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Okay, so I didn’t think I’d be able to post this until sometime after Wednesday when the semester ends. But then I was working on it just a little before getting to my homework, and I kinda…uh, kept going and finished the whole thing instead? Which means I haven’t written any of my assignments and I’m leaving in just over forty-eight hours and haven’t packed so much as a single bag and ahahaha epic fail. But, oh well. Because fic, right? This chapter actually had me crying a little while I was writing it (which never happens because I am apparently very, very heartless), so, um, do not hate me for the sad bits, k? Because they were very EMOTIONALLY DRAINING to write.
Also, I will get around to posting the rest of my abandoned fics since you guys seemed interested. But I’ll save them for the next time I’m really crap at updating LitToS. Which seems to happen kinda a lot.
Title: Love in the Time of Science
Author: Morgen
Summary: Love. Tragedy. The things we’ve left unsaid. This is their story. Set after episode 5.05.
Disclaimer: I am not famous. I do not own TV shows. I am a poor college student with a laptop and a serious procrastination habit.
Rating: Written for grownups.
Thank god for Dr. Hess.
As her thoughts went, that was about it. Everything else had drained away and left this ugly, hollow mess inside her head. The OR was just this distant, blue, swimmy thing. And Derek, god. Derek. Meredith gasped each time she looked at him. She sucked down these great, shaking things that were supposed to be breaths but so, so weren’t because they never seemed to reach her lungs. They died somewhere inside her throat because he was on the ground bleeding. He’d plummeted straight for it like some toppled tree. And she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. And just, thank god for Dr. Hess because her hands were trembling so much there was no way they could do a damn thing.
Not that she could even think of what needed to be done. She had one empty mind with missing thoughts and one very damaged looking maybe-fiancé. If that was what you called it. There wasn’t a good term for halfway between boyfriend and fiancé. God. He’d proposed. He’d freaking asked her to marry him and then keeled over like a dead man. Except not a dead man. She wasn’t going to so much as use that word. The D word. He would be fine. Had to be fine.
She scooted closer still and snatched at Derek’s hand. It lay limply between her own, but she squeezed it all the same. Even if she couldn’t think of a single thing to do, she could hold his hand. Meredith looked at Hess, who knelt opposite her. He had pulled off Derek’s dirtied surgical gown and was easing up the bloodstained scrub top to reveal a smattering of deep purple bruises. They blossomed around the laceration like petals on some gruesome flower.
Meredith bit her lip to keep from crying. “He, he’s gonna be okay, right? He’s gonna be fine, right?”
“What’s his blood type?” said Hess without looking up, and that wasn’t an answer. It so wasn’t. “Do you know it?”
“I…his blood type? He never told me. I don’t, I don’t know.” Her eyes started to fill with tears and she squeezed Derek’s hand that much tighter.
“Alright.” Hess turned to one of the surgical techs, an athletic looking young man with broad shoulders and warm, caramel colored skin. “Knightley,” he said. “See if the phone is working in OR three. If it is, call the blood bank and order six units of O negative. Then run to pick it up. I don’t care how ruined that hallway is, you still need to run. Do you understand me?”
The young man nodded as he got to his feet. “And if the phone’s dead?”
“Run to the nearest phone that works.”
“It works,” said a nurse as Knightley headed for the door. “I used it to page the Chief. No one’s in there so we can take him straight over.”
“Straight over?” stammered Meredith. “He’s going straight to surgery?”
“If we can get him a surgeon,” said Hess.
The first of the tears in her eyes began to trail down her cheeks. “Then Dr. Bailey, someone should page her too.”
Hess was in the process of fitting an oxygen mask over Derek’s head, but he nodded and promptly picked off two more of the crowd, nurses this time, with a brisk, “OR three. Page Dr. Bailey and then prep it for surgery. And someone find me a gurney.”
The nurses left and then there was more open space around their fallen group. She was vaguely aware of the anesthesiologist sitting somewhere on the very edge of her vision, still in the midst of dialing back the drugs that had kept Sarah down. But she could barely think of the child with Derek lying flat on the floor. He didn’t respond to the sound of her voice or open his eyes any of the countless times she said his name. He didn’t squeeze back when she squeezed his hand. His skin was the color of wax paper, all the color drained away, and the oxygen mask he wore made her want to curl up beside him and cry.
She knelt there feeling sick and desperate until the sound of voices arguing in the hall jerked her head up.
“I didn’t page you,” said a man she swore she didn’t know. His voice was low and unfamiliar; it was the second voice she knew.
“Then who’s paging me to a damaged hallway when I have an entire hospital and a disaster situation to manage? If there’s no need to evacuate, you didn’t need to page me.”
“I just said I didn’t page you.”
“Well someone paged me 911!”
“The Chief,” said Meredith with a rush of relief. It was the first time she’d ever been genuinely glad to hear the man’s voice. She pressed Derek’s limp fingers to her lips, kissing his knuckles before she leapt to her feet. “I’ll get him,” she said, not trusting anyone else to be fast enough.
She went sprinting towards the voices. A nurse with a vaguely familiar face stood just outside the door. She had a cap in her hands as if she’d pulled it off when she left the OR, freeing her hair to fall over her shoulders in a strawberry blonde waterfall. And she was flirting obviously with a man dressed in work clothes, heavy leather boots on his feet and a tool belt slung around his waist. Meredith sped past them with barely a glance, promising herself that if that was one of the nurses who was supposed to be prepping Derek’s OR, she’d kill the bad flirt with her bare hands.
“So you’re saying I’m down two ORs?”
The Chief had moved on to bellowing by the time she reached the blocked hallway, and she staggered to a halt in front of him and two more men wearing the same sort of uniform as the first, these with hard hats on their heads.
The taller of the two workmen sighed and rapped on the wall with his fist. “Some of the structural supports have been weakened. It’s not safe for general use. But like I said, this isn’t my final report. I’m not the one who paged you. It was one of the ones back there. There’s some situation going on. I’ve already had a man come running by.”
“A situation?” echoed Richard, his voice booming loudly. “You’re saying my people are back there and you’re just now getting around to telling me?”
“Chief,” cried Meredith before the other man could reply. They turned to face her, Richard’s scowl giving way to a puzzled frown.
“Meredith? What are you doing down here? This area is off limits.”
“I, Derek, he’s… He was hurt in the earthquake, so I had to do his surgery for him, and now he’s—”
“You did his surgery for him?” interrupted Richard.
“It was…he talked me through it. I didn’t, um, it was the clinical trial. I’d already seen it.”
Richard’s eyes narrowed and he folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t care if you’ve already ‘seen it.’ Do you have any idea what kind of liability risk comes with a second year resident performing neurosurgery? Was this Shepherd’s idea?”
Meredith just shook her head frantically; it felt like something inside her was unraveling. Her words turned breathless. “I’m sorry. But he was, oh god, he was hurt, and I’d seen him do it so many times, and there was no one else to do it, and please can you just come!”
“What is this?” called another familiar voice. “A 911 to a hallway?”
Bailey came into view, walking with one hand on the wall to steady herself as she picked her way over the rubble. “Grey!” she added. “Care to tell me why you’ve decided to abandon all your interns on a day like today?”
Meredith wrung her hands together, the tears in her eyes finally overflowing to stream down her face. This wasn’t right. They were wasting time. Seconds that Derek might not have.
“Apparently she’s performing Shepherd’s craniotomies now.”
“Well it wouldn’t be the first time he’s let her assist,” said Bailey.
“No,” cried Meredith. “I did it myself. I did the surgery. I did it because Derek…” She stopped and tried to gulp a breath of air. Everyone was staring at her like she was some sort of weepy freak who cried in hallways. She wiped violently at her eyes. “He was okay, but the ceiling fell and, and…”
“The ceiling fell?”
“On him,” said Meredith, and with that she went from leaking silent tears to crying loud, ugly ones. “On him. And he’s, please, he’s not—”
“Slow down, Grey,” said Bailey. “Start again. Where exactly is Shepherd?”
“OR four,” she sobbed. “The ceiling fell during the quake and he got caught under it, but he was sitting up and talking, and he told me he was fine! He said he felt okay. God, I don’t know why I listened to him. He just, he said…I don’t…he collapsed, and now he, he…”
Now he was unconscious. He could die. And he wanted to marry her. Her maybe husband could maybe die. Was maybe dying.
And she hadn’t done a damn thing to save him. She didn’t even know his freaking blood type.
“I was supposed to get you,” she moaned, but Richard and Bailey were already making their way past the remaining rubble and past her. She followed them down the hall on legs that wobbled with every step, slipping back into the OR behind them. Someone had located a gurney and transferred Derek to it. He lay there like a ghost of himself and she rushed to his side, picking up the hand she’d been holding.
“Hey,” she said as she stroked his fingers. “I’m back. And the Chief’s here now. And Dr. Bailey. So you’re gonna be okay. Okay?” She squeezed his hand, but his fingers stayed limp and his eyes stayed shut. “It’s okay,” she said in a tiny voice that barely made it past her lips. “It’s okay.”
“Sir,” said Hess, looking up at Richard. “Am I glad to see you. He’s in hypovolemic shock secondary to blunt trauma to the abdomen. The ninth and tenth ribs appear to be fractured, and he lost consciousness about three minutes ago. He’s still breathing on his own, but his pulse is weak. OR three is being prepped, so we should be good to go now that you’re here.”
“Well done,” said Richard with a nod of his head. He squeezed Derek’s shoulder, adding, “We’ve got you, Shep.”
But Meredith barely heard him. Fractured ribs. Derek had fractured ribs. She stared down at the bruises darkening his body. She’d missed that too. Every time she’d glanced back at him during Sarah’s surgery his eyes had been pinched up in pain at the corners, and she still hadn’t figured it out. Hadn’t thought.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and she squeezed his hand that much tighter. The floor seemed to be gone from beneath her, and the tears in her eyes turned her blind. Voices floated in and out around her, and she heard someone call to the anesthesiologist.
