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Of course, Bailey Grey-Shepherd didn’t quite realize what was different about his father for some time. He had little memory of him before the accident, so growing up with a father who wasn’t like everyone else’s didn’t seem so massive. It wasn’t like he was ten and his whole life changed. He was three and, if he was honest, in the three months that his dad was gone for when he was in hospital, he could very well have forgotten that he could even walk in the first place. He was that young.
The older he got, the more thankful he was that his dad was there. When he realized what had actually happened to his father and how serious it was at the time, he quickly learnt to appreciate the fact that he was there at all. He didn’t care about what made his dad different. But he quickly learned other people did.
Derek sighed when he heard his phone buzz. He pulled away from the microscope, and grasped it to see the caller was Owen.
"Hey-" Derek greeted.
"Bailey goes to Sound Elementary, right?" Owen asked, not bothering with a greeting.
"Yeah...why?"
"And he's on the soccer team?" Owen continued.
"Practice is afterschool today- Owen, what's going on?"
"There's some kids from Sound Elementary here. Apparently it's like half the soccer team. I'm in surgery, but an intern told me."
"One of the kids was hurt?" He asked, panic audible in his voice.
"Apparently so." He agreed. "But...Derek, I don't know whether it's Bailey or not but-" He paused when the phone buzzed, indicating that Derek had ended the call to rush off to the ER, and hopefully find his son to be safe and sound.
Derek felt his heart slow when he reached the entrance of the ER, and found a group of small boys around a gurney. He knew they were all from Bailey's school, as the group was in the same uniform that he put through the wash each week. But the boy on the gurney was not his son.
Bailey was stood beside the brunette boy who was lying on the gurney, his blonde-hair stuck up in multiple directions, and the high socks that reached his knees drenched in dark mud. That would stain.
There was also a man and a woman stood by the bed, and Derek was only able to assume that at least one of them was the coach of the team, but he didn’t know for sure. Despite the fact that he spent so much time with his kids, he wasn’t that related to their school lives. He still, even after all these years, felt that he could flip his kids lives upside-down if he paraded around their school. So, Meredith went to soccer. Meredith knew the coach. Meredith was a soccer mom. In fact, Meredith was mom and dad on the school premises.
"Who are you?" The woman asked as he approached.
"Dr Shepherd." He answered. "I just-"
“We are waiting for a neuro consult, apparently.” She interrupted impatiently.
“I'm a neurosurgeon."
“Oh…right.” The woman faltered a little as she looked him up and down. "Can you do this? We've been waiting half an hour already."
“Yeah, uh-“ He hesitated as he looked over and made eye contact with Mia across the room. She sped to the group at his request. “Dr Coe can do a neuro workup."
Mia looked surprised for just a second before nodding and pulling out her pen light.
“His parents are coming soon.” The woman said next.
“So you are?” He asked.
“Me and Jenny run the boys' afterschool soccer club, hence why half the team is here. We have a mini-bus and only half of the parents could make it there early enough to pick up their kids.” The man explained.
He nodded as he picked the boy’s paper chart at the end of his bed and scribbled a quick note down. He settled it down again before looking up to his son. He was watching him, intrigued by what his dad was doing.
When he finished and started to leave, Bailey stepped away too.
“Hey, hey!” The woman called, looking between him and the little boy. “Bailey, Sweetie, you've got to stay here. I told your mom that I’d keep you by my side until your dad comes to pick you up.”
"It's okay, Mrs Gomez." Bailey reassured them.
"Bailey, you can't run off."
He shook his head. "I'm not running off."
"Well where are you going then?" She asked, confused.
He swallowed before regretfully admitting, "He's my dad."
“You’re Bailey’s...” She trailed off as she looked at Derek.
The blonde-haired boy gave a strong but slightly-off nod to confirm the shocking news he had just dropped. His eyes were looking between his soccer friends and he found himself taking a step back. He was pretty sure that was because he suddenly felt their eyes drilling into him. He was a fairly normal person before that moment. He was just Bailey Grey-Shepherd, a talented soccer player and, for some strange reason, mathematician. But he wasn't anymore. “Uh- Dad, I’m gonna go to the toilet…bye.”
Then he was gone.
“What happened today?” Meredith asked as she walked into the bedroom to find her husband lying on top of the bed, body uncovered by sheets.
“Doesn’t matter.” He murmured, only verbally acknowledging his wife.
