Chapter Text
When eleven thirty rolled around, Meredith already had a baby in her arms.
“Connie, please.” She begged, looking down to the little girl making an attempt to grip her miniscule fingers around her father’s pinkie finger. She felt herself subconsciously pulling the baby just a little closer into her chest at Connie's threat of taking her.
Now, she just had to stop crying. Although, she had an excuse. She had pregnancy hormones. Derek, on the other hand, had no excuse for tears that made his eyes warble as he made stupid baby noises and brushed his little finger against her perfect skin.
“I know, I know. Her APGAR is excellent but we really should take her.” Connie said, the apology evident in her tone.
Meredith looked as if she was crying with sadness – rather than the complex amalgamation of the joy over her daughter and pain from the act of childbirth – as Connie’s hands wrapped round her, pulling her from her grip.
She looked up to the father of the child. “We have a daughter.”
“We do have a daughter. Another daughter.” He agreed, still awe-struck as he watched Connie bounce her a little before settling her down on the cot, checking her over again, just in case.
"Yeah." She sighed.
“I promise you the exhaustion will be worth it." He vowed, watching as her eyes dropped a little. He pushed a couple of fallen hairs out of her face, finger trailing her ear. It would be a moment where he would kiss her but, after the hours she had just gone through, he was pretty sure a hand holding session was preferable. Hugs would probably hurt her a little too much, at least from an hour or two.
She nodded slowly before her eyes crept open again. She was tired and desperately needed to sleep, but she just couldn’t. Not when, if she turned her head just a little, she could see Connie placing the world’s smallest hat onto her tiny, wispy-haired head.
Derek smiled. When he said guys don’t go goo-goo over baby clothes, he was so lying.
He noticed her attempt and slipped his hand out of hers so he could push himself to the other side of the bed to the cot. “Connie, could you-“ He started, finishing his sentence with a quick gesture across.
She looked round, confused for a second to see Meredith trying her best to observe her baby. She nodded when she realized and stepped around the cot so she had a perfect view of the child. Derek took the other side.
“You are so beautiful. Yes, you are. Yes, you are the most beautiful little baby, aren’t you? Yeah-“ His speaking turned to some kind of baby talk that she didn’t even bother to translate to modern day, adult English. He was perfectly aware that Meredith was looking at him with her trademark, ‘seriously?’ death stare, but he couldn’t care less. She would just have to deal with it.
He suddenly found himself blinking in rapid succession, trying to clear his vision to observe the baby. Their baby. Their tiny, beautiful baby girl. He sniffed a little. He didn’t mean to be crying over the baby. Or at least, have tears welling in his eyes over the baby; there were no physical tears trickling down his cheeks. He just…he just kind of was.
“I told you that you were snotty!” Meredith replied to his tears.
He looked up. “What?”
“The baby is the cute, crying, snotty one, not you. That's what I said." She repeated from the conversation that seemed to be a lifetime ago now. “And you said I’m cute and crying, but not snotty.”
“Right.” He agreed, conscious of the twitch of his nose. “I can’t help it. She’s just- oh, Mer, she’s just so adorable. Look at her eyes. Big, wide, goo-goo eyes.”
“Your eyes.” She corrected. She was complimenting his eyes, really, just inherited by his daughter. "I can see you in her."
“And I can see you in her! She’s gonna get anything and everything she ever wants, you know that, right? I mean, this one has some well impressive puppy dog eyes and I don’t even think she's asking for anything-" He looked back to his baby. "-are you?”
“She’s asking for milk.” Meredith groaned. Providing that was anything but fun but she wouldn’t dare to bottle-feed her. That felt much too Ellis-like for her taste. “You wanna go tell Amelia and the kids the news?”
He dropped all focus on his daughter for the first time, looking straight to his wife. Last time he left her after childbirth, she almost died. There was no reason for that to occur this time; she hadn’t slipped down a flight of stairs. But still, his heart hammered into his ribs at the suggestion. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.” She agreed, nodding before a hand shifted to her stomach. “That or placenta time. Which one you choosing?”
He grinned at her options, although, he was perfectly aware that she wasn’t kidding. “I- okay.” He submitted. “But you call me if anything feels off. Anything at all. I’m only going for five minutes but still…”
“I will, I promise.”
Derek paused outside the door for a second. He needed to breathe. He didn’t even feel like he breathed in that room more than once.
"Dr Zhepherd?" A voice called.
