I took two steps into the kitchen this morning, Derek took one look at me, and told me to go straight back to bed. "I'm fine, Derek…" I insisted, feeling his hand stick to my shirt as the sweat seeped through with the contact.
"Meredith, I don't need a thermometer to tell me you're running a fever. Go back to bed." He said back in an equally insistent tone.
Ok, so I felt like I was one of the living dead, but I wasn't going to tell him that. I was actually grateful that he had his arm around me, or I might have collapsed halfway on the stairs –again, I wasn't going to tell him that. "Cristina went to work once when she was running a 102 degree fever…" I argue feebly as he pulls back the covers and guides me into the bed.
"Cristina is…" He paused trying to find an adjective. "Cristina." He gave up. "I'm telling you…you're not going into work. Not only is it stupid for your recovery, you're an infective sponge right now."
"Wow. Infective sponge. And they say romance is dead…" I laugh, but end up choking on a cough.
"I'll tell people you're not coming in." He said, feeling my forehead, my hairline soaked with sweat. "Yeah, you're definitely not coming in." He blew me a kiss, because he didn't want the infection, and walked out of the door.
I wonder exactly how terrible I look. My throat began to get sore at lunchtime yesterday, but I was willing myself not to get sick. So much for power of the mind. Once I'm in bed, and shivering because of the fever, I'm grateful Derek won this argument and made me stay home. There is no way in hell I'd have made it through the day at work. I feel like all the energy has been sapped from my body and a train has hit me at 100 miles an hour. There isn't one muscle in my body that doesn't hurt. I make it to the bathroom, opening the cabinet to make take some meds, so I can drug myself up and knock myself out. I take a glance of myself in the mirror. Right now, my colour really does fit my name- Grey. I look terrible, and feel terrible. I swallow the pills and walk downstairs to the couch, planning to watch crappy TV and sleep.
No sooner do I make it down there, my cell buzzes.
"Shepherd's got you owned." Cristina says.
I roll my eyes. "It's professional weakness, right?" I say, blowing my nose.
"Being sick or being post-it noted?"
She refuses to call it a marriage. I guess I understand why. She was willing to do the whole white dress and tux thing, that's what she thinks a wedding is. And Burke just walked away. And she wonders why in the end, I think marriage doesn't matter. My mom still cheated, Addison still cheated on Derek, George still cheated on Callie, Izzie still betrayed Alex. Wow, I know a lot of people who screwed up their marriages. I'm happy with this arrangement. We are together because we want to be, we're not obligated by a piece of paper. I don't have first hand examples of a single marriage that wasn't fucked up. Maybe I should be friends with less dysfunctional people.
"Shepherd warned me not to encourage you to come in to work today. So I am actively not encouraging you to come in, even though the board is the board we've had in months." She goads me.
"Couldn't you be a good friend and bring me soup or something instead of telling me what I'm missing?" I sigh exasperatedly.
"Face it,Mer, you'd rather me tell you about the surgeries than bring you soup…" Cristina says confidently.
The sad truth is, she's right. I'd rather be kept in the loop of what's going on at work, and live vicariously through her, than be nursed back to health with affection and chicken soup. I didn't have a loving mother who fed me soup and put cold compresses to my head. She didn't even really know when I was sick, I dealt with it all myself. It actually feels weird that Derek even noticed I was sick, and cared enough to tell me to stay home. Before, I would have dragged my ass to work, felt like I was dying, and felt worse for spending over eighteen hours at the hospital.
My phone buzzes again. It's Derek. "How are you feeling?" He asks me, his voice soft and full of concern.
"I'm waiting for the meds to kick in. I'm fine, really." I don't know how to milk this illness thing.
"I'll come home during lunch, bring you some soup from that deli you like downtown…"
"That's nice, but I'm not sure I'll be able to taste anything. And hopefully I'll be sleeping."
"Just let me look after you."
