A note on language:

American Sign Language is its own language, with a syntax and grammar. Where ASL is used through this text, the transcription is meant to balance between reader comprehension and the shift in fluency of someone learning that structure, not an exact translation into spoken English.


Something had felt off to Derek Shepherd since he'd woken up at the desk of his extended-stay apartment. He'd attributed it to the trip he'd taken to the pub down the block after his Skype chat with his kids. His wife, Meredith had stayed in the background, and the chance that he'd say something wrong kept him from attempting to steer her toward the tone of the night before. Her wordsmithing got stronger the angrier she was, along with her willpower. If the Dartmouth professor who'd assigned her Lysistrata thought she hadn't been paying attention, they'd been incredibly mistaken. She'd have said him she couldn't possibly take him away from government matters for something so tawdry, or something similar.

It was afternoon by the time he bought lunch from the cafeteria two floors below his office and taken it to a picnic table several buildings away. The dry cold was perfect for being antisocial with his phone. He'd left Seattle during the November rains, and all he recalled of the weather during the holidays was the clarity of the moon over the Puget Sound, the night Meredith's friends had presented them with dinner reservations and locked them out of the house for the evening. He didn't let himself go that far back in his camera roll; he wouldn't return to his desk before sunset.

The red-brick campus of the National Institute of Health reminded him of Boston. He'd spent the most time there visiting his youngest sister Amelia in college, but these days, he associated the city with Meredith. Her mannerisms, her references, her accent; those were Beantown, and she had the hatred of the word "Beantown" to show for it.

Where would they be if she'd taken the fellowship in general surgery at the Brigham; instead of staying in Seattle as an attending? She would've returned with all the discoveries she'd made about her mother's history, without all the information. If they'd moved, the memories triggered by the appearance of her half-sister might've come to her without context. He doubted that part would've been better.

He could've have started with the BRAIN Initiative at the time he'd received the offer. Commuted over weekends. Moving here wouldn't have come with history. She would've loved it; he was sure. Everyone he encountered was passionate about medicine, and wasn't that the key to making Meredith Grey feel at home? If she'd just been willing to take a year off…. If he'd offered that. They'd be reconfiguring things by this point. he wouldn't be searching for her on the Grey+Sloan Memorial social media feeds that were otherwise checked by residents waiting for their match. He wouldn't prefer sunny days, because the fog of this one reminded him too much of his wife.

He refreshed their shared folder. Zola and Bailey were prone to be particularly photogenic when you needed them to be faster, but that didn't mean she'd had a chance to upload the pictures. It was barely noon there. She'd told him, years ago, that after spending her sixteenth summer in Seattle, and meeting the only girl who she regularly referred to as a "girlfriend" not a "hookup," "friend with benefits," or "person I screwed;" she'd developed a life-long habit of calculating the time on the west coast before processing what the clock actually said. Whenever he'd called back east from Seattle, he'd had to do the math. In the reverse, it was as automatic as she'd described.

He kept scrolling, looking specifically for shares from Amelia's phone. Last week, she'd gotten a candid of Meredith reading to Zola, the two of them snuggled on Zola's bed. He hadn't seen Meredith smile like that in months. How pathetic would it be to ask his sister for more of those? He had no pride or shame, but what could he offer her? Finally arranging for a pony wasn't going to cut it; she was a grown woman.

Then again, it was Amelia.

They didn't have a paddock. Yet. Zola had gotten her first Briary pony the previous Christmas, and Meredith had pointed out that horseback-riding would be a common extracurricular among her classmates. He'd balked. Zola's shunt was guaranteed to need replacement; did they really want to set her up for additional brain surgery? She'd told him to point her to a sport that didn't come with risk—"We're nerds, but neither of us is good at staying still. Why should we expect them to be?"

He'd admitted that it'd be hypocritical to hope his children gravitated toward chess team, and he'd treated injuries caused by everything from softball to hacky sack. The memory of her laughter at "hacky sack," had him smiling when his phone rang, his screen transforming into a selfie of her with her recently-upgraded person.

"Talk to me, Karev."

"Dr. Shepherd, it's Jo, actually. Wilson…Alex is in the OR." Peds. Karev was a pediatric surgeon. Derek's memory of being shot didn't compare with the rush of adrenaline that came with concluding that Bailey or Zola—Karev wouldn't be operating. It'd be Robbins who'd insist on scrubbing in. Karev might be calling him, but…no. Nothing could've happened too fast for Meredith to be on the phone; pretending she didn't need him to tell her it'd be okay. Not unless…. He grabbed his to-go cup and started to leave his tray, then threw out a hand to grab the cold metal table. The voice telling him not to abandon the last good food he might see for hours was Meredith's.

"Dr. Shepherd?"

"Here. Tell me." he ordered, shredding the deli paper in his attempt to rewrap his Ruben. Had he retrained nothing from the months he'd spent with function in only one hand?

"There was an…incident? Altercation?" The words were muffled, like she was saying it away from the phone. "We don't know exactly—"

"Why are you talking to me?" He left the damn sandwich, already planning the fastest route from his office to the metro shuttle outside the Clinical Center. "Where is my wife?"

