Where You Belong

40

After assuring himself that Meredith was fine, had come out of surgery fine, and would recover just fine, Derek finally allowed himself to relax. He had spent most of the day with very little anxiety. He had talked to patients and performed one surgery. And sitting by his girlfriend's bedside while she was high on morphine had been entertaining to say the least.

It hadn't been until he had found himself stuck in his patient's room, talking over the surgery with worried family members, that he had felt the anxiety hit him like a brick. She was going in at any minute, and he wasn't by her side. And he should be by her side.

He should always be by her side.

He was by her side now. The surgery had gone perfectly; short, quick, no complications. Her time in the recovery room had been textbook, and he had been there when she had first opened her eyes. Her pain was no longer controlled by morphine or anything as strong as morphine, leaving her tired, grumpy and uncomfortable.

And he loved her for it. Because she hadn't been the least bit interested in finding out what she had been up to before her surgery. That meant he didn't have to explain her phone call to his mother. Or her conversations with himself, Cristina, George, Addison, Mark or Bailey. Or any other people he had yet to find out about. Unfortunately there was a chunk of time between his conversation with Addison and him finally making it back to her room with the ice chips that was still unaccounted for.

It all meant he was safe for now.

Light snores filled the hospital room, signalling she was asleep. They would be keeping her overnight for observation because her surgery had been so late in the day. He would, of course, be staying with her, but he still had some things to do before he carefully found space beside her on the small hospital bed. After Bailey had banned him from entering the restricted surgical area, he was taking full advantage of the whole not-a-doctor-here-as-a-family-member-thing.

The most important thing he needed to do was call his mother; a task he had been putting off as long as he could. "Well, here goes nothing," he mumbled, pulling out his phone.

It only rang twice before his mother picked up. And that wasn't a good sign. If she picked up that quickly it meant she was waiting for his call.

"Hi, mom," he said as cheerfully as possible. Maybe the best plan of attack was to play dumb. Meredith called you? I didn't know that...

"Derek, good, it's you. Did everything go okay?"

He couldn't help the smile that tugged at his lips due to the worried tone in her voice. "Everything went fine," he assured. "She did great, came out fine, and is snoring away right in front of me now."

"She snores?"

"She does."

She chuckled. "One of many things I learned about her today."

The comment caught him off guard and he cursed under his breath when he realized too much time had elapsed for him to play dumb. "Yeah, about that... I never thought she'd use my phone if I left it here."

"Does she remember anything?"

"Not about talking to you." She did, oddly enough, remember calling him pathetic and being irrationally excited about ice-chips.

"Mmm," she hummed. "Maybe it's best we keep it that way for a while."

His mother's comment froze Derek on the spot. That meant she had said something she really wouldn't want her future mother-in-law to know. "I... She's going to find out that she called you..."

"Why is that?"

He sighed. "Because everyone in the hospital seems to know. There's no way she won't find out. And soon."