What Do You Hear in These Sounds part 10
Author: Carsonfiles
Timeline: Follows canon roughly around Time After Time (3:20) through end of Season 3. Then A/U (or I'll be really freaked out next fall) Current chapter roughly just after the episode with the not-a-spinoff. I have a mental block against the name and number.
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, but if Shonda doesn't quit bending them in ways they weren't meant to bend, I might have to confiscate them.
Summary: It's not just the interns who need therapy. A day in the life--some Bang interaction, some MerDer. A dash of Alex and Izzie.
A/N: There are some 'medical medical' factoids here, all of which are true to the extent I could verify them with WebMD & Dr. Google. But just like I'm not Shonda, I'm not a doctor, so don't trust them for your own health. And the scene with Bailey and Meredith was written (and posted to another Grey's fic site) the Monday after the show with Susan's death aired, so you can imagine the best part of the next Thursday's episode for me were the words C. Diff. This starts the morning after Derek turned around at Mer's door, because he saw her taking shots of tequila with Alex and Izzie. 'Cause, you know, nothing says "you're the love of my life" like standing your girlfriend up when you made plans for dinner.
Meredith woke up Saturday morning to the familiar sycopated mariachi rhythms of a Jose hangover. She managed to fall quietly out of bed, get into the shower and turn it on full blast, letting the warm water pound her body. She hadn’t cried the day before; she hadn’t cried about Susan, hadn’t cried about Thatcher, hadn’t cried about Derek. She wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Except Susan. Susan deserves my tears. Poor Susan. Her stepmother’s case had been so weird; she presented with hiccups, ended up dying from sepsis. She didn’t know exactly how it had progressed, since she’d been mostly just observing George and Bailey run the case. So what, I lose something like a parent, Thatcher blames me and Derek doesn’t show up. Just another rainy day for Meredith Grey. She had woken up early, though, and was bound and determined to get into the hospital, pull a Cristina and cherry-pick a surgery. One to be performed on a complete stranger, someone she had never met before. Preferably neuro, so she’d be sure to see Derek. Derek didn’t show up last night. And Meredith forced the tendril of doubt that snaked into her heart and throat back into a cage. Something happened. He said he would always show up. This isn’t about me running down the hall, away from Thatcher and the slap, not wanting to be the drama of the moment in the hospital, running away from the people who let me tell my father his wife was dead. But that same tendril of doubt was finding fertile soil.
Alex’s morning wasn’t any better. He spent the night listening to Ava’s words, “Why can’t you be that nice for someone you have feelings for?” What did she want from him? He wasn’t that guy, dream on. He didn’t even want to try to be that guy. So Dr. Montgomery didn’t want him, didn’t want his half-heartedness, didn’t want his heart. Her loss. He had no intention of playing the rebound guy, not even for her. Had he forgotten how to be a boyfriend? Had he ever really known? He roused himself out of bed and trudged to the shower. Rise and shine, rise and shine!
Izzie woke up blearily, showered and came downstairs just in time to hear the door slam as Meredith left. Bitch. Couldn’t she have waited just a few minutes for me? She got herself some coffee and loitered around, enjoying the peace and quiet of the house. She missed George, missed the mornings with him. Missed his companionship, missed their shared jokes. Yesterday, when he told her that the job at Mercy West looked like a good shot, all she could see was her, missing him. Her water was boiling. She threw the rest of her coffee into the sink, and set a tea bag to steep. Time to go.
Meredith was flipping through the charts for the morning’s surgeries when Bailey grabbed her by the elbow.
“Grey, I didn’t expect to see you for another twenty minutes at least. How are you holding up?” Meredith suddenly realized that this short black woman was the closest thing to a mother she had ever had.
“Dr. Bailey, what caused the sepsis? What made Susan. . .what happened? How did it progress so fast?”
Miranda Bailey took a deep breath. This death was hers. And the aftermath that it had dealt her intern was also hers. “When she was given the broad-spectrum antibiotic, as you know, it killed most of the bacteria in her colon. Both good and bad. In rare cases, people who are carriers of C. diff, Clostridium difficile, have a reaction. The C. diff takes over, because it’s no longer being held in check. The balance of bacteria is thrown off. And when C. diff takes over. . .there’s only a short time to act. And we missed that window.”