"She's in surgery," Wilson said. Her voice broke on the word. "She's…Dr Grey…she's stable. No internal bleeding, but her injuries are—"

"Injuries from what?"

"Someone…. She was attacked. Stephanie found her half-conscious on the floor of Trauma-3."

Klaxons blared in Derek's head. It mystified him that no one else in the lobby heard them, or looked when he staggered and pressed his palm against the wall for balance. Pity the poor asshole who had a heart attack here.

"No one saw…. They're reviewing the CCTV. There was no sign of sexual assault, but she's...she's pretty beaten up."

"What…." He swallowed. "What does that mean?" He slammed his shoulder against an emergency door and pounded upstairs, listening to her rattling off injuries.

Schatzker Type II left tibial plateau fracture. Monteggia dislocation-fracture, Bado type I, left radioulnar joint with fracture of the ulna shaft. Blunt laryngeal tracheal injury. Jaw dislocation resulting in trismus. Pre-surgical temporomandibular joint reduction to allow for intubation. Possible hearing loss caused by barotrauma. Fractured ribs causing a left-side pneumothorax, subcutaneous emphysema.

None of it made sense to him. Dislocated shoulder? Fractured wrist? Last night, Meredith had been hanging clothes in of Zola's room while his daughter tried to lead Bailey in demonstrating a clapping-game she'd been taught at daycare. When the toddler had gotten frustrated, Meredith had swooped in behind him, encircling his chubby wrists with her hand.

"That's how half of my first drum lessons went," she'd admitted while the kids disappeared to find the art papers that they wanted to show him. "I got so impatient over not having the muscle memory that Manderly would stand behind me and take me through the rhythm."

"You learned a few surgical techniques that way, too," he'd reminded her. She'd been smiling when the kids returned.

That was Meredith. Not a patient whose jaw was being held together with a Barton bandage, with a chest tube, whose unresponsiveness suggested hearing loss. There was no way her ribs had been broken again.

Wilson was still going. "They thought she was showing positive for Battle's sign, but the CT is clear. It's more likely damage to her jaw…you'd know that. Um...Dr. Hunt told me to get your permission to let them take care of the preliminaries. Dr. Torres wants to immobilize her arm, and then go in again once her airway is more secure. Dr. Avery thinks he may need to do a maxillomandibular fixation, and he's concerned about intubating once her jaw is wired shut. It's…it's Dr. Torres, though, so I think she'll win. Dr. Bailey said to, um, to get your ass on a plane…, sir."

If he let himself slide down against his office door, there wouldn't be anyone here to get him up. He needed to get out. He needed to get to Seattle an hour ago. Yesterday. Last year when he'd set a promise-breaking precedent. "Okay, here's what going to happen: you're going to check Meredith's locker for her bag—"

"Oh, she keeps it—"

"And when it's not there, you're going to get it from my lab. I don't care how you manage that. Take an ax to the hinges, I will get you off the hook for it. I can be at the airport in thirty minutes, which will be long enough for you to have used her card to book me non-stop from National to SeaTac."

"From…?"

"Reagan." How long had the interns—residents—been children?

"Right. How fast can you get through security? Not that I think you'd be stopped, since you're all blue-eyed white guy, but…."

"Go into neuro and work for the government, Wilson. They're using their contractors to make the new pre-check program look popular."

"I'll think about it; TSA does not know a good touch….Uh, I'm at Dr. Grey's locker. No purse. Oh! If she ever asks where her bobby-pins went…."

"I will genuinely have no idea. Someone needs to get the kids. Karev should stay with her, so check with Amelia, unless she's on-call, in which case…." Torres was operating on Meredith. They'd spent almost as much time with Robbins; at least, he thought they had, but not since….

"I've got it. There's a whole chart thing, Alex keeps it on his phone." Right, of course there was. "All due respect, Dr. Shepherd, you just need to get here." Wilson admired Meredith the way Meredith had once idolized Miranda. He needed her to be focused on the task he'd given her, and part of him wanted to send her straight to Karev. "I'll text you the flight information."

"Thanks. I'll call Owen." He wove back through the lobby and emerged out into sunlight less than five minutes after he'd gone in from the fog. Never before had that felt like a bad omen. "Wait, Wilson, what happened to—?"

His phone beeped at him as the call ended. He stared at Meredith's smile until it went black, and then took off. There was far too much distance between them, and he couldn't remember why putting it there had seemed like a good idea.

Everything was heavy; the weight of the water—No, the waves weren't water. They were memory-awareness-pain pain pain. Maybe under the bridge. The dam was made of chemicals. It would break. A hand touched her shoulder. Meredith jerked. Don't-do-that dontothat. Alex. Alex was there. His hands moved down, up, across. Identifying her injuries. She didn't watch. They all intersected. Pulse, twinge, throb, sharp, dull. Fire that wanted to consume her. Letting her eyelids fall was easier than holding them open.

Derek had once driven the distance from New York to Seattle. It'd taken part of a week he recalled in snapshots of dirty gas stations, cornfields, and signs for flyover cities. The six-hour flight Wilson booked for him took interminably longer.