“Orenstein, how’s that little girl?”
“She hasn’t woken up yet, sir, but she’s breathing on her own. She’s ready to be moved to the PICU, if that’s possible with the damage from the quake.”
“It’s not. You can barely get a person through that hall the way it is. A gurney with one very sick little girl on it is out of the question.”
Someone clapped their hands together, and Meredith blinked away her tears to find Bailey picking out two nurses. “I want you both to stay in here with the child,” she said. “Set this up as a temporary PICU as best you can. Dr. Orenstein, you’ll need to come with us to OR three for Dr. Shepherd’s surgery.”
“Alright people, let’s move,” said Richard as the anesthesiologist got to his feet. “You heard the doctor.”
And then the world was in motion.
The gurney rolled and Meredith hurried alongside it, still clinging to Derek’s hand. Her throat felt like it had that one time she’d choked on an ice cube and swallowed it whole. A rush of cold and pain and disbelief. They were taking Derek to surgery. Emergency surgery. No one did a laparotomy without a CT first unless the patient literally did not have the time. Unless they’d be dead as a doornail, really freaking dead, dead by the time they got to CT in the first place.
“Grey,” said Bailey. “Breathe. We’ve got him.”
Meredith nodded but couldn’t seem to find her voice. It had been taken out by the ice cube. She stared down at Derek as they rushed through the scrub room and out into the hall. His scrub cap had fallen off and his hair was a matted mess of dark curls. They stuck out at odd angles, stray pieces lying plastered to his sweaty forehead. His skin was a color she’d never seen before, off white and grayish like a dead fish. It twisted her insides up into knots and made it hard to breathe. She reached out to touch his cheek, and as she did his eyelids flickered, slitting apart to reveal the barest hint of blue.
“Oh my god, hey.” She smiled at him and tried not to mind how glazed his eyes were, how distant he seemed. “You’re okay, Derek. Don’t worry, okay?” His eyelids flickered again and she lunged forward a little, hovering over him. “And yes. Okay? I’m saying yes.”
She wanted to think it could make a difference if he woke up somewhere between life and death and had to choose, but Derek’s eyes fell shut again, and she wondered if he’d even heard her.
“What was that, Grey?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Just yes.”
“Mmhmm,” said Bailey. “I’m sure.” She seemed about to say more, but her words were stolen away by the sound of a violent cough. And then another. The two women looked down to find Derek coughing like a jackhammer, dark red blood spewing from his lips and pooling inside his oxygen mask. From very faraway, she heard someone scream in a voice that sounded a lot like her own. And then she was sobbing and he was gone. Someone had pulled her hand from his and left her standing there as they went flying down the hall towards the open OR.
She tried to follow after them, but Bailey stopped for a second, reaching out to catch her by the elbow. “You know you can’t come in. Go scrub out. I’ll bring you an update as soon as I can.”
And then she was gone too, vanished through the door that led to the scrub room and beyond that, the OR. Meredith stood very still. The hallway was a warzone and she suddenly felt very remote, as if she was looking down on herself from somewhere high above her body. She stood looking small in her bloodstained surgical gown, her dirty scrubs. She’d taken her gloves off when she’d first stepped away from Sarah’s table, but now her hands were splattered red again. With Derek’s blood. She felt someone rush past her, and it slammed her back into her body again in a way that felt wavering and much too much like being drunk.
She caught a glimpse of the back of the man who’d nearly bowled her over. Warm, caramel colored skin. The mint green scrubs of a surgical tech. Arms brimming with bags of blood. Derek’s blood. She looked down at her hands again and then staggered forward, following him through the door that had swallowed Derek whole.
Bailey and Richard were both still washing their hands, and they turned around in unison at the sound of the opening door.
“Grey. You can’t be in here.”
“I’m supposed to scrub out,” she said in a hollow voice that fell away to nothing as she looked through the glass and into the OR. Derek lay flat on the operating table. The anesthesiologist had him intubated already, the tube shoved like a stranger down his throat. A nurse was leaning over him, cutting off his scrubs with a pair of sharp, silver scissors that flashed in the light. She started to shake.
“Meredith…”
“I have to stay. He could… I, god, I have to stay. He needs me to stay.”
Richard smiled sadly as he toweled off his hands. “You know we can’t let you do that. Go on now.”
But she didn’t move. She stood rooted like a tree, staring with sightless eyes through the window as the nurse finished cutting off the last of Derek’s scrubs. He was naked and alone and about to be lost beneath the impassive sea of surgical drapes. She couldn’t leave him. Meredith was only vaguely aware of the looks Bailey and Richard were exchanging. They were whispering about her, but it didn’t matter. She stared at Derek through the glass until Richard left the room and then it was only Bailey stepping in front of her, her freshly scrubbed hands held out in front of her body.
“Meredith.”
“Please,” she said as the tears came back. “I can’t leave him. Not like this. Not when he’s so, so… What if this is the last time I see him alive?”
Bailey shook her head. “Don’t go worrying about things like that before we’ve even got a chance to see what damage’s been done. This could all look much worse than it is.”
“But…”
“The Chief sent him away when it was you, Grey, and I’m doing the same. You need to use the sink in the other scrub room.”
“Go,” she added in a firm voice when Meredith made no move to leave. “Don’t make me get a nurse to take you. Go on. I need to get in there and help the Chief.”
Meredith nodded, feeling like she was a marionette and someone else had jerked the string to move her head. She cast a final glimpse at what little she could see of Derek through the window before turning to stumble towards the door.
She wasn’t sure how she made it to the other scrub room. She was staring at Derek’s lifeless body and then she was at the sinks, looking through the glass at what was left of OR four. Two nurses still fussed over Sarah, but the surgery felt a lifetime ago. As if she’d lived a thousand years in the span of a few hours. Her focus drifted from dirty floor to broken ceiling and back again. To the spot where Derek had lay bleeding. And asked her to marry him.
He’d proposed. Marry me, Mer. That was what he’d said. She could still hear the hoarse way he’d whispered the words. It filled the silence and rubbed her heart raw.
She’d said yes, and instead of a ring, she had his blood splattered across her fourth finger like an engagement band. It wasn’t all dry yet and it smeared a little when she rubbed at it, staining her knuckles and her fingertips. Meredith slumped to the ground without washing her hands. She fit beneath the sink like a hiding child, curling her knees up to her chest. Her head fell forward as the tears came back. Even breathing was a struggle, the oxygen shivering into her lungs and sitting there like it didn’t belong.
It wasn’t fair for a day to turn so fast. She’d woken up in Derek’s arms. He’d kissed his way along her bare shoulder, and she’d twisted around in the nest of blankets to face him. Kissed him sleepily, asked him why he was up so early and muttered something inconsequential about needing coffee. It had all been just like it was supposed to be in that moment. His arms around her had made the world safe, but then he’d let go and everything had dissolved. The ground had gone wild, shook and sent them falling. She’d fought with her best friend and found her boyfriend lying on the ground bleeding. Or was it her fiancé now. She couldn’t figure it out, and it only made her cry that much harder. He had to live. He had to sit down and explain to her how the whole proposing to engaged thing went because, really, this wasn’t fair at all. She’d only just been warming up to the idea secretly inside her head when he went and sprung it on her in reality.
And then he collapsed before she could say yes, and started vomiting blood when she finally did. All because she hadn’t realized what was wrong with him in the first place. When he still had time. Meredith laughed, her entire body shaking with a mixture of violent tears and bitter laughter. It drowned her worse than the bay and she shut her eyes, crying until her head started to throb and then long past it to the point where she swore her tear ducts should have run dry. Somehow, they didn’t. The misery just kept on coming, leaking down her face to mix with the blood on her hands.
She had no sense of how long she’d been sitting there when someone pushed open the door to the scrub room. She didn’t even look up. If they were coming to tell her that her fiancé was dead, she didn’t want to know. She would just stayed hunched over under the sink forever, her head against her knees.
Whoever it was sat down beside her and laid a hand on her back. “Meredith…” Bailey’s voice. Her heart lurched in her chest like it was about to burst, and she dug her nails into her palms, trying to brace herself for it. This was it. The part where Bailey said Derek was really dead. That she should’ve called for help sooner instead of letting it get so bad. That it was too late. There was too much damage. And they were all so very sorry that she’d killed her fiancé. Meredith choked on a sob and buried her head that much deeper, her kneecaps biting into her forehead.
Bailey’s hand ran up and down her back, rubbing in slow, soothing circles. “Derek’s still in surgery,” she continued. “But I wanted to give you an update.”
Meredith turned her head. “In surgery?” she echoed weakly. In surgery meant alive. It meant not dead. Not killed by the stupid, idiotic fiancée.
“Yes. The Chief was able to get the bleeding under control, and he’s working on repairing the damage now.”
“The damage,” she echoed, wiping at her tears with a bloodstained hand. “How bad is it?”
“The Chief’s taking care of it.”
She sat up straighter and shook her head. “No. You have to tell me. You have to tell me how bad it is. I need to know.”
Bailey sighed and leaned back against the sink, closing her eyes. “He’s got some lacerations to the liver along with a ruptured spleen, most likely caused by the fractured ribs. Whatever fell on him hit him hard, Grey.”
“Okay,” stammered Meredith. Her lower lip started to tremble, and she bit down on it mercilessly. “Okay, okay, okay.”
“Hey,” said Bailey in a low, mothering voice. “It’s under control.”
“Right… Right. That’s good.” She scrunched up her face in an effort to keep from crying, but that sent her chin to wobbling.
“Grey?”
