Seattle Grace Hospital
Emergency Room,
Early Evening

-

Meredith just stood and stared until her patient reminded her of the needle she still held on to and that was still piercing the skin on his arm.

"I'm sorry," she apologized and hurried to finish up, constantly glancing across the room though to where Derek seemed completely focused on his task of treating a patient with minor burns and lacerations. She noticed Mark watching Derek as well, sitting in his wheel-chair and trying to get rid off a young doctor set on examining him. Then his gaze shifted and met hers, his expression guilt-stricken and resigned. She gave him a questioning look but he just seemed to wince before he barked something at the doctor and then got out of the chair to leave the ER. She watched him limp towards the elevators, making it halfway there before someone handed him crutches. Taking them without any sign of gratitude he disappeared out of her sight.

"I'll be right back," Meredith explained to her patient and rushed towards one of the nurses to have the blood samples she had just taken being delivered to the lab. For a moment she considered following Mark upstairs but then she carefully approached Derek instead.

"Hey."

"Hey," he replied, looking up and revealing an almost motionless expression.

"What's up?" she asked after a beat or two, for a lack of anything better to say.

"Just helping out until my GSW arrives," he shrugged. "Seems they can use every hand they get."

"Yeah," she said with a frown, still not finding any words that seemed right. "Hey, was that Addison?" she finally just blurted out.

He didn't answer right away. "Yes."

She waited a few more beats but he didn't seem willing to elaborate.

"So, what happened?"

Again, he hesitated, his face turned away from her. But she could see him swallowing.

"She was in a car accident."

"How bad is it?" Meredith asked, feeling so uncomfortable she wished she had spent the past 10 minutes somewhere else, anywhere but here.

"I don't know," Derek simply shook his head, not even looking up from the gauze he was just wrapping around his patient's arm. "They said something about trauma and internal bleedings."

"Are they taking her up to the OR?" Meredith had to force the words out but knew she couldn't just walk away either. She was too…shocked not to try to understand what was going on.

"I think so."

How could he be like this? She of all people understood what it meant to have been hurt by someone but Addison was still his wife. Ex wife, granted, but still the woman he had been married to for eleven years, whom he had spent a huge amount of his life with. How could he stand here like he didn't care when she was coming in with such serious injuries? She couldn't believe it was really Derek she was looking at. Her Derek would never be so…cold.

"Well, who's going to operate?"

Again he shrugged. "Burke probably or the Chief."

She could only stare at him. She didn't get it. Unless there was something he hadn't told her, something Addison had done that was so horrible that… No, she couldn't think of anything Addison or anyone for that matter could have done that would make Derek behave like this.

"Derek," she asked, her voice so low she was sure nobody else but Derek's patient would be able to hear her, "Why is it that I seem to care more about this than you?"

He didn't answer.

"Derek?"

He didn't look up.

"Derek, come on, she's –"

"Coming through!"

The yelling and the noise of another gurney being pushed into the ER cut her off and Derek immediately motioned for her to take over what he had been doing. "I have to take this," he mumbled and was gone before she could say anything else.

Watching him talk to the paramedics and assessing the gun shot wound himself, Meredith felt herself shiver. She suddenly felt like she didn't know him at all.