Having been in a plane crash made him more attentive to the rules, no matter how absurd and outdated. Cell data wouldn't send them plummeting from the sky, but he obeyed the instruction to turn it off. Once they were cruising, he paid an exorbitant amount for the in-flight WiFi, sending a flurry of messages to everyone in the Grey+Sloan section of his contacts. Their responses were all the same:

Nothing you can do.

She's in good hands.

She's strong.

Equally frustrating were the replies he didn't get. Amelia had gone silent.

When he'd crashed Mark's Harley, Amelia had been one of the first at the hospital. By the time the cops brought her home from the ensuing bender, he'd been discharged, and while he'd never been sure, he wondered if she'd gotten her first pills from the bottle that he hadn't known he should be guarding.

It'd been the same thing on different scales throughout their lives. Liz broke her wrist slipping on ice. Uncle Adam was in a fatal car crash. Peter, Nancy's husband, concussed himself cleaning the gutters. Every accident was followed by one of Amelia's tailspins. Had he told her he was impressed that she'd kept it together when Mark died so soon after her relapse? Probably not. He hadn't wanted to remind her that he'd avoided her calls when he'd been shot, afraid he'd be triggering it, then. She hadn't needed that.

He didn't know what she'd need, this time, or what he could give. Meredith came first, and then the kids. It wasn't fair that Amy always came fourth, but he couldn't solve that, or anything else, from a damned plane.

Ironically, he'd convinced Meredith to get anti-anxiety meds for flying, but she wouldn't take them before a consult and hadn't been on a commercial flight since. They would. They'd visit his family; maybe go to the vacation cabin he still paid his shares on. They'd finally go to Tuscany, let her use her Italian—Meredith had been in a plane crash, and she'd gotten barotrauma from an attack—The young woman next to him angled herself toward the window. His fist was clenched around his phone and how furiously he'd been tapping on it could only have been disconcerting. In the past, his sisters had chided him for things he'd believed were thoughtful; following a girl walking alone to make sure she got inside, offering an umbrella, even holding a door, if it meant lingering too long. "Mom raised you to be a good guy," Kathleen had told him. "But the bad guys are really good at faking it." He tried to pull in, take up less space. The last thing he wanted was to be the intimidating guy in someone's story.

Wilson had texted him a bulleted list of what they were looking at, but most of the diagnoses only gave so much information without images and measurements. A clear CT said nothing about the severity of a concussion.

One of his clearest memories from the plane crash was working about her head lac as much as his hand, and there'd been signs after the ferryboat crash, all be attributable to oxygen-deprivation, hypothermia, stress.

When he'd cleared her from the bomb only months earlier, she'd reported one prior head injury. Later, she'd related crashing Ellis's car, and having her mother make them fax her the tox screening twice, like it was an amusing anecdote. She'd arranged the tow and let Meredith find her way home from Florida on her own.

Four, disregarding differential diagnoses. Not at all impossible for Post-Concussion Syndrome to follow.—He could hear her saying, I'm not supposed to have Alzheimer's until I have Alzheimer's! so clearly that he expected to find her beside him— Depending on severity, that could keep her down the longest, and devastate her the most.

He kept thinking of something his oldest nephew had said at his black-belt presentation, over a decade ago. Squared was Nancy's eldest—She hated the nickname, but as Amy pointed out, what had she expected, hyphenating her own name, and then named her son "Shepherd?"—Her youngest, Tyson, had lamented that he'd never be able to hit that hard, and Squared had said "think of it this way, a bunch of little hits will break anything, eventually. I'm just doing all of them at once."

That'd led to a discussion about stealing time from the future, and if it'd actually been backed by physics, it'd been beyond Derek's understanding, but Squared was now at MIT—Where else for a kid called Squared?—Meredith had taken so many hits, all of different strengths, and this might be the hardest of all. Physically, it would be. Mentally, he couldn't predict. It felt far more like the times she'd been pulled under than the times she'd lifted all of them up.

He almost bypassed Miranda at the arrivals gate. She didn't call him a blockhead, or go on about tall-people privilege, just rightly assumed he had no luggage and jerked her head toward the automatic door. Her Lexus was idling in the pick-up lane, with Ben at the wheel. With the exception of the jazz from the radio, things were silent as they navigated around airport property. Which of them put that in their programmed stations? Or was it meant to be for him? He'd prefer something loud and angry. Meredith's music. Punks had been pissed; the wave she'd followed was in pain.

Every other time she'd been recovering from illness or injury, there'd been earbuds constantly within her reach. She'd joked that she should be listening to snooty audiobooks during the liver donation recovery, but it hadn't changed her preference.

Miranda squeezed his arm. "She was in recovery when we left. Transport should have her in ICU by the time we get there."

"Do you have her scans?"

"Man, you've been gone a couple of months," Ben said. "You think she's changed that much?"

Derek kept hopefully eyeing Miranda. Fine, she could be a rock when it came to rule following, but she had a soft spot for his wife; admittedly, one that occasionally calcified.

"Puppy dog eyes aren't gonna get you anywhere. I have nothing, and you will see nothing until you see her. She's stable, breathing on her own."

