Baby MerMer...and baby Derek? Together? In the same class? :O
Hello and welcome to day 21!
Today's one-shot is based of a request from Dianne and features Meredith and Derek as interns, with some initial rivalry and slight hatred that very quickly turns to...well, I'm sure you can guess what happens after a while.
I decided not have Cristina in this one-shot as she'd be top of the class too and I didn't want that, and also Mark also lives in Seattle, but he matched to a different hospital (Seattle Pres).
Anyway, enjoy! :)
"Name?"
"Meredith Grey." The targeted women stated, a little nervous.
Dr Pit nodded. "Right. Dr Grey, the patient suffered a pontine bleed, as well as a bleed above the pontine arteries. This means that the second bleed was where?"
Crap. She hated the Circle of Willis. She just had to be picked on to answer the question, of course. "Um...I'm not entirely sure."
He sighed, clearly disappointed. "Anyone else?"
No one else said anything for a long second before one volunteered.
"Your name?"
"Derek Shepherd." The man answered, only slightly more confident than Meredith's answer of her own name.
"And the name of the artery?"
"It's the superior cerebral artery."
"Above that?" He pushed.
He felt his heart in his neck. He didn't volunteer to answer more than one question. "The P2 posterior cerebral artery. Then the P1."
"You think you could go the whole way round?" The doctor inquired, intrigued.
"Um...after the P1-" He took a quick breath. "Interior carotid, middle cerebral, Heubner, anterior communicating, anterior cerebral P1 and 2, opthalamtic, anterior choroidal, posterior communicating, superior cerebellar again, basilar, and then down to the cord."
He nodded. Every answer was correct, and he had listed the arteries in perfect order. "Good. The rest of you could clearly learn a little from Dr Shepherd."
"Oh Jesus. That nerd in rounds today." Meredith sighed as she flopped onto the gurney beside her friend. In her 3 days at Seattle Grace, she had discovered that the tunnels were the best place to sit in breaks, seeing as it was too easy to be pulled back into work otherwise.
"Who...Dr Shepherd?" Laura guessed.
"Mmm." She agreed, rolling her eyes.
"Not a fan?" She asked, chucking her new friend a packet of chips before opening her own.
"Oh, definitely not a fan. He's far too...look-at-me-I-know-the-answers-ish for me. One of those nerds."
"Yeah." She agreed. "Now...I found the Circle of Willis in my textbook, I rekon we better get revising so that doesn't happen again."
"Uh oh."
Derek paused in the doorway of their flat. "What?"
"Your first day didn't go well, did it?" Mark asked, although he knew the answer.
"No, it...it went okay."
"But?" He pushed.
"In the first week, the best intern does an appy by themselves. And...surprise, surprise, I'm still the nerd. I wish they told us about that before I said all the answers."
"And you're scared you're going to win, and you won't be able to do it."
He sighed. "I am terrified. But, for now, tell me about how Seattle Pres was."
"Dr Shepherd, could you help me with this burr hole?" The doctor asked. After witnessing his impressive memory, he favoured the intern.
"I um-"
"I'll help, Dr Pit." Meredith volunteered when he hesitated, hoping this could be her chance to prove herself.
"Thank you, Dr Grey."
"Mmm." Dr Pit muttered as he examined his and Meredith's handiwork. "Shepherd, watch out, you've got competition."
"I know you were in surgery this morning but...guess who was given the appy?" Meredith asked. "Hint, it's not me, despite my impressive burr hole."
"Hmm." Laura murmured sarcastically. "Lemme guess...our favourite nerd, Derek Shepherd?"
Meredith snorted. "Genius. How did you know?"
"So what happens when the winner doesn't show up?" Meredith whispered to Laura as the pair stared down into the operating theatre.
"No idea." She replied. "I'm not always great at time management, but this really is something that I'd remember to turn up to."
"Tell me about it."
"Hey-" Bailey called through the intercom. "First one to find my screw-up-of-a-surgeon so I can give him a scolding gets to scrub in instead of him."
"Right. That's what happens." Meredith muttered as she, Laura, and the other interns all instantly stood in the hope of locating the missing intern.
Meredith was not the hardest worker, but she was naturally smart with an awful lot of common sense. Therefore, she deduced that the most likely place for the missing intern would be in an on-call room. All they did was work so they were always tired.
