Who would have thought

21

Derek stared into his locker, at his neatly folded pile of clothes, a couple medical textbooks, a picture of his family, a strange doodle of a half naked woman that he could only guess was from Mark, and then the picture of Meredith. Meredith in Italy, lunging towards him for the chocolate gelato he had stolen from her. And instead of smiling, a frown overtook his features.

They had been happy in Italy. Happy and so painfully in love it was probably sickening. Everything had felt good. Everything had felt like it was going to last forever. And then they had come home. They had come home and everything had blown up, everything had fallen apart. And now he was looking at a picture of her instead of going home to her.

He was pushing the eighty hour work week. Actually, he had pushed it yesterday when he had decided to stay all night. Which meant he had been at the hospital for forty-eight hours straight now, which only added onto the almost sixty hours he had worked over the last few days. He was definitely over his limit. He should be going home, interns never had free time, and when they did, it wasn't spent at the hospital.

He should definitely go home. To a real bed, real food, some clean clothes. Home was definitely the best option at this point. Except for the fact his nearly dead girlfriend would be at home. She'd be there sitting on the couch, staring at the wall and not saying or doing anything. Or she'd be in bed, where she didn't actually sleep but just stared at the ceiling. He didn't want to go home to that.

Going home to that would involve poor attempts to get her to talk. It would involve her ignoring him. It would involve her probably half drunk off tequila or whatever the hell else she had managed to get her hands on. There wasn't a single thing at home that made any of that worth it. She was getting worse day by day, and he was done trying to figure out what to do.

He didn't even know how it had gotten so bad. Her life was a mess, he got that. He understood she was going through a hard time. He got that she wasn't very good at talking about things. But there had been a time when she would crawl into his arms and cling to him while she cried. There had been even a time when she at least attempted to talk to him. He couldn't figure out where all that had gone.

She had become a shell of the woman in Italy. A ghost. He was living with a ghost of his girlfriend, and there were times when he went home, thankful to find her not there, thankful she had chosen to go back to her apartment. He shouldn't be feeling this way. She was supposed to be the love of his life, but he was getting tired. He was getting tired of living with a ghost.

He wanted his Meredith back or at least something that resembled his Meredith. He was tired of trying to force her to eat something. He was exhausted with trying to talk about anything just to see if she would say something in response. It was draining having to carry her to bed after she passed out on the couch from drinking. Of course that was the only time he was allowed to touch her.

Any other time he tried to touch her, she flinched. She cowered away from him, curling deeper into herself as she cut him off. He couldn't hold her at night in bed, he couldn't kiss her when he came home from work. He couldn't have any physical contact with her whatsoever. He couldn't even remember the last time they had had sex, which wasn't the point. Sex wasn't the point. The point was, he couldn't even touch his own fucking girlfriend.

It was messed up. He didn't care that she was going through a hard time. It explained the lack of giggling, it explained the lack of an appetite, it even explained the sleepless night. But it didn't explain why he couldn't touch her anymore, why he couldn't at least attempt to comfort her in the only way that he knew would work. It didn't excuse the fact he couldn't remember the last time she had told him she loved him.

He ran his shaky hands through his hair. He needed sleep. He needed sleep and he needed to eat. Forty eight hour shifts usually led to crashing, not contemplating staying a little while longer, at least until she was asleep. "Hey, Shep," Mark frowned as he walked in with Addison, tearing off his scrub top. "Weren't you off two hours ago?"