A/N: First off, WOW! Thank you for all the positive response to this story. I'm floored. Secondly, parts of this chapter may seem a little disjointed. It's supposed to be like that. I'll admit, parts of it were difficult for me to write. I toyed with several ideas, which is why it took me so long to write this part. I want to make the most of every word. I hope it'll make sense in the end, though!
DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor nor do I work in the healthcare field. I just read a lot of articles about the brain, so I apologize for any discrepancies or inaccuracies!
"Life will give us whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness." - Eckhart Toile, A New Earth
PART 2
Life is not linear. Many of us take life one day at a time, assuming that point A will get us to point B. We wish it were that easy, that if we conquer one obstacle, then we can move on with our lives. The problem being, life is not that simplistic. Life is filled with setbacks. We think we're right where we're supposed to be, that we're on the right path, and then a catastrophe happens and we're right back to square one. That's how an unlinear life works. We're in one place, and then another, and we don't know if we'll ever get back to where we were. As it turns out, we have not a clue of where we're supposed to be, after all.
The world around us has been shaped by our perceptions, by our personal experiences, which means that the worldview is different for each and every person who lives and breathes. These perceptions also change as we age and grow. A four-year-old sees the world differently than a forty-year-old. Our perceptions are constantly changing and evolving, and they will, for as long as we live.
When Meredith was a little girl, she wanted to fly like the birds that soared above in the sky. She remembers a time when she couldn't have been much older than four years old. Her father had just taken her training wheels off her bike. She was determined that she was going to show her mother when she came home that she was a big girl who didn't need training wheels anymore.
"Daddy," she said, "why can't you put wings on my bike? Then I can fly." Little Meredith giggled, watching as her daddy removed the last training wheel from her purple bike. Even back then, purple was her favorite color.
Her father looked up, still holding onto his tool, his blue eyes twinkling. "I can't put wings on your bike, darling, because how do you think I would feel if you fell? The higher you soar, the larger room you have to fall, and I might not be able to catch you. I think it's best you stay on the ground, Meredith."
Displeased with her father's response, Meredith stomped her foot. "But I want to fly!" She stuck her lip out as the last training wheel fell on the cement.
"Training wheels are off. Show me what you can do on the ground, then we'll talk about flying. You have to ride without training wheels before you can fly," her father insisted, standing the bike up, holding onto it with one hand and motioning with his other hand for her to take a seat.
"I don't wanna! I wanna fly," Meredith shouted, and she ran into the house with tears streaming down her cheeks
Dreams are surreal. They're idealistic and often enigmatic. Generally speaking, dreams only elapse for around fifteen minute increments during a person's REM cycle. There are four sleep stages. On a typical eight-hour sleep cycle, a person will enter the REM cycle four to six times. Most people only remember their last dream, though. Some don't remember their dreams at all. Studies indicate that introverts remember their dreams more than extroverts.
What makes dreams so fascinating? A fifteen-minute dream can elapse over days or weeks or years. Dreams can be so vivid and feel so real, that you might have a hard time convincing yourself that your dream was just a dream.
Dreams and memory go hand-in-hand. After all, it's your memory that recalls your dreams. Memory is not one hundred accurate. You remember the highlights of your day-to-day activities. We remember joy, we remember pain, we remember situations that evoked strong feelings and emotions.
The higher you fly, the greater distance you have to fall. It's a concept all doctors know too well. Meredith Grey looked into her mother's perilous, muddled eyes. While studying Ellis Grey, a woman who'd once been a brilliant surgeon even if a lousy mother, Meredith arrived at the conclusion that losing everything wasn't the worst that could happen. The worst, the absolute worst, outcome that could happen to a person was to lose everything he or she had and not know they'd lost it. On the outside, Ellis Grey was still strong, the strongest woman Meredith Grey knew. On the inside, she was gone.
Maybe it wasn't so bad not to know. To not remember. Maybe it was okay to live life in oblivion. Ignorance was bliss, right? It was just everyone else around who had to suffer. Everyone who knew the person whose memories were gone. They were the ones truly suffering in pain. Family and friends always got the short end of the stick. Because they could remember. Remembering can be more painful than not remembering at all.
"I start my internship tomorrow," she had said to her mother, meeting Ellis's dumbfounded eyes. She didn't know what to say to her mother now that she was in this condition. Well, she hadn't known what to say to her mother before, because generally, everything she said led to an argument. It was a catch-22, and she would never win. "I'm going to become a doctor."