She was on her sixth on-call room when she was starting to ponder if she had had the wrong idea, only to pause when she opened the sixth.
Crap.
"Oh-" She breathed at the sight of the man sat on the floor, legs up to his chest. "Oh my god. You need an attending, I'll find you an att-"
"No." He gasped, just about managing to interrupt her. "Please don't."
She grasped the door handle and pushed it down. "You appear to be having a heart attack, so yes, I am going to find a-"
"Not-" He sucked in a heavy breath. "It- it's a panic attack."
Her hand released the handle. "A panic attack?"
He nodded, closing his eyes to try and remove as many stimuli as possible in the hope it would allow him to focus on his breathing.
"Because of the surgery?" She asked as she dropped to her knees in front of him.
His eyes opened. "I um- freak out...quite a lot."
She felt her heart soften. Although she had labelled him as a look-at-me-I-know-the-answers nerd, if she was honest, he wasn't really like that. She supposed it was that she was a tad jealous that he knew the answers and she didn't that made her think like that, because the way he had said it wasn't at all presenting anything egotistical or over-confident. Thinking about it, he sounded pretty nervous at the time. "Okay...uh...is there something I can do to make it stop? Or just to make it a little better?"
He shook his head. "I...I'll breathe normally...eventually."
"Okay. Uh- how about-" She grasped his hand, and squeezed it. "How about this? Does this help?"
His eyes focused onto hers before he just about managed a smile. "Yeah...that helps."
She smiled back, just a little.
"Hey."
After the embarrassing events of the day before, no one wanted to talk to him, so he looked up pretty quickly. No one knew why he missed out on the appy, but he didn't know whether explaining it would make it better or worse. The woman in front of him, however, didn't need an explanation. "Hi."
"Mind if I join you?" Meredith asked, gesturing to the empty seat beside him.
He swallowed the hard lump in his throat. "Mind if you what?"
"Study with you." She clarified.
"Oh." He breathed. He looked to the chair beside him before looking back to her, shock still written on his face. She wanted to sit...with him? "Okay. Sure."
"So...how long have you been like-" Meredith paused, realising she wasn't quite sure what word she wanted to use. "-that?"
Derek looked up from his textbook. "Whole of my life. Personality trait."
"Right." She agreed.
"But uh-" He swallowed. "I used to take anti-anxiety meds in New York but I haven't managed to get my SSRIs here in Washington yet so...I'm a little bit of a mess. Appointment tomorrow though so I should get my meds back in less than a week."
She smiled. "That's good."
"I um-" He smirked at himself. "I knew you were probably confused about how I'm planning to become a surgeon when I explode at the thought of a scalpel so, to explain, I can operate fine with sufficient seretonin."
"It's okay. I wasn't judging. If anything, I was judging more before."
"What?" He asked, confused.
"You answer lots of questions."
"Because no one else volunteers and it's awkward." He explained.
That wasn't what Meredith had assumed at first, nor after his panic attack. "Right. Anyway, at first I thought you were a know-it-all...but, you know, in a bad way. Then after yesterday I realised that I'd really misjudged you."
"I'm not too overconfident, rather lacking in confidence so much that it's rather sad." He only half-joked.
"You're always very tense." Meredith noted before standing up from her seat.
"I know." He sighed.
She paused behind him, and placed her hands on his shoulders.
"What are you-" He paused when her hands moved, thumbs sliding into his shoulder blades.
"Detensing you via massage. Or trying to, at least, I'm not sure how to massage." She answered. "Is it good?"
"Mmm." He agreed with a little smile.
"You should smile more often, you know? You have a really nice smile."
"You can't even see my face, you're stood behind me."
"I know." She shrugged. "But that doesn't make me wrong, does it?"
He sighed, and let his smile expand. "Suppose not."
"So...the challenge-" He said, lowering his voice a little to add tension to the next few seconds. "Can you, Dr Grey, list the components of the Circle of Willis in order."
She sighed before listing, "Superior cerebral, P2 posterior cerebral, P1 posteria cerebral, interior carotid, middle cerebral, Heubner, anterior communicating, anterior cerebral P1 and 2, opthalamtic, anterior choroidal, posterior communicating, superior cerebellar again, basilar, and then the vessels of the cord."