“And then she developed toxic megacolon.” Meredith’s tone was level. She was just checking the medical details.
“Yes. Grey. . .I’m sorry.”
Sorry. Why was Bailey sorry?
“Don’t be. I didn’t really know her that well.”
“No. About your father. I should have told him, you weren’t that involved with her case. It shouldn’t have happened that way.”
“No, it’s good. I’m good, I’m glad. Now I don’t have to wonder. Or think about him.”
Bailey’s eyes searched Meredith’s face, looking for a different answer, but found nothing. “Okay, then. Go ahead and take this chart. Should be a straightforward case, she’s an AM admit scheduled for surgery this morning. Take her down to pre-op and get her prepped.”
Meredith looked down at the chart in her hand. Rachel Jenkins, bed 27A. Acoustic Neuroma. Excellent-just what I was looking for.
Meredith only had time to review the chart and speak briefly with the patient as she got her settled into preop before rounds began. She went back down to join Bailey and the rest of the merry band of interns, only to go right back to Mrs. Jenkins bedside.
Where is Derek? Shouldn’t he be in for this? Usually the attending or resident in charge of a case would be listening during rounds so that the interns could be grilled appropriately. But Dr. Shepherd was nowhere to be found.
“Grey, are you presenting this?” Bailey’s voice was kind.
“This is Rachel Jenkins, 38 year old female, who presented with loss of hearing, status post severe respiratory, sinus and bronchial infection,” Meredith began. “MRI showed intracranial abnormalities, which were diagnosed as Vestibular Shwannoma, also known as acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor which forms near the vestibulocochlear nerves.”
“Treatment?” Baileys eyes stayed on Meredith.
“Because Mrs. Jenkins is quite young and her hearing is not degenerated with age, I would use the middle fossa approach, which has the advantage of not compromising hearing. However, the retrosigmoid approach would also be a valid path and also provide for low probability of hearing loss. The choice between the two would be up to the operating surgeon.”
“In this case the surgeon is going with middle fossa.” There he is. Meredith turned to see Derek striding into the room and shaking hands with the patient and her husband. He looks pretty crummy. Disheveled, even. What happened to him last night? Something kept him from coming over with dinner, was it me or him or something else entirely? How would someone normal deal with this? Someone who hasn’t been quite as damaged? Someone who isn’t expecting to be dumped at any moment. Someone with a different last name. Someone not me.
After Derek apologized to the patient for missing the first part of rounds, he quizzed Bailey’s interns on the procedure. Meredith was front and center with her answers. She looks tired. Anguished. And questioning. And. . .confused. Yet she had her facts about the case down cold, so there was nothing he could do except give her the chart. In all fairness, I can’t give her surgeries when she hasn’t earned them, but I can’t withhold them just because we’re. . .whatever we are.
“Dr. Grey, the case is yours. Get another MRI so we know exactly what this tumor is doing today, page me if you see any changes and I’ll see you in the OR.” Derek noted the order on the chart, and clicked the top of the pen before he placed it into the lapel pocket of his lab coat. He gave a smile to the Jenkins couple and nodded to the group of interns.
He avoided meeting her eyes, although she tried to flag him down a couple of times. I can’t have this conversation here in the halls of the hospital. I can’t get perspective here, I can’t figure out how to make our love work. To help her, and to still be the man I need to be.
As Bailey and her group of interns moved to the next patient, Cristina looked at Meredith with questioning eyes.
“What, is McDreamy being McAss again? What did you do? What did he do?”
“I don’t know what he did. I don’t know what I did. It’s like. . .all of the sudden there’s this hole, pit, a huge chasm. An abyss. A canyon. The Grand Freaking Canyon. And he’s way over on one side, and here I am, on the other. I don’t like being across the canyon from him. But I don’t even know what made the canyon, so here I am waving. I’m waving across the canyon, and I don’t think he can even see me from his side. What makes a canyon, Cristina?”
“Erosion over millennia makes canyons, Meredith. I have to write vows. Burke is making me have a wedding. So, what, are you two split up?”
“No! Or. . .I don’t know. We had a good conversation yesterday. A couple. It felt like we talked. I said things. And he said things. We talked. But he didn’t come over. And he said he would, that was one of the things he said. And I’m lonely and he won’t talk. Do you think he’s mad? What are you going to vow?”
