Hey! Glad y'all are liking this series so far.
Heads up, there are discussions of previous suicidal thoughts SH in this chapter. Skip Derek and Mark's scene if you need to. :)
"Meredith? Meredith, I baked you uh- three batches of cookies, a dozen cupcakes and a lemon drizzle cake. But I brought you a slice of it, a cupcake and two different cookies because I did two designs. I'm assuming you don't want all of them but I didn't know which one was your favourite so- Meredith, can I come in?"
She didn't reply, so Izzy exchanged a quick look with George before taking the lack of response as a yes. If Izzy herself was in a mood, she'd reply to say if she was doing something like getting changed, but that was it, so she applied that to Meredith too. She wasn't bothered about breaking her boundaries, but wouldn't want to embarrass her. She opened the door, and found a lump under the covers of the bed.
"Meredith?" George called they both walked into the room. "Are you okay?"
"Go away." She sighed, burying herself a little further into her blanket.
"Would you like a cookie?" Izzy asked.
"No." She huffed.
George sat down on the bottom of her bed. "Can you tell us what's wrong?"
"Stupid boys. Stupid me. Stupid...stupid, stupid." She sighed.
"What happened?" Izzie asked, concerned.
"I met a guy, and we were great friends but I messed it all up with my stupid, stupid stupidness."
"You still have us- and Alex and Cristina. We aren't going anywhere." She reassured Meredith with an optimistic smile.
"But you guys aren't- you're great but he..." She sighed and scrubbed her face with her hand. "He's just-"
"Oh my god." Izzie breathed, shocked. "This guy- you're falling for him?"
"Am not." She replied. That wasn't a lie, because she wasn't falling for him, she already had.
"You so are."
She sighed, and buried her head back into her pillow again.
"Dr Grey, present."
Meredith didn't even hear the woman's instruction. It wasn't that she was too busy staring at him; she was actually using all of her strength not to look at him. Clearly, she had done enough looking for a lifetime, even if he did have a shirt this time.
"Dr Grey. Present the patient." Bailey repeated, this time with more force in her voice.
She heard that. Or, she at least heard something, but not the content of the instruction. "What?"
Cristina sighed. "Jamie Hayes, two, recovering in the neuro ICU after Dr Shepherd performed a hemispherectomy due to complications from Rasmussen's encephalitis. She has been progressing well and has been stable throughout her recovery. She'll be heading home in a few days."
"Thank you, Yang." Bailey said, shooting a look at Meredith. "You should learn from her, Grey."
She swallowed as her eyes stole a quick look at Derek before moving to her resident. "Sorry, Dr Bailey."
"I'd love to stay, but I'm afraid I have a surgery starting soon."
"That's okay, Dr Shepherd." Mrs Hayes said with a broad smile. "Thank you again."
He smiled briefly before leaving the room, avoiding any eye contact with Meredith on his way out. She'd do anything for any kind of smile to be directed at him.
"Now, Grey, maybe you can get out a word with our next patient." She suggested as she walked out the room, and her interns trailed her. "Who is?"
"Edward Eden." George answered.
"Can I be dismissed?" Meredith requested, glancing backward down the corridor to see Derek as he pushed open a door before moving through it. He just needed to not go too far, so she could find him and spill her heart out.
"Dismissed?" Bailey asked, spinning around on her heels. "You want to be...dismissed?"
Meredith swallowed. She was hoping for a simple yes. Maybe she should have just asked to go to the toilet. "Just- five minutes. Tell me what I'll be doing and I'll be straight there afterwards- pit, scut, whatever. I just- I need five minutes."
"No."
"No?" Meredith repeated.
"You have a job, Grey. You can't just disappear when there are lives that need to be saved. So, just incase you need me to clarify it, the answer is no with a capital n. Now...you're going to present next, are you going to freeze up this time?"
She swallowed. "No, Dr Bailey."
"Good. So, let's go, and then maybe you can get to your precious five-minute dismissal!"
"Are you okay?" Mark couldn't help but ask as he sat on his best friend's table. Derek was working on a colleague's project for the day as a favour, so Mark knew to find him in the lab. "You were very quiet yesterday, and you are today as well."
"Fine." He muttered.
