CHAPTER 6: ALIVE.
Derek's whole left side was going numb as he lay on his side on a cramped hospital bed, just feeling Meredith's chest rise and fall in time with his as she slept. Derek considered moving, the pins and needles in his arm becoming more painful rather than uncomfortable, but it was nothing compared to the pain he had inside when he considered how close he was to losing Meredith.
Meredith had drowned, and been medically dead. And all Derek could surmise from that was that she didn't want to swim.
Fresh tears sprung to his eyes as he thought of that, and his right hand tightened around his girlfriend, as he tried to purge those thoughts out of his mind and remember that she was alive and by his side. Derek found it hard to believe she would just have given up on swimming, she couldn't have been in the water all that long. Sure, the water was quite cold- Derek had jumped in it himself, but she couldn't have been in there for more than ten minutes before he found her, not when he knew she was a good swimmer.
"A picnic, Derek? Really?" Meredith laughed at him as she hopped out of her Jeep, walking up to him and kissing him on the lips before grabbing the blanket out of his already heavily-laden arms. He had invited her out to his land on a 'date', a way of not falling into his bad habits that he had acquired in his marriage. It didn't seem to matter that they were informally living together, that clothes they had brought over to each other's places never made it back to their respective homes. Derek's sister Nancy had just come to visit, trying to throw a spanner in the works and promptly flew back to Connecticut when she failed, and now they were enjoying some of their alone time.
"Forecast said no rain. I thought we'd take advantage of this boon…" Derek replied, smiling as Meredith linked her free arm with his, matching his strides synchronously.
Doc was happily running circles around them as they walked the short distance to a clearing by the lake, laying down the blanket before they settled down onto it. Derek sat back, resting his weight on his elbows as Meredith lay down, her head on his thighs as he handed her food and wine out of the basket. It really was the perfect day for late summer. The sun warmed their faces, but didn't burn, and Meredith never knew that silence and the occasional birdsong could be such a nice sound. They laughed and talked as Derek gave Meredith the 'abridged' version of his history of all five of his sisters on Meredith's insistence- she didn't want anymore nasty surprises.
Somehow the picnic migrated to taking their bottle of wine to the little dock on the lake, and they both sat side by side, jeans rolled up to their knees as they dangled their legs in the soothing water. "Do you think this lake is clean enough to go swimming in?" Meredith asked him suddenly.
"Have you brought a bikini?" Derek asked. He watched her raise her eyebrow, her lips curling into a naughty smile. "Ohh…skinny dipping… you'd have to be a strong swimmer to keep your head above the water."
"Swimming is about the only lesson after-school I didn't have to fight my mom on. She encouraged me to know. She told me it was her responsibility to…lemme remember the exact phrase…yeah, she told me as a seven year old it was her parental duty to 'provide me with the skills-set to achieve my full potential'…so I could save myself in case I drowned or something. So yeah, maybe I could have made the high school swim team if I had have been motivated to get up before dawn in the mornings."
Derek smiled widely, filling her glass with more wine as he held her close. Meredith was clamshell tight with details of her life most of the time, unwilling to divulge her past freely- and Derek gathered that describing her relationship with her mother as 'tumultuous' would heave been an understatement. While her childhood wasn't totally awful, it could have been better, and Derek recognised that. That's why when she offered tiny snippets of her history like she had just done, he savoured it all the more. It was as if she wouldn't open up to anyone else like Derek in those moments, and Derek felt privileged.
"Hmm…you in a skin-tight swimsuit seems so sexy. You'll have to show me those skills." Derek replied, his eyes darkening with lust, kissing her deeply.
"It's not the swimming I was worried about…but things…crawly… creepy-crawly-swimmy things live in there."
"Creepy-crawly-swimmy things? I take it you didn't take a marine biology class ever?" Derek laughed.
"Don't be an ass, Derek." Meredith laughed, playfully pushing against him, trying to push him off the dock and into the water.