“I think he’s McAss whenever he gets all ‘boo hoo, I didn’t get my way’. I don’t know, what should I say?”
“Yang,” Bailey’s voice shattered the peace of their private conversation. “Do you mind giving me the update on this patient?” Cristina looked up, startled. At some point in their conversation, they had entered a patient room, and Burke must have been with the patient. Now they were both staring Cristina down. Fortunately it was the room of one of her post-op patients, so she started in easily.
“Mrs. DeWitt, aged 56 year old female, status-post aortic root repair and gortex replacement neccessitated by a dissection at the root thought to have been a result of Marfan’s syndrome. Current plan is to monitor the patient through the post-op care, get her up and walking to accumulate two miles before discharge. She will also be seen by the social worker who will advise her family on getting monitered for future aneurysms and other typical complications of Marfan’s.” Cristina punctuated her delivery with a nod and smile.
“Thank you, Dr. Yang. A word with you before you do continue.” Burke’s voice was as smooth as the creamy chocolate color of his skin. The rest of the doctors left the room and headed over to the next patient in their service. Burke guided his fiancee just outside the door, and held her by the shoulders. “Cristina, we are getting married in a week. You were the one who wanted to write our own vows, and unless you want to stand before our families and just ask for a scalpel or pickups. . .I’m asking you to write something down. On paper. To give to the pastor.”
“Fine, Burke, it’s not like I have any, I don’t know, studying to do. You’re right. I’ll just whip something out right here. ‘mkay?” She smiled up at him, a seriously fake smile and he knew it. Frustrated, he pushed his glasses back up onto his nose, pursed his lips and nodded at her. He walked away.
In the scrub room before Mrs. Jenkins’s surgery, Derek kept glancing at Meredith. She could feel it. Her skin was sensitive to the touch of his eyes, always had been since the very first night at Joe’s. She knew when he was looking at her, because his gaze took up so much space. His focus burned away all oxygen from the room when it was on her. But each time she looked back at him, he concentrated on his nailbeds or his wrists. Or looked into the OR, and then back to his hands. But when she looked back down, he would look at her.
“Derek.”
“Let’s just go in there, okay? Get this done, and then we can find a space to talk.” He rinsed his hands and arms a final time as she finished her own prep. The scrub nurse gloved them both, and they entered the OR. They worked together in sync; the surgery went smoothly. But their normal closeness, the intimacy they usually felt when Meredith assisted him. . .it wasn’t there.
“She had an upper respiratory infection. Sinusitus.” Derek spoke so softly that Meredith almost didn’t hear him.
“I saw that in her chart, she had bronchitis on top of it. But how does that factor into the tumor?” Meredith reached for the retractor just before Derek asked her to hold it.
“Often these tumors progress so slowly that the patient doesn’t notice the change in their hearing. But something happens, like a bad case of sinusitus, and when the hearing doesn’t come back, they notice. I had one patient who thought his ear wasn’t right after an airplane flight. Mrs. Jenkins thought she was seeing the ENT for a sinus lavage, that her sinuses had gotten clogged. Instead, here she is.”
Meredith looked at the woman on the table, listened to her breath sounds. “She’s having brain surgery, and she thought it was just a cold.”
“Sometimes getting the small problems treated lets you take care of the bigger problems. If she hadn’t noticed the hearing loss now, she might not have noticed until it was too late.”
“But the tumor is benign.” Meredith knew that, she’d read up on this.
“Benign, but they grow. And they extend into the angle between the cerebellum and the pons, and pressure there is never a good thing. Why would that be, Dr. Grey?” Derek’s questioning was soft, challenging. Meredith flicked her eyes to meet his.
“At that angle, the fifth, seventh, ninth and tenth cranial nerves would be impacted. She could lose taste and sensation in her face, have some facial paralysis. She could have lost the ability to eat, since her gag reflex would be gone.” Meredith realized that if this woman hadn’t gone to see her doctor, had passed off her hearing loss as no big deal. . .she could have lost much of what made her life special. Smiling. Eating. Tasting. Talking. Kissing. All gone, because the patient diagnosed herself, and attributed hearing loss to a cold.
“Correct, Dr. Grey.”
The two completed the surgery. “Dr. Grey, would you like to close?”