He looked round, startled, to see a man sat on a gurney a little way down the hallway in a suit. A man that, from his knowledge, didn't know him, but Derek certainly knew him.
"Sorry, I know it is odd, me zitting, waiting here but I required a talk with you and I did not fly half vay around the vorld just to not find you." He elaborated, ignoring the surgeon's shock. He slid off the gurney, took a few steps and presented him with a hand. Derek took it and grasped it hard, despite how cramped up his hands were. "I am Dr-"
"Astor Kron, yeah, I know who you are." Derek finished for him. How could he not know who he was? Of course he did. He just had no idea why he was there, stalking him around the hospital. "You...you flew from Germany to watch my surgery?"
"It was the uh- once-in-the-life-time opportunity. But I also come to gift you a lab for research, and some million dollars to cure Alzheimer’s disease."
"What?" was all that he could ask before his mouth dropped open a little. He heard and understood every word, despite his heavy accent and the fact that he wasn't a totally fluent English speaker; he just couldn't quite comprehend it.
"I have two clinical trials. I do not have time for third but my vater passed two veeks ago and my brother was diagnosed with early-onset vhen 47. That was one year ago."
"You...do you have genetic markers of Alzheimer’s too?" He asked, worried. He had never actually met the man before, but he had watched him give a presentation at a Neurology conference and read about his most impressive surgeries. He did a lot of impressive surgeries.
"I had test, it ist more common for me than others. Your wife, Meredith Grey, ist daughter of Ellis Grey. She must have more risk, like me. Das ist why you do your trial, ja? That ist why I want same."
"You do know I was blacklisted by the FDA a few years ago when I-" Derek tried.
He shrugged. "I know. I find way to dance out of line."
"What?"
"Aus der Reihe tanzen...uh- German. How to- uh- ignore rules."
"You can't find a loophole with the FDA." He returned. For a second, he was almost excited. Then his last trial came flooding back. "There are no loopholes: no way to break their rules without serious consequences."
"Trust me. I find...these loophole things."
"How?"
"I am- um, an influential in Germany and FDA does not apply in Tacoma Embassy."
"But why me? There are plenty of other people that could do the same thing as me without all these problems."
"Because you have fear for your wife and children. So I know you...have dedication. Because I have same fear for my own self, and my family. We are the same." He confessed honestly. "Look, here ist my card. I stay in America for one week. I know you have new baby, so I'll give you two months for thinking. New parents make often wrong decisions and I need you to say yes to this Dr Zhepherd. You are second best neurosurgeon on the planet. After me, of course. So-" He handed him a card. "Think with it, please?"
"I uh-" He swallowed. The man was willing to give him a research lab in Germany, in Seattle. That's how desperate he was for him. That was...he didn't even know what that was. "I will." He smiled. "Danke."
Amelia had informed them that she was taking Zola and Bailey to the waiting lobby once she finished Jason's surgery. She also confirmed that the last part of the surgery ran smoothly. He knew it would, seeing as all she had to do was close; he was just thankful that Jason was completely out of the woods now.
It felt strangely...monumental. He had talked to Meredith about how helping Jason felt like he was fixing the last hole in his universe, but he didn't realize how right he was until Amelia popped her head round the door to say it.
Jason Ware, the man who so nearly cost him his life, was going to live a completely tumour-free life for many, many years. He wouldn't have to sit and try his best to stay happy as his vision blurred to nothing, his speech skills disintegrated and his motor skill set depleted. He could just live. Full stop.
If he turned back the clock to that day and the night ended with a different outcome – a Meredith-agreeing-to-pull-the-endotracheal-tube-out-of-his-mouth-before-he-was-stable-enough kind of outcome – he wouldn’t be there. Legally, she could have, if she decided. Just because there was some evidence of brain activity, it didn't mean he was going to wake up. But he did. And she had never been so glad that she had given him a chance.
He wouldn't have just removed the tumour from a man that every other surgeon refused to even touch. He wouldn’t have been with Meredith as she delivered their child. He wouldn’t have met their daughter. He wouldn't have just been received an astounding offer from German neurogod Astor Kron. He wouldn’t have taken his kids for another few wanders around the park with ice-cream or seen Bailey learn to write basic words or Zola memorize more medical terms than she was words at school. Neither of them meant to be so ahead of their game. Bailey just had excellent fine motor skills and Zola soaked up information like a sponge.
