Dreams on Fire

My Paper Heart

Meredith was in panic mode. She knew what to do, or at least Dr. Meredith Grey knew what to do. Right now she was Mrs. Meredith Shepherd and she sat frozen on the couch, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but feel the tears running down her face. They had to get him back, they just had to. She couldn't live in a world without Derek. No one seemed to notice that she was there, hysterically sobbing, as they put the back of his bed all the way down, pushing EPI and shocking his heart several times. Eventually several doctors rushed in, and much to her disgust, April grabbed her and pulled her out of the room. This only made her scream and sob louder, fighting against tiny April Kepner. "No April!" she yelled, fighting tooth and nail. "I have to get back in there, I have to be with him, he needs me!" she yelled, pushing against the other doctor. Kepner, for what it was worth, was strong enough from her grueling months in the Middle Eastt, and was able to keep Meredith contained until she forced her into a chair.

"No, Meredith," she said, pressing down hard on her shoulders. "You cannot be in there right now. You are not the doctor, you are the patient's husband and they're trying to stabilize him. Derek needs you to calm down and stay outside here, he needs you to be strong," she told the woman, who was still sobbing loudly but had ceased her screaming fit. April peaked into the room and could tell that they had gotten Derek back, thankfully, but she knew Meredith wasn't ready to go back in that room. The nurses were still bustling around and Owen was giving orders. "He's okay, Meredith, they got him," she informed her, and Meredith looked up tearfully, not even bothering to wipe at her eyes at this point. Her hard exterior from the past 40 hours had finally broken. She was at her limit. Her husband almost died in a car accident, coded several times at the hospital, and coded right in front of her. There was only so much she cold handle, especially with the pregnancy hormones flooding through her body.

All at once she could feel nausea surging through her, and she tried to make her way to the bathroom down the hall, instead puking in a trashcan at the nurses station. Great. Now there would be rumors about her throwing up. Hopefully everyone would blame it on stress and go easy on her.

Meredith spent an hour in the hallway, pacing back and forth, trying to work up the courage to go back into Derek's room. She was terrified he'd code in front of her again, and she wouldn't be able to handle it. She knew very well that she'd been dead in his arms before, and suddenly she knew what he had gone through when she'd drowned. Taking a deep breath, she slowly entered the tiny ICU room once again. Owen was still in there, adjusting dosages and checking vitals, making changes in Derek's chart. Meredith simply stood in the doorway and watched, chewing on her lips. This journey that Derek was on was going to be long and hard, but she knew that the ultimate prize – his life – was going to be worth it when he was finished with his recovery.

After standing in the doorway for a few minutes she dragged herself to the chair at his bedside, taking his hand again and trying to hold back tears. He was still intubated, and still in a medically induced coma. Part of her wanted to just ask Owen when they could back off the sedation, but another part of her, the wife part, was too afraid of the answer. It could be hours, days, or weeks. His injuries were extensive and critical, she knew, but he had also passed the 24 hour mark, which was good. It was great, even, despite the coding. "Derek Shepherd, don't you scare me like that again," she said in a low whisper, brushing some of his hair off his forehead. Owen looked down at her and caught her attention.

"Meredith...tomorrow we want to try and back off a little bit on the sedation and see how he handles it. He might start to wake up, or he might not, we won't know until we try. And if he does wake up, we'll be able to figure out the full scale of his injuries and assess his amount of pain." Meredith merely nodded, knowing all of this already but at the same time it was soothing to her frazzled brain. Derek might wake up tomorrow. Or he might not. He might need even less sedation to wake up. But he still might wake up. She looked back to Derek, tears forming in her eyes as she pressed her lips together. "Thank you," she managed to force out, giving Hunt a strained smile. He left the room and Meredith, her hand still in Derek's, simply lay her head down on the bed again. Screw the couch. However uncomfortable this position was, she was not leaving his side again.