fragments of my life [MERDER]

TWENTY-ONE

Meredith had been permanently sat at Derek's bedside for a little over a week now, almost glued to his chair, the faint beeps of the heart monitor mixed with the inconsistent muffled sounds of Meredith's sniffles filling the room with noise. Jade and Kieran had to bring Meredith food daily, to force her to eat and drink so she didn't become dehydrated or malnourished and end up in a hospital bed just like Derek. As she sat next to him, she brushed the back of her hand across delicately his pale, weak face, and practised over and over the speech that she would give him when he came to; and for Meredith, it wasn't a question of if. She knew Derek, she knew her husband, and she knew he was a fighter, and he would pull through this.

He'd made it through his extensive surgeries, and seemed to be recovering, as well as could be expected considering the level of trauma inflicted on his body. He was hooked up to an EEG, his brain activity continually monitored, due to being on an adjusted dose of pentobarbital to sedate him into a medically induced coma, so his brain and other organs would get the necessary time to heal. He could only breathe with the help of a ventilator, but he had vital signs; he had brain activity. He had all the conditions to breathe on his own and wake; Meredith began to accept that he would wake up when he was ready.

Meredith was a doctor, a neurosurgeon at that, so she knew what a coma meant – Derek was unconscious, and wouldn't respond to her voice, sounds, activity nearby – he had no signs of awareness, just like any coma patient. He was alive, but his brain as functioning at its lowest possible stage of alertness. She just wanted to shake him to wake him up, like he'd just fallen asleep, but she knew all too well that it just didn't work like that.

Derek felt cold and slightly clammy to touch. He had wires coming from various areas of his body, nurses would come in twice, three times a day to change his dressings or check his sutures. Meredith could have done all of it herself, but she preferred to just stare, gaze at her husband, and wonder; wonder where it all went wrong for them.

Every time she looked down at Derek from her perch on the scratchy, turquoise hospital chair, she caught a glimpse of her bump. She was so sorry – more than sorry. She felt like a villain, a horrible, disgusting excuse for a human, for seriously believing that it was a good idea to conceal this from him. What was happening between the two of them shouldn't have mattered; he deserved to know. They'd always talked about it, and Meredith chastised herself for thinking for even a second that he wouldn't accept his children, or that he would lash out at her and not want them. She knew Derek wanted a big family, and she knew he would make a model father. She just hated herself for lacking the courage to tell him before it was, well, too late. She wanted to let him know that she was here to stay for good, this time. No more running. She wanted to explain to him that running felt like her only option at that point, because she would rather continue to love him from afar than force herself to hate him for what he did, met with his crystal blue gaze every day.

She began to speak out loud, whispering to him, as she thought about telling him about their twins, their little boy and little girl, a younger brother and sister for Zola. She would have started crying, but over the past week she felt like she had cried all the possible tears a human being could cry in a lifetime.

"Derek." She gulped, her voice soft, laced with regret, "Derek."

Nothing; of course, what else did she expect. Meredith scolded herself for thinking that he would awaken on command. That he would hear her voice and immediately wake up, and everything would be fine? That only happened in fairy tales, in movies, and Meredith was brutally thrusted back into reality, into the realisation that this was real life, and that Derek may not ever wake up. Despite this, Meredith continued, as if she could feel that he could hear her, subconsciously, that he was listening to her heartfelt words as she gingerly spoke them into existence.