He sighed. 'Fine' and 'Okay' were banned words. He was either good, or bad, or incredible, or horrendous. He wasn't allowed neutrals because that's all he ever used to say. "You can talk to me, you know."
"I could. But I don't need to, because I'm fine."
Both were silent for a second before Mark asked, "Why are you wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt under your scrubs?"
"Because it's cold, and I'm doing lab stuff all day." He replied. Doctors couldn't wear long-sleeve t-shirts in the OR (or at least without rolling the sleeves all the way up, which hurt after a few minutes, nevermind hours) because of sanitisation rules, but that didn't apply to him today.
"Derek." He called in his softest, most forgiving voice. He couldn't let a hint of fear or anger or worry into his voice, he had to stay calm, cool and collected. Derek had never done committed the act he was assuming he had before, but Mark knew that wearing long-sleeve t-shirts was a clear sign of the behaviour, especially considering the fact that he wasn't a fan of them normally. "Did you cut yourself?"
His head shot up at that accusation. "What?"
"It's okay if you did. I'm not going to be angry or shout or anything. It's okay. Well just get you some help and you'll be fine." He reassured him. It wouldn't be okay, really, but he knew that if he didn't say that, he'd feel guilty that he did that to himself, and that would make him feel worse. Shaming was never, ever, ever the way to go with self-harm. "I'll call your therapist and-"
"Mark, no." He interrupted.
"Derek, you need to talk to som-"
"I'm not doing...that." He promised. "I just wanted to wear a long sleeve t-shirt today. That's literally it."
"Show me."
He sighed. Really? "Mark-"
"Show. Me." He instructed in a firmer voice that told him that even if he fled, Mark would run after him and physically force him to present his arms.
"You know, as a surgeon, I'd be pretty dumb to do it to my arms, right?" He asked rhetorically as he pushed down each sleeve to about half way down his forearm.
"Further." He instructed. Internally, however, he breathed a sigh of relief at them.
He swallowed, and forced his sleeves past his elbows. "Satisfied yet?" He asked in a bored, unimpressed kind of voice as he examined his arms. Clean.
"Derek, if you're feeling down again, if you're feeling like you were in rehab, I-"
"I was relearning almost every single basic human function again in rehab. I wanted to die. I couldn't even talk to a therapist, because I couldn't freaking speak. Don't compare how I feel now- don't even put it in the same sentence to what it was like in rehab, Mark." He snapped as he pushed his sleeves back down to his wrists. He didn't look Mark in the eye for any of it.
He swallowed. He always did so well at staying positive, but the transition from hospital to rehab was a difficult one for him to handle for some reason (he still wasn't quite sure why). Mark knew it was bad because he was there basically every day, but his tongue had slipped, and Derek had taken it in a way that he most definitely didn't mean. Nothing would ever, ever compare to what Derek was like in rehab.
"Isla told me you cried in speech therapy today, and Emily told me you were sad in physio too." He sat down next to his bed. Derek was curled up in the covers, lying on his side, which was the standard he position he got into when he was feeling sad. "What's going on?"
"No."
"Are you in pain?" He pressed, seeing as he was being stubborn.
"No."
Mark took that as a yes, because he was always in pain, but that it wasn't particularly bad, or at least not enough to make him cry. "Do you feel sad?"
"D- don't-"
He bit his lip when Derek didn't continue, not knowing whether to push him or not. Sometimes, he got more frustrated when he was prompted again, and he wanted to avoid that. He still struggled so much with communicating. There was nothing wrong with his comprehension or understanding, he just spoke in disjointed words rather than sentences because it was easier for him. "Don't what?"
"Want."
He waited about five seconds before pushing him again. "What don't you want, Derek?"
Tears slipped. "Life."
Mark physically felt his heart drop out of his chest, and hit the hard, cold floor.
"Please." He begged.
His bottom lip didn't even tremble, it was like an earthquake had started, and the movement had obliterated the dams holding his tears in. He wasn't a crier, ever, but he'd cry at this.
For once, it was a clear cut, unmistakable word. Normally, there was a slight slur or mispronunciation, but there wasn't this time. It was said with certainly and confidence. Derek was certain and confident that he didn't want to be alive, that he wanted to die.
"I'm sorry." He apologize genuinely.
"I'm not going to slit my wrists because I'm having a bad week. If I didn't do it then, I'm never going to, am I?" He inquired rhetorically.