"Will that last?" It slipped out, but his thoughts slowed down, like that'd been speeding them forward. "She has a chest tube. There were a half dozen injuries that could block an airway, and she's…she.…" He could see her lying on the dock; her chest not moving. The more he sat here mentally ordering her to breathe felt wrong. Like that right wasn't his.

"She's tough stuff," Miranda said. No doubt she'd read his mind. "But she'll need looking after. You thought about getting off, or did you torch the place in your hurry to leave?"

"Neither. Once she's out of the woods—"

"—she'll need you around to keep her from climbing walls."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"She's a bad influence on you."

"Now, dear," Ben said. "She'd say they'll whatever the thing when they whatever it. The man has his own mind." Derek hoped his grimace could be seen as close to a smile. The mood in the car tensed. "And her mind is all right," he added, much more seriously. "There's no sign of damage beyond the concussion."

"Wilson said something about Battle's Sign."

"Which you know damn well wouldn't have shown up yet," Miranda pointed out. "Her skull is as solid and intact as ever, and I'm not in there retrieving another organ. It's all gonna be healing. Lord knows she's good at that."

She'd had to do too much of it.

He'd tried to convince her that her scars weren't cracks, but he'd also been the one who'd made her think she had to be "all whole and healed" constantly.

"Speaking of Him," Miranda added. "She's always been good at hiding her condescension about faith, but I've known her long enough to see it. Doesn't change that we're praying for her."

"I appreciate it." That was what you said, but he almost couldn't say it.

He'd stopped going to Mass regularly at the time he started college, and Addison's Protestantism had been lip service—she'd say, "I bring people into the world. Where we go next isn't my purview."—He couldn't be that blasé; he'd married Meredith still calling himself a lapsed Catholic, but more and more he'd questioned. Based on unexpected bad outcomes, yes, but also on experience with families. Her perspective had helped him see how saturated the system was with Christianity, but he'd been the one to observe that families who made the most "good Shepherd" references were more likely to be angry at him over any complication; yet, if the procedure went to plan, he was a tool of God. He wasn't much more in favor of his losses being His plan. Taking ownership of his failures was hard, and he'd fought to do it. He wasn't a god, but he didn't think he was a puppet of one either.

Even with all that settled, he'd held on for a long time. He'd seen God as a necessity for the existence of heaven, which was where his father would be. It'd taken a while for Meredith to admit to the gist, let alone details, of what "it was different for me" meant, but he'd known her well enough to understand that belief—or hope for—an afterlife wasn't at all counterintuitive to who she was. Meredith gave chances. Of course she'd want there to be more.

"Her faith," he said. "Is stronger than my ever religion was."

Miranda's lips pursed; her instinct was always to hold onto her perspective. He respected that about her, but she'd gotten his wife wrong.

Sure, Meredith hadn't been raised to religion: "I'd all but memorized that illustrated Bible Stories book in every waiting room by kindergarten, but it didn't mean any more to me than Dr. Seuss." She'd critique it: "In AP World History, we were supposed to present a mythology in terms of its origin and spread, historical context, all that. I chose Christianity. Let's just say, everyone else had understood that it wasn't in the word-bank." She was wary of the trappings: "I didn't understand prayer. Mom'd say, 'if you're worried about the future, do something to change the present,' but this one friend I had in high school told me it was a way of reminding yourself what of you were hoping for, whether or not anyone else was out there to hear you. I kinda liked that." She did disdain being Christian-passing: "If someone presumed they were agnostic or Wiccan they'd be offended," and resented that it had impeded medical progress, but she'd pray with a family that had asked. Whatever helped someone get through, she was live and let live.

"It's just that her faith isn't in religion, or society, or…or anything that avoids putting blame where it belongs" he elaborated, "Her faith's in people."

"Huh," Miranda said. "Yeah, I guess that's it, isn't it?"

"He is married to her," Ben noted.

Derek didn't acknowledge that, or the side-eye Miranda gave him. She'd been looking out for Meredith for the past few months, and long before. "She…she finally got the damn pneumothorax."

"My lord, she did." She sucked her teeth. "That girl." Her laugh was contagious, and Derek was exhausted; it didn't take more than a moment for Ben to be looking at them like he should plan to pull up to the door closest to psych.

"Meredith drowned as an intern," Derek offered. Ben's expression stayed nonplussed.

"She cracked three ribs during CPR. Only the start of reviving her ass. She'll agree her bones are twigs." Miranda didn't give Derek a chance to correct her phrasing. Meredith didn't break them. "What she wouldn't acknowledge—and it better be a wouldn't—was snapped twigs are sharp, and interns at risk of punctured lungs don't scrub in. Still only got her to take off a month."

"We had to threaten to tie her to the bed for that."

Her response had been predictable: "you think I wouldn't enjoy that?" He'd wanted to call her on her bluff. What would he have done if then, rather than admitting to being in pain, she'd docilely allowed something it'd taken almost another year for her to offer sincerely?

He didn't, would never, could never wish he had pushed her that way, but he wondered. Would he have understood that he needed to slow down? Or would he have accepted the ploy, as he'd accepted the veneer of being fine? If she'd told him that she wasn't ready to trust him, would he have just left? Everything on his terms, or nothing at all? Wasn't that what he'd done, only weeks later?