"Do I know you?" her mother had asked, befuddled.
Meredith abruptly grabbed her purse, and she shook her head. "I have to go."
What if you could use the Photoshop blur tool to omit a very important person from your life? Suddenly, their relevance to the picture ceases to exist. They're no longer part of your life in the same way, if at all. What if you could forget about the impact they've had on you? How would your life be different now?
The bright sun slit through her closed eyelids, forcing them open. Her head was pounding. God. Why did her head hurt so bad? Apparently she'd had one too many shots of tequila at that bar last night. What was its name again? She couldn't remember. She didn't even remember how she'd managed to get home. She blinked several times, allowing the room to come into clear focus.
She turned her head, her memory slowly returning when she saw a man naked lying on the floor covered in one of her throw blankets. Damn, she thought, remembering what day it was. Today was the day. The first day of her internship. She was the idiot who'd gone out the night before her first forty-eight hour internship, and she'd gotten wasted and brought home a stranger. She was sure setting herself up for greatness.
It was going to be a long-ass forty-eight hours.
She wrapped her blue throw blanket around her naked body and stood up, tossing a pillow onto the man's bare butt. The man gasped, picking up her black panties. "This is, uh…"
"Humiliating on so many levels," Meredith mumbled, keeping her head down, too embarrassed to even look at the man. It wasn't her first one-night stand by any means, it wasn't even the first time she'd woken up on the couch with a naked man on her floor. That didn't many it any less humiliating, though. "You have to go."
"Why don't you just come back down here and we'll pick up where we left off?"
"No." Irritation and annoyance lingered in Meredith's veins. She just wanted this man out of her hair and house. Gone. Vanished. Never to be seen or heard from again. "You have to go. I'm late, which isn't what you want to be on your first day of work, so…"
The man stood up, his face an irrelevant blur to her impatient, exhausted eyes and non-relationship seeking mindset. One-night stands were perfect. They required nothing more than hot, dirty sex. Genital smashing without passion. No small talk necessary. No emotions. No hurt feelings. Just sex. Just the way she liked it.
Yet, here he was proceeding to try to make small talk, much to her displeasure. She just wanted him gone forever. That was the whole purpose of a one night stand, right?
The conversation was fuzzy. A total blur. It ended with him extending his hand and introducing himself. His name was Darrell. Or was it Jared? She didn't know or care to know. She told him that she was going to go upstairs and shower, and when she came back he wouldn't be there.
When she came back downstairs, as she had planned, he was gone.
Poof. Gone forever. Just like that. That was easy.
"Don't blink. Just like that you're six years old, and you take a nap and you wake up and you're twenty-five…"
When you're six years old, you're not acutely aware of your surroundings. One place can easily be mistaken for another. Not long before her sixth birthday, her mother had packed her up and moved her across the country, thousands of miles away from her father. Every night when she closed her eyes, she saw him, so it was like he wasn't really on the other side of the country.
Dreams are superficial, mystifying, and completely non-linear. They don't always have to make sense, either.
Have you ever had a dream that was so intense, that you woke up and believed it was real?
Have you ever had a dream that was so intense that you couldn't remember if it was really a dream, or if maybe, just maybe, it was an actual memory?
"Meredith," she hears a faint voice speaking her name. The voice is soft, soothing almost, and familiar in an unsure way. "Meredith, are you in pain?"
She flickers her eyelashes, trying to blink away the heavy, crusty matter from her eyes. Then she tries to breathe, but the air gets caught in her throat, her lungs fail to inhale, and she starts to choke, now desperately gasping for air. Her head rings, it's spinning, and her temples throb vigorously. She feels like someone hit her in the head with a bowling ball.
The room's brightness makes her eyes burn. She feels like she's falling and never going to stop. Then everything stops.
She can breathe again. Meredith takes in a deep breath of air. The air tastes clean. Hospital-clean.
It takes a moment for Meredith's brain to register that she is, indeed, in the hospital. She's lying in a hospital bed.
But why? Her thoughts fill with confusion and questions as she considers the possibilities. Had she gotten in an accident on the way to her first day of residency?
God, her head hurts excruciatingly with so much pain. Why can't she remember what happened?
"Meredith," the man says again, his voice tender, and her heart races in terror as she looks into his unfamiliar, yet familiar, eyes. "Say something."