He didn't speak for a second, surprised at how freely he was talking about the topic before inquiring, "Why are you having a bad week? Can I help?"
"It's stupid." He sighed.
"Why is it stupid?"
"Because it's about that woman. And that makes it stupid."
"Love can hurt, you know." He sighed. "When that blonde rejected me in the bar- man, that hurt."
He snorted, and Mark was glad to see him smile. "That's not love. You literally just looked at her from across the bar for like ten minutes."
"Fine. But I do know it can hurt." He replied. "What did she say?"
"She didn't really say anything."
"Right." He said; that wasn't a very helpful piece of information.
"I..." He sighed. "I wasn't wearing a t-shirt."
"Woah, woah, woah- you went from no relationships to having sex in like four days?" He exclaimed, because apparently that was the only reason in Mark's sex-obsessed brain someone would be shirtless.
"I was getting changed. She walked in on me." He explained.
"Oh. Right." He breathed. Oops. "And?"
"She saw my scars."
He swallowed. He knew about Derek and his number one hatred. In fact, that explained why he was wearing the t-shirt to hide as much of his skin as he could. Normally, he'd just accept the fact that he had one visible scar on his arm, and one on his shoulder that could creep out if his scrub top wasn't positioned quite right, but this woman seeing them must have accelerated his insecurity. "Then what?"
"She was...Mark, the look on her face. She was...mortified."
"I'm sorry." He sighed, simply because he didn't know what else to say.
"Mmm. She just...she seemed so- nice and I thought..."
"You were hoping she wouldn't mind?" He suggested.
"I was hoping she'd be all nice and somehow convince me I shouldn't mind, seeing as you, and Mom, and my therapist all failed at convincing me."
"So...now what?"
"Now I go back to my dying-alone-and-sad-because-I'm-a-cripple plan, as you so nicely put it in the bar."
"So it's raining and apparently there's a thunder storm over night but-" Meredith paused, thinking. "Derek, I'm going to stand here until you let me in. And I'm wearing a coat, but it's one of those thin ones so if I get hypothermia and die, it's going to be your fault."
Nothing.
"I wasn't freaked out by your scars. I'm sorry if I looked like I was or- whatever I did that made you think that I-" She paused when the door clicked, and opened. That was the last thing she expected. "Oh, hi."
"This isn't us being friends again, this is me not wanting you to die of hypothermia because I'm a nice person." He explained as he let go of the door, and pushed himself backwards.
She swallowed, stepped in, and shut the door behind her. He didn't move any further backwards from the coatroom, and she wasn't going to invite herself in. He was serious about only doing it for her health, clearly.
"Continue." He prompted when she didn't speak.
"So, I don't know how to say sorry other than saying sorry, but I know it's not going to make it better."
"No, I'm afraid it's not." He admitted honestly. He really wished her saying sorry was enough, because he didn't really want to be mad at her, but it wasn't. She'd torn a hole through his heart; and he needed more than just one stitch to fix it.
"Your scars- you don't like them, do you?"
He swallowed, and shook his head.
"So, I...I'm going to tell you my deepest darkest secrets now. The stupid things I've done and said and...the things that embarrass me. I'm not saying you should be embarrassed about them because there's nothing wrong with them but- you know, seeing as they make you insecure, this is what I'm going to say to hopefully make you stop hating me. Because, Derek, I miss having lunch with you and I'm just-" She sighed. She could do this, right? "Okay...when I was a teenager, I had pink hair. Pink. And I wore black and eyeliner and it- Jesus, it was not a good look, seriously. I mean some people can pull off the alternative look but- I just sucked at it. Like- it physically makes me sick to look at pictures."
He smiled, just slightly.
"Now, I don't really have any scars - or at least any big scars - to show you to prove that they're okay, but when I was seven, my mom gave me a mini surgical kit, which was a terrible idea. I stabbed myself with the little scissors because, you know, I was seven. And these two dots on my left hand-" She paused as she lifted her hand. "That's where the ends went in. She was really mad, despite the fact that it was her with the terrible idea."
His smile expanded again, although it was still barely noticeable.