"How many doctors living in that house?" Miranda asked, moving him back to the present, and the truth of the past.

"Five? Three?" Did he count himself? He couldn't remember what Karev's status was. That Meredith didn't question Torres or O'Malley showing up and saying they didn't want to be alone at the Archfield had helped ensure someone was with her. The idea of him taking any time off on her behalf was anathema to her. "Anything that's happened since, she's let us take care of her. But that month—She was a brat about it, honestly. And now…. Now…Christ. She has four broken ribs, a chest tube, someone cut off her windpipe." Derek nearly slammed his fist into the seat in front of him, which would've sent them all careening off the road. "Why can't the world just let her breathe?"

"You know," Ben said, merging off the freeway. "Her best friend was a cardiothorasic surgeon, and her replacement is her half-sister? Maybe there's something out there making sure she gets that chance."

Derek thought of Cristina's spiraling the day Meredith went into Elliott Bay. Considering the timing, Meredith didn't seem to be the one the universe was protecting.

Shit. Would it be fair of him to make Karev call Cristina? Did fair matter? To Meredith, it would. He took his phone out to check the time in Zurich.

Richard was waiting for them in the Grey+Sloan lobby. Avery and Callie were by the elevator bay. Derek assumed Amelia was with the kids until Callie said, "Pierce took Zola and Bailey home."

"Do they…?" He trailed off. There'd been plenty of time for them to become more comfortable with Maggie.

"She had them when Mer…. Yeah, she's watched them."

"She's great with them," Richard added.

"Wilson found Mer's keys, so no switching car-seats around."

"Why not…? Amelia has my car. Where is she?"

"Question of the day," Avery muttered. Derek's heart sank.

The elevator dinged, and Callie grabbed his wrist on the way out. It made sense for that to be familiar. Comforting was stranger. Ports and storms. Or was it? Callie was a friend. Had been Mark's best friend, when Derek had never shared that title before, not even with Sam. Was mentioned in a good sixty percent of Meredith's conversations lately. Knew him better than most of his sisters.

BokHee came over from the nurses' station, touching his shoulder before walking toward the elevator. Edwards leaned casually against the desk. Did no one sleep at this hospital? Not when Meredith is one of their patients.

Edwards spoke as she fell into step with them, "Jo's on cardio; she's in Dr. Grey's room already. I can answer any questions about her neurological injuries. Not that you'll have them." What about where the hell is your department head?

"—my patient unnecessarily!"

Derek wasn't paying attention to how many corners they'd turned, which wing they were on, just waiting for Miranda to aim for a door. Wilson's voice coming up the corridor brought the world back into focus.

"Shit," Avery swore as Richard strode forward with the confidence of a position he no longer held. "I thought they'd just left a cop at the door."

"Cops?" Derek asked. The members of his veritable honor guard stopped walking and all turned to him.

"What'd Wilson tell you, exactly?" Callie asked. Over her shoulder, Richard gestured to him. The targets of Wilson's ire, a tall East Asian man and a young woman with bleached white hair, turned.

"She said…." He glanced at Edwards.

"I found her," she supplied. "Alone."

"Sorry, that must've been—"

"No….er, yes, sir, it was shocking, but she was alone. I got help, and then paged security…."

"You did it right," Bailey assured her.

The guy—"

"The perp, " Avery muttered.

"—had taken off."

"So, this was intentional? Not just…." Not just anything, but he'd pictured Meredith letting herself be alone with a patient who seemed confused—not her fault, just the result of her primary experience with delusions being sedentary, older women.

Callie put her other hand on his shoulder. "Maybe. Maybe some muscleman with dementia has no idea he hurt someone. Finding out is the detectives' job. Yours is to get your polite, charming, face-of-the-freaking-hospital self, passed them to Meredith. Okay?" He nodded and started to step forward; she blocked him. "What's the goal, Shepherd?"

He blinked. Mark was in her voice. "Getting to Meredith."

"Great." She let go of him but didn't leave his side. Again, following Miranda, Derek tried to embody the stride he'd adapted as Interim Chief. His government-issue phone felt heavy in his pocket.

"Her husband," Richard said, and he got the sense that he'd already missed a cue.

He inhaled. Drew himself up. Offered his hand. Once, his father had made him hold out his palm and slapped a fish onto it, saying, "That's what a weak handshake feels like."

He'd passed the lesson onto the girls at a fish market. Kathleen had grabbed his hand in a vise that felt like retaliation, and then said, "Mom says not to make someone think you're going to break their fingers." That was how his parents had done things; they'd known their kids worked together. (Dad had offered to take his sisters fishing with them. Hadn't he?)

Where was Amy?

"Detective Chakrabarti." Derek had the strange feeling of knowing that usually he'd be curious about how a young man with such a strong British accent ended up in Seattle, while not caring at all. "My partner, Olivia Moore. We're investigating the assault against your wife." Assault. The word felt as violent as its meaning.

"Wait." Avery leaned toward the women. "Liv?"

"Detective Moore these days, Dr. Avery," she said, and Callie whistled. "But yes, my up-to-date license makes me Dr. Moore."