He would have left them. His wife. His kids. His sisters. His mother. His friends. And all just mere weeks after deciding enough was enough with his career. He would have missed this. He would have missed his life. He would have missed literally everything.
Everything .
A year had never felt so long, somewhat in a good way. Every minute was crammed. Their calendar was bursting with so much information Meredith had to start adjusting the size of her handwriting to something almost illegible just so they didn’t have to have two. That was mostly his fault, considering his extremely tight rehabilitation schedule.
But the things that were the most important to him weren’t on the calendar. They weren’t pre-planned. They were…like today. No one planned today. In fact, an idiotic idiot who was being extra idiot-like planned today. He was in one of the biggest surgeries of his life and his wife went into labour. It worked out fine, eventually, but he couldn’t help but wish that it happened just one day later. Three hours later. Just…later.
Then again, he was sick of everything being later.
He wasn’t impatient, just more experienced in how important each second was, he supposed. He liked to suppose. He wanted more. He wanted to be holding his wife and hugging his kids in every second that his hands weren't full. He wanted more hours in the day so he could be a better dad and a better husband and a better surgeon. His ambition was definitely a characteristic that had been morphed and remoulded by the accident, but there was still something there that made him push for something better.
He missed an awful lot of his life lying in that hospital bed, urging his bones to hurry up and heal but he had already made up that time. Anything was worth it for an extra hug from Zola or Bailey, an extra kiss from his wife, a joke with his sister, or a single minute with his new-born daughter. As horrendous as it was, looking back, he'd gladly agree to go through it again if it meant he was left with a working brain and a beating heart.
Anything for his kids. The ones that he had just found as he entered the waiting room. His eyes found his sister and children (well, two of them) instantly as he arrived there.
Zola jumped off her seat at the sight of her father. She very, very quickly abandoned her crayons to run over to him.
Bailey appeared that he wanted to the same, only find himself constricted by his auntie’s embrace. She walked over rather quickly. So quickly, in fact, he was tempted to call it a run.
“Dada!” Zola squealed as Derek wrapped his hands around his child, placing her on his lap. It hurt an awful lot more than it usually did – considering how long he had just had to sit, unmoving with perfectly contracting, gripping fingers for an amount of time he didn’t even bother to check – but it was worth it. It would always be worth it.
“Hey Zozo.” He greeted, embracing for just a second before releasing her just a little, their bodies still lingering together.
She looked up, concerned. “Where’s Mama?”
“You’ll see her in a minute, don’t you worry.” He reassured her, looking up from the girl to greet Amelia and Bailey. He made sure to smile, just to prove that her mom really was okay. He didn’t think the accident impacted his kids massively, but Zola did worry about things a six-year-old shouldn’t even bother thinking about.
He gave his sister a purposeful look before tapping on his left leg. She was surprised by the request but obliged anyway. Now, he had two kids squished onto his lap. Two out of three. That felt so foreign, despite the fact that he was perfectly aware that pregnancies resulted in babies.
“Why you cry?” Bailey asked, a worried drop of his lips occurring as he looked up at his father.
His smile only broadened at his question, pressing the back of his sleeves against his eyes to absorb the tears. There they were: the rolling tears. “Because I’m happy. Really, really, really happy.”
“Why we really, really, really, really, really, really happy?” Zola inquired, bouncing up and down on each repetition.
Amelia had informed them that their parents had to stay behind but they would be back soon enough. Unlike most other days though, they would have to wait for them instead of going home.
They both noticed something was different. Amelia was worried and even Zola was starting to think it was something to do with her father. After the last few months, her presumption would always be that something bad was going on with him. He’d been to hell and back about twelve times since the crash.
“You remember when we talked about Mama being pregnant but that we had to wait a little while before the baby was ready for the world.” He reminded them, remembering the day he laughed at his wife because she was so convinced that she was doing a good job at hiding her pregnancy. She wasn’t. She really wasn’t.
“Yeah.” Bailey nodded.
"That was ages ago! How long do new brothers and sisters take?” She asked, the last words falling down half an octave. It was even accompanied by a demanding sigh for extra emphasis of her anger.
“Well, it’s funny you should ask that now...you don’t have to wait anymore-” He stopped as Zola clearly figured out what that meant before he even had a chance to finish. He couldn’t help but smile – press a light chuckle even – as Zola as her mouth dropped open, giving herself a dramatic ‘Scream by Edvard Munch’ face as she raised her two hands, palms flat to her cheeks. “You two have a baby sister.”
“Swister?”