"I'm sure we have some soup in a can in one of the cupboards in the kitchen…"
Derek laughs at me. "Soup in a can isn't the same." He knows I'm about to protest, and I'm sure he's formulating his comeback in his mind, but I can hear muffled noises in the background. "Hey, I've got to go. See you soon. Love you." He says hurriedly.
My thoughts go back to what I was thinking about before Derek called me, about what I have with Derek. Honestly, before Derek, I thought I just wasn't cut out for love. I wasn't actively seeking it. I didn't have those dreams of a husband, kids and a dog. It wasn't a goal. My goal was to be a doctor, a surgeon. That was what I could depend on, be in full control of. But once you reach that goal, what's left for me? What new goal do I find that I can feel in control of? I never thought I'd be able to depend on anything I felt I had no control over- like my relationship with Derek. I really do feel as if I was swept up and away in it, like the best I could do is just surf the wave and not drown- although I ended up drowning literally and figuratively. I didn't expect it, I didn't want it, I didn't see it either.
I see people whose temporary jobs somehow become permanent ones, and people who get married because it's the next step, or they think that's what they ought to do after dating for a couple of years. But then you can find yourself in situations you didn't even want to be in, and by then it's too late- you have children because everyone expects it, and you find yourself pregnant with your first child before you've even thought about what it means.
I crave any control I can get. Because I feel so out of control so much of the time. That why I chose surgery. Because for a lot of the time, the surgeon god complex and unyielding arrogance tricks my mind into thinking I'm in control. If I clip the artery, the patient will bleed to death, or if I cut the wrong nerve a patient can be paralysed. But then there's moments, especially in surgery, where I realise I have absolutely no control at all. Some call it the path of destiny, some call it the roulette wheel of luck. I don't know what it is.
Too often, it's being caught up in everything that's the problem. The expectations are too high to ever reach them. Really, my relationship with Derek is nobody else's business but mine and Derek's. I know that's simplifying it, and we don't live in a closed society like that. But I don't feel like suffocating myself with hairspray and getting married in a church would change how I feel about Derek. It just makes the commitment I made to him more socially acceptable. I've never been one to conform to that. For people who want to do it, to whom it brings comfort, that's good for them, but it didn't matter to me.
And, I know Derek's the marrying kind. He still believes in that forever even though his marriage to Addison broke up. And yet, he knew I wasn't. I'm not going to cheat on him just because we haven't had a legal wedding. I would have given that to him, but I think he knew that I'd be doing it just for him. I know people think I sound selfish, but here's the thing- I've seen the bad side of it all. The resentment, the 'staying together for the children', that kind of strangling bond that marriage certificate holds. It stopped Richard Webber from being with my mom, it stopped Derek from choosing me, people stay in painful marriages for too long because of the paper. Is it worth it? You couple off, you have babies, and take out mortgages together, and think you have a white picket fenced life, and really, underneath that façade, it's all falling apart, and hate bubbles under the surface. Twenty years later the marriages –sometimes not even the first ones- are falling apart or you're single again, your kids hate you and do whatever they can to stay away from you. Where does that leave you? Why, despite that terrible track record does the next generation think it would work for them?
Why do I think it will work for me, when it didn't work for my mom?
The truth is, I'm going into this blind. I am hoping that my formula works. It's hard to trust Derek to uphold his side of it all. I've seen the other person give up too often, sometimes, I was that other person. I don't have a crystal ball, I don't know if I will be celebrating my anniversary in twenty years' time, or if I will be alone again. But at least I know I can manage on my own, and it won't be a steep learning curve.
That's my last thoughts on the matter, as my feverish delirium succumbs to the meds I had taken.
-X-
When Derek comes home, I'm all bundled up on the couch, watching one of Izzie's chick flick DVDs with a cup of herbal tea in my hands. I look at him standing in the hallway, just looking at me, with a smile on his face. He drops his bag on the floor, takes his shoes off, and joins me on the couch.
"Thanks for the soup. You should have woken me up when you came home." I say to him. Sniffling into the hundredth Kleenex I've used today.
"You were out for the count." He laughs. "Even an earthquake wouldn't have woken you up." He kisses me on the cheek, but I pull away.
