Hello!

Another game of Guess Who today through a Derek-based flashback. This character has been involved in a game of Guess Who before, but he wasn't revealed back then either so that information probably isn't overly helpful. I'd love to hear some guesses if you've got any!

Then we've got a game of...guess what the hell happened! Aka a cliffhanger

"Hey."

The man didn't reply to that. He just stood, and stared, hand still on the door.

"I haven't seen you in forever." Mark said when he didn't reply. "Since...the night it happened."

"His...eyes are open." He muttered as he released the door, and walked to the foot of the bed.

"He woke up a few days ago. Uh...kind of." Mark squeezed Derek's hand a little tighter as he looked at him. At this point, they weren't concerned about him clinically living, barring complications, but that was the only kind of living they were sure of. His eyes moved about every hour or so, but not in correlation with movement around him, and he just about had some kind of sleep pattern, but that wasn't particularly uncommon for someone who was minimally conscious. But that was it. That was the only different between now, and a few days ago. He still wasn't breathing by himself either. "Is that not why you came back?"

He didn't want to answer that question. "How is he?"

"We're not sure whether he's going to regain consciousness. Right now, that's our main hope." Ma rk sighed as he rubbed his thumb against Derek's hand. "It's not impossible, but it's not a certainty either. Then...we're looking into care for the future. Obviously, the TBI is extremely likely to have impacted him long-term, and his other injuries are going to need a lot of rehab. Probably...not going to make it out of care. But he's still here and that's what is important."

"Can I-" He swallowed, and gestured to the seat beside the bed, opposite Mark. Although he was taking in every word, he didn't want to reply to that either.

"Yeah, yeah. Of course."

"Alone." He just about got out.

"Oh-" Mark swallowed. He'd left Derek plenty of times before, but not often, and never for than one full day, which was impressive as hell when he considered the fact that it had been an entire month. "Yeah, um- I suppose so."

"Mark."

He paused at the door. "Yeah?"

"Thanks. For looking after him for me."

"I wasn't doing it for you." He replied, his voice blunt.

The man faltered, but he wasn't quite sure why. He deserved that, or at least some kind of snappy, or angry, or passive agressive comment. In fact, he was surprised Mark didn't say something like that when he first entered the room. "Yeah. I...deserve that."

He sighed as he took one last look at Derek, and left the room, closing the door behind him. He'd worry about privacy, but there was already three signs on the door making it very clear that it was not an ordinary patient room.

He wasn't quite sure what to do. He knew he wasn't going to be out of the room for longer than about an hour, and he had no desire to be home. Eventually, he crashed into an on-call room bed with a packet of crisps, and one heavy, heavy sigh.

He didn't notice that he'd fallen asleep. Not until the beeping started.

At first, he didn't really register it. He carried his pager around and had worked sparsely, exclusively on patients with serious burns or large lacerations that he didn't trust anyone else to do, leaving practically every other patient to his residents, so he wasn't quite as accustomed to the sound as he used to be. After grabbing, however, there was no hesitation.

9-1-1.

He had never ran so fast in his life. When he was first told about Derek, he had fled but definitely not ran, and later he was far too drained by the emotions of it all to run. So, this really was the fastest run in his life.

"What the hell did you do?" Mark asked the second he entered the room. There was far, far more than one man in there now.

"I didn't do anything!" He exclaimed.

"Heart rate is 118. Blood pressure is 141/98. Pulse ox is 78." One of the nurses explained. "He's in severe respiratory distress. I've paged cardio three times."

Mark nodded, thankful, before turning back to his previous conversation, "Did anything happen? Anything at all? How long has he been like this?"

"No. I was just talking to him, and then he just...he kind of winced or something, and the next second he was tachycardic. The hypertension came after, from the stress of it, I think." He explained. "I had you paged the second it started."

"But there were no other signs? None at all?" Mark pushed yet again as he skimmed through his chart, looking at his last set of bloods. They were normal. What the hell was this?

"Nothing. Nothing at all." He replied. "Maybe it's the vent settings?"

"I don't know why it would be. That...this doesn't make any sense." Mark sighed, as he grasped onto his hand with one of his own, stroking against his good shoulder with the other. He had no idea what, if anything, was going on in Derek's brain, but he'd much rather talk to nothing than not talk to him when he was in there. "Derek. Derek, it's okay. I'm here. I'm here, okay? I'm..."

"Dr Sloan?" One of the nurses prodded when he fell completely silent.

"Derek..."

"Dr Sloan, what do you want us to do?"

"Push...uh- diazapam."

"Diazapam?" She repeated. How was that going to help?

"Just do it." He instructed, eyes unmoving from Derek. The monitors were still going off. "Lots of it."

"Mark?" Called a voice. He pushed through the nurses. "Mark, what are you doing? He doesn't need diazapam."

"He does." He insisted, watching the nurse as she followed his instruction. Derek needed to be calm. Freaking out wasn't going to help in one minute. When he did what he was going to do.

"Why, what are you-" He paused the second Mark grasped his tracheostomy tube, and pulled.

"Mark!"

"Dr Sloan! He's crashing!" A different nurses exclaimed, making a grab for the tube.

