Desire - Merddison

Chapter Five

Meredith's POV

Disbelief. Just total disbelief is all I feel right now. She cheated on him. She, ADDISON, cheated on Derek. And then stuck up for me to our patient. She could've just let it slide and agreed to have me replaced on the case, but she didn't. Instead, she told the woman that the situation wasn't as simple as she assumed it was. She told her straight. Leaving me in even more disbelief that she stuck up for me like that. I lingered around for a bit, but I think Julie was too dumbfounded to conjure up any sort of apology for me. But right now, I don't care about that. I don't care about getting an apology from the patient. Because right now I'm just trying to absorb the information I just heard. 

***

I pull up to the part of the woods where Derek has his trailer. Do I want to listen to what he has to say? Yes he is the one who was cheated on first. But I told him something I haven't told anyone before. I told him about my mother. If he had just sat me down and told me way beforehand, that he's married, and WHY he left and came to Seattle, then maybe all of this could've been avoided. I wouldn't have ended up feeling like a dirty mistress. Even now that I know that in a way, I'm not, I still feel like one. I still feel dirty, like a 'secret', like a horrible woman who slept with another woman's husband, like a mistress. And it was horrible.

I get out of my car and walk up to the trailer, where Derek is sat on his porch drinking a beer, looking tired and defeated. He looks up me, sadness in his eyes, we shared a look, a look that seemed to tell him that I've found out what happened, that she cheated on him first.

"One night I parked my car, I unlock my front door, go inside my house, and something's different. Nothing'sdifferent, everything's the same, but yet, still, something's different. And I stand there for a while. And then I know. See, there are moments for me, you know, usually when I'm in the OR, when I just know what's gonna happen next. So I go upstairs. As I'm walking down the hall I'm trying to prepare myself for what I'm gonna see when I go into my bedroom. I step on a man's jacket that doesn't belong to me. And everything I know just shifts. Because the jackt doesn't belong to me is a jacket that I recognise. And what I know now is that when I go into my bedroom, is that I'm not just gonna see that my wife is cheating pn me. I'm gonna see that my wife is cheating on me with Mark, who happened to be my best friend. It's just so pedestrian, common and dirty, and cruel. Mostly just cruel. I left, came out here." He explains sadly to me. I feel for him. I really do. I can't imagine what it must be like to walk in on your spouse cheating on you with your own best friend. But, I do know what it feels to be kept in the dark, to find out too late, to find out that the man you've been sharing your bed with, your secrets with, and someone you have really fallen for, turns out to be married.

"And you met me." I simply say back to him.

"And I met you."

"Well what was I to you? The girl you screwed to get over being screwed?" I ask him. Really, what was I to him? I know he was hurt, his wife and best friend hurt him, but he's hurt me. Massively.

"You were like coming up for fresh air. It's like I was drowning and you saved me. That's all I know." But even a sentinment like that doesn't get rid of the damage he has done. Even if he said all the right words, he still let me down. Even if he did feel like he was drowning and I was like coming up for fresh air, I was still the bit on the side, I was still the dirty mistress who didn't know that my own boyfriend HAS a wife back in New York.

"It's not enough." I say, before turning around and getting in my car to drive away. Because it isn't enough. Because it still doesn't explain why he failed to tell me he was married. If he really loved me, or cared about me, then he would've told me. If he told me why he left his wife and fled to Seattle, then I would've been fine. All of this could have been avoided. I would have understood and things wouldn't be the way they are now. The only reason I can think of why he didn't tell me, is because he wants her back. That I was just a phase that he would outgrow and go back to Addison.

***

After leaving Derek's trailer, I find myself back at Joe's bar where Cristina comes to sit with me up at the bar. She's had a tough day too. I finally found out who the father of the baby is, not that he knows there even is a baby, but she had also schedueled a date for her abortion. She knew in her heart it was the right thing to do for her. Despite her frustration about me finding out that Burke is the father through George and for all my questions I had for her, she sits next to me and sighs.

"The clinic has a policy. They wouldn't let me confirm my appointment unlesss I designated an emergency contact person. Someone has to be there, just in case, and to help me home, you know, after. Anyway, I put your name down. That's why I told you I'm pregnant. You're my person."

"I am?"

"Yeah, you are. Whatever." She sighed back to me.

"Whatever."

"He dumped me." She says tearfully.

I lay my head down on her shoulder and put my arm around her.

"You realise this consitutes as hugging?" She says to me after doing so. She wasn't a hug kind of person.

"Shut up. I'm your person." I say back to her. Because in this moment, I need a hug, because I also think that I have been dumped. My gut tells me that Derek and Addison are gonna get back together, that he has dumped me, never loved me, and that I was just something to take away his pain.

And that sucked.

"Tequila, please." I say to the bartender who had taken over for Joe whilst he recovers from his surgery. Tonight, I plan to get ridiculously drunk so I can forget all about this shit show of a situation.

***

The next morning, Cristina and I are in my bathroom, nursing our hangovers. She's screaming about estrogen, saying that's the problem. Tequila is in fact the problem. And boys. George and Izzie come in and once again Cristina is telling them estrogen is the problem.

"I feel empty." I sigh. So empty.

"Two hours of vomiting will do that to you." Izzie chuckles back. OK she has a point, but I also feel empty for other reasons.

"No, I feel empty." I say quitetly to myself.

"You're lucky, I feel pissed off." Cristina grumbles after. Me too Cristina, me too.

***

I arrive in the parking lot of the hospital, in a shitty mood with a shitty hangover. I slam the door of my car shut whilst George, Izzie and Cristina slowly get out after me. And much to my annoyance, I see Derek, stood there, clearly waiting for me.

"Stop." I snap at him. I'm so frustrated with him constantly trying to make everything okay, like things will ever be ok again.

"What?" He exclaims back to me.

"You're stalking me. Stop it."

"Did we not communicate last night?" He asks.

"Yes." I reply bluntly. You mean when you in a way made me feel like I was just a fling because you decided to not tell me about your marital status because you're probably gonna go back to her.

"Did you hear what I was saying?"

"Your wife screwed your best friend."

"And then from that point on she no longer existed to me anymore."

"You had marital amnesia?" I say sarcastically back to him.

"No. Come on I bared my soul to you last night."

"It's not enough." I sigh back to him.

"How can that be not enough?" Stupid question Derek, real stupid question. There are countless ways how it can not be enough. Now, I was pissed, again.

"When you waited two months to tell me and I had to find out by her showing up, all leggy and fabulous and telling me herself, you pulled the plug. I'm a sink with an open drain. Anything that you say runs right out. There is no enough." I snap angrily at him.

I probably could've picked a better metephor, a much better one, but I am way too hungover for that.