Hey!
So, obviously, although this contains stuff from the show, a lot of it is not in the right order. The end of this chapter, for example, is based 3x14, even though I don't think we're in season 3.
I don't think the ferry boat crash is going to work for obvious reasons (although I think the bomb-in-chest-cavity episode might) but I've got time to figure that out as Meredith hasn't even told anyone about her mother yet.
Obviously, Organ Damage is also an alternate universe, but I had a whole year (where Meredith was in San Diago in the show) to make up with no guidance, so this is a new challenge for me!
Anyway, enjoy! :
When Derek Shepherd woke up, the last thing he expected to hear was the sound of snoring.
The last time someone had slept in the same bedroom as him was when Mark would lie on a blow-up mattress beside his bed. Although he had been cleared by everyone in his rehabilitation facility and at the hospital, Mark still hovered for a good few weeks after he got first home in case of emergency. His mom did too, but he didn't dare let her sleep on something as uncomfortable as an inflatable bed or the sofa.
After he acknowledged the noise, he turned around, to find the last person he expected to be making such a noise.
Meredith.
Meredith was asleep...right beside him in bed...snoring...with their dog still snoozing across her.
He groaned as he rolled over and grabbed his phone. Six in the morning. That was just about the right time to wake up for work when he had an early shift, but too early for today. She, however, did probably have an early shift. Interns always did.
"Meredith-" He muttered as he pushed himself up into a sitting position with his hands. He extended his hand out so he could squeeze her shoulder. "Mer?"
She groaned, and her eyes opened. For a long second, she just stared blankly at the ceiling before they moved.
He could see the precise second she noticed him, because her half-asleep dropped eyelids pulled so far apart he could almost see the whole of her eyeball, and she physically jumped. "Oh, my god."
"Hi." Derek greeted with a smile.
"Where am I?" She asked as she attempted to sit up, although she couldn't move due to the weight across her.
"You're in my bed."
They slept together? No. That wasn't right. Unless they got really drunk after their dog fell asleep on her and she couldn't remember, or she'd hit her head and inquired massive amnesia.
"The dog fell asleep on you, and then I'm guessing we both fell asleep too. It's six in the morning; you better get up." He explained to her dumbfounded, slightly scared look.
"Oh." She breathed. They hadn't slept together then, she was just a sleepy idiot. Not that she didn't want to sleep with him, she just didn't want to not be able to remember it.
"Can you feel your arm?" He asked as he slid his hand into hers and squeezed it.
She swallowed. She wished that she could feel his hand holding hers, but she couldn't. "Nope, nothing."
He sighed as he placed a hand on the dog, and brushed against her fur a little harder than usual. "Wakey wakey, baby."
Her eyes opened at the call, and her coned head lifted.
"Over here." He begged as he tapped a space on the bed next to him.
The dog stood, and struggled into the space between them to recieve a hug and a fur scrub from Derek.
She sat up with a wince, her limp arm not moving. "Youch." She muttered.
"Pins and needles?"
"Mmm." She muttered as she squeezed her arm with her other hand. "Can I uh- use your shower?"
"What are you going to get changed into?"
"Uh- the same clothes I'm wearing right now, I guess?" She answered, although she wasn't very sure of herself.
He smirked. "Okay. How about I give you one of my t-shirts, and uh- some socks? Don't think you want my jeans or underwear, but you'll only have to wear them until you get into your scrubs."
"Thank you so much."
He smiled. He liked- screw it, he loved the idea of Meredith wearing one of his t-shirts. "No problem."
"Are you sure my arm isn't going to fall off or something?" Meredith asked as she watched him dunk the spoon in the bowl of cereal. She could at least feel it now, but touching things was painful.
"Give it five minutes, then I'll be worried." He said as he lifted the spoon to her mouth. "Now, open wide."
She smirked before following his order.
He grinned back. "Here comes the airplane!" He joked as he put the spoon in her mouth. Or at least tried to.
"Mmm!" She exclaimed with a closed mouth as milk dripped down her chin.
"Sorry!" He exclaimed as he dabbed her chin with his sleeve. "I have a lot of experience with spoon feeding, but the other way around."
