I Will Follow You Into the Dark

CHAPTER 24

PREVIOUSLY --

He looked at her with pain and grief and fear written all over his face. He swallowed hard and looked at Jen with such a pitiful, pleading expression that she felt tears leap to her eyes.

"Her name is Meredith."

Jen just sat there waiting for him to say something else.

"You asked me who I loved when we argued a few months ago," he said sadly. "Her name is Meredith."

"Oh.......," was all Jen could say.

Derek started talking as he continued to stare at his shoes. "I haven't seen her or spoken to her in years........"

Derek's phone rang, halting his train of thought. He glanced quickly at the caller id, and seeing it read 'Suze', he quickly answered. "Hello?" he breathed into the phone, not knowing what to expect.

"She's awake," she murmured, her voice full of disbelief.

Those two words were all it took to send Derek flying out the door, Jen long forgotten in his mind.

The comatose patient had entered the hospital two days ago after having fallen from her bed when the nurses had tried to turn her frail body over. The doctors were told to check for any sign of head trauma. The scans were returned and deemed clean and the patient was to be prepared for discharge, to go back to the live-in care facility she had been residing in for the past few years, ever since she had fallen into a coma.

Suze had come upon the patient while taking her interns through their daily rounds. She had immediately recognized the name, her former flame having mentioned it numerous times. She had sent her interns on their merry, surgery-hungry way and had stopped by the room during one of her rare breaks.

She had resided in the chair next to the bed for at least an hour before her pager went off, conversing with the woman who was unable to talk back, telling her all about the man who was madly in love with her. She had been about to leave when the woman's eyes opened. She began examining the patient once more and discovered that the patient was following her voice and was in fact minimally concious. She had immediately begun yelling at everyone she came into contact with for letting this woman live this way for so many years.

And then she had set about waking her up.

When she had finally awoken, scared out of her mind, Suze was by her side. She was there to explain to the woman that she had been in a car accident so many years ago on her way home from the airport. She had fallen into a coma and the doctors were too careless to realize she had partially woken up.

The news only served to terrify the poor woman more, though it did not deter her from the single thought that had been running through her mind from the moment she had awoken. She had shared this thought with her doctor, who had nodded understandably and excused herself to make a call.

She had returned to the room for only a few moments before the door flew open, letting in a crazy head of raven hair highlighting a pair of wild blue eyes. He eyes had landed on Suze, visibly displaying the thanks he couldn't find the words to express. She had nodded and went to leave the room, pausing briefly to tell him she had called for a plastics' consult to deal with the remaining injuries the woman had sustained that hadn't been operated on before due to her fragile condition.

He seemed not to hear a word, though, as he moved towards the bed, not hesitating for a second before he climbed in, hugging the woman who had been gone for so long close to his body. "Meredith," he choked out, his tears hindering his speech.

"Derek," she replied, lovingly, conveying as much emotion as she could in one word.

He had placed a finger on her lips, urging her to preserve her strength as he continued trying to speak, an incessent urge pressing him to get out the information he held. "Your mother ...."

She nodded, stopping him mid-sentence. She knew. He had pulled her closer, never wanting to let her go, as they drowned in each other's tears, oblivious to the world around them until a shout broke through the fog.

"Derek?!"

Any other voice and he would have ignored it. But it was his voice. He couldn't ignore his voice. His head had shot up, his eyes staring in disbelief as he got up from the bed, walking towards the man he had for so long believed to be dead.

"Mark?!"

The two had embraced in a long hug, as if they didn't trust the reality of the situation. They had broken apart at least and grinned widely at each other, exclaiming simultaneously, "I thought you were dead!"