"You Daddy."
"Yeah, bud," Derek confirmed for what might've been the hundredth time, trying to keep his son's fingers from his nose with the hand on the arm carrying him. "I am."
"We have only this daddy," Zola reminded her brother from his other arm. "Sofi has the both mommies and one daddy our uncle Mark who died, the uncles Joe and Walter are two daddies. For us is daddy and mommy, and a lot of love-us ones. And no step halfs like my friend Jeremy has." She put her head on Derek's shoulder like the explanation had drained her. Following it hadn't been easy for him, and he'd spent days listening to a lot of very smart people making arguments like their audience was full of infants.
"Daddy, Zo-Zee!"
"You don't always know he understands," Zola lamented. "He hears. You have to hear some things a lot to learn. Mommy teaches me about learning. So's I can teach B.B. and others, and they can learn, too."
"Others?"
"Friends nicely. Cousins I gotta meet. Sometimes, if a 'nadult is very wrong."
Derek winced. Hopefully, Meredith had put strictures on what "very wrong" meant. He pushed up the yogurt in the tube Bails was sucking on. He needed to stock up on those. They'd be useful one Mer was off the clear liquids diet, and on the any-liquids, only-liquids diet that she was going to despise. He'd add it to the note on his phone.
Somewhere, Meredith probably had a comprehensive list of things that'd ended up in the bags they'd used during the times one of them was in-patient, and the things that shouldn't have been. Until he could ask her where that was, he'd be on his own, and even the times she'd been the patient, he'd mostly followed her instructions.
"Maybe a baby," Zola added. A squirt of banana yogurt oozed on the table and Bailey screeched. "A quieter one. But Mommy says they all start at louder because they need tension. We couldn't get one for my birthday, or Christmas, or Family Day, or Bailey's birthday, because you have to be together, and then things take time because cells are small and have to become full big babies. And it's never a sure."
Good grief. His wife deserved a medal for being able to stay one step ahead of her, and it wasn't the first time he'd known Zola must've tried her best to box her in.
His wife who lay upstairs, mostly senseless. Who needed him up there; but even if he hadn't promised the kids he'd get them for lunch, she would've figured it out somehow. He could tell she was already trying to be an easy patient—more than she could be. He told the tech to find somewhere else to take her blood pressure when the cuff squeezed a hand-shaped bruise hard enough for tears to leak onto her pillow. He noticed that whenever she'd been truly asleep, not drifting in and out, she woke up with a jolt; one he knew. It followed all of her nightmares. He pressed the call button when the ice packs numbing her jaw began to melt, wishing, waiting, for the moment he could remind her the contraption used to hold them was called a "jaw bra."
Things weren't going to get easier right away. They'd hardly moved her at this point because any time they did her eyes squeezed shut, her face shifting in a shadow of an expression he knew. He associated it with the sharp taste of tequila kisses, and the groan of annoyance that was as likely to become laughter as not by the time it was tagged by a variant of "shit, spinning." Here, there was only misery swimming in her eyes once she opened them, her skin going quickly clammy.
"Are you going to take us to bedtime again tonight?" Zola asked.
"Uh…." He'd hadn't planned to go home, but he could: take them, gather more overnight stuff than he'd found squirreled away in his office and her locker on the first night, and come back to the cot by Mer's bed. They needed routine, and as exhausted as he was, they livened him up. "Sure, baby girl."
Her face lit up. "And Momma?"
"Mama?" Bailey repeated, looking around the cafeteria.
"Not yet. Remember what we talked about with Auntie 'Zona?"
Zola sipped from her juice-box. Was it projection to imagine she'd picked up Meredith's stalling tactics? "She said Mommy had a accident, and had to have surgeries on her hurts. That makes her a patient."
"And where do patients sleep?"
"On the floor."
"On the surgical floor. They have beds."
Zola's frown lessened a tiny bit. "I figured that. Maybe Bailey didn't."
"Now he knows. Mommy's healing. That means, she's going to get better, but for now she's a patient so that she's where the doctors taking care of her are."
"We got doctors at our house."
"More than the American average. But Mommy's doctors aren't brain doctors. Her doctors are Aunt Callie, and Dr. Avery, and Aunt Maggie. They—"
"Oh, thank God."
Derek startled as Jo Wilson's hands came down on the table.
"Jo-Jo!" Bailey reached for her as Zola said, "Dr. Jo, my daddy is home! Momma got a few hurts. Few is more than two."
"I know, sweetie," Wilson said, managing a decent smile considering how heavily she was breathing. She wasn't panicked. She wasn't calm, either. "Dr. Shepherd, you—" She glanced at the kids again. "Dr. Torres needs a consult. In the ICU."