“At least someone figured out what was wrong,” she choked out, and then her tears spilled from her eyes like the contents of a wet paper bag that had just ripped down the middle. “I was with him for almost three hours. I did an entire procedure with him lying there bleeding out. I mean, who does that? Who actually does that?”
“Don’t even tell me you’ve been sitting in here this entire time blaming yourself.”
“Well who else should I blame? I was supposed to help him and I didn’t! I don’t know how I didn’t realize…” She shook her head again. “I didn’t even think to check for fractured ribs. I thought it was superficial, that it was just a simple laceration, but I’m a doctor. How could I possibly think he was okay?”
“Because knowing Shepherd, that’s exactly what he told you. That he felt fine.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t matter!” said Meredith vehemently. “I never would’ve just believed a patient like that. Never. Not without proof. A CT. I should have made him let me examine him.” She choked on a sob and wiped at her eyes again, her tears smearing the blood from her fingers across her cheeks. “And now he could, he could—”
“Hold it right there,” said Bailey. “That man is your boss. He is also your loved one.”
Meredith sniffled and nodded her head. “So?”
“So? You trusted what he told you on more than one level. You are too close to Derek to be his doctor.”
“But he did it for me! He saved me. He got me out of the water when I was—” Her gaze flicked to Bailey and then back to her knees. “When I drowned.” She stared at her dirtied surgical gown, praying that Bailey wouldn’t bring up how her drowning was not so accidental. It cut at her like a knife, the knowledge that she’d done something even in a split second of stupidity that had put Derek where she was now. If he’d been even half as scared as she was… She forced herself to look up, trying to brace for a fresh wave of guilt, but her boss just smiled quietly at her.
“He got you out of the water, yes. But he was not one of the doctors on your case that day. He was in no state to be calling the shots about your care. In fact, he didn’t look all that different from the way you do now.”
“But he still did something! And I can’t, I can’t even return the favor. He saved me, and now he might die because of me.”
“No,” said Bailey firmly. “His injuries are not your fault.” Meredith just moaned and let her head fall forward, tears dripping from her eyes to stain her surgical gown. “Come on,” she continued, taking her by the arm and half lifting her to her feet. They faced the window that looked into the OR, and Bailey pointed straight at Sarah. “You did something too. That little girl has a chance to live because of you.”
Meredith stared at Sarah, her small chest rising and falling with every breath. At least it still was. Derek had just about died to keep her alive. “He really wanted her to live.”
“Wants. He’s still alive.”
“Right…”
“First solo surgery today, Grey,” continued Bailey, her voice growing purposely lighter. “It’s a big day.”
“Yeah.” She shook her head and looked down, rubbing her thumb over her naked ring finger. “Big day.”
When she glanced up again, Bailey was looking at her through narrowed eyes, one eyebrow quirked like a question mark. But then she simply stepped behind Meredith and began untying the strings to her surgical gown.
“Now wash those hands,” she added as she went to dispose of the used gown.
Meredith gave a dull nod, her foot hitting the pedal that controlled the water more out of habit than any sort of conscious decision. She stared straight ahead, seeing nothing as she scrubbed and scrubbed at the blood on her hands. It was unpleasant; the soap was sharply antiseptic and the water was harsh and much too warm. But she barely noticed. It beat down against her skin, shriveling her fingertips like prunes until Bailey stepped forward and pulled her hands out of the water.
“Wipe your face too,” she said as she handed her a damp towel. Meredith did as she said, barely blinking when it came away streaked with Derek’s blood.
“Now?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“Now, I’m going to tell you just what I told him when it was you. You need to go change out of those scrubs.” Meredith stared down at her ruined clothes. They were blood spattered, the knees torn and streaked with filth from crawling along the hall. “I’ve got to head back in,” continued Bailey as she ushered her out of the scrub room. “Why don’t you find one of your friends? Yang, maybe. You could use someone to sit with while you wait.”
“No!” said Meredith. “I don’t want, I mean, it’s fine. I’ll be fine, just…” She turned in a circle, reaching up to tug on her hair, her eyes filling again with tears. “I’m fine. I’ll just sit here.”
“Meredith, go change. You’re not going to do him any good like this.”
She stopped her pacing to stare past Bailey at the door leading to OR three. “But…”
“Go on,” insisted Bailey, and Meredith finally nodded, turning away from the OR to stumble down the hall.
-----
Meredith made it to the locker room without running into any of her friends, and the quiet brought her a strange sense of relief. Still, her fingers shook as she pulled her street clothes back on. It was barely halfway through her shift and she was done. Dressed like she was about to go home in a red shirt and faded jeans. She shuddered and ran a hand gingerly up and down her arm, finally feeling the scratches she’d earned from crawling along a floor covered in broken glass. It looked like she’d battled a cat and came out the loser. Slowly, she tugged her sleeves back down, wincing a little. Her back was throbbing from the surgery, but when she went to rub it she thought of Derek’s warm hands working the knots from her muscles and she wanted to cry all over again.
He was going to be fine. She promised herself that again and again as she pulled on her boots and tossed her scrubs in the bin. Bailey had said “prepare yourself” a total of zero times. And she had said yes. Meredith Grey, queen of all that was dark and twisty and wrong with the world, had said yes. He had to be okay. She couldn’t turn into the next Izzie Stevens and lose her fiancé only hours after he’d proposed. She was not about to open up a Derek Shepherd Memorial Clinic and sleep with her married best friend. She didn’t even have a married best friend. She had, well…she wasn’t so sure she had a best friend anymore.
She looked at Cristina’s locker, the clothes in it almost as familiar as her own. And then with a sigh that seemed to cut into her lungs, she left the room. The hospital was still in disarray, long stretches of hall littered with toppled supplies, their walls adorned with crooked picture frames. She felt lost with nowhere to go; it was the sound of the television that finally drew her. It played loudly in the waiting room, and she wove her way through the clusters of chairs to stand right in front of it, neck craned back to see the screen. The news was still on, and she stood and watched the onslaught. Buildings that had suffered worse than Derek’s OR. Battered and bewildered people with microphones thrust in front of them. Her city, her home turned upside down and ripped in two. It made something ache deep inside her, filled the empty space, that great hollow hole of nothing that she’d been pouring herself into since the moment Derek collapsed. She brushed fresh tears from her eyes as the wrecked cars and homes and lives flickered across the screen.
The waiting room felt too empty for the tragedy with fewer people slumped in the chairs than on a usual day. They were down two ORs though. She would guess all elective surgeries had been wiped from the board. Anything that wasn’t a case of immediate life or death, anyone who wasn’t Derek, really, would have been postponed. While she’d been down there in the OR with Sarah, they had probably been sending all the trauma away to Mercy West. To hospitals that kept up on their repairs and didn’t have floors coated in fine layers of plaster dust. And in the end, it all added up to leave her alone with a silence that turned the TV very loud. It filled her up with everything wrong, and Meredith stared and stared at it until she couldn’t. She pivoted on her heel and walked away just shy of a run, slipping past the few faceless ones still waiting there, huddled over with their heads in their hands.
She walked without thinking, not realizing her destination until she came to a halt with a hand on the door to Derek’s office. Meredith held her breath and twisted the handle, praying that it was unlocked. The door swung open easily, letting her into a darkened room. She didn’t bother with the light switch but let the darkness lap close around her as she curled up in his chair. It wasn’t the same as him holding her. It wasn’t the same at all. But she pressed her palm flat to the leather like it would bring him closer and sat there for a long time, her body bunched up in misery and fear.
When she finally moved, it was to tug on the nearer of Derek’s two desk drawers. It slid open easily and she turned on his desk lamp to reveal a box of paperclips, a stack of old, dog eared medical journals, and a granola bar in its wrapper. All a little out of order thanks to the quake, but still perfectly ordinary. No surprises there. She frowned and shut the drawer, scooting over to open the one on the opposite side. Out came a tidy row of files in alphabetical order for his staff. No small, fragile box made of black velvet. She sighed and closed the drawer, rolling her eyes at herself. She was actually turning into that girl. The one who went snooping in her boyfriend’s stuff. Her fiancé’s stuff. Whatever she was supposed to call him now, it was pathetic either way. And also quite possibly illegal what with the breaking and entering and spying. She was a spy. A miserable, snooping, fiancé killing spy. She tried to laugh at herself, but it came out sounding broken and wrong, and so she slumped back into her seat instead.
Her left hand stuck out oddly like it didn’t quite belong with the rest of her body. It wasn’t like she even needed a ring. She couldn’t remember ever owning one in her life, and there was no need to start now. But at least it would be proof that she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. It was surreal. Less than twenty-four hours ago, they’d been fighting. And now they were maybe engaged and Derek was maybe dying.
And she was going to maybe be alone. Forever.
It was her fault too. It didn’t matter what Bailey said. She knew him. She knew exactly how obsessed he was with saving Sarah, even if no one else did. Obsessed enough to sit there with two fractured ribs and promise her he felt fine. That it was nothing. It was a superficial wound. Just a scratch. And she hadn’t even checked. She hadn’t so much as pushed up his scrub top and found the bruises for herself. Meredith shook her head and started rocking back and forth in the chair, running through the past few hours again and again in her mind.
If she’d just examined him like she was supposed to in the first place, he would’ve had time for scans. The bleeding would’ve been minimal when they caught it. He wouldn’t have started coughing up his own blood. But Sarah would’ve died. She couldn’t have done that surgery without him there to talk her through it, and if she hadn’t done it… She didn’t want to think about how he would have looked at her if she’d forced him to get a CT at the cost of the child’s life. But if he died, oh god. He could. He really, really could, and maybe it made her a horrible person, but if she could only save one of them, she would’ve rather saved him. Because he asked her to marry him. And pulled her out of the water. And then again out of the shower. And loved her still even when he knew she’d done it on purpose. Not to mention she wasn’t quite sure how to live in a world without him in it. If she even could… Meredith’s lower lip began to tremble and she curled up again, pressing her face into her knees as the tears came back.