"You're a neurosurgeon, how can you miss a mouth?" She exclaimed once she was done chewing.
"I didn't miss, you're just a messy eater." He sighed as he went to collect another mouthful.
She snatched the spoon out of his hand with her left. "I'll just do it myself."
He smirked. "Okay. But just remember I'll be here when you spill your food everywhere."
"Woah." Alex breathed. "What. Is. That?"
Meredith paused abruptly. "What is what?"
"What are you wearing?" Izzie elaborated. The second that she looked up to see Meredith she knew what Alex was referring to.
"Um- clothes?" She answered, continuing her way to her locker. She dropped her bag onto the bench, but paused again when she still felt their eyes drilling into her. "What?"
"You didn't come home last night. Again."
"Yeah." She agreed hesitantly.
"And now you're wearing an oversized men's t-shirt."
"No I'm not."
"You so freaking are. It's your boyfriend's, isn't it? Your not-boyfriend-crush-man guy's t-shirt."
She couldn't help it as her cheeks turned red, and she quickly turned back to her locker. She opened it with her right hand - the numbness had worn away by the time she finished her cereal - and chucked her stuff in. She sighed before turning back around, knowing their eyes were still on her. "What?"
"Is the sex good?"
"No sex."
"No sex, no relationship? Jesus, what are you even doing with this guy in all that time at his house?"
"Talking." She answered simply. "Because, believe it or not, sex is not the most important thing to everyone. There's other things to like about people than their bodies."
"You're not one of those weirdos, are you?" Alex asked with a creased brow.
"Okay, one: some people don't or can't have sex, that doesn't make them weirdos." Meredith started. "And two: no boyfriend means no sex."
"But you want to have sex with him?"
Meredith sighed. "He's hot, and funny, and smart, and handsome, what do you think Izzie?"
"She slept in my bed."
Mark almost dropped the chart he was writing on. "What?"
"Last night, we both fell asleep on my bed."
"But no sex?"
"No, Mark." He sighed with a smile. Every. Single. Time. "But she...she was asleep next to me. I didn't even know until I woke up, I must have fallen asleep before her."
"But she didn't leave. She could have left and gone home or crashed on the sofa." He pointed out hopefully.
"The dog slept on her. Like- all night. She couldn't feel her arm this morning."
"Well, I agree that you shouldn't move a pet if it falls asleep on you, but if I fell asleep in the bed of a girl I didn't like, I would have shoved the dog off and made a run for it."
"A girl you didn't like?" He repeated with a smirk.
Mark smiled. "Okay- fine, that part of the story is inaccurate but- you know what I mean. If she thought you were gross, she would have left, but she didn't. How did she react when she woke up?"
"Very confused. Then again, I was as well, so that's fair enough."
"So when are you going to ask her to marry you?" He joked.
"Mark-" He sighed.
"Dude, please, just ask her out. You're killing me with all this waiting, honestly."
"How do you think I feel?" He quipped, although it wasn't that funny for him. He couldn't really complain though; he was doing this to himself.
"Do you want her physically?"
"Physically?" Derek repeated with a creased brow.
"You know...physically." He repeated, putting a strong accent on the key word.
"Jesus Christ, Mark-" He sighed. "That's just weird. Don't ask me stuff like that."
"Just reminding you to think about it before she strips all your clothes off and is disappointed."
"Disappointed?" He repeated. "Mark, you were literally there for those very, very awkward questions with my neurologist."
"So she's not going to be disappointed?" He concluded.
He stared at the man, in shock of how straightforward he was, before sighing. "I'm going to go now. Before you start asking even weirder questions."
"You know, when the vet said that we shouldn't take her for long walks, I don't think this is what she meant."
"She gets a little go, and then she gets a rest; it's perfect." He dismissed.
She snorted. "Pushing your own bodyweight, plus a whole dog does not sound perfect to me."
He smiled as he briefly looked down at the creature. After discovering that she liked curling up on his chair, Derek had the genius (well, he said it was genius, Meredith thought it was stupid) idea to let her sit on his lap so she could could outside without having to walk. Unfortunately, she didn't really fit on his lap, but he was just about making it work. "It's okay. Extra cardio."