“Thank you, Dr. Shepherd. I certainly would.” Derek shifted his spot and allowed her to take charge of the surgery. He watched in careful concentration as Meredith closed the skull flap behind Mrs. Jenkins’s ear. He evaluated each suture she took. And when she had finished, he nodded his approval.
“Nicely done. Let’s go tell her husband we got it all, and she’s doing well. Make sure you keep tabs on her in post-op.”
“Dr. Shepherd, I have an 11:00 with Susan Burson, but I’ll let whoever is on duty in post-op know.”
Derek pulled the mask off and tossed it into the scrub room hazardous waste bin along with his gloves. “What a coincidence. I’ve got a 11:00 with Jack. Let’s walk up there together.”
“Hmmmm.” Meredith thought for a moment. What the hell, go for it.
“Let’s not walk, Dr. Shepherd. Let’s take the elevator.”
A/N: Yeah, me again. I just wanted to say that I have more information about Marfan's syndrome than I would like if you are interested. Remember Burke & Cristina's first date? Also have some information on acoustic neuroma, because when I had my severe sinusitus, etc, my doc was convinced I had the tumor instead of just residual hearing loss afterward. Oh, and if you read this previously, you'll notice that I changed Mrs. Jenkins's name from Rebecca to Rachel. (Remember, Ava told Alex she was Rebecca.) Between the name thing, the C. Diff and the train analogy (slightly different, but still), I'm having a hard time remembering that I am not Shonda and have no rights to the characters, that I'm just writing as an act of love and fandom. But all I need to do to remind myself is think about Derek's final lines to Barfly Lexie. Derek? The reason Mer isn't the shiny sparky girl in the bar, the difference between Season 1 Meredith and Season 2 Meredith? Can be summed up in this line: "And you must be the woman who's been screwing my husband." Sorry you don't like the woman you helped create, Derek. Drop a pair and deal.
Previous Chapters
1-- I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak
2-- I go and I find the one and only answer every week
3-- And it's just me and all the memories to follow
4-- Down any course that fits within a fifty-minute hour
5-- And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
6-- When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
7-- And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something
8-- But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself.
9-- Oooooooh, aaaaaaah, what do you hear in these sounds?
Timeline: Follows canon roughly around Time After Time (3:20) through end of Season 3. Then A/U (or I'll be really freaked out next fall) Current chapter roughly just after the episode with the not-a-spinoff. I have a mental block against the name and number.
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, but if Shonda doesn't quit bending them in ways they weren't meant to bend, I might have to confiscate them.
Summary: It's not just the interns who need therapy. A day in the life--some Bang interaction, some MerDer. A dash of Alex and Izzie.
A/N: There are some 'medical medical' factoids here, all of which are true to the extent I could verify them with WebMD & Dr. Google. But just like I'm not Shonda, I'm not a doctor, so don't trust them for your own health. And the scene with Bailey and Meredith was written (and posted to another Grey's fic site) the Monday after the show with Susan's death aired, so you can imagine the best part of the next Thursday's episode for me were the words C. Diff. This starts the morning after Derek turned around at Mer's door, because he saw her taking shots of tequila with Alex and Izzie. 'Cause, you know, nothing says "you're the love of my life" like standing your girlfriend up when you made plans for dinner.
Meredith woke up Saturday morning to the familiar sycopated mariachi rhythms of a Jose hangover. She managed to fall quietly out of bed, get into the shower and turn it on full blast, letting the warm water pound her body. She hadn’t cried the day before; she hadn’t cried about Susan, hadn’t cried about Thatcher, hadn’t cried about Derek. She wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Except Susan. Susan deserves my tears. Poor Susan. Her stepmother’s case had been so weird; she presented with hiccups, ended up dying from sepsis. She didn’t know exactly how it had progressed, since she’d been mostly just observing George and Bailey run the case. So what, I lose something like a parent, Thatcher blames me and Derek doesn’t show up. Just another rainy day for Meredith Grey. She had woken up early, though, and was bound and determined to get into the hospital, pull a Cristina and cherry-pick a surgery. One to be performed on a complete stranger, someone she had never met before. Preferably neuro, so she’d be sure to see Derek. Derek didn’t show up last night. And Meredith forced the tendril of doubt that snaked into her heart and throat back into a cage. Something happened. He said he would always show up. This isn’t about me running down the hall, away from Thatcher and the slap, not wanting to be the drama of the moment in the hospital, running away from the people who let me tell my father his wife was dead. But that same tendril of doubt was finding fertile soil.
