I Wanna Be Yours

"Chapter 31"

Ellis sits on the edge of her seat, much like any other intern, as she watches Meredith prep Darren Covington for his surgery. She observes how Meredith opens him up and places the needles, all her movements careful, calculated, practiced endlessly in the Skills Lab.

Next to her stands Derek, equally professional, even though he's barely out of the womb, career-wise. He has a lot more judgment than the other crazy interns, and Ellis appreciates that. Yet, she has a hard time separating Derek, Meredith's boyfriend, from Dr. Shepherd. Especially when yesterday's dinner is still so fresh in her mind.

Derek is so different from Finn, much more centered, balanced. He's older, so that might be a point in his favor, but she doubts Derek Shepherd would have left Meredith alone when she told him she was pregnant.

Actually, she knows he wouldn't have, because the guy raised a kid by himself when David's mother took off.

Yet, maybe Finn leaving was the best thing that happened to Meredith, because it forced her to become her own person, to make her own decisions. And in spite of everything, Ellis is proud of the choices Meredith made.

The two of them work well together, almost in sync, and it's a pleasure to witness it. Ellis thinks the only time she had that kind of connection with a fellow surgeon, she ended up making Maggie with him, and they were both board-certified surgeons by then; Derek is still a baby surgeon and these two are just about ready to change the face of medicine.

Ellis smirks, hoping she can see this with her own eyes.

"Okay, we need to do this in perfect sync, okay? That's what we practiced." Meredith's metallic voice filters from the audio in the gallery, and Ellis is again on the edge of her seat, waiting for them to start injecting the virus.

"Ready when you are," Derek says, confident, though Ellis can see his eyes betraying him from above his mask. Yet, Meredith smiles at him, terse and hidden under her mask, but Ellis catches a glimpse of it. She knows her daughter, after all.

They both stand at the sides of the patient's head, needles in hand, both of their eyes fixed on the monitors.

"Okay, go."

Meredith's injection is slower than Derek's, whose numbers are crawling up and up to a hundred and Meredith can't catch up.

"Slow down," she says. "Dr. Shepherd, slow down."

Their eyes lock but the numbers are still crawling.

"Look at me, don't look at the monitors," she instructs, and so Derek's eyes shift and Ellis can almost see his tension drain away.

"That's it," Meredith hums, the numbers evening out. "That's it."

The monitors beep one hundred in unison, and they relax, unfurling the tension right out of their bodies as they extract the needles.

"We're standing on the moon, Dr. Grey." Derek's grin makes his eyes crinkle at the edges, and Ellis can see Derek behind this Dr. Shepherd façade as Meredith smiles right back at him.

Ellis hates that their smiles are quickly replaced by a flurry of activity as soon as the patient is brought back to his room and his stats are grim.

It's the middle of the night when he starts coding, and in a matter of minutes, he dies. Loss number twelve. Ellis knows that this was almost their Hail Mary, that the FDA might reconsider the whole trial now, and she hates it. She wanted this for Meredith, for them, for the patients.

She'll see how many strings she can pull.

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