Disclaimer: Nothing recognizable is mine. No copyright infringement intended.
A/N: Finals are kicking my ass but I've been relaxing through fanfic so that's score one for you guys. Earlier, while taking a break from an essay I actually finished writing the season one finale! With that in mind, I'm not sure whether I want to continue Into the Fire with season two or have a different fic. Any ideas from y'all? I think I'm leaning to continuing in this fic. Also, thank you so much for all the great reviews, they always brighten my day.
one week later
Derek walks into our bedroom, still dripping wet from his shower. His towel is draped low across his hips, his dark curls plastered to his forehead, and if we had just an extra fifteen minutes I would be ripping off his towel. However, we're already both running late. Finishing to button my shirt, I ask him if the bathroom is free.
"We need to talk to our roommates about boundaries," He replies.
I move across the room to sit our bed. Pushing my bangs out of my face, I glance up at Derek as I pull on my boots and ask, "What do you mean?"
He pulls on his boxers before moving his towel to his hair and rubbing it down, "Well for starters," He answers, "I really don't need Izzie walking into the bathroom while I'm showering."
"She did not," I half laugh, half gasp.
"Oh, she definitely did."
Standing up, I make my way across the room so I can go downstairs and have breakfast. I smirk at Derek as I leave the room, "You're the one who wanted roommates, dear. You're problem, there." Because it's only four in the morning, after his shower, Derek climbs back into bed. Today he needs to be in the hospital early, but after his shower he's still trying to squeeze in an extra fifteen minutes of sleep. He likes to be awake, at least for a little while, in the morning with me before I head into work. I think it's charming, the fact that he's willing to lose half an hour of sleep just to say good morning. Albeit, it is cheesy. But Derek has always been cheesy. I would never tell him, but I love the cheese and romance. He makes me feel special, something I had never felt before meeting him.
It's become routine that George, Izzie, and I, drive to the hospital together. The three of us being interns with the same resident means, for the most part, our schedules match. Derek drives himself not only because of his day usually starts later than ours but because while my friends know about our marriage, nobody else in the hospital does. During the drive in, I learn that Izzie walking in on people in the shower is an epidemic. George won't stop complaining on how she had walked in, wearing just her underwear, to brush her teeth that morning. Turning up the volume on the radio, I tune them out. They're like bickering children and I'm not in the mood to listen to them feud. By the time I pull the car into the hospital parking lot, George is just short of full blown screaming.
"You don't understand. Me gonads, you ovaries," George snaps.
Her words dripping with bemusement, Izzie replies, "Oh, that reminds me. We are out of tampons." She closes the door behind her and starts walking into the hospital, casually sipping on her morning coffee.
"You're parading through the bathroom in your underwear when I'm naked in the shower," still complaining, George follows her.
Climbing out of the car, I mention to Izzie, "I have no problem with you walking in on George, but try to keep the walking in on my husband to a minimum."
"No problem," Izzie shrugs, she then continues to George, "Can you add it to your list, please?"
"What?" He asks.
"Tampons," Izzie repeats. George stops in his tracks, as if Izzie's request was as ludicrous as her asking him to kill a man.
Passing him, I explain, "To the list, it's your turn."
Asking him to buy tampons appears to be the straw that broke the camel's back, so to say. Finally caving into his anger, George yells. "I am a man! I don't buy girl products! I don't want you walking in while I'm in the shower, and I don't want to see you in your underwear."
Under my breath I say to Izzie, "Derek's a man and he buys tampons."
"Mmhm," hums in reply to me. She then turns to George and says, "It doesn't bother me, ok? Look at me in my underwear, George. Take your time. It's no big deal."
Again, George stops in his tracks. I turn and pat him lightly on the arm saying, "My husband's a man and he's fine with all of that," Before taking a few quick steps to catch up to Izzie.
Most mornings, Bailey likes to do a quick lesson on something. She paces the locker room and lectures every intern, not just her own, about some topic or another. The tone she uses is intimidating and it's a pretty good teaching tactic. We then spend the rest of the day thinking about whatever she spoke about, being more aware and honing our skills in that specific subject. Today as she walks through the locker room, Bailey is talking about bedside manner. Given the fact that pre-rounds are early today, Bailey's mini lesson perfectly to task. As we all scatter to finish checking all our patients before 5:30, we're leaving with bedside manner at the forefront of our minds.
Cristina is leaning against her locker, bragging about a surgery she's convinced she's going to get on. I'm a little peeved, my patients yesterday were not only boring but also high maintenance. I had to do dressing changes for two colostomy patients every fifteen minutes. It had been exhausting. Following Cristina out of the locker room, I beg her to tell me what she knows.
"No," Cristina replies, "I'm not the intern who's screwing an attending."
I start to argue that I'm not screwing Derek. Well I am screwing Derek. But we're married so the screwing is allowed, there is nothing immoral about me screwing Derek, even though he is an attending, because we've been screwing for eight years. I'm halfway out of the door when I nearly crash into Derek. He's holding two cups of coffee and thrusts one of them forward, handing it to me. After a quick glance around to see nobody would notice, I accept the coffee from Derek and start walking with him.
"You're here early," I point out.
"I have a chordotomy at 5:00,' He reminds me, "I'll be out at 6:00. I thought I might buy your breakfast before your rounds."
Shrugging, I tell him, "I've already eaten."
"What'd you have?" He asks, as he turns around. As we talk I continue walking down the hallway. Derek walks backwards so he can look at me when he speaks and despite my best efforts, I can't wipe the small smile I get from his antics off of my face.