She cried for a long time until she felt empty on the inside. Like there was nothing where her organs used to be. Her thoughts were a patchwork of panic and pain that she sewed into her skin. She wondered if he’d gone anywhere. Perhaps the dead hospital was only for the really, really screwed up, and Derek always seemed so much more sensible than her. Maybe he was waiting someplace beautiful with lots of open land and a lake to fish in. He’d like that. Or maybe he hadn’t gone anywhere at all, and he was shrunk down inside his body in some fearful place where even words didn’t reach. No. She shook her head. Not possible. He was fishing or some other crap like that. Something happy, but not too happy so he’d want to come back for her. Some pond with crappy fish that didn’t like to bite.
Meredith started chewing on her lower lip as she thought about their conversation in the cafeteria that morning. She should’ve told him all of it. That she’d come back for him because she couldn’t stand the thought of being without him, and that it was only fair that he come back too if he ever had a choice to make. Then he’d have it hanging over his head, and he’d be all guilted into surviving, and that was just fine by her. She could do guilt trips if she had to. If it would bring him back. Or maybe she should have said yes a little sooner or a little louder. Maybe that would have been enough. Or maybe if she’d told him she loved him that morning instead of grumbling about coffee. Or if she had nicer hair without split ends. Or didn’t snore. Or didn’t make him live in a house with roommates like he was still just out of college. Maybe, if she’d done all those things, or even just one or two, maybe then he’d throw down his fishing pole and say goodbye to the crappy fish and come back to her.
If he would just live, she’d be the best freaking fiancée the word ever saw.
She scrambled out of his chair as if it had burned her and pushed it back where it belonged. Really excellent fiancées most likely did not go snooping around in their fiancé’s stuff. Meredith straightened the chair out and turned off the desk lamp. It was very clearly an office that had not been spied on. Because she, Meredith Grey fiancée extraordinaire, was above such things.
She backed out of his office and closed the door, and for a moment, she could almost convince herself that it made a difference. But then the hospital swallowed her up again. It had come back to life a little in the time since she’d left the waiting room. Some of the halls seemed cleaner, and almost every other person she passed in scrubs stopped to give her a long look brimming over with pity. A few said things that sounded sympathetic and made her insides curdle and the soles of her feet itch like she would scream if she didn’t start running soon. She started checking her pager again and again, pulling it from where she’d hooked it to a belt loop. But each time, it was as blank as before. And the battery wasn’t dead no matter how many times she looked.
Meredith was halfway down yet another hall when she came to an abrupt stop. A familiar head of black curly hair faced away from her, and she could hear Cristina talking to two of her interns. The sight of her called back the crazy, itching panic, and before she fully realized what she was doing, she had pushed open the nearest door and slipped inside.
It was the interns’ locker room. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d set foot inside. It felt like a lifetime ago. Maybe two. She slumped down on the nearest bench, her back to the dingy white lockers behind her. Her head was ringing and she was grateful for the emptiness. She didn’t want apologetic glances and reassurances about Derek, and she certainly didn’t want to talk to Cristina so soon after their fight. She wasn’t even sure what there was to say. Fake “he’ll be okay’s” from her person seemed unbearable. Cristina thought she’d be better off without him and now, well, now she might get her wish. Meredith shook her head, her body bowing forward as she buried her head in her hands. She was starting to feel sick from all the tears that kept finding their way out of her.
“Meredith?”
It was a quiet, tentative voice, and when she lifted her head, she found Lexie standing there poised just beyond the door leading to the bathroom. She held it half open as if she’d forgotten to let go of the handle, and her dark eyes were wide with concern.
“I, I heard about Dr. Shepherd. Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” she echoed dully. “Derek is having emergency surgery because a ceiling collapsed on top of him, and I was too stupid to realize anything was wrong until he was ten seconds from passing out. He could die today. Right now. Maybe he already has and they just haven’t paged me yet. The love of my life just…gone.” She sniffled and glared up at her, adding, “So no, Lexie. I’m not okay.”
“Right. Sorry. I’m sorry. That was a stupid question. Definitely a stupid question.” She took a small step forward and let the bathroom door close behind her. “Do you want me to find Dr. Yang for you? Maybe she could—”
“No,” snapped Meredith. “I don’t want you to get Cristina. I don’t want you to get anyone, okay? Just go away. Please.” She added it on as an afterthought while trying not to notice the way Lexie’s face had fallen.
“Right. Okay. I’ll, I’ll just go…”
There was the sound of another door opening and closing and then nothing. Silence. It was supposed to feel comforting, but somehow it ate at her worse than before. Meredith curled forward and pressed her head to her knees, trying to blot out the world.
When the door opened again, she didn’t bother to lift her head. Some random intern did not need to see her tears. But the footsteps shuffled nearer and nearer to her until she felt the undeniable warmth of someone sitting down beside her. She tilted her head to find Lexie perched awkwardly on the bench.
“Sorry,” said Lexie. “I know you said to go, but…coffee.” She held out a large cup stamped with the name of the vendor in the lobby. “It looked like maybe you could use some.”
Meredith frowned but took it anyway, starting out with a tiny, tentative sip. It tasted black and biting on her tongue, and when she swallowed the warmth of it soothed her throat after all the crying that had torn it apart. She sighed and took another sip.
“I got it black. I, well, I remembered that was how you drank it. Or at least that’s how you did that morning when I slept over at your house.”
“What?”
“The day you made breakfast, the eggs. You had coffee and it was, it was black.”
“Oh.”
“And…I’m a freak for noticing that. And an even bigger freak for remembering it.” Lexie flushed bright red and got to her feet. “So I’m just gonna go now and—”
“Stay.”
“Stay? Really? You, you want me to stay?”
Meredith started to shrug but then nodded her head, staring resolutely down at her feet.
“Okay,” said Lexie in a quiet, wondering voice. She eased back onto the bench, a small smile on her face. Meredith sighed and looked at her. She didn’t have the energy for a smile herself, but she took another sip of her coffee, relaxing a little as the warmth washed down her throat. For some reason, the emptiness in her chest felt a little less vast.
“I think he’s going to be okay,” continued Lexie. “I have a good feeling.”
Meredith said nothing, and when Lexie was met with silence she seemed to decide against saying anything else. They sat together, Meredith staring straight ahead pretending not to notice the glances Lexie continually cast in her direction. They were a bizarre mixture of hesitant and eager, but they didn’t annoy her as much as she thought they would. There was something oddly comforting about having someone sit beside her, and she made it to the bottom of her coffee cup without checking her watch or pager once.
They were lingering still in silence when it finally went off. Meredith jumped, the cup falling to land forgotten by her feet. She pulled her pager from the waistband of her jeans and squinted down at the tiny screen.
“Bailey,” she said, feeling all the hope and fear come back in one giant lump that lodged itself in her throat. She stood and pushed the hair out of her eyes.
Lexie got up as well. “Do you, do you want me to come with?”
“No,” said Meredith, already halfway to the door. She paused and looked back at Lexie standing there beside the bench and the fallen coffee cup. “But thank you,” she said, finally managing a small smile. “For staying.”
She slipped out of the locker room and broke into a run, not caring how ridiculous she looked charging down the hall. Her heart was just about crashing into her ribcage with every beat and the world was a blur, but she just kept going and going in a constant sprint of he had to be alive until she crashed straight into Bailey.
“Whoa. Slow down there, Grey.”
Meredith shook her head, barely hearing her. “He’s still alive,” she gasped with her first breath. “Right? Tell me he’s alive.”
“He’s alive,” said Bailey. She took her by the elbow, and Meredith found herself being steered into a nearby conference room. “The surgery went well,” she continued as she closed the door. “The wound to his leg ended up being fairly minor. That piece of metal just missed his femoral artery, so he got lucky there. Still, it sliced through a fair amount of muscle. There will be some pain at first as he gets back on his feet.”
“And the rest of it? What…” She dragged the back of her hand across her eyes. “What did you do?”
Bailey leaned forward with a reassuring smile. “The Chief repaired the liver lacerations and he was able to salvage part of the spleen as well.”
“Part of it?” she choked out, sinking down into a chair.
“He had to perform a partial splenectomy to repair the rupture.”
“But he already had a puncture wound, and now, now…he doesn’t have a spleen? He could develop sepsis or OPSI.” She shook her head. An overwhelming post-splenectomy infection could kill in a matter of hours.
“Partial splenectomy,” repeated Bailey. “With time the remaining portion of the organ will be able to fight off infection just as well as it used to.”
Meredith just shook her head again. “But not at first,” she said. “He needs vaccines. PPV and Hib and pneumococcus,” she said, listing them off on her fingers. “And maybe influenza. I know it’s not flu season, but just to be safe…”
Bailey crossed her arms over her chest. “He’ll be getting them.”
“What about antibiotics?” she demanded. “He should be on prophylaxis.”
“He already is. Grey, we’re doing our jobs here.”
“It’s just, sepsis…”
“Is a rare complication, not a guarantee.”
Meredith nodded weakly. She bit her lip and looked away to hide the fresh tears on her cheeks. “It killed Susan.”
“Meredith…” Bailey sighed and sat down beside her, her face softening as she reached out to squeeze her hand. “We’re taking every precaution with him,” she said, her voice turning motherly once more. “And there are no signs of infection.”
“None?”
“None.”
“Good, that’s good,” stammered Meredith as she got unsteadily to her feet. “Where is he? Can I see him now?”
“He’s in recovery. And yes, you can go on in. He should be waking up soon, and I know it’s you he’ll be asking for.”
“Okay…” She smiled through the tears that never seemed to go away no matter how many times she blinked and dried her eyes. “Okay,” she said again as she turned to go.
Bailey held up a hand. “Grey,” she said, sounding sterner than before.
Meredith looked back. “Yes?”