Richard's triumphant "ha!" made Derek jump. "Er. Apologies. Thought I recognized you. Dr. Moore put in for a transfer from Mercy West before the merger. I always thought Hahn leaving was why you didn't take our offer." Derek fought not to roll his eyes. Would a zombie apocalypse make Richard's nosiness wane?

"Uh no. I had personal… I needed a change of pace. There was a sudden opening at the King County morgue, and one thing led to another. It's all people and puzzles in the end."

Derek bristled. His wife being assaulted was not a puzzle. It was an affront. An impossibility. A…mystery. Maybe the detective wasn't wrong. (Maggie might like her.)

"We're gathering pieces," she added, smoothly. "Dr. Shepherd, you and your wife have been living separately?"

"What? No. I'm working for Ob—the BRAIN Initiative. We're not separated. That's, uh, Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. We're fine. Good." Not your best salesmanship, Dr. Shepherd.

"But for the past several months you've been out of state?"

"I came home for Christmas, but for the past eight weeks, yes."

"And that's in D.C.?"

"Greater D.C. Bethesda. I flew in from Na—Regan as soon as Wilson called me." He nodded at the resident braced against the glass ICU door.

Their ensuing questions about his flight, the day he'd had before that, all started to sound like where were you? Why weren't you here?

"We'll be checking on all of that," Detective Moore said. "Procedure, if you were in the air an hour ago. It seems the attacker came in through the ER this morning, is that correct?"

"A patient left an emergency bay around the correct time," Miranda confirmed. "Bennett has seen him at least once before. Clocked him as a drug-seeker. As far as we know, he did not interact with Dr. Grey."

"Any information from the past visit?"

"We have several hundred notes about one Mr. Tony Stark."

"Ah. Our initial review of the CCTV footage shows an unidentified male, who, I'll warrant, doesn't look much like Robert Downey Junior, entering the room through the sliding doors. He plays the angles, possibly he's familiar with them. Opens the staff door as Dr. Grey walks by. She goes in. From there we're blind for half a minute before he retraces his steps. Dr. Edwards enters via the staff corridor within ten seconds of that."

"I was just going to close the door, but I noticed the bent blinds, and…. She was in the middle of the floor, like…like he'd dropped her." Edwards cast her eyes down, blinking hard behind her glasses, and Richard put a hand on her shoulder.

Derek should've thanked her for being there, but he was too close shouting at her for not being faster. His mind was doing horrible things in the face of horror. Anyone who did this much damage to Meredith could've shoved Stephanie out of the way without a problem, but she'd been in the middle of the hallway. Someone would've seen her, immediately. Maybe, they'd have gone after him.

"We've got technicians on every other camera in the area. Chances are he couldn't have evaded them all, recon or not."

Either, or, if. Derek understood uncertainties; predicting the behavior of a body was inexact, no matter how many scans you took. He still wanted to demand that the detectives tell him something certain. "She must've…. Why did no one hear her?"

"There was a code being run in Trauma 2," Richard offered.

"The man looked like a patient in the wrong place. Grey could've been grabbed, tried to de-escalate, and…" Avery wiped a hand across his mouth. "Those experiencing air hunger often makes injuries worse trying to break their attacker's grip. She would've known where the worst points were. With the depth of her bruising, and the severity of the bronchial injury.…We don't know if she lost consciousness during, but it's likely. He had a strangulation hold on her for at least fifteen seconds. Not a full thirty." Loss of bladder control, not bowel.

"Um." Edwards held up a hand, like they were doing rounds. Detective Chakrabarti nodded. "No one's saying it, so I'm gonna: her scrubs seemed to be…. They were tied when w-we cut them off."

"The exam found no signs of sexual assault," Detective Moore agreed. Her matter-of-fact tone did nothing to vanish image of a pair of flats from Derek's brain. Meredith had been violated regardless.

"But…." Callie took a deep breath. "He went at her barehanded. If it was intentional…there are all kinds of weapons in there."

"That's one factor that makes the idea of premeditation complicated, yes. As Dr. Grey walks in, her expression suggested recognition. Is there any reason that you know of that someone might have sought her out?" Detective Chakrabarti was trying to be gentle. Derek knew the tone. He'd used it. It didn't stop his pulse from rushing, sounding like the waves that had tried to take her away from him once. Had this been revenge, too? Had someone thought Meredith didn't feel patients' deaths like a shot to the heart? He could barely hear Richard explaining that "Dr. Shepherd might need a moment…several years ago…." (Detective Moore's face changed. Did she know Charles and Reed?)

"We have to be careful about HIPAA, in a situation like this," Richard continued. "Edwards, let's have you start going through Dr. Grey's cases. Flag any unexpected results. Dr. Bailey and I can look those over."

"There won't be bad outcomes." Everyone's attention shifted to Wilson. Derek squinted at the floor-to-ceiling blinds behind her. None of light and color between them resolved. "She's on a streak. Dr. Grey hasn't lost a patient since…in two months. I noticed it while…clearing her schedule for the next six weeks. She might've…might know. I don't think she likes thinking of patients that way."