Mark didn't listen. All he did was place his thumb over the outer cannula of the trache that was left, plugging the hole. "Breathe, Derek."

"Mark! He isn't going to breathe! You need to put the tube back in before he codes!" He exclaimed, attempting to pull him out of the way by grasping onto his shoulder. He didn't budge.

"He's going to breathe." Mark said, only calm in his voice. As if he hadn't just pulled a tube out of someone's throat with no medical evidence for it. As if Derek wasn't currently choking, gagging, suffocating with no oxygen. As if the monitors hadn't started screaming louder after he pulled it out.

He couldn't even reply to that. He couldn't comprehend what in the world made Mark think this was a good idea. This is not how people were taken off ventailators, and there was a good reason for it.

"What the hell is-" Bailey tried as she entered the room, only to be cut off.

"He. Is. Going. To. Breathe." Mark repeated, not daring to break eye contact with Derek.

"Bailey, he's pulled him off the trache." He explained. "He's not getting any oxygen."

"Mark-" She grasped onto him. "Mark, put it back in. Now, Mark. Now. Please. Please, Mark, I'm begging-"

"No. He's...he's going to breathe."

"No, Mark. He's not. This isn't going to do anything. He needs more time on the vent. Maybe he's not going to come off the vent. You know we don't know, but you can't do this. Please." She begged. She had no idea what was going on, but it was clear to her that Mark was the one in the wrong in this situation, and she was just hoping she could get through to him as someone who had been around him extremely often over the last month.

Nothing. He still didn't look or pull away.

"Mark, he's going to die! He is not going to-" He paused when the noises stopped. All of them. No more beeping as the machine desperately begged for someone to come and fix their patient's tachycardia. No more nurses, panicking, begging Mark to stop. No more choking.

He was breathing.

He was breathing, all by himself.

Which meant he was conscious. Actually conscious.

"Hey-" Mark greeted softly.

Derek stared at him.

Stared. At. Him.

Stared. At. Him.

Not at the wall, not with an empty gaze, not with half-dropped eye lids; he was looking at him for real, with a purposeful and focused gaze.

They'd almost unplugged him, and the only reason they never followed through with it was because of, what Mark believed at the time to be, his stupid emotions and grief. But it wasn't stupid, because it had inadvertedly saved Derek's life. And now he was conscious, and breathing. Alive. Actually alive.

"You were in an accident, Derek. You're in the hospital. But you're okay. You're..." He swallowed, hard, and finally let go of his shoulder. "You're going to be okay."

"You've been quiet."

"Thinking." Derek muttered.

Mark smirked. "Well, that instantly tells me a lot- what's wrong?"

"I have good thoughts too you know?" He challenged.

"No. I didn't know that, because I really don't think you do."

He did, on the beach with Meredith. But that wasn't really the point. "I'm worried about Meredith."

"You're always worried about Meredith. Take a break. She's of course happy about passing her intern exam, so it's a good day. We...won't get into how useless worrying is today, don't worry." Mark said with a small smile. He often told Derek that worrying didn't make a difference to the outcome of literally anything, but he never took that advice.

"She told me she thought she was a bad partner. And she apologised about ten times."

"Oh." Mark breathed. "That uh...sounds a bit like you."

"Which is why I'm so worried, because Meredith isn't like me."

"She apologised for being a bad partner? Is that what she was sorry about?"

"I...don't even know. She just...she wasn't making a lot of sense. She was really upset, said she was stressed out of her mind with the last week and all. I just about managed to get her smile, did my best to cheer her up a little...and then her friends came and she left."

"Right. Maybe this worrying thing isn't quite as irrational as I thought." Mark sighed as he pulled into Derek's driveway. "You want me to come with?"

He stared at his house for a moment before looking back to Mark and shaking his head. "Just my chair please."

Mark nodded. "Of course. And I'm sure you'll be okay."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Tears slipped as she shook her head, curling herself further into the ball she had tucked herself into.

"It's okay. Whatever it is, it's okay. I'll make sure it's okay." He swallowed. "I promise."

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

His eyes watered at her quiet, but desperate plead. He'd never seen her like this. Even in her darkest moments, which never lasted more than a few seconds, he had never seen her in a state anything close to this. He had no idea what he was supposed to do, or say. He didn't even know why she was crying, or how long she had been crying, or what else she might have done, or who made her cry. He thought for a moment, before settling on one thing he hoped could stop her from crying, shaking, sobbing, "Can I..can I hold you?"

"Please don't." She begged through a sob.

"Okay-" He breathed before swallowing. He could always hold her. Always. In fact, often, she'd ask to curl up in his lap or next to him on the bed when she was feeling stressed or upset as a choice.

"Please." She begged again.

"It's okay. I'm not going to do anything you don't want me to, I promise. It's alright." He tried again.

She shook her head.

"I'm not going to touch you, I'm not going to hurt you, I'm just going to sit right here and talk. Is that okay? Can I do that?" He swallowed when she didn't reply. "Meredith, I promise. I promise."

She stared at him with bloodshot tears for a long, long moment before giving him a small, tentative nod.

He sighed a little. He could stay. He'd established that, and that was his main priority. But what the hell was he going to do after this moment?