His heartrate spiked. He held Bailey up over the side of the table, and he went to Jo easily. More easily than he'd gone to Derek a couple of days ago.
"Daddy, no!" Zola grabbed his arm. "You're a doctor in the D.C., not with us."
Meredith had told him that saying that over Christmas would bite him in the ass. "Unless you're not planning on ever working where they live again." He'd dismissed it in annoyance, like she hadn't known them significantly better at that point.
"I'm going to be a doctor here while Mommy's a patient." That would be a good explanation for the next time something like this—and what was this, what was going on? —happened.
"Just here?"
He could feel Wilson's eyes on him and would've been willing to bet that they were as wide as his daughter's. Being on Meredith's service as frequently as she had put her front-row center to quite a few of their discussions over the past year, and God only knew what she'd heard by virtue of living with Karev.
"Just here."
Zola pursed her lips. That was Amelia. How long would it take to identify every member of Zola and Bailey's little village in their expressions, and would he be here to do it? "You'll pick us up at shift end?"
"Yes," he said, and then hesitated with one leg poised to leave. He had to keep the promises he made them. Consistency would be hard to guarantee for the next month or two, and he hadn't needed Arizona to remind him they needed it. He hadn't been their primary parent in over a year, and Meredith's people, as a whole, had taken his place as co-parent. He'd let them take up plenty of slack, but he owed it to the kids—to Meredith—to step up. He could prioritize being her husband and their dad.
"Evening shift." he clarified. The childcare center they'd overhauled at the time of the reopening was staffed 24/7, but there were regulations that kept that from being abused. Things like limits on overnights, and scheduling pick-ups at the end of a shift.
Zola wasn't a pouter; her lip folded back instead. She'd almost trapped him, and she knew it. If he'd gotten a text at three saying that Zola said they were being picked up at afternoon shift-change, he'd have felt guilty about the misunderstanding and headed for the daycare. He'd have to tell—he needed to start a list of things to tell Meredith. "Okay," she said. "Deal."
"Good girl. I love you."
She said it back while he kissed the crown of the baby's head, and it wasn't until he turned a corner and started sprinting that he realized he hadn't explicitly told Wilson to make them finish eating and take them back to daycare. She'd figure it out. He opened the door to the stairwell at the exact same time he heard Bailey start to wail. You Daddy, he thought, and started up two steps at a time.
There was commotion on the ICU floor, but it wasn't centered around Meredith's room. A code team was surrounding a door on the other side of the nurse's station. The uniformed officer standing at Meredith's door was watching it so attentively that he didn't notice Derek's approach.
"Let me through, please?"
"Eh? Oh, sure, Dr. Shepherd. She's calmed down since he left."
Next to the bed stood Callie, and while she was doing it as gently as possible, she was holding Meredith's fractured wrist with both hands. Discarded bandaging, half-open rolls of fresh gauze, and an unraveling compression wrap formed a pile at the foot of the bed.
"Where do you need me?" he asked.
"What'd you do with my resident? I needed you both!"
"I gave her the kids." Derek said. Meredith was awake, the eye she could hold open glassy, but following him with sharp movements. "Can I page another one?"
The leg he could only refer to as less injured was bent up. He met Meredith's eyes whole touching her calf. She tensed, and he looked for a bruise he'd missed. Before he could ensure there was nothing, she relaxed it, and then her eyes cut away from him, almost like…she was embarrassed over something. That took doing.
"I don't…Karev. Get Karev. He's been in here today, right?"
"Yeah, why? What's going on?" He took his phone out of his pocket and sent a text one-handed, scanning her monitors, and covering her other hand with his.
"She's maxed out," Callie said while he tapped the unmoving PCA button, frustrated. "I used the physician override. She shouldn't be awake, but she…she freaked out."
The Breathe-Rite strip had come off of her nose. Derek flicked it onto the tray and arranged the icepacks to cover more of the bruising on Meredith's cheek. It was stiff with the salt of dried tears. "What's wrong, baby?" he murmured, futilely. "You examined her?"
"Tried to." He raised his eyebrows. "I am telling you, Derek. I was in here with Wilson, and Hunt came in, and out of nowhere she freaked. She almost walloped me with the cast. I'd have told you she couldn't lift it yet. If she could scream...well, it would've been a lot less eerie."
"What was he doing?" He moved the blanket and gown that were already askew. The bruising below the wrap around her ribs made him wince; any deeper and she would've had internal bleeding.
"I don't know, his job?"
He tucked both layers down, and touched Meredith's left cheek, turning it toward him enough that she was looking at him. He held his hand up flattened and flipped it. She stared at him, and he tried to think of another way to ask her rather than hurting her unnecessarily—he stiffened the hand on her cheek to keep her from shaking her head more than once.
"Okay," he said. "Okay."
