What Should Have Been From The Beginning

Invisibly In Denial

Cristina and I arrived to the house for the first time since the attack and walking in, surrounded by nothing but silence, felt so eerie yet it felt so much like freedom. I was welcomed back into the warmth and memories overloaded my heart again. I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway and just looked around the room, thinking about the past and future. Thinking about, how prior to the horror, I was pregnant and had no idea and when I was throwing up in that sink, how I just thought it was a stomach bug. The I was looking at the fridge and thinking about the finer details to come like being able to stick handmade drawings up with magnets that our child had made,

'Come on, since you can't drink tequila with me, I guess it's just gonna have to be food and sleep. What do you want to eat?' Cristina asked, brushing past my arm into the kitchen. 

'Erm, anything.' I replied back totally unaware of what I was fancying.

'What you don't have any weird cravings like pickles and Worcestershire sauce or strawberry milkshake and French fries?'

I laughed at her bizarre comments and how into the idea of me being pregnant, she was, which I did not expect at all. After only a short while had passed, I realised I really wasn't hungry at all. Nothing sounded appetising and as much as I tried to hide, dismiss and tell myself I wasn't tired physically as well as mentally exhausted, I knew I was. 

'You know, I'm not hungry. I just need to sit down.' 

'Meredith, you and me both know that if Derek comes home and finds out you haven't eaten, he's gonna go through the roof.'

'Seriously Cristina, I'll be sick if I eat anything.' We both stared at each, silently trying to compromise and eventually, after many death stares from her piercing straight through my eyes, I gave in and told her I'd eat but only if I could eat it in bed. The compromise was made and I later found myself sprawled across the edge of the bed, stomach facing up to the ceiling and my arms spread across like a starfish. Every bone and muscles in my body was aching and my head was pounding. A burning sensation engulfed my eyeballs and I could not stop yawning. Laying in a world of my own, I began to drift into a dark place and interact with the knowledge of being away from Derek again and the last time that was, I ended up, in a hotel room, pregnant, in nothing but a towel and with a gun to my head. Cristina was in the bathroom brushing her teeth so I had a minute or two alone and even though my best friend was less than 50 feet from me, in those minutes, I had somehow fallen so deep into my own nightmare that a tear fell horizontally down my face and landed on the bed sheets. Thankfully, before I could become numb and relive anymore terror, Cristina brought me out of my head. 

'You okay?' She peeped her head around the door and spoke through spitting out the toothpaste that was in her mouth. I pushed my head back on the mattress, looking at her from upside down whilst trying to hide, in actual fact all I wanted was Derek. Through a sweet but false smile, 'Yeah, I'm fine,' I answered.

Cristina had no clue about the terrors that haunted me and although she knew about what had happened, she didn't and wasn't expected to know that the thought of sleep scared the living daylights out of me and the thought of being without Derek, for any time at all, wrecked me. 

I took my jeans and shirt off and changed into pyjamas that made me feel like I was home. Anything to bring a sense of comfort too me right now was appreciated and was pulled from everywhere. Cristina turned the main bedroom light off and switched the bedside lamps on dim whilst we climbed under the covers. At that moment in the realisation that if I didn't go to sleep or rest my eyes eventually, this pregnancy was going to suffer. I would suffer and the baby would suffer and then Derek would suffer. An act of selflessness was priority thinking about this and on that thought, I felt Cristina slip her arm under mine and hold it supportively and comforting in her hand. She sat up higher in the bed than me, which meant my head reached her shoulder where I laid it and I just stared ahead. 

'You tired?' She softly asked down my ear. 

'Exhausted.' 

CRISTINA'S POV

'Cristina! Cristina! Get Derek! Now! Call Derek!' Meredith was shaking me vigoursly and screaming at me to get Derek. I had no recollection of time and had no idea what was happening until Meredith stood up out of bed and looked me directly in the eyes with a horrifying expression on her face. Then I knew.