“He lost a lot of blood. Be gentle with him.”
She nodded and swiped at her tears, silently ordering them to stay away this time. She could do this, be the strong one. The one who held it altogether for them. She could do anything he needed, anything he asked of her. Anything at all.
Because her fiancé was still alive.
Also, I will get around to posting the rest of my abandoned fics since you guys seemed interested. But I’ll save them for the next time I’m really crap at updating LitToS. Which seems to happen kinda a lot.
Title: Love in the Time of Science
Author: Morgen
Summary: Love. Tragedy. The things we’ve left unsaid. This is their story. Set after episode 5.05.
Disclaimer: I am not famous. I do not own TV shows. I am a poor college student with a laptop and a serious procrastination habit.
Rating: Written for grownups.
Thank god for Dr. Hess.
As her thoughts went, that was about it. Everything else had drained away and left this ugly, hollow mess inside her head. The OR was just this distant, blue, swimmy thing. And Derek, god. Derek. Meredith gasped each time she looked at him. She sucked down these great, shaking things that were supposed to be breaths but so, so weren’t because they never seemed to reach her lungs. They died somewhere inside her throat because he was on the ground bleeding. He’d plummeted straight for it like some toppled tree. And she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. And just, thank god for Dr. Hess because her hands were trembling so much there was no way they could do a damn thing.
Not that she could even think of what needed to be done. She had one empty mind with missing thoughts and one very damaged looking maybe-fiancé. If that was what you called it. There wasn’t a good term for halfway between boyfriend and fiancé. God. He’d proposed. He’d freaking asked her to marry him and then keeled over like a dead man. Except not a dead man. She wasn’t going to so much as use that word. The D word. He would be fine. Had to be fine.
She scooted closer still and snatched at Derek’s hand. It lay limply between her own, but she squeezed it all the same. Even if she couldn’t think of a single thing to do, she could hold his hand. Meredith looked at Hess, who knelt opposite her. He had pulled off Derek’s dirtied surgical gown and was easing up the bloodstained scrub top to reveal a smattering of deep purple bruises. They blossomed around the laceration like petals on some gruesome flower.
Meredith bit her lip to keep from crying. “He, he’s gonna be okay, right? He’s gonna be fine, right?”
“What’s his blood type?” said Hess without looking up, and that wasn’t an answer. It so wasn’t. “Do you know it?”
“I…his blood type? He never told me. I don’t, I don’t know.” Her eyes started to fill with tears and she squeezed Derek’s hand that much tighter.
“Alright.” Hess turned to one of the surgical techs, an athletic looking young man with broad shoulders and warm, caramel colored skin. “Knightley,” he said. “See if the phone is working in OR three. If it is, call the blood bank and order six units of O negative. Then run to pick it up. I don’t care how ruined that hallway is, you still need to run. Do you understand me?”
The young man nodded as he got to his feet. “And if the phone’s dead?”
“Run to the nearest phone that works.”
“It works,” said a nurse as Knightley headed for the door. “I used it to page the Chief. No one’s in there so we can take him straight over.”
“Straight over?” stammered Meredith. “He’s going straight to surgery?”
“If we can get him a surgeon,” said Hess.
The first of the tears in her eyes began to trail down her cheeks. “Then Dr. Bailey, someone should page her too.”
Hess was in the process of fitting an oxygen mask over Derek’s head, but he nodded and promptly picked off two more of the crowd, nurses this time, with a brisk, “OR three. Page Dr. Bailey and then prep it for surgery. And someone find me a gurney.”
The nurses left and then there was more open space around their fallen group. She was vaguely aware of the anesthesiologist sitting somewhere on the very edge of her vision, still in the midst of dialing back the drugs that had kept Sarah down. But she could barely think of the child with Derek lying flat on the floor. He didn’t respond to the sound of her voice or open his eyes any of the countless times she said his name. He didn’t squeeze back when she squeezed his hand. His skin was the color of wax paper, all the color drained away, and the oxygen mask he wore made her want to curl up beside him and cry.
She knelt there feeling sick and desperate until the sound of voices arguing in the hall jerked her head up.
“I didn’t page you,” said a man she swore she didn’t know. His voice was low and unfamiliar; it was the second voice she knew.
“Then who’s paging me to a damaged hallway when I have an entire hospital and a disaster situation to manage? If there’s no need to evacuate, you didn’t need to page me.”
“I just said I didn’t page you.”
“Well someone paged me 911!”
“The Chief,” said Meredith with a rush of relief. It was the first time she’d ever been genuinely glad to hear the man’s voice. She pressed Derek’s limp fingers to her lips, kissing his knuckles before she leapt to her feet. “I’ll get him,” she said, not trusting anyone else to be fast enough.
She went sprinting towards the voices. A nurse with a vaguely familiar face stood just outside the door. She had a cap in her hands as if she’d pulled it off when she left the OR, freeing her hair to fall over her shoulders in a strawberry blonde waterfall. And she was flirting obviously with a man dressed in work clothes, heavy leather boots on his feet and a tool belt slung around his waist. Meredith sped past them with barely a glance, promising herself that if that was one of the nurses who was supposed to be prepping Derek’s OR, she’d kill the bad flirt with her bare hands.
“So you’re saying I’m down two ORs?”
The Chief had moved on to bellowing by the time she reached the blocked hallway, and she staggered to a halt in front of him and two more men wearing the same sort of uniform as the first, these with hard hats on their heads.
The taller of the two workmen sighed and rapped on the wall with his fist. “Some of the structural supports have been weakened. It’s not safe for general use. But like I said, this isn’t my final report. I’m not the one who paged you. It was one of the ones back there. There’s some situation going on. I’ve already had a man come running by.”
“A situation?” echoed Richard, his voice booming loudly. “You’re saying my people are back there and you’re just now getting around to telling me?”
“Chief,” cried Meredith before the other man could reply. They turned to face her, Richard’s scowl giving way to a puzzled frown.
“Meredith? What are you doing down here? This area is off limits.”
“I, Derek, he’s… He was hurt in the earthquake, so I had to do his surgery for him, and now he’s—”
“You did his surgery for him?” interrupted Richard.
“It was…he talked me through it. I didn’t, um, it was the clinical trial. I’d already seen it.”
Richard’s eyes narrowed and he folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t care if you’ve already ‘seen it.’ Do you have any idea what kind of liability risk comes with a second year resident performing neurosurgery? Was this Shepherd’s idea?”
Meredith just shook her head frantically; it felt like something inside her was unraveling. Her words turned breathless. “I’m sorry. But he was, oh god, he was hurt, and I’d seen him do it so many times, and there was no one else to do it, and please can you just come!”
“What is this?” called another familiar voice. “A 911 to a hallway?”
Bailey came into view, walking with one hand on the wall to steady herself as she picked her way over the rubble. “Grey!” she added. “Care to tell me why you’ve decided to abandon all your interns on a day like today?”
Meredith wrung her hands together, the tears in her eyes finally overflowing to stream down her face. This wasn’t right. They were wasting time. Seconds that Derek might not have.
“Apparently she’s performing Shepherd’s craniotomies now.”
“Well it wouldn’t be the first time he’s let her assist,” said Bailey.
“No,” cried Meredith. “I did it myself. I did the surgery. I did it because Derek…” She stopped and tried to gulp a breath of air. Everyone was staring at her like she was some sort of weepy freak who cried in hallways. She wiped violently at her eyes. “He was okay, but the ceiling fell and, and…”
“The ceiling fell?”
“On him,” said Meredith, and with that she went from leaking silent tears to crying loud, ugly ones. “On him. And he’s, please, he’s not—”
“Slow down, Grey,” said Bailey. “Start again. Where exactly is Shepherd?”
“OR four,” she sobbed. “The ceiling fell during the quake and he got caught under it, but he was sitting up and talking, and he told me he was fine! He said he felt okay. God, I don’t know why I listened to him. He just, he said…I don’t…he collapsed, and now he, he…”
Now he was unconscious. He could die. And he wanted to marry her. Her maybe husband could maybe die. Was maybe dying.
And she hadn’t done a damn thing to save him. She didn’t even know his freaking blood type.
“I was supposed to get you,” she moaned, but Richard and Bailey were already making their way past the remaining rubble and past her. She followed them down the hall on legs that wobbled with every step, slipping back into the OR behind them. Someone had located a gurney and transferred Derek to it. He lay there like a ghost of himself and she rushed to his side, picking up the hand she’d been holding.
“Hey,” she said as she stroked his fingers. “I’m back. And the Chief’s here now. And Dr. Bailey. So you’re gonna be okay. Okay?” She squeezed his hand, but his fingers stayed limp and his eyes stayed shut. “It’s okay,” she said in a tiny voice that barely made it past her lips. “It’s okay.”
“Sir,” said Hess, looking up at Richard. “Am I glad to see you. He’s in hypovolemic shock secondary to blunt trauma to the abdomen. The ninth and tenth ribs appear to be fractured, and he lost consciousness about three minutes ago. He’s still breathing on his own, but his pulse is weak. OR three is being prepped, so we should be good to go now that you’re here.”
“Well done,” said Richard with a nod of his head. He squeezed Derek’s shoulder, adding, “We’ve got you, Shep.”
But Meredith barely heard him. Fractured ribs. Derek had fractured ribs. She stared down at the bruises darkening his body. She’d missed that too. Every time she’d glanced back at him during Sarah’s surgery his eyes had been pinched up in pain at the corners, and she still hadn’t figured it out. Hadn’t thought.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and she squeezed his hand that much tighter. The floor seemed to be gone from beneath her, and the tears in her eyes turned her blind. Voices floated in and out around her, and she heard someone call to the anesthesiologist.
“Orenstein, how’s that little girl?”
“She hasn’t woken up yet, sir, but she’s breathing on her own. She’s ready to be moved to the PICU, if that’s possible with the damage from the quake.”