"You'll get sick…stay away." I stick my hand out to stop him from kissing me again.
"It'll be worth it."
"It really wouldn't." I cough. "This thing is awful."
I lay my head on his chest anyway, breathing noisily through my mouth. I think about what I was thinking this afternoon, about marriage and what we have, and whether any of it matters. I have this question in my head that's been niggling me ever since we did the post-it thing, and maybe because I'm feeling vulnerable because I'm sick, I ask him. "Do you want to get married for real?"
I can feel him not breathe for a moment. The rhythmic in-out rise and fall in his chest has stopped. "Maybe not the Izzie version of a wedding, but you know, the certificate in city hall part of it. Because- I know you believe in marriage, and I don't want you to think I can't give it to you- I can. I mean every marriage is different, right? It doesn't have to end like my mom and dad's…"
He doesn't answer straight away. He thinks for a moment. "Are you happy?" He asks me. It's asked confidently, as if he knows the answer.
"Well yeah, but…"
"Yes, I wanted to be married to you. I wanted something that means forever with you. And I have it. You're right, every couple is different. We love each other, we're committed to each other, that's a marriage. It's not a legal one, it's not a recognised one, but that's ok with me. Other people want that legality. So did I. But you know what? People do what they want anyway. They cheat if they want to, they lie. The legality makes no difference whether you break up or not. That's the emotionally tough part. I'm not bothered about the paper element of it. I wanted the commitment and the romantic gesture. And we did that."
I guess his answer put an end to my insecurity that my jittery need for unconventional relationships was forcing him to do something he didn't want to do. If I think about what I wanted when I told him I wanted to get married at city hall, I wanted those same things. To tell him I'd try my hardest to love him forever.
Now I realise, that the people I admire and try to be are at two ends of a continuum. There are people who either choose to pack in as much as possible into their lives, because we don't know how long we're going to be on this earth, and truly 'carpe diem'-ing means you don't give a fuck about the consequences, and there are those who have the motto of 'Live forever or die trying' because again, at least they don't have regrets. They've looked into the abyss, acknowledged their fear of the unknown, and are still doing what they can.
Anything is just average- middle America, middle-of-the-road. It's all or nothing. I'm supposed to be a passionate force of nature. That's fine for others, but I think 'when you were six years old, what did you want to be when you grew up?' Ok, so I might not be a world class surgeon yet, and Derek – or the concept of someone like him- might never have been in the plans, but I don't feel as if loving him has clipped my wings. It's made me more bold. It's made me want to be better, because he provides me a strong emotional base, which is something that was totally alien to me. Someone loves me for just being me? Not because he has to, but because he chooses to. Hell yeah, that gives me a lot of confidence.
We sit there, on the couch amidst tissues and empty mugs and blankets, the sound of the TV filling the silence between us. "I love you." He says softly, his hand rubbing my arm.
I pull myself up to look at him, wondering what made him say that. I am lying on the couch, still in my nasty pajamas, I dread to think what my hair looks like, my head feels like it's a watermelon about to explode, and he's telling me he loves me? What does he want? What did he do. I know sometimes he can be a sentimental fool, but he's also a man. Men don't just say it. Maybe he said it to plug the flow of my insecurities.I look at him- into his eyes, and just see a contentedness. There's not actually a reason why he said it.
He shrugs. "Just because."
Is he reading my mind? He said it as if he can't not say it. I don't know how to deal with this kind of love. Of all the different kinds of 'I love you's, it feels as if it's this 'just because' kind of love is the one that truly counts. When I think about it, there's lots of things I love about Derek, but really, when it boils down to it, there are really the two types of love. There's the solid and enduring love, like the ground beneath your feet. That's the 'I love you even when you look like shit' love. Then there's the other kind, it's like a hurricane, powerful and fierce. It might only happen once but it leaves a footprint on your heart. That's the 'I have to have you now' love. I don't know which one is the best, which one matters more. They both do.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love you more than I could ever promise.
And you take me the way I am.
Ingrid Michaelson- The way I am.