She didn't, but she did keep track. At Christmas, she'd said things had been going well, and they'd skirted around discussing work, otherwise. She must've felt the levity of not having to tell a single family she'd lost their loved one in two months, but he'd have noticed. Wouldn't he?

"How many?" the detective asked.

"Fifty-one."

"I'll be damned." Miranda slapped her hands together, and then send an apologetic look over her shoulder at Derek. He shrugged at her. She'd trained Meredith. She had every right to be proud. He was, somewhere in the flux of emotions.

"And that's in…two months? Do you know when it started exactly?" The resident, who hadn't broken eye-contact with the investigators to that point, didn't respond.

"I'd say around the fourteenth of November," Derek said. "That right, Wilson?"

Relief replaced her pained expression. "Yes, sir. A couple of days before, but… about then."

"Dr. Grey must be impressive," Detective Moore commented. "That's something that sparks envy. Is there any possibility—?"

"No!" The objection came from everywhere around Derek. Miranda's fists were clenched and her shoulders held forward like she was considering ramming the woman.

"None of our people would hurt Meredith," Richard added.

Detective Chakrabarti held a hand up, much the way of Richard himself moderating a dispute. "We understand, it's a disturbing thought."

Callie stepped forward. "I say this with all the love in my heart; Meredith can be a bitch. Her humor is soulless. She does everything her way, and if you call her on anything, she'll blame her dead mom, or Alzheimer's, or her dead mom's Alzheimer's. And she's one of the best friends I have. She takes people in, and once she takes your hand? You're gonna stay upright, whether or not you're on your feet.

"She loves hard, and she loves this hospital. You're going to need diagrams to understand how we're all connected, but everyone owes her our jobs. For most people, it's a lot more."

"Any chance she chose to love the wrong person?" In the same breath, Detective Moore added "what I mean is…" but Derek wondered if she had, when she'd chosen him. "...could she have taken on a fight that wasn't hers? Apologies, Dr. Shepherd, I worded that wrong. Say this guy was a drug-seeker. Could someone close to her have been—?"

"Think you want me."

Derek's head shot up. It felt disloyal to Meredith, but some part of his tension ebbed at the sight of Amelia. Amelia, who was shaking; her lab coat wrinkled, her expression lopsided. Their eyes met. Her face settled into a frown, and Owen came around the corner behind her. "We were in the chapel," he said.

"He hunted me down. Turns out we don't stock communion wine. Dr. Amelia Shepherd, the only person you'll ever meet who got 'oh, you too?' after telling family she'd chosen neurosurgery. Also, the live-in, former junkie sister-in-law, and I can promise you, Meredith doesn't have time to be messed up in anything your vice cops care about. She gets the kids up, takes them to daycare, performs surgeries—and I do mean performs; her epiphanies show us all up—takes the kids home, has occasional Skype sex with my brother, and that's it."

Derek's first thoughts—gonna kill her, wanna strangle her— made him feel sick, but they were those of a child; a twelve-, thirteen-, fourteen-year-old whose little sister grinned and told Rachel Rothschild "my brother thinks your ta-tas are mammoth. Does that mean you have wool on 'em?" She made the same energy shoot into his calves, but there was no action to take when you couldn't chase her around the living room.

"And that is why this—" she gestured toward the ICU door. "—makes no sense." Behind her, Owen shook his head like he was clearing it and then stepped forward. She moved an inch to the side, blocking him. Amazing! The most unflappable man Derek knew could be steamrolled by her. "There's no reason for someone to beat up Meredith Grey. Standing here interrogating my brother is a waste of your goddamned resources."

"As you can see, detectives—" Owen put a hand on Amelia's shoulder, but anyone who watched her step aside would know she'd let him pass. "—everyone here has been affected by today's events. I'd appreciate it if you'd allow Dr. Shepherd the chance to see his wife."

Detective Chakrabarti nodded. Richard crossed his arms. Derek couldn't tell if he was satisfied or envious of the response he'd gotten.

"And you're not going in with him." The focus went to Wilson again, but Derek had played contact sports; he was good at tracking moving people. Owen stepped closer to Jo. The spotlight was off of Amelia. She was shifting slowly toward the wall.

"Dr. Grey is on high-powered painkillers. She can't hear, she can't speak, and she doesn't need to think about the man who did this to her!"

Amelia sank to the floor. She'd spurred everyone to action, and now she was free to collapse. Knowing she was sober—nine hundred seventy-six days; he'd been a jackass for assuming she wasn't—he could see the exhaustion. He glanced around the—was there a word for a collection of doctors? Meredith would know. (Get to Meredith.) He was searching, he'd admit, for his mother. For Addison. Hell, Nancy could've taken over for long enough. That was always the arrangement. Someone watched Amelia until she could be passed back to him.

"Amelia." Her expression looked like Richard's tone made her feel the same as way as the weight of his hand on Derek's shoulder. "Why don't you and I go down to the cafeteria and grab a cup of coffee? Give your brother some time with his wife?" Suddenly, he was addressing every other doctor in their vicinity.

"We need his opinion—" Richard narrowed his eyes. Avery scowled. Derek knew that feeling, too. (He should ask after April.)

