Secret smile

20

Derek stifled a yawn as he moved toward the coffee shop. He needed a coffee. The nightmare had come again last night, which definitely wasn't a surprise but he had been to shaken by it to fall back to sleep and now he had an important surgery too soon and he needed a coffee to get going. Which is why he was going to the very coffee shop he had spent the month avoiding.

He knew she came here. He knew it was only a block from the practice and that she came here. So he had avoided it. For the last month, he had avoided the best coffee shop in the city because seeing her scared the hell out of him. But now, he couldn't get the image of his daughter's stuffed puppy torn and bloody out of his head and his hands felt like they were barely moving. Coffee was a must. If he saw her...he wasn't actually sure what he would do if he saw her. He should actually say something, he wanted to say something to her. It had been a really long month and he had found himself missing the quiet strength she brought to his life. But he had no idea how to talk to her, still, so it was probably better to just keep his head down. If she was there, he'd just pretend she wasn't.

The nightmares were coming harder and faster, and each time, they seemed more and more real. He needed someone to make them go away, he needed someone to bring him back to this life. Meredith had been able to do that once, but he couldn't stand to see the pain on her face again. He couldn't stand to be reminded of that night, not when Amy's face was now starting to pop up in his nightmares.

For now all he wanted was the coffee. He didn't want to think, he wasn't even sure he wanted to breathe, he just wanted the cup of coffee he was relying on to get himself through the day in the hopes that maybe by some miracle, tomorrow would be better. Maybe he'd be so exhausted tonight that he would collapse and forget all about dreaming. That would be good. If he could forget about the dreaming, about Puppers or about Amy's bloody face, he would be able to get some sleep. He just needed some sleep and maybe life wouldn't be so damn hard. But he wasn't going to think about that now. His job right now was to get a cup of coffee, sit down for a bit to study up on his surgery, and then get to work. That was the plan for today. He could get through that at least.

The coffee shop was crowded which was a problem because he had definitely been hoping on a quiet morning but at least with all the people, the noise might make it harder to think. He was quite certain that thinking was the enemy, he just needed coffee. And maybe some sort of medication, not something to make him not feel, but something to help him sleep through the night. Dr. Wyatt had mentioned it at his last appointment, when he had confessed about the constant panic attacks and the nightmares. She never suggested anti-depressants, but she had mentioned insomnia medication. He needed to sleep, he needed to get his sleep, and he knew his therapist was right. But for some reason, he hadn't taken her up on it. Probably because he had seen her afterwards. And he had ran, he had seen her walking toward Dr. Wyatt's office and seen her blonde hair moving toward him and he had ran. Which he had been doing for the past month but he didn't know what to do besides that. He didn't know how to apologize for sleeping with her and having a nightmare and leaving in the middle of the night. He didn't know how to say sorry for hurting her like that.

But he wasn't going to think about that. He was in line now, the smell of coffee was overpowering him, and he definitely wasn't going to think about the hell he had put her through. He had made a lot of people suffer in the last year, and he was starting to think he just needed to get the hell out of Mark's apartment. His brother looked like hell, and the last thing he wanted to do was add Mark to the list of people he had hurt and destroyed. He could live on his own, especially if he looked into the meds Dr. Wyatt had suggested and he stopped with the nightmares. He would lose the nightmares, he'd sleep again and he could get his own place and it would be like he was actually living instead of just...doing whatever he was currently doing in Mark's apartment. It would be a good step and at least he'd only hurt himself.