The irony that Meredith was more than proficient in swimming but drowned anyway wasn't lost on him. Thoughts raced through his fatigued body as he searched from reasonable explanations as to why Meredith didn't think it was worth treading water anymore. Was he not worth fighting for? Did he not provide enough support and love for her to just keep treading water forever? Derek's thumb traced her bicep up and down, as he tried to concentrate on the fact she was there.
Everything was going so well until Ellis was lucid for that day, and since then, he felt like Meredith doubted that she was allowed to be happy with the way things were going for them. Since Ellis said something to her, Meredith was waiting for something to happen- like another wife to come back, for them to hit a roadblock- find out something about each other that they found so unlikeable that they couldn't move on from that. It seemed that anything Derek said or did pissed her off even more, and Derek hadn't known how to deal with it.
Getting to know a person completely was exhausting sometimes, and he realised how much he had understood Addison over the years. He knew her- could decipher her passive-aggressiveness and behaviours, and with Meredith, he was having to start all over again. She was different to Addison, pushing him away wasn't a test to see if he'd come back stronger and dreamier, she really wanted him to leave her the hell alone.
He resented Ellis, she really knew how to push Meredith's buttons, and had succeeded in making Meredith doubt her relationship with Derek. All it took was for that one day of lucidity to break down nine months of what they had built together. It should have been a gift- Meredith should have been able to hear all the things she wanted her mother to say to her- that she was proud of what she had achieved, that she was happy that Meredith had found love. What kind of mother doesn't want their child to be settled in their lives. Derek realised that those little snippets Meredith told him, about not allowing her to go to every birthday party because it looked cheap among other things weren't exaggerations on Meredith's part- recollections of an overly dramatic little girl- but they were frighteningly real.
Derek knew what it was like not to have a parent- his dad had died when he was in his early teens, and he never got to say goodbye. It was too sudden for that. But he knew that if his dad could come back for a day, and talk to him, he would say how much he loved him and how he was proud of him. Meredith didn't get that at all.
Guilt swept over his body as he realised he could have contributed to Ellis's death by shouting at her when she was already in such a fragile state.
"You broke her. You called her ordinary. You told her time and time again that nothing she does ever is good enough. Every good thing Meredith is happened to spite you. She may not survive this. That's on you. That is on you! "
Yet Ellis was the one that didn't survive this. It was mean- Ellis was not lucid again, and she could no longer be responsible for the words she said to Meredith when she was back to her normal self. And no amount of trying to revive that Grey worked. Meredith now had no one except him and her friends. Derek kissed her head lightly, careful not to wake her. He would try and be enough for her.
Meredith was screaming, but no sound was coming out- she was trying to kick, but her legs wouldn't move and her lungs were filling up with ice cold water. The surface of the water was getting further and further away as she sank deeper and deeper…and she closed her eyes. She couldn't watch herself die. If only this were a nightmare of fantasy instead of reliving a real life experience.
She wished she had fought harder to keep her head above water, but she just didn't have the energy anymore. She had accepted it was her time to go. She had been treading water for what felt like forever, and her muscles were cramping in the cold water. Every breath she took hurt, and no one could hear her cries for help. There had to be a point where she gave up, and she had reached it. It wasn't that she wanted to die…it was just that she had run out of energy to fight to live. Derek would have forgiven her for that eventually.
Ellis had called her ordinary, nothing special, nothing to be proud of after not being there for her for five years. Meredith wasn't sure if anything she did would have been good enough for her, and Meredith had been thinking about it overnight, and had begun to believe her. Her mother's Alzheimer's hadn't motivated her- she had lost that force that had driven her to get to where she was. Meredith had been happy exactly where she was, and Ellis had ruined all that in one day.
It wasn't that Meredith had tried to drown herself in that tub- she just wanted to see if she had it in her to be able to push herself to the limits- whether she still had that ability to compete with her own expectations of herself. So she held her breath underwater. She could do thirty seconds…up to forty… the lightheaded-ness she had felt due to the lack of oxygen had felt somewhat numbing in the warm water of the tub- and in a good way. She was pushing herself, and it felt great. She hadn't lost it, she could be passionate, a force of nature…
And then Derek spoiled it by pulling her out of the tub.