“Yeah. A little girl.” He confirmed, eyes swimming with tears.
“APGAR?” Amelia slipped in while the kids were still absorbing the information. She wasn’t worried by his emotions. He was still smiling. He was still happy. He still looked like this was the best day of his li- one of the best days of his life. She wasn’t there for the moments after Bailey was born and she knew the process of getting Zola legally into their arms was most certainly a difficult one but, really, neither of them could say this was the best day. That would be much too biased.
“Perfect. She-" He swallowed, finding his sinuses…snotty. God, he hated it when his wife was so right. Crying, check. Snotty, check. Cute, well- he'd have to check with her for that one really. “She’s perfect.”
“I’m gonna be best big sister ever. I already promising.” Zola replied with one short, affirming nod of her head.
“I know you are. You already are to your brother.” He confirmed, placing a kiss on her head.
Bailey shook his head vigorously. “You are so not the best sister! Zola smelly sister."
Amelia couldn’t help the grin as she looked at her own brother. The pair really did remind her of the childhood she had had with Derek, despite their age gap. Then again, most siblings had insult fights and playful squabbling.
“Hey, hey. Mama is tired and baby is very small so you two have to be nice.”
“I can be nice.”
Zola turned back to her father. “No, I can be the more of the nice! Me. I’m nice. Not smelly.”
He smirked. “As long as you are both nice, I don’t think anyone will mind who is the nicest.” He reassured them as he placed a hand against Zola’s back, not pushing against her at all but hoping the pressure would help convince her to shift off of his lap. “C’mon then.”
“What?” Bailey inquired at the exact same time as his sister...well, his older sister, seeing as he now had two. “Where we going?”
He smiled- no, beamed. His mouth hurt from how constantly they stayed upturned and he was pretty sure his heart was about to burst. But that was fine. It was a small price to pay for happiness. “You do want to meet your new little sister, don’t you?”
"Derek told you, didn't he? He had a session this morning."
Dr Sears nodded. "Yes. Derek did tell me about what was going on."
"I was clinging. To hope. To the fact that he always ends up okay in the end." She murmured, squishing the stress ball in her hand. Derek had told her that they helped to get him speaking in therapy and, ever since she first tried one, she put selecting one in her session's routine: walk in, grab stress ball, spill feelings, return stress ball, leave. She was on the middle one.
"This outcome isn't 'okay' to you?"
Meredith shook her head slowly.
"Why not?"
"What if I'm not happy again?"
"You will be."
"What if I never get over it. What if every-freaking-time time I look at him for the rest of my life, all I can see is that chair? Then what? What if I freeze every single time someone asks me a question? I've been doing that ever since the accident. What if someone asks what happened to him and I explain and they think it's new because I'm a shaking leaf, but it's been twenty years? Then what? What if I can't...I-"
"Do you love him Meredith?"
"No." She said with certainly.
"No?" Dr Sears repeated, astonished by her answer. "You don't love your husband?"
"What's a better word than love? I suck at all this speechy stuff. He's the one with all the fancy words in our relationship."
She smiled. The denial made sense now. "I like besotted. It's the most intense synonym of love. You can be affectionate or smitten or infatuated. But...to be besotted-" She sighed with a smile as if she had just inhaled a bouquet of roses.
"Well. I...besot my husband then. But...uh- what does that have to do with this?"
"Meredith, Love doesn't prevail death. Nothing prevails death. But it can – and in your case, already has – prevailed trauma. It can prevail pain and hurt and injury. And, of course, love can also beat the shit out of a wheelchair-"
Meredith snorted a laugh. She had never heard the woman speak in such an unprofessional manor and she had spent so, so many hours trying to fix herself in her room.
"So, give yourself time to process his prognosis and what that means for you and your family, and you'll be fine."
"I'm supposed to just trust you about that? Just let a few sentences mould the rest of my life?"
“No.” She smiled knowingly. "Don’t trust me, Meredith...trust love."
There was a reason Meredith Grey always said she'd be happier alone. It wasn't because she believed it was true. It was because she thought that if she loved someone and it all fell apart, she wouldn't be able to fight her way through it. What if she liked it and leant on it to its breaking point? What if she shaped her whole world around it only for it to collapse? Would she even survive that kind of pain? Would she survive the grief of death, or the very similar grief of smiling her way through years and years of chronic, ever-lasting damage?
