, he settled Bailey next to his sister, argued with Kathleen about the possibility that he could have sliced his medial plantar nerve open and seriously injured his son, then returned and let Bailey sit on his lap.

"Why do your legs look so weird?"

Derek hesitated. "Uh…in what way Millie?"

"They're…weird- shape?" The nine-year-old said, unsure of what she meant.

"Is that because you're broken?" The cousin asked. He was Millie's, Zola's and Bailey's cousin. Although, basically everyone was a cousin because there were so, so many kids. Everywhere.

"Um- my spine- I broke my spine-" He clarified, although he tried not to be too aggressive with a child. A common misconception that he was met with was that he was broken. He wasn't broken; his back was, once upon a time. "-and that's what makes my legs work. So, because they don't work anymore, my legs don't get a lot of exercise. And exercise is what makes your legs look like they're supposed to, so mine look a little funny."

"When do you get better?"

"I have gotten better already." Derek elaborated, already knowing what was going to come next.

"Why are you like that if you're better?" Millie asked, pointing at his chair with creased eyebrows. "That doesn't make any sense Uncle Derek."

There it was. The question. How in the world could someone be healthy and fine if they couldn't walk? Luckily, he also had an answer pre-prepared in his mind. "Give me your glasses Mils."

"But I can't see without my glasses."

"So, your eyes don't work?" He suggested. Whether or not she handed him the glasses didn't matter to him; it was only to push her to find the answer.

She shook her head. "Not without my glasses."

"So are your eyes broken?"

"Uh…no. Yes. Kind of. I don't really know…But you don't wear glasses." She returned, eyebrows creased. She was intrigued about where he was going, but it got boring once he had taken one too many twists.

"Do you feel sad that you have to wear glasses?" He asked, still not helping her figure out what her uncle was talking about.

Her eyebrows creased as she thought about the question before shrugging. "Annoying when they fall off, I guess, but no. That would just be silly to be sad. They're super cool. They're cooler than walking into a wall or something because I'm super blind."

"And that is exactly the same for my chair. I can't walk, which is just like how you can't see, so I use this chair, which is just like how you wear glasses. So I don't feel sad either, unless there is something annoying, like your glasses falling off."

"Ooooooooh!" She exclaimed. "I get it now! Thanks Uncle Derek!"

"No problem Mils." He replied with a smile before it faded. All it really did was raise a significant question in his mind: how in the world could Kathleen's daughter understand what a wheelchair was and that life was still okay when you used one, when Kathleen hated it so, so, so damn much?