She walked to her side of the bed, and sat down cross-legged next to him. “How bad is it on a scale of one to ten?”
He shrugged. “Seven?”
“How can I make that a six? Like this?” She asked before pressing his lips with a kiss. She smiled as she pulled away.
He returned it, but only for a second before the edges of his lips dropped again. “Six point five.”
“What’s up?”
He sat up with a sigh before slipping his legs off the bed and grabbing at his chair. “The sky, Mer.”
"Speak, Derek."
"I should probably go and fix it. Better than speaking."
"Okay-" She agreed a little hesitantly as he left the bed. "Tell me if it isn't fixed though, okay? Healthy emotional processing, communication- all that stuff, yeah?"
He smiled, just a little. "Okay."
Derek hadn’t talked to Bailey since this afternoon, other than a few basic words like please and thank you at the dinner table.
He didn’t bother knocking at the door, seeing as it was open wide. Bailey was sat on his bed, books all over the covers. “Hi Dad.” He murmured without looking up.
“How’d you know it was me?”
“Approaching noise but no footsteps.” He answered simply before actually looking up to his dad.
He pushed against the door and let it close however much it wanted to from the power of his shove. It wasn’t like he wanted it to be a private conversation; the open door just made it feel a little too exposed. “Can we talk about what hap-“
“Dad.” He cut him off.
“Look, I’m sorry Bailey.” He apologized. He knew why the boy had ran. Derek had seen the look on his friends’ faces. The confusion. The intrigue. The disgust, perhaps. “You’re embarrassed of me.”
“No, Dad, no…” He placed his book in front of him on the bed, completely discarded now. “You know it’s not like that.”
“I know what it’s like.” He sighed. He knew. He knew exactly what it was like; it had been his own life for years now.
“I just…one of my friend’s mom is deaf. They make fun of her and Lisa – that’s the girl in my class – all day. Like, when they were signing to each other once before school, they sat there are did-“ He trailed off as he lifted his hand, pressing all his fingers to his thumb a couple times before waving his hand about a little more. It was a classic imitation of sign language that most definitely didn’t spell out any word. “This isn’t sign language! This is kids making fun of Lis! And she’s nice. It’s not her fault her mom is deaf and they shouldn’t be making fun of either of them for that.”
He picked up one book on his bed to clear a space before transferring himself over so he was sat by his son. “I don’t want anyone to make fun of you, B.” He replied, pulling his legs onto the bed so he could face Bailey.
“I don’t want to have to ask you to not come to school stuff so they don’t have to know.”
He gave a small smile at that. “I want to be there for you. But if you don’t want me to be there…if I can’t be there then-“
“On Wednesday, I have uh- bring a cool person to school day. I think its actually something like someone you look up to or something but…you know.” Bailey stated. He simply wasn’t going to bring anyone. Meredith was working and he hadn’t thought about inviting him before. Well, he had considered it. He had considered it long and hard. But he didn’t know how anyone would react and he certainly didn’t want to test it.
He nodded. "I got the e-mail.”
“Come to school. Be my hero person.” He beseeched.
Derek didn’t want his son to be treated like this Lisa girl in his class. He wouldn’t bare to think about what their sign language equivalent would be or what sort of things they could say. “Bailey, no-“
“Yes. Dad, pleeeease!”
“I’ll leave my chair, bring my crutches instead and wear braces under my pants so no one will be able to tell that I’m wearin-“ He tried to suggest, although he could see the displeasement in the boy’s face at the attempt.
“No. I know that hurts you. And that’s not the real you. I want real-you.” He pleaded. “And you’ve got to tell the truth. You didn’t break your leg playing soccer last week and you’ll be fine in two weeks or anything like that. That isn’t real-you either.”
He smiled truly at that. His son wanted him to be raw and true, and that felt good. “Fine.”
"So...remember next week we're bringing in our superheros!" Mrs Jones exclaimed, forcing excitement into her voice. "This can be your mom or your dad, or your grandparents, or your siblings. Anyone who you think is a superhero. Maybe they have a cool job. Maybe they did something really cool. Maybe they're just a great person. It's all up to you, as long as you bring someone you believe is a superhero! Now- who wants to tell me who they're bringing?"
"I'm bringing my sister!"
"I'm bringing my grandad!"
"My uncle is in the Navy!"
She smiled at all their responses. "Wow, you guys know such cool superheros!" She exclaimed, but couldn't help but notice one child's frown. "Bailey, who are you going to bring?"