"I feel like, if you were to have kids, they'd want to sit on your lap."
He swallowed. Where did the topic of children come from? "You know I have four sisters-"
"Yeah."
"Well, obviously, when I was in hospital and rehab, they all came to visit me. It wasn't always at the same time, and sometimes it would just be a sister, or a sister and some kids or- there were a lot of combinations." He explained. "Anyway, one time, Liz came with her son Lucas. He must have been about four at the time. I was in rehab, and it was probably about five months post-accident. The nurses take you out every day so you don't go loopy from living inside, but seeing as my sister was there, she offered to take me instead. Lucas wanted to - as you suggested - sit on my lap while Liz took me around the garden. When we got back to my room, he wouldn't let me get back into bed because he was having so much fun. And Liz couldn't sign, and I didn't want to fail at speaking around Lucas because he was young and I didn't want to confuse him, so I had a text-to-speech tablet. Lucas discovered you could press random letters and the woman would sound really funny, and then I couldn't speak for the rest of the day, because it was his new favourite game."
Meredith laughed. "Cute kid."
"Yeah. Very annoying when my sister flew in to see and talk to me and he stole my best method of communicating, but, yeah, very cute too. Apparently, he still does it sometimes."
Neither of them spoke for a second as Meredith mustered the courage to ask a question that had been nagging her for a while, "How long did your recovery take?"
"Depends on your definition of a recovery really. It took about a month of saying the alphabet and some basic phonetics to actually be able to go through them, but I had about a month where I didn't speak at all before that. I'd say I could make basic replies by three months, I was pretty much back to normal by seven or eight, but it took me over a year to get through all the medical jargon. I wasn't ready to go back to work anyway, so I didn't mind, but it did take forever. Obviously, considering what happened a few weeks ago, I didn't relearn every single word."
She swallowed at that. She knew how much that shook him. "So how do you relearn a word?"
"You just say it. Over and over and over. It's very, very boring. And then sometimes you mess up a word you've practiced and you've got to do it all over again. Not fun."
"But you still knew what it all meant."
"Well- I was pretty out of practice, I had to go through a lot of books to remind myself but- yeah, I knew what most things meant." He confirmed. "It was just really annoying because I could always hear the word in my head and figure out what syllables to say but when it actually came to speaking- there was just nothing there."
"What did you do as a child?"
"What did I do as a child?" He repeated, confused.
"Did you murder someone or something? How did you end up with such horrendous luck?"
"Oh." He said, realizing what she was referring to. "I used to steal stationery from my friends when I was like seven, maybe that's the sin I committed that got me here."
"That doesn't sound like the kind of thing that would warrant paraplegia and a horrible speech condition."
"The world isn't fair."
"No." She sighed. "The world is never fair."
He paused. "Are you okay?"
She stopped walking, and turned around to look at him. "I'm fine...why?"
"Is your private personal stuff not fair either?"
She didn't answer for a second, thinking. She was conflicted. What she was thinking of was definitely a bad thing, of course, but it hadn't happened to a particularly good person. "I...I don't know."
"Can I fix it?"
"Someone I um...it's uh, the cure...you can't- I mean um-" She faltered.
A hundred questions flooded his mind at that. What couldn't he cure? Was it that he couldn't cure it personally, or no one could? What couldn't he cure? But most importantly, who had this incurable disease? "Mer, oh my god- are you-"
"No, no, no!" She exclaimed, cutting him off as she realized what she had just implied. "I'm fine. It's not me. I'm not sick. Someone I...it's someone I- yeah."
He wished he could have felt his heart rate settled at her interruption, but it was still hammering in his chest at the idea that he could lose her.
"I think I may have just given you a heart attack, I am so sorry." She apologized as he just stared at her, still in shock.
"It's um-" He licked his lips. "It's okay. Just...freaked the hell out of me. I'll be fine in a second."
She smiled. "Really that traumatic to live in a world without me?" She teased before turning back around and continuing to walk.