Alex’s morning wasn’t any better. He spent the night listening to Ava’s words, “Why can’t you be that nice for someone you have feelings for?” What did she want from him? He wasn’t that guy, dream on. He didn’t even want to try to be that guy. So Dr. Montgomery didn’t want him, didn’t want his half-heartedness, didn’t want his heart. Her loss. He had no intention of playing the rebound guy, not even for her. Had he forgotten how to be a boyfriend? Had he ever really known? He roused himself out of bed and trudged to the shower. Rise and shine, rise and shine!
Izzie woke up blearily, showered and came downstairs just in time to hear the door slam as Meredith left. Bitch. Couldn’t she have waited just a few minutes for me? She got herself some coffee and loitered around, enjoying the peace and quiet of the house. She missed George, missed the mornings with him. Missed his companionship, missed their shared jokes. Yesterday, when he told her that the job at Mercy West looked like a good shot, all she could see was her, missing him. Her water was boiling. She threw the rest of her coffee into the sink, and set a tea bag to steep. Time to go.
Meredith was flipping through the charts for the morning’s surgeries when Bailey grabbed her by the elbow.
“Grey, I didn’t expect to see you for another twenty minutes at least. How are you holding up?” Meredith suddenly realized that this short black woman was the closest thing to a mother she had ever had.
“Dr. Bailey, what caused the sepsis? What made Susan. . .what happened? How did it progress so fast?”
Miranda Bailey took a deep breath. This death was hers. And the aftermath that it had dealt her intern was also hers. “When she was given the broad-spectrum antibiotic, as you know, it killed most of the bacteria in her colon. Both good and bad. In rare cases, people who are carriers of C. diff, Clostridium difficile, have a reaction. The C. diff takes over, because it’s no longer being held in check. The balance of bacteria is thrown off. And when C. diff takes over. . .there’s only a short time to act. And we missed that window.”
“And then she developed toxic megacolon.” Meredith’s tone was level. She was just checking the medical details.
“Yes. Grey. . .I’m sorry.”
Sorry. Why was Bailey sorry?
“Don’t be. I didn’t really know her that well.”
“No. About your father. I should have told him, you weren’t that involved with her case. It shouldn’t have happened that way.”
“No, it’s good. I’m good, I’m glad. Now I don’t have to wonder. Or think about him.”
Bailey’s eyes searched Meredith’s face, looking for a different answer, but found nothing. “Okay, then. Go ahead and take this chart. Should be a straightforward case, she’s an AM admit scheduled for surgery this morning. Take her down to pre-op and get her prepped.”
Meredith looked down at the chart in her hand. Rachel Jenkins, bed 27A. Acoustic Neuroma. Excellent-just what I was looking for.
Meredith only had time to review the chart and speak briefly with the patient as she got her settled into preop before rounds began. She went back down to join Bailey and the rest of the merry band of interns, only to go right back to Mrs. Jenkins bedside.
Where is Derek? Shouldn’t he be in for this? Usually the attending or resident in charge of a case would be listening during rounds so that the interns could be grilled appropriately. But Dr. Shepherd was nowhere to be found.
“Grey, are you presenting this?” Bailey’s voice was kind.
“This is Rachel Jenkins, 38 year old female, who presented with loss of hearing, status post severe respiratory, sinus and bronchial infection,” Meredith began. “MRI showed intracranial abnormalities, which were diagnosed as Vestibular Shwannoma, also known as acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor which forms near the vestibulocochlear nerves.”
“Treatment?” Baileys eyes stayed on Meredith.
“Because Mrs. Jenkins is quite young and her hearing is not degenerated with age, I would use the middle fossa approach, which has the advantage of not compromising hearing. However, the retrosigmoid approach would also be a valid path and also provide for low probability of hearing loss. The choice between the two would be up to the operating surgeon.”
“In this case the surgeon is going with middle fossa.” There he is. Meredith turned to see Derek striding into the room and shaking hands with the patient and her husband. He looks pretty crummy. Disheveled, even. What happened to him last night? Something kept him from coming over with dinner, was it me or him or something else entirely? How would someone normal deal with this? Someone who hasn’t been quite as damaged? Someone who isn’t expecting to be dumped at any moment. Someone with a different last name. Someone not me.