"Right. Then there's this fun story. When I was like- fifteen, I had a friend who was big into theatre. And she said I should audition. Spoiler, I shouldn't have. Anyway, she dragged me there and I'm glad they did the singing first because I was not going to their weird little dancing thing but- I sang like two lines, and the music guy stopped me because apparently I was in the wrong key. I didn't notice. And my friend said afterwards that she'd never heard anyone sing so out of tune in her life, which was horrible of her, but she was Belle that year, so I guess she had the right to say that. But, to be fair, I was nervous." Meredith explained. It wasn't a good memory. "The last time I peed my pants-"
That made him smirk.
"-yes, I'm going that far into the land of embarrassment but I promise it will get worse when you hear about it, because it was in med school. I was- what, nineteen? I had an exam, and I didn't go to the toilet before. It was a two hour exam, and there were so many questions that if I left, I would have failed. When it ended, I ran. I freaking sprinted. But the stalls were all full. And I just- I just couldn't hold it in any longer and- Jesus Christ, it was so embarrassing I think I actually died. No one saw, luckily. I was wearing a hoodie and I did the good old tie-it-around the waist technique, then ran home before my next class but- god, it was bad. But that's not actually the worst thing I did."
His eyebrows raised at that.
"I had this Indian friend in high school, right? And the food was amazing, but my westernised pizza-and-chips little stomach could just not handle it. And it was a sleepover and there was no way my mom was picking me up, but I-"
"Okay, okay, okay-" He interrupted through a laugh. He had a horrible feeling he knew what she was about to describe next, and he really, really didn't want to hear about it. "Please stop. Please, for the love of God, stop talking."
"Oh, thank god." She sighed. "I was hoping you'd say something after the med school one and- okay. Thank you so much for saving me."
He smiled just slightly before a more serious look fell across his face. She could feel the difference in his eyes when he looked at her. "Meredith."
"Yes?" She asked, a little scared.
He swallowed "What did you...think?"
"About what?" She inquired, confused.
"When you looked at them- you looked so...horrified." He explained. "What were you thinking if you weren't thinking about- how...horrible they make me look."
"I'm a doctor, and, as a doctor, my first instinct was to analyse them. You know, in my head I was thinking about what scars came from what surgeries and why those surgeries would need to be performed and I...Derek, it wasn't you or your scars that freaked me out. It was thinking about what the hell happened to you that could possibly break so many bones and crush so many organs that someone could even have that many scars. And I'm guessing you have even more. Like- heart surgery because of the one down the midline of your chest. Abdominal surgery- I think it was an ex-lap. I'm guessing you had like- a kidney removal, and maybe you had a transplant after that because of that one on the side. The scars on your ribs looked like they were from chest tubes. I don't know what you did to your shoulder but that was one big scar. It just...thinking about what did that to you and how much pain you must have been in for so long, Derek, that's what horrified me, not your body."
He swallowed as his vision went a little blurry. So she did care. She cared so much, in fact, that thinking about him in pain made her eyes widen and her mouth drop open. His mind had jumped to the worst, most pessimistic conclusion of the woman, and she had completely obliterated his ideas with the real reason. He didn't even think of that, but neither did Mark when he discussed it, which made him feel a little better. "So...so it wasn't-"
"No, it wasn't you at all. It wasn't- I mean it was to do with you but- it wasn't you."
He stared at her silently for a second before smiling. "You know, you could have led with that. You realize that if you said that when you first got here, you wouldn't have had to tell me all of your most embarrassing secrets, right?"
She sighed. "Oh, Jesus- now you're not going to be friends with me because I'm an embarrassment."
"Meredith, I still want to be friends with you. And, for the record, last time I did that was when I was thirty-four, and I was a little too confident that I didn't need a foley catheter anymore. I did. I really did, but I said no because I was being all manly, thinking I could go to the toilet by myself, and- I- yeah, I'm still not sure I've recovered."
She smirked. "Makes me feel a little better."
"Mmm. Now, have you eaten?"
"Dinner?" She assumed before answering her own question, "No."
"Well, I was planning on going to the little restaurant down the end of the road because I'm far too tired to cook, wanna come?"
She beamed. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes. But she couldn't say that. She couldn't really express how much their friendship (their for-now 'friendship, if she was ever going to be able to spit out her feelings for him) meant to her, so she simply smiled and muttered a simple, "Yeah. Sounds good."