"I don't think there's anything wrong," Callie said. "Worse," she added, and his disbelief must've been exaggerated, because Meredith's eyes darted between them. Then the door opened. Meredith didn't react until Karev's shadow hit the bed, a function of the exact way the sun came through the blinds.
She freaked out.
It didn't last more than a second; a fraction of what Callie must've witnessed, but if she hadn't been as strong as she was, Meredith would've gotten her injured arm free. She managed to pull herself almost all the way onto her side with her other arm wrapped around Derek's, the PCA slid down her wrist, and she bent her other leg up again. Protecting herself, he realized as she turned her head against him, the chill of her icepacks bleeding through the arm of his sweater.
"What's going on?" Karev rocked in place, toward Meredith, and then away from her. She squinted, and the recognition was visible for about a second before the fresh tears. Derek wouldn't have thought her face could've taken on more color if he hadn't seen it. Whatever had made her panic at the sight of Owen had her worked up; the pain, adrenaline, and opiates had made her react the same way to being startled by a similar silhouette, and she was humiliated by it.
Meredith freaking Grey.
"Hey, hey." Derek lowered the rail on the side of the bed and sat next to her, adjusting her covers and cords while Callie directed Karev, and then ran through the whole thing again.
Karev squeezed Meredith's fingers as he supported her wrist, smiling at her reassuringly. To look away from him, she had to look at Derek. Her nose had gone from the irritated pink, leftover from the nasal intubation tube, to red. His immediate thought, that the NG tube must be doing something, disappeared as her eyes glistened over.
"We've got you, Mer," he said, forcing back the platitudes she would've rejected, it's okay, you're all right, and not giving into the urge to shush her, when not only was it good for her to cry, but she wasn't making a sound. "I'm right here. Not going anywhere."
The PCA clicked. Derek heard Callie exhale at the same time he did. Another few minutes passed before Meredith's eyes stayed closed, and it took longer than that for the lines on her face to settle.
"Did he touch her throat?" Karev asked; his voice low, even though she wouldn't have heard him. Derek had found himself doing the same thing. He figured it wasn't a bad habit. She'd get her hearing back.
"Crap," Callie said. "I was there, I should've thought of that."
"What are you…?" Derek slumped. "He strangled Cristina."
"And she's drugged, and traumatized, and who knows what she's thinking, yeah."
"Jesus." Karev muttered.
"She would've gone after him if he hadn't decided to get treatment," Callie observed. "Derek?"
"Hm?"
"Smash all of Ellis Grey's antiques with your freaking bat. Chop down a whole copse of trees in the woods. Do whatever it is you want to do to the guy who hurt her to something else, because if you attack him in police custody, you'll be arrested, too. The cops might be lenient given the situation, and who you are, but she won't."
"Really?" Karev demanded. "She's hurt like this and—"
"It's not that she's hurt," Derek interrupted. "God knows, she doesn't deserve it, and I'd take it on for her. I'd breathe for her if it helped. It's…have you ever seen her as scared for herself before?"
"No," Callie answered. "And I pushed her up against the locker room wall once."
"Did you?"
"Yeah…." Callie paused, eyeing him nervously. "She never told you that?"
"Oh, she did."
"You're being weird. You have the right, at the moment, but—"
"Fine, whatever, ha-ha," Karev burst out. "Meredith pinned me in the same place. It's a very funny coincidence, happy?"
"No, but it's objectively funny." How long after that had she told Derek there were better ways take someone on at her size, but her fists could be effectual on the soft parts? Did whomever put her in that bed have the half-moon marks of her nails on his face? "She can defend herself," Derek added, stroking her forehead. He wasn't saying she could swim. He wasn't. "And the cops had a point, she'd go after someone trying to hurt someone she loves. This…She's not afraid for anyone else."
"Meaning what?" Callie demanded. "She doesn't think this guy could hurt someone bigger than her? Because if she's this badly beaten up—"
"No," Karev said. "She doesn't think he will. If it was an obvious fluke, she wouldn't be worried. But if you know her…you're gonna threaten someone else first."
"No one here knows anything."
"So, what?" Callie asked. "It's something to do with before she came to Seattle? She's a prep school kid from Beacon Hill. I know she thinks she's the dark Slayer, but what kind of trouble could she have really gotten into?"
Derek leaned carefully over Meredith and took the hand Karev was holding. Her fingers were swollen from her broken wrist. He signaled for Karev to take it again and lifted her other hand. Her knuckles were unmarked. Her nails were clean. Was it sick to hope that the last thing she'd bitten down on was an arm, letting her native bacteria continue to attack back? He decided it wasn't. The other possibility was that she hadn't gotten to fight at all.
