Emily awoke with a start and was briefly disoriented, before realizing she was being shaken.

"It's okay, Emily, it's just me," Desiree said softly, hand still on her shoulder.

"Desi?" she said muzzily, rubbing her eyes and stretching out the kinks in her neck from the awkward sleeping position she'd been in, stretched out across several chairs in the waiting room. "What-what are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you," she said urgently.

"If this is about me being here, I'm not about to..."

"No, no," Desi interrupted. "I think my mother is wrong. About you. About what Derek would want."

Emily sat up straighter and combed the hair out of her face with one hand. "Really?"

"If there's one thing I know, it's that my brother loved you so much. He would want you in there. I want you in there."

"But your mother made it very clear that..."

"I'm going to help you," she promised. "I'm going to help Derek."

"Well," she said slowly, digesting that information. "Can-can I see him?"

For several moments upon entering the room and taking a tentative seat on the edge of his bed, Emily just stared at Derek's unconscious form, at a loss for words. "Oh, Derek..." she whispered at length, wrapping a hand around his. "Why did this happen?"

Derek slowly sank down onto the bed beside her. He reached out a hand to brush her hair behind her ear the way he used to do before remembering that he couldn't touch her. "Em..." he said.

"I know I should say something right now – something about how I'm feeling, how much I want you to wake up...but I just don't have the words. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel right now. I don't know what to say to make this better." She gave a small humourless laugh. "I don't suppose there is a 'better' in this situation," she said softly. "There hasn't been one in a really long time. Not for us." A tear spilled over to trail down her cheek.

"There is a better, Em, I promise you there is," Derek said, wishing more than anything he could dry her tears.

"Don't get me wrong – of course, I want you to wake up. I'd give anything... But what happens when you do? Things between us have been so..." She shook her head, not having the words to describe it. "Since...what happened. I guess I haven't done the greatest job of dealing with it..."

Ian stood in the corner, observing with a critical eye. His brow rose sharply, interest piqued, but Derek was doing his best to ignore him. He had no interest in dissecting his relationship with Emily to satisfy his curiosity.

For a moment, she looked anywhere but at him. "If you wake up, I promise, I'll do better."

"I don't care about that," Derek swore, "Emily, listen to me: this is not your fault. You didn't cause this by not loving me enough, by not being good enough...you've always been enough."

She attempted to climb into bed beside him so that she could rest her head on his chest, but the moment she heard the beating of his heart beside her ear, she jumped up as if she'd been burned. She shook her head, blinking too often in a weak attempt to hold back the tears.

She couldn't do this.

She wasn't strong enough.

Emily fled the room, vision obscured by tears, running straight into Reid, knocking the wind out of both of them. Reid stumbled back several steps, arms windmilling, before regaining his balance.

"Emily!" he said, surprised, reaching out a hand to steady her. "I didn't know you were in town." He looked down at the floor awkwardly. "I'm sorry for not calling to tell you that he'd been in an accident..." he apologized, cheeks flushing red in shame, "I wanted to, but Mrs. Morgan asked us not to..."

"Oh...don't worry about it. I understand," she replied in a tone making it clear she absolutely did not understand. "She put you in an awkward position, that's not your fault."

"Yeah, well, I feel bad about it anyway," he insisted. "If there's something I can do to make it up to you..."

Emily pursed her lips in thought. "Actually, there is. I need to know how to wake him up."

He stared at her silently, mouth gaping open, for a few moments. "But...he's in a coma," he pointed out as if she'd somehow missed that.

"I know that! But his doctors aren't doing anything! There has to be something we can do to, I don't know, stimulate his brain or something..."

"I'm not that kind of doctor," he said apologetically. "I want to help you – help him – but I just don't know that there's anything..."

"No, Reid!" she interrupted, eyes blazing like he'd never seen. "I don't accept that. You're the smartest person I know, if you just try, I'm sure you can find something. I don't care how small a chance, how untested the method, how unscientific the principle, if it has even the slightest chance of working, I need to know. Please...can you do that?"

He looked into her eyes, brimming with tears she was struggling to hold back. He knew that desperation in her eyes all too well – he'd seen it in his own reflection for seven months, wishing there were anything at all he could've done to save her life. He nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said quietly, "Yeah, okay. I'll see what I can find."

She wrapped her arms around him and he felt her breath shuddering as she choked down the tears.

"I'm not promising anything..." he added quietly, hating to burst her bubble, but needing to ground her in reality.

She pulled back, shaking her head. "I just need someone to try..."

He nodded slowly. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask – like why her eyes were bloodshot like she hadn't slept in a week, why her hands shook frantically, why she looked like her heart was breaking...he didn't ask any of them, though.

He just held her.