Had I known How to Save a Life

Hopeless

Chapter 30
*Meredith POV*

When medicine fails, we keep our heads held high until all hope for recovery is lost. We don't like to throw in the towel, we don't like to surrender. So we hold on to the maybe's, the small chance something can get better. Because when you're at rock bottom, it's one hell of a climb back up.

I stare at the chart of my patient. She has metastatic colon cancer. She was my miracle case for a few years. Then she got a set of scans 6 months ago and it came back and spread. Her bones, her liver, her head. Derek looked at her brain tumor and he thinks he can remove it. He says it's tricky. And if it wasn't Derek operating, she'd be hopeless.

"So you realize this patient is my miracle?" I say to Derek.

"Yes, I'm very well aware of that. From the day she went from hopeless to a miracle to last night when you insisted we stay up all night to talk about it." He says.

"Well, that's not all we were doing." I say and I give him a small wink.

We go to do rounds on her. In her room is, Derek and I, Wilson, Edwards, Ben, Amelia, and 1 intern.

"Wilson you're presenting." I say.

"Nikki Patrick, 33, Metastatic colon cancer that has spread to her liver, brain, and bones. Today Dr. Derek Shepherd and Dr. Amelia Shepherd will be removing the brain tumor while Dr. Grey removes the mets on her liver." Wilson says.

Derek asks Nikki if she has any questions. She asks about the risks.

"Yes well, with every surgery especially brain surgery there's risks. With yours, motor functions, memory loss, stroke, and in the worst case scenario death." Derek tells her.

Her surgery isn't till 10 and its 8. I'm hoping there's no emergent cases right now because I need to sit down.

I go to an on-call room. I get a FaceTime alert from Christina.

"Hey!" I say.

She looks like she's on an air plane. "Hey Mer, how's everything going?"

"It's going alright, big surgery in a few hours. Where you flying?" I ask her.

"Oh just this hospital that needs me to do some stuff with my conduits." She says.

"I wish you were here." I says.

"Yeah me too. I've been trying to get a few days off to come visit. Plus when the time comes I want to see my new niece." She says.

"Text me or whatever when you land so I know you're not dead." I tell her.

We talk for a little longer before she loses her connections.

I close my eyes for a few seconds then I fall asleep. I'm curled up in a blanket because it's nice and warm. I hear two people laughing outside. It's Alex and Jo.

They open the door and apparently don't see me. I'm pretty hard to miss.

Jo is against the door making out with Alex. I can hear her whisper, "Let's try this time..for a..baby."

Alex laughs. "Let's get started."

"Go conceive a child somewhere else." I say laughing my ass off.

"Holy hell when did you get here?" Alex says startled.

"An hour ago. Go away. I was sleeping." I tell them.

Before I know it I have to wake up for the surgery. I scrub with Derek and Amelia. We get in there. My part is pretty straight forward. The chemo shrunk the liver mets. I'm not in there very long. But I wanted to stay to watch Derek's part.

Derek can tell that my feet are killing me. But he knows I'm stubborn and will try and ride it out.

"Can we get Dr. Grey a chair of some sort." He says.

"No that's really not necessary." I say.

"You've been on your feet for hours. You're sweating. You're going to sit down. Or leave." He laughs.

After a while Derek almost has the tumor out, Amelia got paged for a trauma. "Dammit, there's a bleeding."

"Ah found it." He follows up a few minutes later.

We get out of surgery. And are in the scrub room. "So you think she has one less thing to worry about?" I ask.

"I don't know it was tricky. We'll just wait and see when she wakes up, if she does." He says.

We go to talk to her husband. He thinks everything is going to be okay.

"We're hopeful that she will wake up with no deficits but as of right now, we can't be 100% sure." Derek tells him.

Hours pass and she's still on the vent.

"Please don't tell me she's hopeless now?" I ask Derek.

"We'll know by the morning." He says.

We're not on call so we head home. I check my phone and Christina texted me to tell me she landed about 20 minutes ago.

It's not even 7 PM and I'm exhausted. When we get in the house I change into pajamas. I still need to make something for dinner. But I don't want to leave the couch. Thankfully Derek makes spaghetti. Bailey goes to sleep after dinner so I sit on the couch with Zola. Derek is in the shower. Zola tells me about her day at daycare. Then she falls asleep with her head on my lap. I begin to fall asleep too, then the front door opens. I try and think about who it is. Amelia is at Owen's, Derek is in the shower. I whip my head around and I see Christina standing there.

"That airplane I was on, was a flight to Seattle." She says. I smile.

I carefully slide Zola's off of me and she's still asleep. I get up and hug Christina tight.

At the end of the day, we might only have hope to hold on to. The hope that the next day will be better than today. And sometimes we're just hopeless, other times we realize hope was all we needed to climb.