"Perfect! You got it." He smiled. He was doing better at smiling recently, despite the fact that he'd only been taking half doses of his medication. "It didn't take that long."
"It's been two weeks of revision sessions, Derek." She laughed. "I'd say it took a pretty long time."
"Do you need me to jam my fingers in your back again?" Meredith only half-joked.
"No...no...I've got it." He muttered, even though he really, really hadn't.
"Your hands are going to cramp and explode if you don't loosen your hands, Derek, seriously. Breathe, relax, drop the tension."
"I'm trying." He sighed. "I promise I'm trying."
"C'mon-" She stepped closer so her front was against the back of the chair he was sat on, and reached over him. Her hands grasped his, and guided them. "Like this, okay?"
He swallowed. "Okay."
"You sure?" She asked. "Because you don't sound very 'okay'."
"I think...I think it might have been okay if I was never picked for the appy and this was my first surgery where I was actually doing something interesting but...the fact that I was picked and I freaked out-" He sighed. "Even though I feel better now, I still feel like I'm going to do the same thing. It's not that I can't do this. It's not that I can't do anything, really. I just...I can't do it when I'm freaking out and...I'm freaked out all the time."
She pulled the chair next to him out. "You can do this Derek. Just...think of it like me, you and the Circle of Willis. I know it now after your guidance so...you know this now after mine, okay? I believe in you. Just have a little more faith in yourself, okay?"
He smiled, and this time he sounded like he meant it when he agreed, "Okay."
"Hey."
"Hey? Hey yourself, you kick-ass surgeon." Meredith said as she paused beside him, resting against the lockers.
He smiled. He couldn't help it. Earnestly, even as a man who struggled with self confidence, he could admit that he had indeed 'kicked ass', as she had put it, in his surgery today.
"You were amazing today. You really, really were." She continued to marvel. She couldn't believe it when she entered the gallery about half-way through the surgery. He wasn't even doing okay, he was thriving. He was better than her but, today, that didn't matter. She was too happy to be jealous or competitive.
"I didn't even like...feel anxious and lie." He replied, his smile remaining. "I actually felt...okay."
She beamed at that confirmation. "You should be proud of yourself. It's not been easy. You in that on-call room when we started a month ago...that imagine is engrained in my memory so seeing you today-" She gave a satisfied kind of sigh. "-you're amazing."
"Meredith."
"Yeah?" She asked, opening her own locker.
"I don't think I would have done it without you."
She smiled, but didn't look at him nor react in any other way. "I think your SSRIs are to thank, not me."
"I haven't been taking my SSRIs."
She paused, closed her locker, and looked at him. "What?"
"I started...and then I cut them a little because...I thought that maybe I could be happy without them."
"You said that anxiety was...built into you. That it had been a thing forever. Why would you decrease your dosage now?"
"Because of you, Mer." He answered honestly. Right now, he did feel anxiety and a desperate need for his SSRIs, but he was sure that anyone would. Confessing to being in love with someone was always scary. "You gave me...confidence. And-"
"And?" She pushed.
"I love you for that. I-" He swallowed. "I mean- I um- what I meant was-"
"Okay, okay, okay-" She interrupted. "Don't say it."
"What?" He breathed.
"You're going to say you love me-"
Crap.
Don't say you love me, Derek. That's what she meant. Don't embarrass yourself like that, Derek. That's what she meant.
"-but I don't want you to have to say it not knowing how I feel because that sounds scary as hell."
He swallowed. That didn't sound like a rejection.
"So...I love you too. Or...I love you first since you didn't actually get there quite yet." She corrected. "Now you can say it without having a panic attack."
"Okay." He breathed.
"So...you love me?" She prompted, hoping it would help him communicate.
He stared at her for a long second. "I um-"
"Oh, crap." She swore. "You're-"
He placed his hand against his locker to steady himself. "Still going to have a panic attack."
"Sorry." He sighed, since he had finally got back into a regular breathing pattern.
"It's okay. I've gotten used to it." She half-joked. "Just...it was super cute that you said you didn't need SSRIs becuase of me and it made me fall in love with you even more but...jesus, Derek, take your meds. Please."
He smiled. "That sounds like a great idea."