Do you take thee...?

Choosing

'Derek, I know this sounds ridiculous but I have this gut feeling that something horrific is going to happen' I said sternly, trying to keep composed but the look of worry across my face made it evident that this was not the case. 

I'm never one to be scared and when searching through all the past events in my life that could've been the scariest thing to someone else, they just weren't to me. I didn't get scared. I was normally fearless, probably from all the trauma I've had in my life since I was young but this situation made me sick to my stomach and I promise it wasn't the stomach bug still. 

'Meredith, I'm here, right now. I'm here tomorrow and I'm always going to be here.' Derek persuasively said to me. Still though for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to take back what I had said but only to say, 'I'm sorry Derek.'

'We've not known each other for long but I what I do know is that I'm intrigued, so if that means giving you space, that's fine.' Derek replied, being so understanding and so dreamy. Derek picked back up the bag that he had recently dropped carelessly and pulled out a hot water bottle, new pyjamas and chocolates. 'I bought them because I know you're going to need them. I'm gonna go now.' He said all this whilst carefully placing each item onto the worktop before he turned around, holding my hand one more time and walking out the door. 

I needed to find myself because I already missed him but I knew that what I did was the right thing. If I had left it any later the situation probably would've been much worse and I would have hurt him even more. Having no pure reason to tell Derek why I couldn't be with him, I feel hurt him more. I didn't know how to trust. I didn't know how to love. I didn't know how to let someone love me.

I went into work the weekend after not sleeping much and relying on coffee to drag me through my 18 hour shift. Of course the first person I saw walking into the lobby was Derek. God just had to be that cruel and break my heart all over again. He made eye contact with me but I just dropped me head and carried on walking to the interns lounge. Cristina greeted me about 20 minutes later with a smile on her face. Clearly she had just been in the on-call room doing what Cristina does in the on-call room. She noticed that I was not the Meredith that I normally was and immediately knew that something was wrong. But she didn't know about Derek and my past conversation or that he had been with me for the past 48 hours. She had been on-call for the past 36 hours and then went straight home to sleep before going back to the hospital so she had had no time to come to my house and plus she didn't want to catch what I had had. I gave her the look of 'I don't want to talk about it' and threw on my lab coat and made my way to my first patient. I didn't see Derek all day until we met at the nurses station and he let me know that there was going to be a merger between Seattle Grace and Mercy West. I think that my facial expressions gave away how I was feeling because he put his hand on my shoulder and told me not to let them bother me. He obviously knew that the other interns at Mercy West weren't the nicest people to me. 

From that day on, Derek gave me plenty of space. Back to basics. As far away from him as possible. In the upcoming week, residents, attendings and interns all flowed into what used to be our space. Already this merger had been one of the worst things to happen for me and it wasn't even started yet. Derek hadn't spoken to me since the day he told me about the merger and he was clearly being very distant. I know he said he was going to give me space but he hadn't even asked for me on his service which he knew I loved and how interested in Neuro I was. A few hours into my shift, I had noticed there was a lot of giggling and chatting in the room outside of my patients. Although the door was open, I couldn't seem to work out who the voices were, so once I had finished up with the charts, I walked outside to peek my head around the corner and try to make out who it was. They seemed to be very happy and cheery which wasn't really like many people in this hospital so I assumed it was a Mercy Wester. My curious and nosey self couldn't help but look around the corner and at that point I realised who it was. My face stayed perfectly straight, even though I was pretty sure that my jaw had dropped and a familiar voice said 'Meredith, can I help you?' It was the attending who's service I had been on for the past week. 

'Sorry Dr Mei, I was just was just wondering...' I was trying so desperately to come up with an excuse as to why I was being so nosey, 'if I could be on Dr. Forbes' service for the rest of the day.' 

'Yeah, of course, I don't see why not. Just please tell your resident that I have allowed it and then you should be fine.'

I searched their faces trying to see the emotion they were both feeling but all I saw was annoyingly smiley Mei and Derek, would did not look at me once whilst I was speaking or even as I left the room.  As I walked back down the corridor to greet Forbes,  who's service I didn't even want to be on, the laughter and conversations took off where they left. 

All interns and attendings were called to a meeting the next morning to discuss routers. Apparently, there was an event with all the residents therefore the interns had to be assigned to attendings. I knew that Forbes, Derek and Mei were all going to be in the room so my stomach was doing flips at how awkward it was most likely going to be. I was not wrong.

Each attending could choose who they wanted to be on their service and since there was plenty of interns, there was at least two of us to each attending. My name was second to last to be read out and the last two attendings to fill their spaces were Forbes and Shepherd. They both exchanged a look between one and other before Derek said,

'I'll take Dr Grey. She seems to be very interested in plastics.'

This was the first time that Derek had even looked at me in the past week and it was so good to have eye contact with him. I felt special and warming. His eyes alone gave me so much comfort. Forbes was quick to jump onto the decision.

'Well what if I want Grey?'

Webber interrupted what was about to be an argument between the both of them by assigning the choice to me since they couldn't make the decision between themselves. My heart started to palpitate knowing that I had to choose between McDreamy and the service I wasn't even interested in yet let on that I was. I directly looked at Derek to try and make the decision easier but it only made it harder. He gave me those eyes. Those McDreamy eyes. The ones he had given me in those 48 hours when we were practically living together. I was still pissed at him though for moving on so quickly and giving me so much space. I took at look at Forbes, then at Webber. 

'I think I'll choose...'