fragments of my life [MERDER]

NINE

It had been two weeks since that first surgery here in Boston, and as Meredith had expected, Whelan and Delaney were still being territorial, spoilt jackasses about everything. They reminded her of Alex back in our intern year.

Splitting her time between general and neurosurgery was one of the best decisions she had made recently, and although it meant extra hours, and she was exhausted all the time to the point where she would get dizzy, it meant she could focus on surgery and not on everything else going on in her hot mess of a life. When she wasn't working, she slept, for as long as she could, which wasn't long. Sleep was a luxury nowadays, and even when she had the time, she couldn't sleep. She began to wear dark circles around her eyes, and everyone except Jade thought it was about staying up late studying for their boards, which in all fairness was partially true, but it wasn't the whole story.

Lately, Derek had been on her mind.

Maybe it was the neurosurgery cases again. Maybe it was just the fact that she was on neuro today. She hoped it was just today. Because she couldn't feel like this for much longer. She couldn't have him haunting her while she was asleep, when she was awake, anywhere she went. Meredith still needed her space. His words still hurt her, but it had gone from unbearable to a dull ache. She was living life at a 6. He said she couldn't be a good mother. He said she should be thankful that Zola, that her daughter, was taken away because she would have been such a horrible mother that she would have ruined her. He went too far, and they both knew it.

Maybe it was the fact that she was starting to miss sleeping with him, and she couldn't sleep alone... the bed feels too lonely without him. There's that place, every time she looks over her shoulder, to where he should be, and he's not. And she didn't feel safe anymore. Not the kind of safe Derek made her feel. She didn't have his arms around her, making her safe, making her comfortable. She didn't have him anymore.

"Mer... honestly, don't take this the wrong way but you look like crap. When was the last time you slept?" Jade enquired as the two scrubbed out of a tumour resection surgery together.

"I don't know... 24... 26 hours ago?" Meredith lied, hoping Jade wouldn't see through it. It was more like, 36, and even then she had only slept for about 4 hours.

"Meredith." She looked at her friend, tilting her head and rolling her eyes.

Jade definitely saw through her lie.

"Jade".

"It's him... isn't it. You're thinking about him, about you together, and what is it... you can't sleep alone?"

"It's been 5 years, Jade. I'm just not used to it." She looked up at her, breathing deeply and biting her bottom lip to trap the whimper threatening to escape. "The bed feels lonely without him. Sleeping next to someone... it's habit. It felt safe. I can't just change that instantly." Meredith sighed, letting the cold water run onto her hands.

"Fine. I've got an idea. You and me, we're going to drink tonight, at mine, and we're taking Kieran."

Bringing Kieran meant one of two things; he were going to get drunk enough to do something he'd regret, or he'd get so drunk he wouldn't even remember the day before. Meredith had encountered him do both, but she wouldn't change him for the world. He was just... happy, positive energy, and Meredith really needed that. Kieran was from Ireland originally, and told her all about how when he first got here, no one could understand what he was saying let alone want to talk to him, so he was just very lonely until he met Jade. Meredith told him about Whelan and Delaney, and it seemed to be a hospital-wide thing that those two were the village idiots and no one could figure out how they'd made it out of medical school in the first place. Kieran knew what it was like to feel alone, to feel like you had no one, to feel like you could never fit into a new place, a new life. He was like her twisted... brother? She guessed. Now she had a twisted sister and a twisted brother. Soon enough she could get a whole fucking twisted family.