"None of you business."
He rolls his eyes, "That means you ate the leftover pizza. You are the leftover pizza, right?" He laughs a little, "That was supposed to be dinner tonight, if you ate the pizza that means you need to make dinner which mean we're going to need a new house because I know for a fact you cannot cook."
"Fine," I confess what I ate to get him to stop, "leftover grilled cheese. Curiosity satisfied?"
Derek spins on his heels so he's no longer walking backwards but now at my side, "That's sad, Mer. That's from like last week. It's pathetic. A good day starts with a good breakfast."
"Derek, you need to stop," I half beg, half demand, "Look, I'm not being seen with you in this hospital. Learn it, live it. It's unprofessional."
Still pushing for us to be open about our marriage in the hospital, Derek suggests, "Think of it as an attending getting to know one of his interns."
"He's married to the intern," I reply.
"Barely knew her," Derek deadpans.
Rolling my eyes, I say, "And it should stay that way in the hospital." One day, we will be open about our marriage in the hospital. And I understand why Derek wants to be open about it now, but the thing is I'm not ready. I'm not established yet. People still think I'm only in the program because of my mother. I can't have them thinking I'm here because of my husband, too. Part of me knows most of Derek's pushing is a joke, but it still rubs me the wrong way. His pushing could blow our secret wide open and I'm not ready for people to know.
Just feet away from one of the nurses' stations, Derek stops our walking. "You want me to be professional? I'll be professional," Derek decides.
"That's what I want," I nod.
"Then that's what you'll get," He says, his tone his grave but there's still a happy sparkle in his eye.
"You're going to be late for your chordotomy," I point out.
Glancing at his watch, Derek realizes that I'm right. Lifting his head up and trying to hide his smile under a faux-serious expression, Derek says loudly and in a terrible British accent, "Nice talking to you, Dr. Grey." Watching him retreat, I chuckle a little and shake my head. He drives me insane, he's pushy, he's stubborn, but I really do love him.
I'm already exhausted and the day has only just begun. George, desperate to get me to agree with him and say that Izzie is being inappropriate, follows me complaining through all of pre-rounds. He thinks that there should be rules, which I find hilarious. There aren't going to be rules. He's clearly never lived with roommates if he thinks any established rules would be followed. My only qualm with Izzie being so exposed is her doing so around Derek. Not that I worry that either of them are interested in each other, I just have a jealous streak and a half dressed former model walking in while my husband is in the shower triggers said streak.
Through our conversation, I managed to push enough of George's buttons to get him to stammer. When he says that Izzie isn't the one he's interested in, I know the one he is thinking about is me. Poor kid, really. He doesn't have any semblance of a chance. George wouldn't have a chance with me even if I wasn't married to Derek. He knows that there's no chance of ever being with me, which I think is one of the reasons why he's so flustered when I mentioned having a crush. I'm mid laugh when Bailey tells us to grab Karev and go to the pit for a trauma with Derek.
"Shepherd's in surgery," I tell Bailey, knowing full well that he had a chordotomy scheduled to start fifteen minutes ago.
Bailey shakes her head, "He got pulled before he could start."
Luckily, George and I find Alex easily. He had been by the vending machine, flirting some red haired and giggly nurse up. We enter the trauma room together and I'm so mesmerized by the patient's injuries that I don't even greet Derek. Knowing I might be stating the obvious I say, "Those look like…" I trail my sentence off, knowing everybody sees the same thing that I am seeing.
Glancing up from the patient's skull, Derek confirms my suspicions, "Nails. Yes."
Laying on the table in the trauma room is a man with seven nails embedded through his skull and into his brain. I spare a glance at the x-ray of his injuries and I'm intrigued. I've never seen anything like this, even through all of the surgeries I've heard of from Derek and my mother, before him. Staring at the patient, I'm shocked to see he's even still breathing with multiple nails full penetrating his head. Around the patient, nurses move around tending to him. Derek sits by his head, cleaning the wounds and assessing the injuries. Throwing me off guard, the patient lifts his hands to his face and moans that he can't see them.
George gasps, "Oh my God! He's conscious."
"But blind," Derek adds.
Alex makes a mocking comment to George, but I'm still too fascinated by the injuries to spare a thought to them. Derek orders four mgs of morphine as well as titrate. Everyone moves around the patient as if it a choreographed dance except, because of Derek's orders for the patient not to move, the lead is not participating in the performance. The patient seems to be becoming more anxious as he panics over his loss of sight.
I lean over the patient and assure him, "It's ok. We need you to be very still, Mr," I don't finish my sentence as, during the time spent in the trauma room, I have yet to learn the patient's name. One of the ER attendings tells me his name, Jorge Cruz, and that the poor man received his injuries by falling down the stairs while holding a nail gun. Derek goes about checking Mr. Cruz for responsiveness. Aside from the optic injury, there's also numbness on his right side and he doesn't react to Derek's touches. As he works, Derek asks questions. He's always in control, managing to teach and heal at the same time. CT is down and so we have to resort to other measures to get scans. While George and Alex are sent to research similar cases, I stay with the patient.
"Stay with him," Derek instructs, "You're good at keeping confused patients calm," I haven't had to deal with any patient in a state like this as an intern and part of me wonders if Derek is thinking about how I kept him calm after his accident, "And I need you to do just that. Look for changes, page me if you see anything. I remind the patient that his wife is on the way but he's still repeating the terrifying fact that he can't see. Without thinking, I take his hand. The simple contact calms him down and I tell him again that his wife will be here soon.