The End

Chapter 2: I Love You

Patrick burst into Shonda's office. Her secretary trailing behind him. "Mr. Dempsey." She called after him. The door swung open with force and slammed into the wall behind it startling the table full of women. They were clearly in the middle of some kind of meeting but Patrick didn't care. This was urgent and nothing was going to get in his way. 

"Can we have a minute." Patrick said forcefully.  His tone was enough for the women to gather their things quickly.  He stood brooding as they stepped outside.

Shonda was far from amused by his temper tantrum. Her face a perfect representation of that. She didn't budge from her seat at the table.

The door barely closed behind them and then, "I'll take the blame." It erupted from his lips with urgency.

Her face shifted in surprise and she exhaled heavily. "I don't think that's possible," She spoke flatly.

"This is her show." He crossed the room to plead with her. "I'm replaceable. She's not." Images of her flashed through his head as the words left his lips.

"Look no one planned for it to end this way. I sure as hell didn't." Shonda spoke with frustration. "It's just not possible."

She stood up as if to walk him out of her office.  He stood his ground on the opposite end of her table.

"Sure, it is," Patrick spit quickly. He immediately came forward with the only reasonable way out. He had been obsessing over it for days. "It was someone else."  Shonda rolled her eyes but he continued anyway. "It was a young crew member. I'm the cheating bastard who paraded some kind of fling all over set."  He paused running his hands roughly through his hair, "I don't care what you say just fire me!" He let that sink in for a moment before he repeated firmly,  "Fire me. Move someone from the set to your office to cover your ass."

It was quiet for far too. Patrick hovered anxiously and then collapsed in a chair. "I'm not going to go through hell to figure this out for you..."

"You're not doing it for me. You would be doing it for Ellen." The emotion was thick in the air.  His eyes traced the tile on the ground. "She's worked too hard to get to this point. It shouldn't fall apart this way." Patrick pleaded.

His own words were heavy in his chest. It should have never come to this point. How could he have put her in this position? A decade of romance played like a movie reel through his mind.

The atmosphere of the room was unpredictable. Patrick searched for a single tell in Shonda's expression, but found nothing. His breath shallowed, his heart raced. He wasn't even sure it was the right decision. Could it even fix the mess they had made?

For what seems like an eternity she wouldn't meet his eyes. He was sinking deeper into his hopelessness when her voice cut through the fog. Shonda's words were distant but hit with a sting, "You go away quietly." She paused as if she was already regretting what she was saying, "You let your publicist fix the affair drama and get your shit together." Her tone was sharp. "You let Derek Shepherd die nobly." And lastly she followed it with a statement he would someday find ironic, "and as I'm running this show you never set foot here again."  Today, however, it felt like the final nail in his coffin.

Patrick sat in his black Porsche overlooking the empty beach near his Malibu home. His thoughts glued to his past more than usual today. It happened when the world shifted around him.  The unexpected often brought him back to that day in Shonda's office.

In times like these he thought about his decision to fall on his sword, but he never regretted it. To see Ellen and the show still thriving nearly 100 episodes later made the heartache he endured worth it. He hoped it had been enough to bring her happiness.