“It’s not. You can barely get a person through that hall the way it is. A gurney with one very sick little girl on it is out of the question.”
Someone clapped their hands together, and Meredith blinked away her tears to find Bailey picking out two nurses. “I want you both to stay in here with the child,” she said. “Set this up as a temporary PICU as best you can. Dr. Orenstein, you’ll need to come with us to OR three for Dr. Shepherd’s surgery.”
“Alright people, let’s move,” said Richard as the anesthesiologist got to his feet. “You heard the doctor.”
And then the world was in motion.
The gurney rolled and Meredith hurried alongside it, still clinging to Derek’s hand. Her throat felt like it had that one time she’d choked on an ice cube and swallowed it whole. A rush of cold and pain and disbelief. They were taking Derek to surgery. Emergency surgery. No one did a laparotomy without a CT first unless the patient literally did not have the time. Unless they’d be dead as a doornail, really freaking dead, dead by the time they got to CT in the first place.
“Grey,” said Bailey. “Breathe. We’ve got him.”
Meredith nodded but couldn’t seem to find her voice. It had been taken out by the ice cube. She stared down at Derek as they rushed through the scrub room and out into the hall. His scrub cap had fallen off and his hair was a matted mess of dark curls. They stuck out at odd angles, stray pieces lying plastered to his sweaty forehead. His skin was a color she’d never seen before, off white and grayish like a dead fish. It twisted her insides up into knots and made it hard to breathe. She reached out to touch his cheek, and as she did his eyelids flickered, slitting apart to reveal the barest hint of blue.
“Oh my god, hey.” She smiled at him and tried not to mind how glazed his eyes were, how distant he seemed. “You’re okay, Derek. Don’t worry, okay?” His eyelids flickered again and she lunged forward a little, hovering over him. “And yes. Okay? I’m saying yes.”
She wanted to think it could make a difference if he woke up somewhere between life and death and had to choose, but Derek’s eyes fell shut again, and she wondered if he’d even heard her.
“What was that, Grey?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Just yes.”
“Mmhmm,” said Bailey. “I’m sure.” She seemed about to say more, but her words were stolen away by the sound of a violent cough. And then another. The two women looked down to find Derek coughing like a jackhammer, dark red blood spewing from his lips and pooling inside his oxygen mask. From very faraway, she heard someone scream in a voice that sounded a lot like her own. And then she was sobbing and he was gone. Someone had pulled her hand from his and left her standing there as they went flying down the hall towards the open OR.
She tried to follow after them, but Bailey stopped for a second, reaching out to catch her by the elbow. “You know you can’t come in. Go scrub out. I’ll bring you an update as soon as I can.”
And then she was gone too, vanished through the door that led to the scrub room and beyond that, the OR. Meredith stood very still. The hallway was a warzone and she suddenly felt very remote, as if she was looking down on herself from somewhere high above her body. She stood looking small in her bloodstained surgical gown, her dirty scrubs. She’d taken her gloves off when she’d first stepped away from Sarah’s table, but now her hands were splattered red again. With Derek’s blood. She felt someone rush past her, and it slammed her back into her body again in a way that felt wavering and much too much like being drunk.
She caught a glimpse of the back of the man who’d nearly bowled her over. Warm, caramel colored skin. The mint green scrubs of a surgical tech. Arms brimming with bags of blood. Derek’s blood. She looked down at her hands again and then staggered forward, following him through the door that had swallowed Derek whole.
Bailey and Richard were both still washing their hands, and they turned around in unison at the sound of the opening door.
“Grey. You can’t be in here.”
“I’m supposed to scrub out,” she said in a hollow voice that fell away to nothing as she looked through the glass and into the OR. Derek lay flat on the operating table. The anesthesiologist had him intubated already, the tube shoved like a stranger down his throat. A nurse was leaning over him, cutting off his scrubs with a pair of sharp, silver scissors that flashed in the light. She started to shake.
“Meredith…”
“I have to stay. He could… I, god, I have to stay. He needs me to stay.”
Richard smiled sadly as he toweled off his hands. “You know we can’t let you do that. Go on now.”
But she didn’t move. She stood rooted like a tree, staring with sightless eyes through the window as the nurse finished cutting off the last of Derek’s scrubs. He was naked and alone and about to be lost beneath the impassive sea of surgical drapes. She couldn’t leave him. Meredith was only vaguely aware of the looks Bailey and Richard were exchanging. They were whispering about her, but it didn’t matter. She stared at Derek through the glass until Richard left the room and then it was only Bailey stepping in front of her, her freshly scrubbed hands held out in front of her body.
“Meredith.”
“Please,” she said as the tears came back. “I can’t leave him. Not like this. Not when he’s so, so… What if this is the last time I see him alive?”
Bailey shook her head. “Don’t go worrying about things like that before we’ve even got a chance to see what damage’s been done. This could all look much worse than it is.”
“But…”
“The Chief sent him away when it was you, Grey, and I’m doing the same. You need to use the sink in the other scrub room.”
“Go,” she added in a firm voice when Meredith made no move to leave. “Don’t make me get a nurse to take you. Go on. I need to get in there and help the Chief.”
Meredith nodded, feeling like she was a marionette and someone else had jerked the string to move her head. She cast a final glimpse at what little she could see of Derek through the window before turning to stumble towards the door.
She wasn’t sure how she made it to the other scrub room. She was staring at Derek’s lifeless body and then she was at the sinks, looking through the glass at what was left of OR four. Two nurses still fussed over Sarah, but the surgery felt a lifetime ago. As if she’d lived a thousand years in the span of a few hours. Her focus drifted from dirty floor to broken ceiling and back again. To the spot where Derek had lay bleeding. And asked her to marry him.
He’d proposed. Marry me, Mer. That was what he’d said. She could still hear the hoarse way he’d whispered the words. It filled the silence and rubbed her heart raw.
She’d said yes, and instead of a ring, she had his blood splattered across her fourth finger like an engagement band. It wasn’t all dry yet and it smeared a little when she rubbed at it, staining her knuckles and her fingertips. Meredith slumped to the ground without washing her hands. She fit beneath the sink like a hiding child, curling her knees up to her chest. Her head fell forward as the tears came back. Even breathing was a struggle, the oxygen shivering into her lungs and sitting there like it didn’t belong.
It wasn’t fair for a day to turn so fast. She’d woken up in Derek’s arms. He’d kissed his way along her bare shoulder, and she’d twisted around in the nest of blankets to face him. Kissed him sleepily, asked him why he was up so early and muttered something inconsequential about needing coffee. It had all been just like it was supposed to be in that moment. His arms around her had made the world safe, but then he’d let go and everything had dissolved. The ground had gone wild, shook and sent them falling. She’d fought with her best friend and found her boyfriend lying on the ground bleeding. Or was it her fiancé now. She couldn’t figure it out, and it only made her cry that much harder. He had to live. He had to sit down and explain to her how the whole proposing to engaged thing went because, really, this wasn’t fair at all. She’d only just been warming up to the idea secretly inside her head when he went and sprung it on her in reality.
And then he collapsed before she could say yes, and started vomiting blood when she finally did. All because she hadn’t realized what was wrong with him in the first place. When he still had time. Meredith laughed, her entire body shaking with a mixture of violent tears and bitter laughter. It drowned her worse than the bay and she shut her eyes, crying until her head started to throb and then long past it to the point where she swore her tear ducts should have run dry. Somehow, they didn’t. The misery just kept on coming, leaking down her face to mix with the blood on her hands.
She had no sense of how long she’d been sitting there when someone pushed open the door to the scrub room. She didn’t even look up. If they were coming to tell her that her fiancé was dead, she didn’t want to know. She would just stayed hunched over under the sink forever, her head against her knees.
Whoever it was sat down beside her and laid a hand on her back. “Meredith…” Bailey’s voice. Her heart lurched in her chest like it was about to burst, and she dug her nails into her palms, trying to brace herself for it. This was it. The part where Bailey said Derek was really dead. That she should’ve called for help sooner instead of letting it get so bad. That it was too late. There was too much damage. And they were all so very sorry that she’d killed her fiancé. Meredith choked on a sob and buried her head that much deeper, her kneecaps biting into her forehead.
Bailey’s hand ran up and down her back, rubbing in slow, soothing circles. “Derek’s still in surgery,” she continued. “But I wanted to give you an update.”
Meredith turned her head. “In surgery?” she echoed weakly. In surgery meant alive. It meant not dead. Not killed by the stupid, idiotic fiancée.
“Yes. The Chief was able to get the bleeding under control, and he’s working on repairing the damage now.”
“The damage,” she echoed, wiping at her tears with a bloodstained hand. “How bad is it?”
“The Chief’s taking care of it.”
She sat up straighter and shook her head. “No. You have to tell me. You have to tell me how bad it is. I need to know.”
Bailey sighed and leaned back against the sink, closing her eyes. “He’s got some lacerations to the liver along with a ruptured spleen, most likely caused by the fractured ribs. Whatever fell on him hit him hard, Grey.”
“Okay,” stammered Meredith. Her lower lip started to tremble, and she bit down on it mercilessly. “Okay, okay, okay.”
“Hey,” said Bailey in a low, mothering voice. “It’s under control.”
“Right… Right. That’s good.” She scrunched up her face in an effort to keep from crying, but that sent her chin to wobbling.
“Grey?”
“At least someone figured out what was wrong,” she choked out, and then her tears spilled from her eyes like the contents of a wet paper bag that had just ripped down the middle. “I was with him for almost three hours. I did an entire procedure with him lying there bleeding out. I mean, who does that? Who actually does that?”
“Don’t even tell me you’ve been sitting in here this entire time blaming yourself.”
