Where You Belong

124

On their first Christmas together, Meredith had woken up in Derek's arms. She had been warm and didn't want to leave the comforts of her bed. In response to the alarm – which had played upbeat Christmas carols – Derek had buried his face into the back of her neck and held her tight. They had savoured the moment together and had then shared a very enjoyable shower.

This year, their second Christmas together and their first as a married couple, was nothing like the last one.

Meredith jolted awake to the screech of her pager. Instead of waking in Derek's arms, she awoke alone in a cold, hard on-call room bed. Despite the holiday season and lack of scheduled surgeries, the hospital still needed to be staffed, and apparently HR had approved too many leave requests. Meredith and Derek had been lucky to have their shifts coincide so that at least they could be at home together. They had worked the day before, Christmas Eve, and had been on-call overnight. They were then schedule to work until five that evening, and then be back the next morning. There would be no turkey dinner for them, but at least they'd have the evening together.

With a groan, Meredith rolled off of the bed and stood. A glance at her watch told her she'd had three hours of sleep since her last page. That was more than she would have thought, but still not enough to make her feel human. Derek had been called into surgery at midnight – a drunk man leaving a party had caused a pile up on the freeway – and she hadn't seen him since.

After stretching to regain mobility in her stiff limbs, she hurried down to the ER.

"I was paged," she said to the on duty ER nurse.

"Bed three," the nurse said, handing Meredith a chart.

"Thanks." She opened the chart as she walked across the ER to bed three and pulled back the curtain. A young boy in reindeer pajamas lay in the bed, two equally worried parents sat on either side of him. "Hi, I'm Dr. Grey-Shepherd. What seems to be the problem?"

"He fell of the roof," said the mother. "Oh, please. Please tell me he's going to be okay. We didn't know where he went, and then he was screaming from outside."

Meredith put the chart down on the end of the bed. "When did this happen?"

"Less than an hour ago," the father answered. "We just put him in the car and got him here."

That explained why he wasn't on a backboard.

"Hi, Mathew," she greeted the young boy as she pulled on a pair of gloves.

He was holding an icepack to his head, but managed to scowl despite the expression of pain on his face. "Matt," he said.

"He doesn't like being called Mathew," the mother explained.

Meredith smiled. "Okay, Matt. It looks like your head hurts. Is that all that hurts?"

"My arm, too," he said with a sniff.

"Not your back? Or your neck?"

"No."

She glanced at his parents. "How high was the roof?"

"Just one storey. He was climbing onto the roof above the garage."

She turned back to Matt. "Where does your head hurt?"

He showed her with his hand. "But don't touch it, it hurts."

"I'll be very careful," she promised, probing the area around the obvious bump on his head. There was no sign of broken skin or obvious skull fracture.

"Did he lose consciousness?"

"I don't think so," the mother said. She seemed to have calmed down now that Meredith was here looking at her son. "He just started screaming."