After Derek apologized to the patient for missing the first part of rounds, he quizzed Bailey’s interns on the procedure. Meredith was front and center with her answers. She looks tired. Anguished. And questioning. And. . .confused. Yet she had her facts about the case down cold, so there was nothing he could do except give her the chart. In all fairness, I can’t give her surgeries when she hasn’t earned them, but I can’t withhold them just because we’re. . .whatever we are.
“Dr. Grey, the case is yours. Get another MRI so we know exactly what this tumor is doing today, page me if you see any changes and I’ll see you in the OR.” Derek noted the order on the chart, and clicked the top of the pen before he placed it into the lapel pocket of his lab coat. He gave a smile to the Jenkins couple and nodded to the group of interns.
He avoided meeting her eyes, although she tried to flag him down a couple of times. I can’t have this conversation here in the halls of the hospital. I can’t get perspective here, I can’t figure out how to make our love work. To help her, and to still be the man I need to be.
As Bailey and her group of interns moved to the next patient, Cristina looked at Meredith with questioning eyes.
“What, is McDreamy being McAss again? What did you do? What did he do?”
“I don’t know what he did. I don’t know what I did. It’s like. . .all of the sudden there’s this hole, pit, a huge chasm. An abyss. A canyon. The Grand Freaking Canyon. And he’s way over on one side, and here I am, on the other. I don’t like being across the canyon from him. But I don’t even know what made the canyon, so here I am waving. I’m waving across the canyon, and I don’t think he can even see me from his side. What makes a canyon, Cristina?”
“Erosion over millennia makes canyons, Meredith. I have to write vows. Burke is making me have a wedding. So, what, are you two split up?”
“No! Or. . .I don’t know. We had a good conversation yesterday. A couple. It felt like we talked. I said things. And he said things. We talked. But he didn’t come over. And he said he would, that was one of the things he said. And I’m lonely and he won’t talk. Do you think he’s mad? What are you going to vow?”
“I think he’s McAss whenever he gets all ‘boo hoo, I didn’t get my way’. I don’t know, what should I say?”
“Yang,” Bailey’s voice shattered the peace of their private conversation. “Do you mind giving me the update on this patient?” Cristina looked up, startled. At some point in their conversation, they had entered a patient room, and Burke must have been with the patient. Now they were both staring Cristina down. Fortunately it was the room of one of her post-op patients, so she started in easily.
“Mrs. DeWitt, aged 56 year old female, status-post aortic root repair and gortex replacement neccessitated by a dissection at the root thought to have been a result of Marfan’s syndrome. Current plan is to monitor the patient through the post-op care, get her up and walking to accumulate two miles before discharge. She will also be seen by the social worker who will advise her family on getting monitered for future aneurysms and other typical complications of Marfan’s.” Cristina punctuated her delivery with a nod and smile.
“Thank you, Dr. Yang. A word with you before you do continue.” Burke’s voice was as smooth as the creamy chocolate color of his skin. The rest of the doctors left the room and headed over to the next patient in their service. Burke guided his fiancee just outside the door, and held her by the shoulders. “Cristina, we are getting married in a week. You were the one who wanted to write our own vows, and unless you want to stand before our families and just ask for a scalpel or pickups. . .I’m asking you to write something down. On paper. To give to the pastor.”
“Fine, Burke, it’s not like I have any, I don’t know, studying to do. You’re right. I’ll just whip something out right here. ‘mkay?” She smiled up at him, a seriously fake smile and he knew it. Frustrated, he pushed his glasses back up onto his nose, pursed his lips and nodded at her. He walked away.
In the scrub room before Mrs. Jenkins’s surgery, Derek kept glancing at Meredith. She could feel it. Her skin was sensitive to the touch of his eyes, always had been since the very first night at Joe’s. She knew when he was looking at her, because his gaze took up so much space. His focus burned away all oxygen from the room when it was on her. But each time she looked back at him, he concentrated on his nailbeds or his wrists. Or looked into the OR, and then back to his hands. But when she looked back down, he would look at her.
“Derek.”