He shrugged, and didn't speak.
"How about your mom or dad?"
"Maybe." He sighed in a small voice. "Think they're working."
"Maybe you could ask them to take the day off. If you could bring anyone, who would you bring?"
"My dad." He answered after a long second of thinking. It wasn't that he couldn't decide between his parents; he just didn't want to admit who he wanted, even though no one in the room knew anything about his father.
"Well, there we go. Sorted!" She exclaimed before going to back to the rest of the children.
Bailey sighing, wishing it could be that simple.
“You sure about this?” Derek asked, looking to his son.
“Mmm mmm.” He said with a certain nod before he started walking, prompting his father to move too. “You are my hero. Because you are an epic dad, the best dad, and you like chop open people and fix their insides and then they live! How could you not be my hero?”
“And your friends?”
“If they are mean, then they are not my friends anymore.” He supposed simply with a shrug.
Derek frowned, pausing. The boy did too. “Bailey, you don’t need to do that.”
“You make friends out of nice people, right?” He questioned, the pair now just outside the school gates. “So, if they aren’t nice to you, then I’m not going to be happy when I’m around them.”
He couldn’t help but turn the corner of his lips up at that. When did his son get so mature?
Bailey had suggested getting there early so there were only a few other people there and it had definitely worked. Derek could tell which one was this Lisa girl by the fact Bailey instantly waved at her. In fact, he actually greeted the girl with a sign-language hello.
“Mr Grey-Shepherd?” Bailey’s teacher greeted, a little hesitant about offering her hand as the pair entered the mostly empty classroom.
He understood both reasons for her confusion and tried to correct her as simply as possible as he offered his own hand. “It’s actually Dr. Shepherd, but yeah. My wife is Dr Grey. It all gets a little confusing at work so our kids get both, we keep our own.”
She took his hand and shook it, now feeling even more awkward about offering and retracing her hand in a single second before. “Right. Uh- I didn’t actually know…about you until yesterday. Obviously, kids are always curious and...”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s all good. Anything they want to ask is fine.” He said as she trailed off, knowing what she was trying to ask anyway.
“Thanks. You can…sit just there.” She offered, the verb of her sentence extremely confused, as she gestured to a seat at the front.
He smiled. "Thanks."
Bailey was glad when the bell rang for lunch. He had been thinking about the sentences he was planning to say to his teacher for a while now. He almost got a question wrong because he was so consumed by what he was planning to say.
“Uh- Mrs Jones.” He called as the class emptied and he left his seat. He was purposefully an awful lot slower than everyone else.
“Yes, Bailey?”
“I need to sit at the front tomorrow.” He blurted quickly, the words already sculpted to his mind.
“Bailey, I’m not changing the whole seating plan just so you can sit with Lisa, I kn-“ She tried to protest. Him and Lisa were good friends and always trying to sit next to each other without her noticing. Unfortunely, she did spot the attempts. Every time.
“No.” He shook his head, cutting her off. “One day. For…uh- it’s for my dad.”
“Are you bringing your dad tomorrow?”
“Yup.” He answered happily. He didn’t at all regret the invite.
“Why do need to sit at the front for your dad to be here?”
“The gaps between tables are small.”
Her brow creased at that statement as she watched her pupil turn around to look at the desks and chairs behind him, examining the space between them. He had gotten awfully good at noticing things that his dad could and couldn’t do so he couldn’t help it when he noticed the child-like space between seats. Plus, he sat at the back. He didn’t want his dad to have an awkwardly long entrance to the presentation and if he was sat at the back, it would be an awful lot more obvious that people were staring at him. He knew they would but at least if they were at the front he wouldn’t have to look at them.
“I’m not sure his chair would- you know...fit with the extra chairs for other people’s heroes.” He elaborated awkwardly. “And I don’t want it to be awkward with other people.”
“Your dad’s…chair?”
“Yeah.” He nodded simply before his eyebrows dropped a little. She was looking at him as if he was speaking in French. “What?”
“I just- I don’t understand what you mean Bailey.”
“My dad’s chair.” He repeated, as confused as her.
“I...still don’t quite get what you mean.”
“Dad...he can’t walk- something happened to his legs so-“
“Oh my god, Bailey!” His teacher suddenly exclaimed and almost made the child jump. “Do you mean your dad is in a wheelchair?”
“Uh- yeah.” He replied a little awkwardly. Had he not already said that? Twice?