Derek Shepherd’s wife once told him that organ damage was much like death...but worse. She explained her point of view rather bluntly to him. Although they were similar in some ways, organ damage hurt more. Organ damage went on forever. Organ damage hurt for life. Meanwhile, death ended everything. In her view, that was better.
He disagreed. Now, she disagreed too.
Death was irreparable. There was no coming back from the dead. There was no magic drug or procedure that could make someone who was proclaimed dead spring back to life like there was for most other things in medicine. Most organs could be transplanted, if not, replaced by a machine. Hearts could go on bypass, colostomy bags could be placed and kidneys could be filtrated with dialysis if needed. Organ damage could be treated but dead was dead. Dead would always be dead. Asystole. Empty lungs. Stationary heart. Blown pupils. There was no coming back from that.
There was a chance with damage to the body: the organs and the bones and the ligaments and the muscles and the tissues and the tendons. That kind of damage was not irreparable...most of the time. That was the one thing that made his rebuttal hesitate. Sometimes it meant the patient had to sacrifice a part of their life to get better. They would have to come in for three or four days for dialysis or pay thousands of dollars to get a coronary artery bypass surgery or work to regain a full range of motion from a broken wrist or wait for their gastrocnemius fascia to heal after being gashed through with a scalpel. But that was time and that was money.
She didn’t want to imagine what it would be like. All she could picture was crying. Constant, permanent tears. She knew that grief for him would have never faded. She had lost a lot of people but the thought of losing him...she didn’t even want to consider what it would be like to wake up to an empty bed, knowing he would never be lying beside her again. For the only fingerprints on the pancake frying pan to be hers. To never request coffee ice cream at the park again. To have to explain to her kids that their father was one and he was never coming back. She didn’t want to have to imagine the empty car ride to the hospital without him cracking stupid Dad jokes to the kids in the back. She didn’t want to live in a world where she wouldn’t randomly bump into him in the hall between surgeries, just enough time to exchange a hello, an amorous kiss, a smile and a goodbye. That’s all she needed.
She needed him. Or rather, she wanted him. Life was so, so much better with him there. She could have lived out the rest of her days with her kids, and perhaps found an okay suitor somewhere along the way, but it would never, ever, ever measure up to spending the rest of her life with him. And that’s what this was. Death meant death, organ damage meant life...eventually, and she had finally reached that place.
She would have given anything to prevent the tragic ending. For him not to die. She would have agreed to a lifetime of arguing and fighting over the stupid little things between them. She would have agreed to them driving each other mad. Because he would still be there. And that would make her thrilled. But she didn't need to beg for that because it didn't happen. He was there and very, very much alive. And breathing. And happy. So she was thrilled. They were thrilled. Dr Sears' stupid, cheesy love speech was right: love kicked disability's butt any day.
Organ damage was her life. Her right-now life. It was him, sat by her side as she swayed their third child slowly back and forth her arms. Their other two children seemed to have lost the ability to speak as they examined the, thankfully, silent child with their mouths dropped open and eyes sparkling.
“God I love you.” He murmured, overwhelmed with the urge to smile further – he would have, but at that point, it was physically impossible – as he booped a quick but careful finger on his daughter’s nose and she smiled. He knew she, technically, couldn't be smiling at him at only an hour old, but he held onto the idea anyway.
“Love you too.” Meredith hummed back.
His smile dropped abruptly at the comment.
She didn’t bother to look at him with concern; she knew he was about to crack some stupid quip.
“Uh- Actually Mer, I was talking to the baby, not you.” He said brashly, his tone drowning in disgust at the very idea of talking to her. His perfect, beautiful, funny, intelligent wife.
She pouted but failed to maintain it for a second before it became a sly smile. “I hate you, Derek Shepherd."
"You love me." He insisted with a smirk before he pressed his lips against her cheek to form a kiss. "And, god knows, I love you. I mean- if I'm honest, I really am quite disappointed. Because, you see, I love you, Meredith Grey, to the moon and back three-hundred-and-twenty-seven times.”
Her half-pout, half-smile didn’t converge into a full grin as he wished it would at the comment. Instead, a devilish one appeared. "Why not three-hundred-and-twenty-eight? Huh? Or nine? Or three-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty? Huh? Why not more? In comparison to the amount of love you could have offered me, that number is terrible. Don't I even get an infinity plus one?"
He sighed dramatically at her verbal pokes and prods, but his grin didn't fade. He wasn’t sure it could ever fade again when he was sat with his wife and kids. "Okay, now I hate you too."