Tell Meredith not to. Not to. Not to tell, Meredith. Meredith tell. You told, Meredith. Tell, Meredith. Tell Meredith not to get involved. Tell Meredith not to get involved. Tell Meredith not to let down her guard. What did I tell you, Meredith?
Tell Meredith not to tell. I told you not to tell. Told you. Told you, Death. Are you going to tell, Meredith? Going to tell Meredith? Tell Meredith. Tell, Meredith. Tell Meredith not to make my mistakes. Can't tell. I can't tell. Tell me. Tell me, Meredith. Tell Meredith not to do that. Tell Meredith not to cry. Tell Meredith not to try. Tell Meredith? Nothing. Tell Meredith not today. Tell Meredith not tomorrow.
Tell Meredith not to go. Not to go to Europe. Not to go to Seattle. Not to go to med school. You don't have to go to med school. Mom told her. Told her she'd never be a doctor.
Tell Meredith not to stay. Tell Meredith not to come back. Tell Meredith not to be soft. Not to be silly. Not to be weak. Tell Meredith not to follow him. Tell Meredith not to speak to him. Tell Meredith not to speak. Not to tell. Never tell anyone anything.
Tell Meredith not to break. Tell Meredith not to make my mistakes. Tell Meredith not to believe. Not to behave. Not to be late. Meredith was too late. Too late to tell. Tell. Tell, Meredith. Meredith, tell. Meredith, what did I tell you?
Mom told her. Mom told her to be quiet, not to cry, not to worry, not to be afraid. Not to call. Not to fight.
Tell Meredith not to open her mouth. Tell Meredith not to scream. Tell Meredith not to let him see. Meredith,are you even listening? Meredith can't tell.
Day three. In ideal circumstances, the majority of injuries began to go from hemostasis to inflammation. Peak swelling, peak acute pain. The neutrophils Derek had imagined being overwhelmed by Meredith's bacteria in her attacker were starting to clear, with no signs of infection. Thank God, she hadn't sustained open wounds, only surgical ones, and so far, the high-power antibiotics had done their job. Her immune system was getting signals from all over her body; using as much energy as it could to provide for each patch of bruising.
Day three also meant that they could use heat against her chest and face, when it didn't seem like they were producing too much of their own. She liked cold in small doses; but he hadn't needed to actively track them to notice that her dreams pulled her underwater more on cold nights.
He couldn't believe she'd gotten curled up in the corner of the bed just yesterday, she was holding herself so stiffly, even in her sleep. That control couldn't help the oral numbness and dysphagia causing saliva to eke out of her mouth. Awake, she tried to make a point of swallowing.
"It could not be more obvious that it hurts," he lamented to Miranda that afternoon. "She can't feel her mouth; can't be consistent. She's absolutely trying to save me trouble; I get it, and there's absolutely no way to get that across to her!"
"That's true whether she can hear you or not. You'd be getting a half-dozen quips about the baby's last molars, and a reminder that your meant to eat that salad I used my time to bring up here, probably with a note about it being rabbit food."
"She's gotten better about that."
"She gave up on learning to cook and knows you don't want the kids brought up on Chef Boyardee and Hot Pockets. I assume you and your sister got your recipes from the same source."
"I don't want the kids—?" He cut himself off, looking down at Meredith, sure he'd find her staring at him.
Earlier, she'd cracked her eyes open, and the bruising had reminded him of the smoky-eye she'd used for Yang's wedding. It wasn't the only time he'd seen her pull the look off, but in his head, it was tied to the look she gave him in the holding cell, and he kept thinking back to her honesty the next day. He'd had a few "Is this Derek Shepherd?" calls in relation to Amy, but like Meredith's fall into Elliot Bay, he'd been on-site for the worst of it. He hadn't had experience with the type of phone call she was terrified of, and now that he had, he understood her fear significantly more. He should've understood it without her needing to say it.
"Actually, I taught Amelia to cook, originally. When, uh, when our father died, we lived for a good six months on dishes the neighbors brought. My dad ran the corner shop, knew everyone, and if you think Richard's nosy…. Dad gave advice, but I don't think he really…well, Richard can be a little…."
"Involved?" Miranda offered.
"Mm. What Dad liked was following one story to the next. The connections between people. What made them make their choices. Didn't do anything to get people to shut down on him…we had gifts for a while. There were occasional explosions about charity from my sisters, but Dad used to say the neighborhood was family, and Mom…we did a lot to make it easier on Mom.
"In spite of the family who thought Mom would…I don't know, be heading to the widow's section of the poorhouse without it, turns out, selling Dad's store and their pensions gave her a decent amount of savings. She invested, and she worked. More than…more than she did when I was in elementary school. Owns the house now. My sisters and I paid off the last of her mortgage, but it wasn't much."