“Oh my goodness! Bailey, God, I’m so, so, so sorry. I didn’t know.” The teacher apologized, looking at the boy with worried, sympathetic eyes, as if he had just said his whole family had died.
He ignored those, still a little confused. There was nothing actually wrong with his dad that anyone needed to give those eyes or apologize for. “It’s um- okay. But can I?”
“Of course, of course.”
“Bailey, do you want to tell me about who you brought today?” His teacher asked, looking over to the boy.
He nodded, sliding off his seat and glancing at his dad. Personally, Bailey didn’t think any of the people his friends had brought were half as cool. They were just all moms and dads. And one sister, but she was in her thirties. He was pretty sure it was made to be ‘inspirational’ day rather than ‘bring your parent to school’ day because he knew some people didn’t have parents and that would seem a bit unfair. Then again, the dad race existed on sports day and that meant he always had to pretend Uncle Alex was his dad for an afternoon.
Derek took off the breaks off his chair and pushed himself the short distance to the front of the classroom, pausing besides his son, facing the class.
“I uh- I brought my dad.” He stated, looking over to him and exchanging a real smile before looking back out to the class. “I think he's a superhero because he is super cool and he’s a doctor and he cuts into brains and saves people and stuff. And he also had some bad things happen to him-"
Derek swallowed, and bit his lip as he looked at his son.
"-but he is still the best Dad ever."
“You’re a surgeon?” Mrs Jones questioned.
“I’m a neurosurgeon, which means I fix brains. I work at the hospital that I'm guessing most of you would go to if you hit your head in a rugby match or broke your arm in physical education.” He elaborated. “It’s called Grey Sloan Memorial hospital, and it's just down the road.”
She nodded, trying to engage her class by requesting, “Can you explain what a neurosurgeon is in a little more detail?”
“Uh- yeah.” He started, looking round to the board behind him and finding a whiteboard pen there. He picked it up and repositioned himself a little to face the board as he asked, “Can I use this?”
“Of course.”
“So this is a brain." Derek narrated as he drew. "It’s inside your skull, that’s in your head, and it controls everything you are doing right now. Literally everything. Ever. I use some super special tools to fix the brain when it is hurt to save people’s lives when something bad happens to them.”
“Does it control speaking?” One girl asked.
Derek looked round to see it was Bailey’s friend Lisa again. "Yep.”
“How about this?” A boy asked before doing a trick with his tongue, finding confidence from his classmate.
“Yep, the brain is controlling that. It’s called a cloverleaf tongue.”
“How about this?” A different girl asked, lifting her hand and clicking her thumb out of place.
Hypermobility, he thought to himself. In fact, she even managed to bend the distal joint of her thumb backwards into a hitchhiker’s thumb. "Yep.”
“Does it control walking?” A dark-haired boy asked. He hadn’t brought someone with him, for whatever reason, so there was no one to stop him from asking that. Parents normally scolded their kids for being nosy when they were around him, even though he didn’t mind. Even though they were the nosy ones, really.
“It controls everything you could ever think of. In fact, even thinking occurs in the brain.” He replied, ignoring his question slightly. He still replied, but it wasn’t such a simple answer to what he had said to the other inquiries.
“What’s wrong with your brain?” The same boy pressed, unsatisfied with the answer.
Derek tried not to falter at that question, making a quick glance at his son.
Bailey's eyes told him it was okay to continue. He wondered if he was one of the ones who had been making fun of Lisa.
“There’s uh- this other part of you. It’s called the spine.” He started, drawing a vaguely spine-like shape on the board. Although, it wasn’t like any of them would know that his drawings were imperfect. “This connects to your brain and sends messages to other parts of you. Like, your brain tells you to move and the message goes through your spine to reach your hand. Then, it can do that cool double-jointed thing you were doing. It’s like…when you plug a fan in. The plug goes into the wall and the electricity goes from the wall, through the wire and then the fan turns on, right?”
“Everyone understand?” The teacher asked. Technically, what he was talking about was rather complex for a room full of children that had barely studied the very basics of science but the analogies were helping.
There was a murmur of agreeable noise and a few nodding heads.
“Now, this is the not-so-cool bit…” He started, placing a finger on the board and quickly and dramatically slicing through the whiteboard ink so there was now a disconnect in the two lines representing the spine on the board.
“Woah!” He heard some of the kids exclaim.
“So, going back to uh-“ He pointed to the boy who had asked his what was wrong with his brain.