She sees evidence of concern present in his eyes. Is he a doctor? He looks like he could be a doctor. No, he's too handsome to be a doctor, and he's not dressed in doctor clothes. He's wearing a suit and a blue tie, which illuminates the blue in his eyes. He has nice. And hair. He has gorgeous dark brown waves of hair. But who is he? And how does know her? And what is he doing here?
When she opens her mouth to speak, nothing comes out. She inhales deeply, feeling absolutely horrified. "Who the hell are you?" the words escape her mouth just like that.
The man frowns, his eyes darkening. "Meredith, it's me. Derek," he croaks as he reaches for her hand.
Her knee-jerk reaction is to pull her hand away, but she has wires running through her veins which make it difficult for her to move freely. She has no choice but to let him grab ahold of it.
He has warm hands, or maybe hers are just cold. The man - Derek - squeezes her hand gently, massaging his thumb into her palm, the kind of hand massage you would only give someone you care deeply for. She likes his hand around hers, and it seems to fit. But her thoughts are still distorted with confusion. Who is this man, and why doesn't she remember him?
"I-I don't know you," she stammers. It's not every day a very handsome man arrives at your bedside. Those kinds of events only happen in fairy tales, and her life is far from a fairy tale. She adds, for the sake of being polite, "Derek, it's a nice name, though."
Derek lets go of her hand. He stands over her bed, his facial expression mirroring that of a boy's whose puppy has just been killed.
God, why does her head feel like it's about to implode?
Derek is at a loss for words. His breathing becomes irregular as he inhales shakily, and he tries to digest what is happening here in this moment with Meredith. He scrutinizes her, inspecting every little detail of her condition. He's a world renowned neurosurgeon, and Meredith is not his patient, but he can't separate his knowledge from the situation.
If he were any other husband in any other situation, he would likely break down. Okay, his insides are crumbling. He feels like he's been stabbed in the heart with the sharpest kitchen knife that exists. Like someone is tugging at his heartstrings while he bleeds out helplessly. Dying. Dying. He's hit with a wave of flashbacks. He's lying on the cold catwalk. There's a bullet in his chest, and he's bleeding profusely. All he can see is Meredith standing over him.
Meredith does not remember him. He doesn't know what to say or do. How is he supposed to react? His wife does not remember him.
He needs to see her chart. Surely there's a fixable explanation for why his wife would be experiencing amnesia. Fortunately for her, her husband is a world-renowned neurosurgeon. He can help her.
First, he needs to evaluate her condition to determine the extensiveness of her memory loss. "Meredith," he says slowly, channeling all attempts to remain calm and collected. "What's the last thing you remember?"
"I, uh, was on my way to work, and I guess I must have been in an accident," she replies matter-of-factly.
"So you remember the accident?" She remembers getting in an accident, but she doesn't remember him? Derek's lips press together, his head spinning in circles and wondering what this could possibly mean. He can't deny that he's heartbroken, that he's dying inside, that he feels like all of his internal organs are being crushed with each breath he takes.
"Well, no, not exactly. But my head hurts, I'm connected to an IV, and I'm in a hospital bed, so I must have been in an accident. Are you my doctor? Why aren't you wearing a white coat?"
"I am a doctor," Derek smiles. "I'm a neurosurgeon."
Her eyes widen. "You must be here about my headache, then. Still doesn't explain why you're not wearing a white coat, or do doctors not wear those anymore?"
Her remark brings a smile to his face as he sits back down in the chair beside her bed, and he can't help himself from leaning over her bed to stroke her cheek. He desperately wants to kiss her, but he's afraid she'll freak out, considering he's already noticing the fear present in her eyes as he touches her cheek with the center of his thumb.
Then it hits him. Does she remember that she's a doctor? Would would she ask if doctors still wore white coats?
"Meredith, what is your profession?" he asks, moving his hands away from her, resisting the urge to touch her more. She's his wife, he shouldn't have to resist touching her, but in this moment, she doesn't know he's her husband, and he can tell she's not ready for that bombshell. He'll tell her when he knows she is ready. Too much information at once could send her brain into overload and would cause more harm than good. He knows that from experience.
She sighs. "I'm a doctor...well, kind of."
"Kind of?"
"I'm a surgical intern," she says. "Well, today was supposed to be my first day. At least I think today was. How many days have I been out? I'm probably going to be dropped from the program now since I missed my first shift."
His eyes widen, his heart picks up its pace, and memories come flooding back to him. He inhales a deep breath of air, a tingle of hope rejuvenates within his body as he looks to his left, where he sees his sister standing on the other side of the window outside of Meredith's room. Her arms crossed together, and she's giving him a look that could kill. Before she can come in, he leaves his wife's bedside and storms out of the room.