He could feel Meredith's x-ray vision through her eyelids. He'd admitted to her that he'd written that check before his older sisters got there. They hadn't been that far into their careers; only grown up listening to Mom say that should've held onto the starter apartment her parents had left them; that real estate was the smartest investment, rent control was well and good, but owning your home was the closest thing to a guarantee in this world. He'd thought he was paying them back, too. Helping them get started, like they'd helped him get through— "and did you tell them that?" Meredith had asked. Like it was that easy.
Maybe it should've been.
"Did you meet Nancy? She's the one who visited, uh, not too long after her appy." He stroked his thumb over the arch of Meredith's forehead, at the very edge of the last pinpricks of bruising from her left eye. It was also a gesture that usually helped her sleep.
"I believe I had the privilege."
"She was the oldest at home by then; Kathleen had just started college. When Nancy was getting ready to leave, I got onto the hockey team."
"Didn't you once tell me you were a skinny band nerd?"
"Oh, I was." He studied her, thinking back to those times they spent chatting in the lobby. He would've been thrilled to imagine that he'd come to know her as an attending, a coworker, Meredith's coworker. It would've seemed like a perfect future. He would've been with happy, without knowing a thing about his own career.
"There have been musicians who could get their rage out through a sax. I grew up on the edge of Harlem, I'm aware that it's possible, but I am far more capable with surgical instruments." He'd been going to ask for an electric guitar the year Dad died, but by Christmas none of them had quite put together what the family's finances looked like—"You want numbers? Do your math homework."—and besides, Uncle Adam was teaching him on an acoustic.
"Yeah, I guess you've always done all right admitting to your obvious flaws."
He wanted to push her past her smile. Was she alluding to something he didn't know about, something Meredith mentioned over one of those fifty-one bodies she'd kept running? The PCA clicked.
"I was fast. Hard to catch," he said. "And Mom and Dad never stopped my sisters from rough housing. Checking people…." He swallowed—the slice of blades over unspoiled ice, Mikey's quick release of breath against the boards, the scan from something called Magnetic Resonance Imaging, the drawn acne-spotted cheeks— "I only played three years. Practices put a wrench in the cooking schedule, and Lizzie had a…well…." He looked at Meredith again, this time wishing to see her eyes, to have her smile. "A shit fit about the idea that as a girl, she'd obviously be expected to take on extra nights. In retrospect, I'm sure we should've talked to Mom, and sure that we didn't."
He sighed, shifting his hold on Meredith's hand. No marks had appeared on her knuckles, but what had been a goose egg had flattened on the center of her palm. Would it have been better if she had caught herself evenly, or would being moderately injured on both sides have brought equivalent hardship?
"Amelia says she was raised by a pack. A pack of Shepherds. But while she was in grade school, it was Mark and me. She did get more McDonald's than I'd probably give BeeZ, but I taught her to cook, too."
Mark had stolen her Happy Meal toys, helped her make up cheers for the hockey team, and let her wear his letter jacket when he'd started ninth grade on Varsity. Mark had gotten to be—basically, while they were kids—a brother.
Miranda smiled. "Never thought I'd miss that man the way I do. He settled here pretty quick considering that rolling stone vibe he gave off. Guess that's familiar for a reason." She cut her eyes at Meredith, whose forehead was sinking into furrows.
Derek wrapped his hand more soundly around hers, pressing the PCA button once, twice; her face smoothed before it locked. "Good girl."
I'm not a child, Derek. That's what she'd say in front of Miranda. Almost never in private—Never the way she'd said, "I know what my hair looks like, and if you call me 'honey' one more time, I'll jam my very pointy elbows into your gut. Trust me when I say it's over-used."—She'd heard so many things, so many times, and he knew her, she'd be hearing them again and again in this situation, he wished he'd found a way to get the same objection from "love," "precious," "sweetheart." She even accepted "baby," without more than an occasional protest, which pleasantly surprised him once he'd gotten to know her. That any part of her knew she'd deserved to be babied was one of the small Meredith miracles.
She was a whole miracle.
"Did you read Chose Your Own Adventure books?" he asked. Miranda nodded, her lips pursed curiously over her straw. "I don't know if they were around when I was the age for them, but Amelia loved them. She'd always choose the extreme options, even in the ones that were obviously trying to divert you from that. Then she'd go back and do it the other way; wanted to make sure she didn't miss anything.
"I'd flip through and try to figure out which choices made the best story. Mark would wait for me to finish and say, 'so, do we survive?'" It wasn't the first time he'd explained their friendship with that anecdote. Usually, it got a laugh, and the conversation moved on. Miranda hummed, accepting the story, but not truly taking it.
Did he and Mark agree about what made the best story? He'd gone for the obviously "daring" options enough to make it interesting; rarely did Mark say he hadn't made enough "exciting choices" the way Amy had. He just made sure the book ended with success; riches, love, happily ever after. They never said how you were supposed to make the choices that followed.