“Well who else should I blame? I was supposed to help him and I didn’t! I don’t know how I didn’t realize…” She shook her head again. “I didn’t even think to check for fractured ribs. I thought it was superficial, that it was just a simple laceration, but I’m a doctor. How could I possibly think he was okay?”
“Because knowing Shepherd, that’s exactly what he told you. That he felt fine.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t matter!” said Meredith vehemently. “I never would’ve just believed a patient like that. Never. Not without proof. A CT. I should have made him let me examine him.” She choked on a sob and wiped at her eyes again, her tears smearing the blood from her fingers across her cheeks. “And now he could, he could—”
“Hold it right there,” said Bailey. “That man is your boss. He is also your loved one.”
Meredith sniffled and nodded her head. “So?”
“So? You trusted what he told you on more than one level. You are too close to Derek to be his doctor.”
“But he did it for me! He saved me. He got me out of the water when I was—” Her gaze flicked to Bailey and then back to her knees. “When I drowned.” She stared at her dirtied surgical gown, praying that Bailey wouldn’t bring up how her drowning was not so accidental. It cut at her like a knife, the knowledge that she’d done something even in a split second of stupidity that had put Derek where she was now. If he’d been even half as scared as she was… She forced herself to look up, trying to brace for a fresh wave of guilt, but her boss just smiled quietly at her.
“He got you out of the water, yes. But he was not one of the doctors on your case that day. He was in no state to be calling the shots about your care. In fact, he didn’t look all that different from the way you do now.”
“But he still did something! And I can’t, I can’t even return the favor. He saved me, and now he might die because of me.”
“No,” said Bailey firmly. “His injuries are not your fault.” Meredith just moaned and let her head fall forward, tears dripping from her eyes to stain her surgical gown. “Come on,” she continued, taking her by the arm and half lifting her to her feet. They faced the window that looked into the OR, and Bailey pointed straight at Sarah. “You did something too. That little girl has a chance to live because of you.”
Meredith stared at Sarah, her small chest rising and falling with every breath. At least it still was. Derek had just about died to keep her alive. “He really wanted her to live.”
“Wants. He’s still alive.”
“Right…”
“First solo surgery today, Grey,” continued Bailey, her voice growing purposely lighter. “It’s a big day.”
“Yeah.” She shook her head and looked down, rubbing her thumb over her naked ring finger. “Big day.”
When she glanced up again, Bailey was looking at her through narrowed eyes, one eyebrow quirked like a question mark. But then she simply stepped behind Meredith and began untying the strings to her surgical gown.
“Now wash those hands,” she added as she went to dispose of the used gown.
Meredith gave a dull nod, her foot hitting the pedal that controlled the water more out of habit than any sort of conscious decision. She stared straight ahead, seeing nothing as she scrubbed and scrubbed at the blood on her hands. It was unpleasant; the soap was sharply antiseptic and the water was harsh and much too warm. But she barely noticed. It beat down against her skin, shriveling her fingertips like prunes until Bailey stepped forward and pulled her hands out of the water.
“Wipe your face too,” she said as she handed her a damp towel. Meredith did as she said, barely blinking when it came away streaked with Derek’s blood.
“Now?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“Now, I’m going to tell you just what I told him when it was you. You need to go change out of those scrubs.” Meredith stared down at her ruined clothes. They were blood spattered, the knees torn and streaked with filth from crawling along the hall. “I’ve got to head back in,” continued Bailey as she ushered her out of the scrub room. “Why don’t you find one of your friends? Yang, maybe. You could use someone to sit with while you wait.”
“No!” said Meredith. “I don’t want, I mean, it’s fine. I’ll be fine, just…” She turned in a circle, reaching up to tug on her hair, her eyes filling again with tears. “I’m fine. I’ll just sit here.”
“Meredith, go change. You’re not going to do him any good like this.”
She stopped her pacing to stare past Bailey at the door leading to OR three. “But…”
“Go on,” insisted Bailey, and Meredith finally nodded, turning away from the OR to stumble down the hall.
-----
Meredith made it to the locker room without running into any of her friends, and the quiet brought her a strange sense of relief. Still, her fingers shook as she pulled her street clothes back on. It was barely halfway through her shift and she was done. Dressed like she was about to go home in a red shirt and faded jeans. She shuddered and ran a hand gingerly up and down her arm, finally feeling the scratches she’d earned from crawling along a floor covered in broken glass. It looked like she’d battled a cat and came out the loser. Slowly, she tugged her sleeves back down, wincing a little. Her back was throbbing from the surgery, but when she went to rub it she thought of Derek’s warm hands working the knots from her muscles and she wanted to cry all over again.
He was going to be fine. She promised herself that again and again as she pulled on her boots and tossed her scrubs in the bin. Bailey had said “prepare yourself” a total of zero times. And she had said yes. Meredith Grey, queen of all that was dark and twisty and wrong with the world, had said yes. He had to be okay. She couldn’t turn into the next Izzie Stevens and lose her fiancé only hours after he’d proposed. She was not about to open up a Derek Shepherd Memorial Clinic and sleep with her married best friend. She didn’t even have a married best friend. She had, well…she wasn’t so sure she had a best friend anymore.
She looked at Cristina’s locker, the clothes in it almost as familiar as her own. And then with a sigh that seemed to cut into her lungs, she left the room. The hospital was still in disarray, long stretches of hall littered with toppled supplies, their walls adorned with crooked picture frames. She felt lost with nowhere to go; it was the sound of the television that finally drew her. It played loudly in the waiting room, and she wove her way through the clusters of chairs to stand right in front of it, neck craned back to see the screen. The news was still on, and she stood and watched the onslaught. Buildings that had suffered worse than Derek’s OR. Battered and bewildered people with microphones thrust in front of them. Her city, her home turned upside down and ripped in two. It made something ache deep inside her, filled the empty space, that great hollow hole of nothing that she’d been pouring herself into since the moment Derek collapsed. She brushed fresh tears from her eyes as the wrecked cars and homes and lives flickered across the screen.
The waiting room felt too empty for the tragedy with fewer people slumped in the chairs than on a usual day. They were down two ORs though. She would guess all elective surgeries had been wiped from the board. Anything that wasn’t a case of immediate life or death, anyone who wasn’t Derek, really, would have been postponed. While she’d been down there in the OR with Sarah, they had probably been sending all the trauma away to Mercy West. To hospitals that kept up on their repairs and didn’t have floors coated in fine layers of plaster dust. And in the end, it all added up to leave her alone with a silence that turned the TV very loud. It filled her up with everything wrong, and Meredith stared and stared at it until she couldn’t. She pivoted on her heel and walked away just shy of a run, slipping past the few faceless ones still waiting there, huddled over with their heads in their hands.
She walked without thinking, not realizing her destination until she came to a halt with a hand on the door to Derek’s office. Meredith held her breath and twisted the handle, praying that it was unlocked. The door swung open easily, letting her into a darkened room. She didn’t bother with the light switch but let the darkness lap close around her as she curled up in his chair. It wasn’t the same as him holding her. It wasn’t the same at all. But she pressed her palm flat to the leather like it would bring him closer and sat there for a long time, her body bunched up in misery and fear.
When she finally moved, it was to tug on the nearer of Derek’s two desk drawers. It slid open easily and she turned on his desk lamp to reveal a box of paperclips, a stack of old, dog eared medical journals, and a granola bar in its wrapper. All a little out of order thanks to the quake, but still perfectly ordinary. No surprises there. She frowned and shut the drawer, scooting over to open the one on the opposite side. Out came a tidy row of files in alphabetical order for his staff. No small, fragile box made of black velvet. She sighed and closed the drawer, rolling her eyes at herself. She was actually turning into that girl. The one who went snooping in her boyfriend’s stuff. Her fiancé’s stuff. Whatever she was supposed to call him now, it was pathetic either way. And also quite possibly illegal what with the breaking and entering and spying. She was a spy. A miserable, snooping, fiancé killing spy. She tried to laugh at herself, but it came out sounding broken and wrong, and so she slumped back into her seat instead.
Her left hand stuck out oddly like it didn’t quite belong with the rest of her body. It wasn’t like she even needed a ring. She couldn’t remember ever owning one in her life, and there was no need to start now. But at least it would be proof that she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. It was surreal. Less than twenty-four hours ago, they’d been fighting. And now they were maybe engaged and Derek was maybe dying.
And she was going to maybe be alone. Forever.
It was her fault too. It didn’t matter what Bailey said. She knew him. She knew exactly how obsessed he was with saving Sarah, even if no one else did. Obsessed enough to sit there with two fractured ribs and promise her he felt fine. That it was nothing. It was a superficial wound. Just a scratch. And she hadn’t even checked. She hadn’t so much as pushed up his scrub top and found the bruises for herself. Meredith shook her head and started rocking back and forth in the chair, running through the past few hours again and again in her mind.
If she’d just examined him like she was supposed to in the first place, he would’ve had time for scans. The bleeding would’ve been minimal when they caught it. He wouldn’t have started coughing up his own blood. But Sarah would’ve died. She couldn’t have done that surgery without him there to talk her through it, and if she hadn’t done it… She didn’t want to think about how he would have looked at her if she’d forced him to get a CT at the cost of the child’s life. But if he died, oh god. He could. He really, really could, and maybe it made her a horrible person, but if she could only save one of them, she would’ve rather saved him. Because he asked her to marry him. And pulled her out of the water. And then again out of the shower. And loved her still even when he knew she’d done it on purpose. Not to mention she wasn’t quite sure how to live in a world without him in it. If she even could… Meredith’s lower lip began to tremble and she curled up again, pressing her face into her knees as the tears came back.