“Harry.” He said.
“Harry’s question.” He continued, using the boy’s name in the hope that it would encourage him to listen and understand. “There is nothing wrong with my brain. My problem is that my spine looks like this.” He settled a finger on the board, right where he had rubbed out a line. That wasn’t at all what his spine looked like, but it was a room full of children. That was the best and most accurate representation he could think of. “So, it’s like the dog came in and bit the cable, and now it’s broken so the fan doesn’t work anymore, basically.”
“Why?” A red-headed girl asked.
“I was in a car accident and I broke my spine, so now only stuff from like- here-” He placed his hand at his neurological level. "-upwards I can feel. It's called paralysis, incase you've heard of it before."
“When?” was apparently the next question that needed to be asked.
“2015. A couple years ago now. You were probably about four then, maybe five.”
“Does that mean you’ve been like that for years?”
“The spine-” He pointed at the board again. “-is a particularly difficult thing to heal. Nerves, which are the electricity in the wire from our metaphor, don’t like to fix themselves. They just really hate getting better so they don’t recover like bones do. So yes, I have been using a chair since 2015 and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life.”
“Does that mean you stay broken? Forever?”
“My dad isn’t broken.” Bailey started, surprised at the power in his own voice.
“Bails-“ Derek couldn’t help but breathe at his outburst.
“He isn’t like me or you or Mrs Jones but he is still my dad and he’s definitely not broken. He can’t play soccer anymore, which is annoying because my Mom is really bad at it and that means I always have to play it alone, but he still does everything else your dad does. And he’s really great. So, he’s who I look up to most. Because he’s had a lot of bad things happen to him and he’s still really great. The uh- perseverance. He’s good at that. And he saves people every day. And he cooks the best food. And is good at helping me with homework. And he looks after me, and my sisters. And he…he’s just the best dad. Ever. He. Isn’t. Broken. He is a superhero!"
Derek would be lying if he said he didn’t wait on the sofa for his son to come home from school out of pure worry about the after-school verbal report he usually gave when he entered the house on that Thursday afternoon.
He came in with a smile, and gave his dad a hug for about five minutes as he spilled the details of his whole day to him, which consisted of almost only positives. His main complaint was the burnt pizza at lunch, but there was nothing negative relating to him.
Derek was glad, but there was one thing nagging his mind over and over again after Bailey's speech.
“No, no Mer! You've got to do it with the side of your foot.” Derek shouted across the field.
“Like- this?” She asked, kicking the ball with the medial side of her foot into the house’s wall.
“Yeah!” He exclaimed, smiling proudly at his wife as the ball hit the bricks in the chalk square Derek had drawn there. Bailey was right, Meredith was really bad at soccer, but she was getting better.
She walked over to the wall before collecting up the ball and asking, “Am I not allowed to kick it with my toes?”
“You can flick at the center of the ball with the tip for a short pass.” He elaborated.
“Right…” She murmured, settling the ball back down. She had no idea what the meant, and she knew Derek knew that.
“Have another go at the push-kick.”
Her head shot round to her, eyebrows creased and a frown on her face. “What the hell is that?”
“The thing we’ve been doing for the last fifteen minutes.” He elaborated, pushing himself a little closer to her. She was more accurate with her shots than when they started, it was a little safer to be there.
“Right, right.” She murmured, kicking the ball once more.
It missed. Horrendously.
“Really?”
She collected the ball from behind her, the shot extremely powerful but extremely far away from what she was aiming for. “Yeah, I’d like to see you do this better than me.” She remarked back.
“Ah yes, let me just stand up, walk over there and kick a ball, that will go well Mer.” He suggested, looking around to his wife as she chucked the ball at him. He, luckily, caught it without having to move far before placing it on the floor by where she was stood before. She could tell that was where she was by the ripped up grass. “Now, you think you could beat Bailey at a game yet?”
“That boy can run across the whole field in like five seconds, I’m never going to score more than a single kindness-goal against him.”
Derek smirked. “He’s kinda scary. Olympic runner through?”
She walked over to him, rather than the ball, and placed herself on his lap with a sigh. It took him a second to wrap his hands around her, surprised at her action. He was just thankful she was small and light.
“Mmm maybe. But he’s not an Olympian yet and I still can’t kick a ball for my life.
He kissed her. “Well, you’ll always be better than me.”
“Yeah…Derek, I hate to tell you this but that’s really not a compliment.”