"Trust me," he said. "I dealt with plenty of guilt over leading him out here."
"Now, you know better than to think that's something I— "
"Oh, it's egotistical as hell; Meredith made sure I knew that. Made me remember how even we were in terms of making decisions based on each other's lives. He could've gone back if he'd wanted to."
"You don't remember life before being jealous of him was in you, do you?" she murmured. He adjusted the heat-pack around Meredith's head with a chagrinned smile. How many times had she told him that Dr. Bailey could see what you were thinking?
"I have a couple of memories from before the day a snotty little kid tried to talk me out of my 1960 Hank Aaron…uh, anyway, I get your point. He would've gotten Amelia take-out every other day if I'd let him. He'd point out that period where we got food from the neighbors… Wasn't he a neighbor? But… Mom made casseroles, too. I understood that give-and-take. Didn't see what we were giving Mark, I guess. You can know that someone's parents aren't around. It's harder to understand that they can be there, but not be a family. The bitter irony of it all is that Mark's father was a surgeon."
"Of course he was."
He pressed the PCA button to relax the pull of Meredith's lip, touching the spot where it had been. They could only guess at what was numb, what itched, what tugged, and assume that her answer to "what hurts?" would be "everything."
"Ellis cooked once or twice a week. Took the leftovers to work, most of the time. Occasionally there were housekeepers, but generally, Meredith knew how long she was going to be home by how much cash was left on the counter. If she'd known how to cook, there'd have been more groceries on Friday, and that'd be it."
There was a reversal of the equation: in never taking the time to teach Meredith to make even the basic dishes she did, Ellis might've been freeing her from "the expectations of domesticity" while hindering her independence— "Don't you know, Derek? Career women pay the plebs to cook, just to ensure nothing they make passes the lips of a man."—She'd also given herself that one responsibility: "I have to make sure my daughter doesn't starve."
Was it actually wanting that connection? Was it an excuse to get away from the hospital? A brag, to remind everyone around her: she wasn't simply a female surgeon, she was A Mother, whether they liked it or not? Did she shame the men who she "supposed" made their wives solely at fault if dinner wasn't on the table? Whatever it'd been, it hadn't been enough. Sometimes he wondered if anything ever was—not that that was a reason to give up on trying.
Suddenly. Derek heard raised voices, but in the panopticon of the ICU, he could pretend they had nothing to do with his wife, who was frowning in her sleep, five minutes before the PCA would release again.
"Did she ever tell you that she tutored the delivery boys? Had kind of a racket going. Got her the day's best cannolis, and cache whenever someone noticed that the public-school delivery guys lingered at her place. She said it gave her the clout to be choosy. Uh, and now, she'd add 'which is gross, because the prep-school boys should've been taught that we weren't required to be gagging for them or on them.'"
They wished, was usually her last line, but he was already getting the side-eye.
Hey, Mer. I should let you know what I told Miranda. Don't worry, she knows "cannoli" wasn't a euphemism. That time.
He turned her hand again. She hadn't been shy about defending herself as a kid, he knew those stories. As an adult, she'd been the same playground hellion. There had been a point where she was less sure about what she deserved, what she was worth. How deep had that gone? Could it have anything to do with what'd happened three days ago, or was he contorting the situation?
And what, she'd say. Because it's me, I must've done something?
No. No, baby, no. He didn't think that. He just…he wanted a why, because otherwise the why was that the universe's dice had settled on this happening at random, or some deity who felt less and less benevolent to him, believed there wasn't any other way to teach them something—and they were intelligent people. Didn't God—or…or whatever—know that inducing pain was not an effective method of parenting?
The voices were getting louder. Miranda glanced over her shoulder. "Webber," she reported. "Avery. And, oh, there's Pierce."
He ran a hand through his hair. "I think Owen has Webber standing in as his proxy to nod and say, 'all right,' to both of them."
"—too rare to categorize— "
Derek wasn't sure himself if the sound he made into the back of his hand was a laugh or a groan, so Miranda's uncertainty was understood. "Apparently, a system for categorizing laryngeal injuries was only published in the Laryngscope this month. The foundation had it earlier, of course, but Avery has really latched onto that to justify...er..." Say cockblocking I dare you. "Preventing anyone from going in again."
"So, having Pierce take out chest tube under local, and what? Torres…?"
"Casts the arm for a few weeks. Waits until more edema's down. The break might heal without placing anything internal. Since she'll be immobile for a while. It's her non-dominate arm." How many times had he tried to tell himself he'd manage; he was right-handed? It hadn't been the case.
"He's really worried about that airway?"