He wouldn't understand it. She wasn't trying to hurt herself, she was re-learning how to push herself, and she felt like only she would understand the difference. He was pushing and pushing her to tell him what happened between her and Ellis- but she couldn't. Even though her relationship with Ellis was less than picture-postcard, she still had this instinctual desire to defend her. She could say what she wanted about Ellis, but Derek couldn't. How could she tell Derek anything when she hadn't figured out what it all meant in her head yet?
He had almost proposed to her.
Meredith hadn't known what she had really thought about that, but said no anyway. If in doubt, say no. Marriage was far out of her mind until he mentioned it. But if he wanted to…she wouldn't have opposed it. Being ordinary to her mother was nothing new- that was normal Ellis, even when she was with it. Nothing was ever good enough. If Meredith had accepted the fact she was only ordinary, then so should Ellis.
But Meredith had died.
The ketamine neurotransmitters they were pumping into her transported her into this screwed up afterlife, where she had met her mother, and her mother tried to build those bridges Meredith had hoped to build during that day of lucidity.
"Just keep going. Don't be a dam. You are anything but ordinary, Meredith."
She wasn't ordinary. She had been waiting all thirty-three years of her life to hear that from her mother, and even if it was all in her head, it's what she needed to hear. She was enough for her mother, she had to learn from her mother's mistakes. She couldn't be like her mother and be too scared to fight for whom and what she loved- and she loved Derek. Derek, the man who believed in soulmates and love and magic, even though he had been through a divorce, his wife cheated with his best friend, his dad died- now Meredith happened to him.
Just how 'killing' Ellis by not sanctioning her heart operation would have been yet 'another thing' to happen to Meredith, she couldn't let her death be another thing for Derek. She had to be strong, fight back, be there for him. And so she ran, ran as fast as she could, towards that blinding light faster and faster….
Meredith was jolted awake by her dream of reliving her afterlife experience, her heart racing as she heard it throbbing in her ears, breathing deeply to try and catch her breath. Her hand with the drip and the pulse ox went straight to her chest, and within seconds, she felt Derek's strong hand cover it.
Derek's eyes popped open as he felt her move suddenly beside her. In his daze, he feared it could have been a seizure, until he heard her anguished sigh, and despite the pins and needles, shifted closer towards her, spooning her more, holding her tighter than before, so he was against every inch of her body.
"You're ok, you're alright…" Derek whispered soothingly in her ear over and over until she had calmed down.
"What time is it? Don't leave me." Meredith asked him groggily, wrapping her sore fingers around his, as he held his hand against her heart, feeling it beat rhythmically inside her chest.
"It's midnight. Go to sleep. You need your rest. I'll be right here when you wake up." Derek croaked, glad that Meredith was facing the same way as him, so she couldn't see the tears in his eyes, rolling down his cheeks.
He was there for her, just like Denny had said he would be- soulmates. He would have had to believe in one hell of a magic trick to get them out of this, but they could do it. Meredith had wanted to tell him everything, but that had crossed the border from magic to plain crazy. She'd tell him another time. She always had another day. Not today.
Tonight the stars fill the sky
And each one shines upon me
Couldn't help but remind me of my dreams
So I sing myself a lullaby
Though I'm alone I don't cry
And I wonder why
When the rain comes down
And there's no one else around
When I'm feeling down I need you to
Catch me when I, catch me when I fall
Life without you ain't no fun at all
Believe me when I, hear me when I call
Nights without you
It ain't the same at all
Catch me when I'm wrong but I think I'm right
Catch me when I'm just looking for fight
And hear me out when you think my sanity's in doubt
Hear me when I need you and
I'll catch you when you, I'll catch you when you fall
Life without you ain't no fun at all
And believe me when I, I'll hear you when you call
Nights without you…
Catch me when I, catch me when I fall
Life without you ain't no fun at all
And believe me when I, I'll hear you when you call
Nights without you
It ain't the same at all
Daniel Cage- Catch me when I fall.