"Meredith's awake?" Amelia's murderous eyes glare at him as he exits the room. "And you didn't page anyone? Look, I know she's your wife, but she's not your patient and -"
"She's not yours, either," Derek buts in.
Amelia sees the pain and distress in her brother's eyes. He's hurt and scared, and she doesn't blame him one bit.
"I'm the one who operated on her," she interjects quickly, which she knows isn't any consolation for Derek, especially since, technically, she shouldn't have operated on Meredith. She didn't have a choice. At this point, though, she doesn't know if he's upset because she crossed a line, broke a rule, or if he's upset because she's simply not a good enough surgeon to touch his wife.
"You're not going near her again," Derek snarls.
"Seriously, Derek? What is it? I'm not good enough?"
"You know very well that's not the case. I need to see her chart. Now," Derek demands, giving her a furious look.
Amelia snickers. He has to be kidding her. "If I'm not going allowed to touch her again, you're surely not seeing her chart. I might be her sister-in-law, but you're her husband, Derek. You're closer than I am, so no, I can't give you her chart, Derek."
She frowns, knowing she needs to explain to Derek the details of Meredith's condition, that there's more than he knows. Meredith is awake. Derek should be celebrating that, and someone needs to run a neuro exam.
His eyes are watery, like he's about to burst into tears. She can't remember the last time she saw her brother look this hurt, this scared.
"Derek, is she okay? You were in there with her," she says lowly, sensing Derek has already noticed something.
"She doesn't remember me, Amelia," he says hoarsely. "She thinks it's the first day of her intern year, which...doesn't make sense."
"What do you mean?" Amelia asks blankly.
"It...it doesn't make sense because," Derek swallows thickly, "because we first slept together the night before her first day as an intern."
The hippocampus is where a person's memories are saved. It functions like an address book when you're trying to recall a person's name. Your brain searches your hippocampus to find the names of people you know, then locates the names you're looking for. The hippocampus is located in the medial temporal lobe.
Hippocampal damage can result in anterograde amnesia, or selective memory loss. Severe anterograde amnesia can prevent a person from learning new information. Each case is unique. Some individuals may remember little or nothing from recent years, but may be able to recall stuff from a distant past, similar to patients with Alzheimer's. Others may remember everything from the past, but not be able to remember anything from that occurs afters after the injury.
To determine if Meredith is indeed suffering from anterograde amnesia, though, Derek needs to see her chart. Amelia has to give it to him, STAT.
"Derek, there's something you need to know," Amelia says slowly, and it's coming. He knows it's coming. He can feel it in his bones.
"So, tell me," he says, his frustration growing. "Tell me." He locks eyes with his sister, his heart pounding. He sees misty tears inside his sister's eyes.
"I wasn't going to show you just, but follow me," she frowns, motioning for him to follow her, and he does. He follow her into a viewing room. She pulls up the scans. It doesn't take long for him to see it.
A temporal lobe tumor near the edge of the hippocampus.
"M-Meredith's scan?" he whispers. Amelia nods.
"My guess is she's had it for a while, and it's just started to grow," Amelia says with certainty. "Derek, you should know, I've already left a message for Ginsberg."
"The woman who fired you from your fellowship?" Derek clarifies.
Amelia nods. "Unless you have someone better in mind. It's not an impossible tumor, Derek, but I know she's your wife and neither of us should operate on her, and you surely don't want just anyone operating on her, so I called Ginsberg because she's one of the best. Unless you have someone else in mind?"
He doesn't. His mentor passed away a few years after Derek started his practice. It was sudden, and sad. He's read Ginsberg's studies, and Amelia's right. She's brilliant. One of the best. He can't think of anyone else he would want operating on his wife.
"Okay, let's bring in Ginsberg," he says, his body shaking. He feels numb.
"Yeah, well, I had to leave a message with one of her fellows. She's not exactly easy to get in contact with, and I'm not exactly her star pupil. So you might want to give her a call yourself. I'm sure she'll be glad to answer a call from the Almighty Dr. Shepherd," Amelia rolls her eyes. He doesn't like her tone, but he doesn't have time to argue with her. He needs to save his wife.