"He'll still need to sign the form in half an hour," Callie countered. "Let's call Pierce and argue the plan again. We'll patch her in when we're back," she added to Derek. "You can check on BeeZ." His daughter's voice rang through his head—"Daddy, our 'nitial-letters say 'bee-zuh.' Like bees!"—and the first time that night, Derek smiled.

The ICU door opened.

"Good, you're here. She's coming to." In Karev's eyes, Derek noted the feeling Callie had tried to explain to the police, aimed at the woman who'd once slammed him against a wall.

He could see the edge of the bed; the casted leg propped on a pillow. A catheter trailed under the blanket. Meredith's L.L. Bean bag sitting on a chair. There was a box of those in the back of the closet— "I don't buy them," she'd claim. "Seriously. Someone gives you one. You use it one day because your backpack fell apart, and the next person thinks they know exactly what to get for your birthday. You have five by the time a stitch breaks on the first one." Probably true. The one she'd carried during her internship still got used.

He'd been prying her off of Karev's collar, before he'd really been sure the shouting voice was hers. He hadn't dreamed he'd become adept at calculating how long she'd been awake by how hoarse she'd gotten or known why she vehemently insisted she was from Seattle when letting her guard down took her straight to South Boston, but. He couldn't have. Understanding had taken details he wouldn't learn for months and wouldn't put together for years.

"Come on, now." Miranda turned to the side to frown up at him. "You've listened to me tell you to stay away before, and now I'm telling you to go. So, go."

Did Callie shove him forward, or something else? Someone else? He was ashamed that it took anything to make his legs cross a threshold he'd stepped over innumerable times. Meredith never hesitated at this point. He'd never doubted that she was better than him.

In the wake of other disasters, there'd been signs of what she'd made it through: the pallor, the single incisions, the scratches from branches ripping at her as she'd searched for him. This time, damage was on display. All of it, with the x-ray of her ribs on the lightbox. Red-tinged bruising snuck out from the edges of the blanket partially covering her right leg. One arm was braced to the PCA, and one braced, her left hand swollen below the wrist fracture. They'd draped her with a gown, untied—Her ribs wouldn't be visible underneath it, would they? It'd been years since "skin and bone" had been more than a joke between them, but…No. Fifty-one successes. That was not a Meredith who was anything less than extraordinarily well. He hadn't gotten that inattentive.

He could see why they'd seen Battle's sign under her eyes, though away from the chaos of a trauma room it was obvious that the right side was worse. There were bruises spattered under her left eye, but her right eyelid might as well have been covered by dark purple shadow. It trailed down to the goose-egg that made the injury to her jaw obvious. They'd bent a Breathe-Rite stripe over her nose to open her airway as fall as possible. He'd have to let them know it might not have much effect.

Her lower lip was split. He held his finger over the spot to confirm his suspicion. It was exactly where she tended to bite it. Below that, a border dressing covered the incision where Avery had gone in to address the "tracheal injury;" the euphemism they were all using to mean someone had strangled her.

He was watching her chest so intently that he didn't notice the uptick in her heart rate until her eyelids fluttered. He started to grab for her hand, but he was on the wrong side for that. Her gaze was bleary, but several blinks left her more focused than he'd expect from someone in her position. How much of that was understanding, and how much was fear?

Tentatively, he rested the backs of his fingers on her forehead, and she moved a hair closer in response to his touch. She was warm. She was breathing. She was alive.

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

Meredith tried to say no; tried to scream. Something pulled in her temple, and the instinctive cry made it happen again, and she couldn't get the sound to rise; couldn't pry her mouth open. Her tongue hit her teeth and stopped. A metallic taste filled her mouth. She associated surgery with the plasticy aftertaste of a breathing tube, but there was something unfamiliar dangling in her throat. Pressure from her searing chest built up around it. She couldn't swallow. She couldn't breathe.

A face appeared over her, her heart seized, and without warning her body figured out a second option. Air burst through her nose with a force that made her head rise enough to bump down again. She felt the vibration against the back of her lips, but all she could hear was the buzzing, the ghost of a voice.

Alex moved closer. No. Different blue. Derek blue, a little washed out by the lights above the ICU bed. Derek. Derek was here. She was in an ICU bed, so Derek was here. He touched her face. His fingers were soft. Cool. Right. Not new. He'd been here. How long?

He said something. She couldn't hear over the fluorescent buzz. The hospital wasn't at capacity. Hadn't been, anyway. Why put her in a room with noisy lights? Hey, maybe. Or okay. The second one was a lie. She'd let him lie. His shoulders moved, shifting his attention without breaking eye contact.

Maggie was standing at the foot of her bed with Callie and Jackson, gesturing toward the lightbox on the wall. Trying to focus on it made Meredith flinch. Maggie took a step to the side, blocking it. Didn't matter. She remembered the burn of the chest tube going in.

Derek stroked her cheek. Did he think it was her fault this time? Did he know he was right? She couldn't ask. She couldn't tell. She'd accept the damsel in distress role, cradled by the illusion that Derek could keep her safe. Lying still and continuing to breathe didn't seem like much of a curse. It was a spell that would be broken. The past and pain were the same that way. They always caught up to you. That was the morale she'd never learned.