“Let’s just go in there, okay? Get this done, and then we can find a space to talk.” He rinsed his hands and arms a final time as she finished her own prep. The scrub nurse gloved them both, and they entered the OR. They worked together in sync; the surgery went smoothly. But their normal closeness, the intimacy they usually felt when Meredith assisted him. . .it wasn’t there.
“She had an upper respiratory infection. Sinusitus.” Derek spoke so softly that Meredith almost didn’t hear him.
“I saw that in her chart, she had bronchitis on top of it. But how does that factor into the tumor?” Meredith reached for the retractor just before Derek asked her to hold it.
“Often these tumors progress so slowly that the patient doesn’t notice the change in their hearing. But something happens, like a bad case of sinusitus, and when the hearing doesn’t come back, they notice. I had one patient who thought his ear wasn’t right after an airplane flight. Mrs. Jenkins thought she was seeing the ENT for a sinus lavage, that her sinuses had gotten clogged. Instead, here she is.”
Meredith looked at the woman on the table, listened to her breath sounds. “She’s having brain surgery, and she thought it was just a cold.”
“Sometimes getting the small problems treated lets you take care of the bigger problems. If she hadn’t noticed the hearing loss now, she might not have noticed until it was too late.”
“But the tumor is benign.” Meredith knew that, she’d read up on this.
“Benign, but they grow. And they extend into the angle between the cerebellum and the pons, and pressure there is never a good thing. Why would that be, Dr. Grey?” Derek’s questioning was soft, challenging. Meredith flicked her eyes to meet his.
“At that angle, the fifth, seventh, ninth and tenth cranial nerves would be impacted. She could lose taste and sensation in her face, have some facial paralysis. She could have lost the ability to eat, since her gag reflex would be gone.” Meredith realized that if this woman hadn’t gone to see her doctor, had passed off her hearing loss as no big deal. . .she could have lost much of what made her life special. Smiling. Eating. Tasting. Talking. Kissing. All gone, because the patient diagnosed herself, and attributed hearing loss to a cold.
“Correct, Dr. Grey.”
The two completed the surgery. “Dr. Grey, would you like to close?”
“Thank you, Dr. Shepherd. I certainly would.” Derek shifted his spot and allowed her to take charge of the surgery. He watched in careful concentration as Meredith closed the skull flap behind Mrs. Jenkins’s ear. He evaluated each suture she took. And when she had finished, he nodded his approval.
“Nicely done. Let’s go tell her husband we got it all, and she’s doing well. Make sure you keep tabs on her in post-op.”
“Dr. Shepherd, I have an 11:00 with Susan Burson, but I’ll let whoever is on duty in post-op know.”
Derek pulled the mask off and tossed it into the scrub room hazardous waste bin along with his gloves. “What a coincidence. I’ve got a 11:00 with Jack. Let’s walk up there together.”
“Hmmmm.” Meredith thought for a moment. What the hell, go for it.
“Let’s not walk, Dr. Shepherd. Let’s take the elevator.”
A/N: Yeah, me again. I just wanted to say that I have more information about Marfan's syndrome than I would like if you are interested. Remember Burke & Cristina's first date? Also have some information on acoustic neuroma, because when I had my severe sinusitus, etc, my doc was convinced I had the tumor instead of just residual hearing loss afterward. Oh, and if you read this previously, you'll notice that I changed Mrs. Jenkins's name from Rebecca to Rachel. (Remember, Ava told Alex she was Rebecca.) Between the name thing, the C. Diff and the train analogy (slightly different, but still), I'm having a hard time remembering that I am not Shonda and have no rights to the characters, that I'm just writing as an act of love and fandom. But all I need to do to remind myself is think about Derek's final lines to Barfly Lexie. Derek? The reason Mer isn't the shiny sparky girl in the bar, the difference between Season 1 Meredith and Season 2 Meredith? Can be summed up in this line: "And you must be the woman who's been screwing my husband." Sorry you don't like the woman you helped create, Derek. Drop a pair and deal.
Previous Chapters
1-- I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak
2-- I go and I find the one and only answer every week
3-- And it's just me and all the memories to follow
4-- Down any course that fits within a fifty-minute hour
5-- And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
6-- When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
7-- And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something
8-- But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself.
9-- Oooooooh, aaaaaaah, what do you hear in these sounds?