He didn't - couldn't - move for a second, thinking about what she had just said. It would be more than traumatic. He wasn't sure he'd ever get over it. In fact, as much as he despised what happened to him, he'd gladly have it happen all over again if it meant the woman was okay. He'd do anything for Meredith Grey to be happy and safe.
"So you came in wearing McDreamy's t-shirt yesterday."
"McWhatNow?"
"You know, McDreamy." She said as she glanced to a group of nurses - also known as the fastest gossip spreaders in the world - on a nearby table.
"Oh." She breathed. Now she understood where the nickname came from, although she had no idea why she chosen that specific name. "Yeah...uh- I fell asleep at his house."
"So you weren't lying about the no sex thing?"
"We have a dog together, and the dog thinks I'm a bed."
She smirked. "So you didn't even do it on purpose?"
"She was so warm and cute; I couldn't help it."
"Izzie talks a lot, but she doesn't know, does she?"
"I haven't told anyone. I'm not sure if um...Mc-" She paused, thinking. "Mc...Steamy knows. Mc- McDreamy could have told McSteamy, but I don't know."
"McSteamy, eh?" Cristina repeated.
"I don't know- you're the one who started with the Mc thing, not me. Don't judge."
"So how's McDog?"
She smiled. "She's doing okay. She still needs a name."
"Are you really going to be able to keep whatever you have going on a secret when you're sharing a dog? Isn't he going to be at your house? What happens when your roommates realize that both of you own half a dog?"
"I...I'm going to tell him."
"Tell him what?"
"That I love him." She answered without a thought. "That I've been in love with him...forever."
"What, now?" Cristina asked, surprised. It was a little bit of an abrupt decision, but she knew Meredith had been thinking about it since- well, not the day that they met, because it wasn't love at first sight when she was shouting about him and calling him lazy, but it was a love that developed very quickly.
"You don't believe me?"
"I didn't say that." She rebutted. It was true that she didn't state it, but that didn't mean she didn't think it.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket, and started scrolling through it.
"What are you doing?"
"Hi-" Meredith greeted as she put her phone to her ear. She smiled, and Cristina could only assume that it was a simple reply that made her grin like that. "Oh, what's the surgery for? Don't need an assist then? Fine- No, not calling for a chat- I just wanted to know when you got off of work...Six- okay, I'm working until eight, but can you meet me in our regular room when you finish- No, not something bad. I just need to talk to you about something- it's something good. Okay. Bye. Good luck for your surgery." She sighed as she placed her phone down, and smirked at Cristina.
"Impressive. But I'll be more impressed tomorrow when I see you kissing. You could still back out."
She sighed. "Fine. But prepare to be impressed."
"Dr Sloan, I've been sent by the chief to tell you to stop your surgery."
"Stop my surgery?" He repeated.
"There's an emergency."
He passed his scalpel to the scrub nurse and turned round completely so he could see the woman. "What kind of emergency?"
"A patient with neurotoxic blood. Her chemotherapy drugs mixed with some kind of herbal mixture - it's her own home treatment - to create some kind of chemical that made everyone in the patient's OR collapse. The chief needs help managing the chaos; he was one of the ones in there."
"But he's okay now?"
"Everyone is okay now. Just put on O2 and sent to the ER to rest for a little bit. Handling the patient is the problem now. The surgery isn't finished and they need to figure out a way to stop it from spreading, as well as how they're actually going to treat her for the neurotoxin build-up."
"Who else was in there?"
"Three scrub nurses, two interns, an anaesthesiologists, and four surgeons." The woman listed off. "And legally-"
"Legally?" Mark repeated.
"As a next of kin, you should know that Dr Shepherd was-"
Derek.
Derek was there.
Derek had collapsed.
Mark didn't care that she said everyone who had fainted was okay now. She didn't know that. Not for sure. He knew Derek, and he knew he often lied about how much pain he was really in or how he really felt in an attempt to reduce his burden on others. That was okay (but still not particularly great) when he was lying about a cramp or an ache, but not when there was an unknown chemical with unknown effects.
Mark didn't waste a single second after Derek was named to shove past the woman at the door. Luckily, he hadn't even started his surgery before the woman intruded, so he could leave his intern and the scrub nurses to pack the equipment away and take his patient back to her room.