"That, and he says it's a lot before she can give full, informed consent. Maggie wants to stabilize her ribs— "
"That'd be a godsend," Bailey said, and Derek felt a rush of relief, like he was the one with an IV that wasn't consistently helpful. "Same procedure as the arm?"
"Uh, yeah. Three would be..." He trailed off. They put patients through any number of procedures, but each one had risks he wasn't sure any of them truly acknowledged: the general public because surgery was commonplace and convenient, surgeons for the same reason they'd undercut the dangers before they truly understood anesthetic. A desire to help, yes, but also an equal amount arrogance and curiosity. Until, of course, the patient's life mattered exponentially more than progression of the discipline.
"It'd be undue stress," Miranda pointed out. "To draw either out that way. I wouldn't play games with that arm, non-dominant or not. She'll take a scalpel to them if she goes through all of this and isn't able to get back to work."
"I know."
"Isn't it your opinion that matters here?"
Derek twisted his lips to the side; it should've been, yeah. They'd dealt with next-of-kin scenarios where estranged family hadn't seen each other in decades, but Avery kept giving him dismissive looks, like he'd lost the right to talk.
"—morale with a trach— "
"All right," Miranda said, standing. "I don't care if she can hear that or not, she doesn't need that. I'm not Chief, I don't have to be diplomatic when I tell Avery being conservative is not causing her less pain. This is why we don't let family operate on family, but who knew? Those Aladdin eyes are all kinds of magical, but they sure do hide a lot." With their trash gathered, she put a bracing hand on Derek's shoulder. "You are her voice right now. Anyone thinks you haven't earned that right can talk to me. Just because you've disagreed doesn't mean you don't know her. Might be the opposite."
It was true that he learned a lot about Meredith by what made her stand her ground, and what made her lash out for other reasons. And maybe he should want to be as hands-off as Avery; he'd hurt her without wanting to, and Derek would admit while he'd rarely been aware of wanting more than for her to shut up, give it up, leave him alone, making her feel what he did was in there somewhere. The guilt over it made him want to do everything for her. To assuage pain that was worse than anything she'd ever given, should ever experience.
Under her lids, Meredith's eyes were moving. Her teeth, wired together as tightly as possible, became obviously clenched. The meds did nothing to change the outward appearance of the dream, and he hoped that they didn't make whatever she was dreaming into one of the nightmares she jerked awake from.
As he dabbed the corner of her mouth with a terrycloth, she blinked, her eyes slitted and foggy. "Hey," he murmured. He managed to slip an arm behind her shoulders before she coughed. Her face contorted in a grimace, and the next one came in a seizing motion, like she'd tried to hold it in. "Oh, don't, sweetheart. I know it hurts," he said—then what good are you? —tilting her upward, and carefully sliding the aspirator into her mouth. It took it a second to pull out the clot. He hissed through his teeth at it—modeling something she could do? —Day three. Most of the blood should've been out of her stomach, but shewasn't coughing enough; he'd seen the hitches other times she'd fought it.
He'd barely emptied the aspirator in the nearest basin when she jerked again—a relatively small movement that was huge when you imagined all the invisible pulls and aches she'd amassed. He brought his hand around to a put it on her chest, to try to give her resistance. The compression bandage around her chest had her breasts pushed up at an angle different from what he would've been accustomed to; he'd tried to avoid brushing them in his hurry to deal with the moment—He thought he had. He wanted to be better at applying yesterday's lessons to today. —Her right hand slammed the PCA against his wrist. Her eyes flew open. He winced for her. Whatever level the pain was at, the swelling would've made that hurt. He stayed still while she put together what had happened—dream-coughing-misery-pain-touching-not there!-Derek.—Her wrapped arm, he noticed, had risen off the pile of pillows propping it. Callie needed to put that hardware in yesterday.
"It's me," he said, holding her gaze. The fogginess enunciated the gray in her eyes more than the blue or green. "I've got you."
Another spasm coursed through her. Her throat was moving visibly under the bandage, but she wasn't swallowing, not while he was clearing her mouth from the other direction. She was struggling to make a sound, any sound that gave voice—her voice, her objection—to this.
He angled her forward a little, watching her face for the spinning flinch. So many broad reactions in her repertoire, but her own feelings were tiny tells, why use the energy, if no one cared? On her back there were occasional marks from the edge of a metal shelf, but nothing like the abstract canvas of ecchymosis on her front. He rubbed circles between her shoulders, trying to use the pattern of her breathing to time the release of the PCA and make the next cough easier on her. She tried harder to stifle them, tensing everything, which only made expulsion take more force from the area of her diaphragm.
She was shaking when the fit finally abated, and he propped her back on the pillows. Her lips quavered, but not to forecast tears. Whimpering, he realized. Silently. He kissed the top of her head. It'd only been a few months since the stalemate they'd been in had kept her from showing him how much she'd been reeling.