She cried for a long time until she felt empty on the inside. Like there was nothing where her organs used to be. Her thoughts were a patchwork of panic and pain that she sewed into her skin. She wondered if he’d gone anywhere. Perhaps the dead hospital was only for the really, really screwed up, and Derek always seemed so much more sensible than her. Maybe he was waiting someplace beautiful with lots of open land and a lake to fish in. He’d like that. Or maybe he hadn’t gone anywhere at all, and he was shrunk down inside his body in some fearful place where even words didn’t reach. No. She shook her head. Not possible. He was fishing or some other crap like that. Something happy, but not too happy so he’d want to come back for her. Some pond with crappy fish that didn’t like to bite.
Meredith started chewing on her lower lip as she thought about their conversation in the cafeteria that morning. She should’ve told him all of it. That she’d come back for him because she couldn’t stand the thought of being without him, and that it was only fair that he come back too if he ever had a choice to make. Then he’d have it hanging over his head, and he’d be all guilted into surviving, and that was just fine by her. She could do guilt trips if she had to. If it would bring him back. Or maybe she should have said yes a little sooner or a little louder. Maybe that would have been enough. Or maybe if she’d told him she loved him that morning instead of grumbling about coffee. Or if she had nicer hair without split ends. Or didn’t snore. Or didn’t make him live in a house with roommates like he was still just out of college. Maybe, if she’d done all those things, or even just one or two, maybe then he’d throw down his fishing pole and say goodbye to the crappy fish and come back to her.
If he would just live, she’d be the best freaking fiancée the word ever saw.
She scrambled out of his chair as if it had burned her and pushed it back where it belonged. Really excellent fiancées most likely did not go snooping around in their fiancé’s stuff. Meredith straightened the chair out and turned off the desk lamp. It was very clearly an office that had not been spied on. Because she, Meredith Grey fiancée extraordinaire, was above such things.
She backed out of his office and closed the door, and for a moment, she could almost convince herself that it made a difference. But then the hospital swallowed her up again. It had come back to life a little in the time since she’d left the waiting room. Some of the halls seemed cleaner, and almost every other person she passed in scrubs stopped to give her a long look brimming over with pity. A few said things that sounded sympathetic and made her insides curdle and the soles of her feet itch like she would scream if she didn’t start running soon. She started checking her pager again and again, pulling it from where she’d hooked it to a belt loop. But each time, it was as blank as before. And the battery wasn’t dead no matter how many times she looked.
Meredith was halfway down yet another hall when she came to an abrupt stop. A familiar head of black curly hair faced away from her, and she could hear Cristina talking to two of her interns. The sight of her called back the crazy, itching panic, and before she fully realized what she was doing, she had pushed open the nearest door and slipped inside.
It was the interns’ locker room. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d set foot inside. It felt like a lifetime ago. Maybe two. She slumped down on the nearest bench, her back to the dingy white lockers behind her. Her head was ringing and she was grateful for the emptiness. She didn’t want apologetic glances and reassurances about Derek, and she certainly didn’t want to talk to Cristina so soon after their fight. She wasn’t even sure what there was to say. Fake “he’ll be okay’s” from her person seemed unbearable. Cristina thought she’d be better off without him and now, well, now she might get her wish. Meredith shook her head, her body bowing forward as she buried her head in her hands. She was starting to feel sick from all the tears that kept finding their way out of her.
“Meredith?”
It was a quiet, tentative voice, and when she lifted her head, she found Lexie standing there poised just beyond the door leading to the bathroom. She held it half open as if she’d forgotten to let go of the handle, and her dark eyes were wide with concern.
“I, I heard about Dr. Shepherd. Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” she echoed dully. “Derek is having emergency surgery because a ceiling collapsed on top of him, and I was too stupid to realize anything was wrong until he was ten seconds from passing out. He could die today. Right now. Maybe he already has and they just haven’t paged me yet. The love of my life just…gone.” She sniffled and glared up at her, adding, “So no, Lexie. I’m not okay.”
“Right. Sorry. I’m sorry. That was a stupid question. Definitely a stupid question.” She took a small step forward and let the bathroom door close behind her. “Do you want me to find Dr. Yang for you? Maybe she could—”
“No,” snapped Meredith. “I don’t want you to get Cristina. I don’t want you to get anyone, okay? Just go away. Please.” She added it on as an afterthought while trying not to notice the way Lexie’s face had fallen.
“Right. Okay. I’ll, I’ll just go…”
There was the sound of another door opening and closing and then nothing. Silence. It was supposed to feel comforting, but somehow it ate at her worse than before. Meredith curled forward and pressed her head to her knees, trying to blot out the world.
When the door opened again, she didn’t bother to lift her head. Some random intern did not need to see her tears. But the footsteps shuffled nearer and nearer to her until she felt the undeniable warmth of someone sitting down beside her. She tilted her head to find Lexie perched awkwardly on the bench.
“Sorry,” said Lexie. “I know you said to go, but…coffee.” She held out a large cup stamped with the name of the vendor in the lobby. “It looked like maybe you could use some.”
Meredith frowned but took it anyway, starting out with a tiny, tentative sip. It tasted black and biting on her tongue, and when she swallowed the warmth of it soothed her throat after all the crying that had torn it apart. She sighed and took another sip.
“I got it black. I, well, I remembered that was how you drank it. Or at least that’s how you did that morning when I slept over at your house.”
“What?”
“The day you made breakfast, the eggs. You had coffee and it was, it was black.”
“Oh.”
“And…I’m a freak for noticing that. And an even bigger freak for remembering it.” Lexie flushed bright red and got to her feet. “So I’m just gonna go now and—”
“Stay.”
“Stay? Really? You, you want me to stay?”
Meredith started to shrug but then nodded her head, staring resolutely down at her feet.
“Okay,” said Lexie in a quiet, wondering voice. She eased back onto the bench, a small smile on her face. Meredith sighed and looked at her. She didn’t have the energy for a smile herself, but she took another sip of her coffee, relaxing a little as the warmth washed down her throat. For some reason, the emptiness in her chest felt a little less vast.
“I think he’s going to be okay,” continued Lexie. “I have a good feeling.”
Meredith said nothing, and when Lexie was met with silence she seemed to decide against saying anything else. They sat together, Meredith staring straight ahead pretending not to notice the glances Lexie continually cast in her direction. They were a bizarre mixture of hesitant and eager, but they didn’t annoy her as much as she thought they would. There was something oddly comforting about having someone sit beside her, and she made it to the bottom of her coffee cup without checking her watch or pager once.
They were lingering still in silence when it finally went off. Meredith jumped, the cup falling to land forgotten by her feet. She pulled her pager from the waistband of her jeans and squinted down at the tiny screen.
“Bailey,” she said, feeling all the hope and fear come back in one giant lump that lodged itself in her throat. She stood and pushed the hair out of her eyes.
Lexie got up as well. “Do you, do you want me to come with?”
“No,” said Meredith, already halfway to the door. She paused and looked back at Lexie standing there beside the bench and the fallen coffee cup. “But thank you,” she said, finally managing a small smile. “For staying.”
She slipped out of the locker room and broke into a run, not caring how ridiculous she looked charging down the hall. Her heart was just about crashing into her ribcage with every beat and the world was a blur, but she just kept going and going in a constant sprint of he had to be alive until she crashed straight into Bailey.
“Whoa. Slow down there, Grey.”
Meredith shook her head, barely hearing her. “He’s still alive,” she gasped with her first breath. “Right? Tell me he’s alive.”
“He’s alive,” said Bailey. She took her by the elbow, and Meredith found herself being steered into a nearby conference room. “The surgery went well,” she continued as she closed the door. “The wound to his leg ended up being fairly minor. That piece of metal just missed his femoral artery, so he got lucky there. Still, it sliced through a fair amount of muscle. There will be some pain at first as he gets back on his feet.”
“And the rest of it? What…” She dragged the back of her hand across her eyes. “What did you do?”
Bailey leaned forward with a reassuring smile. “The Chief repaired the liver lacerations and he was able to salvage part of the spleen as well.”
“Part of it?” she choked out, sinking down into a chair.
“He had to perform a partial splenectomy to repair the rupture.”
“But he already had a puncture wound, and now, now…he doesn’t have a spleen? He could develop sepsis or OPSI.” She shook her head. An overwhelming post-splenectomy infection could kill in a matter of hours.
“Partial splenectomy,” repeated Bailey. “With time the remaining portion of the organ will be able to fight off infection just as well as it used to.”
Meredith just shook her head again. “But not at first,” she said. “He needs vaccines. PPV and Hib and pneumococcus,” she said, listing them off on her fingers. “And maybe influenza. I know it’s not flu season, but just to be safe…”
Bailey crossed her arms over her chest. “He’ll be getting them.”
“What about antibiotics?” she demanded. “He should be on prophylaxis.”
“He already is. Grey, we’re doing our jobs here.”
“It’s just, sepsis…”
“Is a rare complication, not a guarantee.”
Meredith nodded weakly. She bit her lip and looked away to hide the fresh tears on her cheeks. “It killed Susan.”
“Meredith…” Bailey sighed and sat down beside her, her face softening as she reached out to squeeze her hand. “We’re taking every precaution with him,” she said, her voice turning motherly once more. “And there are no signs of infection.”
“None?”
“None.”
“Good, that’s good,” stammered Meredith as she got unsteadily to her feet. “Where is he? Can I see him now?”
“He’s in recovery. And yes, you can go on in. He should be waking up soon, and I know it’s you he’ll be asking for.”
“Okay…” She smiled through the tears that never seemed to go away no matter how many times she blinked and dried her eyes. “Okay,” she said again as she turned to go.
Bailey held up a hand. “Grey,” she said, sounding sterner than before.
Meredith looked back. “Yes?”
“He lost a lot of blood. Be gentle with him.”
She nodded and swiped at her tears, silently ordering them to stay away this time. She could do this, be the strong one. The one who held it altogether for them. She could do anything he needed, anything he asked of her. Anything at all.
Because her fiancé was still alive.
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