Even if it wasn't for his racing heart, he knew he'd been flooded with Adrenaline. It was three flights of stairs and a run across half the hospital, but he didn't slow down. He couldn't. Not until he knew Derek was okay.
He paused when he reached to the entrance to the ER, and all the pain of going for such an abrupt and quick run hit him. Again, that didn't matter. Derek was what mattered.
"Dr Shepherd-" He pleaded to a nurse as she attempted to exit the emergency room.
She paused. "Yeah, he's just behind that curtain, bed 3, Dr Sloan."
"Thank you." He sighed before heading to the place the woman had both pointed and instructed.
He snatched the curtain back the second he got there with no care that the nurse could have made a mistake and he was revealing a random patient. He felt his heart slow the second he did. "Derek-"
There was an O2 mask over his mouth, and he looked a little pale, but those were the only two signs of an ailment he could see. "Mark." He greeted with a smile.
"Are you okay?"
He pulled his mask away from his mouth to speak. "Yeah. I'm fine. I'm...actually, I'm great."
"Great?" He repeated, dumbstruck. That was the last thing he expected Derek to say. "You just fainted in the OR and you're great?"
He didn't respond for a second as he placed the oxygen mask back over his mouth and took in a sharp breath. "I'm gonna tell her. I- I'm gonna tell her that I love her Mark. I'm gonna do it."
He smiled. "Is this a near-death revelation?"
"Probably." He pressed the mask to his face again. "But if I do it now, quickly, before I can decide it's a bad idea, that won't matter. If she says yes, she'll be too stubborn to let me break up with her because of the chair and then- I would have done it."
Mark sat down on the end of the bed with a grin, proud of his friend. "I'm best man, right? I get to do the super embarrassing speech?"
He smiled through the mask, and nodded.
Being a doctor, Meredith met a lot of crying, grieving people every single day. Sometimes it was the patient themselves, sometimes it was their family, sometimes it was their friends, sometimes it were their children, and, every once in a while, it was a fellow surgeon.
What always struck her the most was how much a single day, a single hour, a single minute, a single second, even, could change someone's life so drastically.
One second, someone was complaining of fatigue, and the next they were getting a cancer diagnosis.
One second, someone had a wife and two kids, and the next they were getting a call by the police telling them that a drink driver had just rammed into their family car.
One second Meredith Grey was heading to her favourite on-call room to tell her best friend that she'd been in love with him for months, and the next-
"Dr Sloan-"
He sighed as he turned round to look at the woman at the door. All he wanted to do was give this poor woman her nose job. "Please don't tell me I'm sending my patient back to my room. It's the second time today."
The woman didn't speak, hesitant of what to say to that.
"Am I going to have to apologize to this woman for the second time or not?"
She swallowed, regretfully. He was so upset about having to close up the patient, but she knew that was going to feel like nothing, less than nothing even, after she finished talking to him. "I'm afraid so, Dr Sloan. I'm sorry."
"Why? What is it this time? An axe murder loose in the hospital?" He sighed. "If it's not something I specifically need to deal with, please go and find another attending."
"Um- no, Dr Sloan, I'm sorry, we need you."
"Why?" He asked, his boredom of the repetitiveness becoming anger now. Why couldn't the woman just say it?
"It's um-"
"What is so important that I'm leaving my OR for the second time in one day?"
"Um-" She faltered. She couldn't say what she needed to say to such an angry shout. "I uh-"
"Spit it out."
"There's been a...complication-"
"A complication?" Mark echoed. "With who? With one if my patients? I doubt it's something I need to go and fix. Fluids and temp monitoring for a fever. Just page cardio for a pulmonary embolism or-"
"Not that kind of complication." She just about managed to interrupt with a shaking voice.
"Then what the hell is it?"
"It's um- It's about Dr Shepherd."
No. no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
He knew why she had such a worried, broken voice.
Something had happened. Something bad.
Not Derek.
Not again.
Anyone but Derek.
"An intern found him unconscious in an on-call room. He's in critical condition, Dr Sloan."