Keep The Faith

13.

Three Days

Meredith sighed and leaned on the counter of the nurse's station with her head in her hands. A coffee cup clinked on the counter and she looked up.

"Dr. Montgomery." She stammered. "Um, what?"

"You look dead on your feet, Grey." She said, gesturing towards the coffee. "Thought you could use a pick me up."

Meredith's breath caught in her lungs and her chest ached. "Thank you, Addison." She said softly. "That was really nice of you."

Her pager went off. "I gotta go." She said sadly, not meeting the red head's eyes. She grabbed the coffee off the counter and hurried in the other direction.

"Tyler!" she called as soon as she saw him. "You paged?"

"Shepherd needs an intern in overflow six." Meredith groaned. Overflow trauma rooms were notoriously empty, rarely used and far away.

"How many trauma patients are there taking up the rest of the rooms?" she grumbled under her breath. She trekked up a flight of stairs to the east wing of the hospital, and rode an elevator all the way to trauma overflow.

When she finally opened the door to room six, and stared. There was no patient, no trauma, and no emergency to warrant her being there. There was just Derek, leaning against the exam table, arms folded over his chest, cocky smirk playing across his lips.

"Derek, what the hell is this?"

He didn't bother responding. Words felt silly to him, when they had lips and tongues to tangle with. He kissed her, and for a fleeting moment, she kissed him back. It felt good, to good to kiss him. She started to wrap her arms around his neck, but she felt the cup of coffee in her hands. Coffee from his wife.

She pushed him away as it all came back to her. The time limit. The month she graciously gave, and the month he assured her he needed.

"Mer..." he said. "Don't you want to?"

She closed her eyes, not sure if she should sit down and cry at the absurdity or slug him in the jaw for treating her this way. "Of course I want to, Derek." She snapped.

"Then what's the problem?" he asked reaching for her.

She brandished the coffee cup in his face. "The problem, Dr. Shepherd," she spat out angrily, "Is this. Coffee from your wife! The problem is that I told you we would take time. Time that was not consumed by an affair that makes me feel like some cheap...." She trailed off, not wanting to introduce whore back into the dialogue of her and Derek.

"Meredith..." he started again.

She shook her head. "I'm giving you time, Derek. That's all I have left to give."

"Meredith, you don't have to..." He tried again. "It doesn't have to be like this."

She let out a strangled, angry, half scream, and flung her hand in his face. "See the difference between my ring finger and yours?" she asked, "Yes, it does have to be like this. You have time to figure out who you want, Derek. Until then, we can't."

She left, still clutching the coffee, and Derek stood, watching her go, bewildered, wondering what had changed and why she didn't understand.

💉🩺

Meredith stormed down to the tunnels, torn between anger and an overwhelming sadness. Sadness scared her. Terrified her. Sadness was what she was going to feel when he picked Addison again. She would hold out for a month, but it seemed so inevitable to her now.
Anger was easier. So she went with that as she threw herself onto a gurney. "He had Tyler page me to trauma overflow." She said to Cristina and Alex, the only two who were there. Cristina was eating an apple, and Alex was filling out post op notes. "There was no trauma patient. Only Derek and his come hither smirk."

They said nothing. Meredith looked over at them, expectantly. "What?" Cristina asked, between mouthfuls of Granny Smith. "You expect me to be surprised? He's reach a new level of McBastardness. Nothing shocks me anymore."

"I gave him a month." She said, not noticing as Cristina and Alex exchanged glances. "I told him he had a month to choose, thinking it would prompt him to do so now. But he was all, 'oh I need the time' or something."

Cristina hopped off the gurney she sat on. "I'll be back." She offered and sped off. Meredith looked at Alex.

"I'm an idiot, aren't I?"

"For sleeping with the guy who risked his life to save you, even though he's married? I don't know if I'd say idiot, but there may have been wiser courses of action."

Meredith smiled. "Quite the diplomat, you are these days, Karev."

He looked over at her seriously. "You're booking aren't you? If he stays with her again?"

Meredith suddenly became very interested in the ceiling tiles. "Meredith," Alex pushed, "I'm not the idiot."

"Yeah. If it doesn't work..." she trailed off and swallowed. "I don't know how to feel anything else."

They sat in silence.

💉🩺

Cristina charged through the halls until she spotted him, leaning against a wall, hair styled as usual. "Uh, Dr. Shepherd?" She asked. "I have notes here, on a patient? I'd love to ask you a quick question." She announced loudly.
He looked around warily, and nodded. She dropped her voice to a low hiss. "Look. Meredith's my best friend and all, but you make her into an idiot. Just because she's stupid enough to give you a month, doesn't mean we are. Three days left. Or Addison will hear it from us."

She was gone, saying something about a consult later at a volume that others could hear. Derek ran a hand through his thick hair, and walked to the cafeteria. He spent the rest of the day trying unsuccessfully to get Meredith's attention, but it just wasn't working. She ignored him purposefully.

She avoided him in the halls, the elevator, and she, somehow, avoided his cases. He slumped against a wall, almost hoping for someone to get something severely wrong with their brain, just so he'd have a case rare enough to tempt her.

He didn't understand what was happening. He didn't understand why she didn't understand, because he though they had understood each other. He thought he had known exactly where they stood, and exactly how it was going to play out.

Only he didn't. He realized that he didn't understand how to leave his wife. He didn't understand how to tell her that he wanted out. That he'd tried and he'd failed her, and now he wanted to cut it off.

Derek hated, more than anything else, feeling like a failure. And if reason were guiding him, he might have noticed that he was failing Meredith, but all he could see was how hard it was for him.

It blinded him.