He pulls out his cell phone to phone Dr. Geraldine Ginsberg with the number Amelia gives him. As Amelia predicted, she is, indeed, available to speak to him. He explains his situation, and she tells him that she'll be on the next flight out. She's at Johns Hopkins, so she can be in Seattle in seven or eight hours. It will be early morning in Seattle by then.
Derek breathes shakily as he leaves Amelia in the viewing room. He walks back to Meredith's room in the SICU, marveling through the glass window at his bed-bound wife. He's petrified.
For once in his life, he wishes he wasn't a neurosurgeon. Never in a million years did he anticipate his wife would need his expertise and he wouldn't be allowed to operate on her. This isn't the kind of thing he'd ever once dreamt of happening. Surely, it's something she'd joked about in passing. She tends to joke about dark and twisty stuff like this. He's never found it particularly amusing.
He knows that the surgery isn't guaranteed to fix her memory loss. It's certainly a possibility that her memory is permanently impaired, and she may never get it back.
Derek swallows thickly, floored by strangeness of the situation. A couple years ago, Meredith learned that she had the Alzheimer's gene. Before that, he'd listened to her talk endlessly about what he should do if she got Alzheimer's. It'd always terrified him when she talked about it, but that didn't stop her.
When she was pregnant with their son, she'd asked him to shoot her the minute she started to forget. He'd told her he could never do that. He couldn't.
He would do anything for Meredith, but he could never take her life away from her. He'll do anything to save her. It's part of the reason he became interested in the BRAIN Initiative. The initiative's focus area is on numerous brain diseases and defects, Alzheimer's being just one of many of those focus areas. In the back of his mind, he's been hoping that his research with the NIH will lead him to a cure for Alzheimer's.
Meredith doesn't have Alzheimer's, though. She has a damn brain tumor. Talk about irony at its worst.
He wonders if Meredith caused the accident. Tumors like hers can cause loss of motor skills, change in perceptions, and mood swings. Is this why she's been so difficult as of late?
He doesn't know what to think anymore. Everything between them changed when he was offered an unrefusable offer from the President of the United States. He couldn't say no to the opportunity. Who in their right might says no? He understands why Meredith was upset, because he promised her he'd step back. What he doesn't understand, though, was why she seemed fine with moving to DC, then all of a sudden, she changed her mind.
They could be together, as a family, in DC. He wanted her there. He misses her and the kids every day that he's away from them.
She told him that she didn't want to be her father, that she didn't want to be a trailing spouse. It all came on so sudden. One minute they were fine, and then she was yelling at him.
Tumors like these can also cause sudden mood changes.
Of course he'll never know for sure if it was the tumor speaking. Meredith is complicated, tumor or tumor-less, anyway.
Still, knowing there's a tumor, in a weird way, gives him a sense of relief. A relief knowing there might be an explanation for these confusing past months where he felt Meredith could be falling out of love with him.
His heart weighs heavily in his chest as he looks at Meredith, longing to touch her. He still has a strong urge to be close to her, to tell her who he is, even if she doesn't remember him.
He's scared that she'll freak out, though. Surely he can't just go in and tell her he's her husband, right?
He thinks of their blue post-it note hanging on the wall in their bedroom back at home. He vividly remembers writing those vows with Meredith almost five years ago.
"And if I get Alzheimer's," she started.
He felt a daunting pang in his chest as he finished her sentence, "I will remind you who I am every day."
She doesn't have Alzheimer's,though. Not yet. Neither of them could have possibly foreseen this moment when as they were writing their post-it vows on that fateful day. He swallows thickly, knowing he needs to see her. Maggie is with the kids. It's good that they don't see her like this.
He can't imagine bringing Zola and Bailey to see Meredith like this, with her not remembering them. It's an unimaginable thought that he can't bear to process.
Derek re-enters the room, to find Meredith dozing off. She looks ethereal. But as soon as he sits down next to her bedside, she jerks awake.
"It's you again," she says, a dreamy smirk on her face that reminds him of the time she'd had her appendix out.
"It is," he smiles. "Do you know who I am?"
"The neurosurgeon who's here to poke into my brain," she replies, smiling deliriously. He smiles brightly, knowing that's a good sign. She's able to retain new information. She crinkles her forehead. "When is my headache going away?"
He frowns at that. "Meredith, there's something I need to tell you." She stares intently at him. "I'm not just a neurosurgeon."
"Then who are you?" she asks, and yawns.
"I'm...I'm your husband," he says, a small smile breaking through his lips. Please don't freak out, he thinks.
She stares at him, point blank, then starts to laugh. "Okay...where are my kids?"