Her breath caught again; her eyes widened, flicked back and forth in a clear "no." Her next inhalation was shorter.
"Breathe," he directed, enunciating the single word, his palm on her heart. He angled his arm for her to see that's all he was touching. "That's all. Air in, air out. All you have to do." He brought the aspirator to her mouth again. Her lip ticked down slightly. "Better than seeing you swallow." He pointed to his throat and then to her and made a face. Her eyes rolled. "If you could open your mouth, you'd use a whole bottle of numbing spray before having to let anyone know it hurt this much."
Her breath remained jagged for a minute or so—thirty seconds—wavering as she flipped between consciousness and sleep at the speed of a blink. The PCA reset, and he cupped her hand, holding with both of his while she depressed the button. "That's right." She brought their hands down slowly, and then bumped her thumb against a wrinkle in the sheet. "What, love?" She squinted, blinked out of sleep, plucked at the sheet, her eyelids slipped; she shuddered awake. He smoothed the cover, which was light in deference to the heating pad on her ribs. She pinched it again, tuggingit. He flipped it off her side, just before it started to reveal discoloration. Either she didn't notice, or she preferred that, because she stopped plucking. Her hand shifted to arrange his arm against her bare skin.
"Soft, huh?" he murmured. Cold. Heat. Soft. Stable. He could do that. She didn't look at him again before her breathing settled, and she was out again. Asleep. Still. Frozen, in spite of the heat packs covering her.
There'd been times when stillness had been a blessing. When she'd physically push away from pain. He'd held her several nights after the liver transplant to keep her from popping stitches. —"So ironic. usedta try so hard to stay in my body. Make my brain shut up. Now it's my body making my brain loud. I got it. Something's breeched. Swear I don't need the alarm bells."—It'd been a matter of waiting for the painkillers to take the edge off, and she could settle. Having a portion of an organ cut out sounded worse than being beaten up; surgery was still considered more barbaric than taking out your own emotions on someone else. Someone smaller. Someone who willingly gave up a portion of an organ, and eight weeks of training—But surgery was controlled. Precise, with every move calculated to make her recovery as comfortable as possible. The sheer breadth of this damage meant that stronger medications could only do so much. The edges of the breaks weren't clean; they needed to be held in place to heal. Pain might be a deterrent from moving, but it led to fear.
With movements as gradual and careful as Meredith's had been, he found her call button. The nurses already responded simply, "on our way," and then left the line open for a moment, for situations like this, where a proxy was making the request.
"It's Dr. Shepherd, Priya. Can you send in Dr. Avery, Dr. Pierce and whomever else is part of the debate at the moment?"
"Yes sir."
He waited for the light to turn off to return the call button to the bedside table. "The last thing in the world you need is to be afraid to breathe."
It would start a new cycle for the wounds created by scalpels; hemostasis and inflammation would come around again, as controlled and bolstered as they could be, and by the time the scar tissue started forming—the scars—they'd be even, if not the first to heal.
"That's what we do, isn't it?" he said, wryly. "Do you realize I see it? We do it all again, and again…. It shouldn't take seeing you like this for me to realize…." He hunched forward, pressing his forehead to their clasped hands. "We're going to make this as easy as possible, okay? I'll take care of you. You and the kids. You're safe."
She should've been safe. What good was owning the hospital, of putting in every possible security protocol that didn't impede patient care, and then revamping patient care to increase security, if this could happen on a random Tuesday morning.
If he'd been there….
If he'd been there, he couldn't have done anything for sure. That was how he could offer Avery any sympathy here; he'd been by April's side, his unborn child's side, and couldn't prevent or take on any of their pain, only feel his own. But Dr. Grey calling for a neuro consult had always made Derek move more quickly. Always. Almost always.
He sank down onto the edge of the glider right as Richard touched the button that opened the door. He stood up again, putting himself between Meredith and the others, staying at an angle where she'd be able to see more of his face than Richard.
If he'd been here—or if this had happened in November, before the conversations that had forced him to accept that Meredith wasn't just jealous, like she'd been of Cristina, or as Richard had been of her mother. She wasn't ready to be levered out of Seattle, no more than she'd been two years ago, and he'd been willing to blow her life, and their children's—She might still be lying there damaged as though there had been a blast; more than she'd been the time she was in one. The nine hours it'd taken him to get to her had felt interminable; thinking he could've interrupted those thirty seconds would've been insufferable, a guilt he might not have gotten past.
His sense that he wasn't simply taking on Meredith's habit of spinning worst-case scenario webs wasn't something he wanted known. He wished he didn't have to know it himself, but denial would only start the cycle again, and it wouldn't be any more controlled.