Love gives hope

Chapter 17 "love and respect"

Meredith's Point-of-View

"They're letting me take you down." I said as I pushed Derek's bed into the elevator. "But I have to cover the general surgery floor while my parents are in there operating on you."

"Well, I'll just have to see you afterwards." He said confidently. I felt my eyes mist as the fear of that 85% chance winning over started to swarm my gut. "Meredith? What's wrong."

I sucked in a deep breath and let it out quickly as I tried to bat at my tears. "I'm scared."

"What are you scared of?" he asked softly as he wrapped his hand around mine.

"I'm scared of losing you." I sniffled "Which isn't something you need to hear from your doctor right before your surgery but... Derek, you better make it. If you don't make it, I'm not going to make it."

"Kiss me." He breathed.

"What?" I scoffed.

"Kiss me." He repeated.

I leaned over quickly and touched my lips softly to his, lingered a moment of tingled bliss before standing up straight again as the elevator dinged. He smiled.

"Ok, I'll make it, I'll be ok."

"Promise?" I quivered.

"Promise," he smiled, "If I see any bright lights, I'll run the opposite direction."

"Ok." I smiled.

The doors of the elevator opened, and he gave my hand a squeeze before taking it away. I pushed him down the hallway and into OR 2 where the scrub nurses took over. He gave me one last confident smile before I walked into the scrub room where my parents were starting to scrub in.

"Patricia has my list of patients I need you to check on." Richard said. "This will probably take all day so you should keep me posted about every three hours."

"Ok."

"I'll need you to assess any incomings." My mother said, "If they need urgent care, I left you a number for Dr. Kessler at Seattle Prez. He is the next best thing when it comes to me."

"Alright."

"How is our patient doing?" Dad asked.

"Remarkably confident." I breathed "which is more than I can say for myself, but his odds are better here than if no surgery was involved."

"You put him in excellent hands Meredith." Mom said as comforting as she could "You did good work, I'm proud of you. But now you've got to let us do what we do best."

"Right." I sighed. I took a CD case out of my pocket "Here, put this on during the surgery, it's his favorite band...The Clash. Also, keep the bright lights away or we may never get him to wake up. Keep the fighting or bickering to a minimum, the more relaxing surgery is the better the patient's outcome, and it shortens the recovery time too."

My mom and dad exchanged a look.

"Anything else?" Dad asked.

"Yeah." I sighed, "Please don't kill him."

I looked in on just about every patient in the surgical wing that had been touched by a general surgeon, twice.

I was doing the best job that I could, but I knew that my head wasn't clear.

"Who is the guy?"

I snapped out of my trance as I noted a patient's vitals into her chart and looked down to see a smirk on the woman's face.

"Excuse me?"

"I've been sitting here talking to you the last ten minutes about my life. Here I am, sitting in a hospital bed alone with no one to speak with. All you keep saying is 'uh-huh, that's real nice'?"