"If you have tears, prepare to shed them now." – William Shakespeare 


At first, she thought it was ligament pain, just the sharp ache of an expanding uterus pushing on strained tissue. She’d been in surgery when it started, just a phantom of discomfort at first, but it soon had bloomed into something else entirely. A crampy, gnawing, emptying pain that dizzied her and plunged her into a deep denial. 

She continued to cut, and cauterize tiny blood vessels around the spine, with one of her interns peering over her shoulder in rapt attention. Pausing for a moment, she took notice of the surgical team around her – the anesthesiologist, the scrub nurses, the people who were looking to her to lead this surgery – and gritted her teeth. She hadn’t had much, if anything, to do with obstetrics since she was an intern, but quickly, she tried to mentally rattle off the causes of abdominal pain during pregnancy. Round ligament pain, heartburn, constipation, gas. Miscarriage. The chance of which went down significantly after the twelve-week mark. Ten and a half weeks was close enough, right? 

Everyone knew she was pregnant. In a hospital like this one, where gossip moved like an ocean current through the hallways, there’s no way everyone could not know, though few had congratulated her or Derek outright. There had been no official announcement, but the day Cristina Yang had to guard the door to the women’s bathroom so Derek Shepherd could comfort his wife in semi-privacy, everyone had gotten a pretty good idea of what was going on. 

Pregnant or not, though, Meredith had insisted on professionalism. Normalcy. Good medicine. She could continue to power through 12-hour work days, and stay on call every fourth night, in the following weeks. She had made peace with admitting, if only to herself, that she wasn’t feeling completely normal, but she still had to cringe whenever she slid her scalpel over human flesh for the first time, partly from nausea and partly from the way everyone looked at her when she did it. 

By the time the bleeding started, she was already at home, cooking dinner. Spaghetti, which was one of the first meals she had learned how to make without irreparably screwing it up. Put two saucepans on the stove. Boil the pasta, heat the sauce. It was also Emily’s favorite. Meredith always thought that she liked to play with the noodles more than she liked eating them, but what Emily wanted, she would give it to her. It was slow at first, but when she felt wet, while she was stirring the spaghetti sauce with a wooden spoon, she knew that she’d look back on that instant as the beginning of the end. 

She moved somewhat robotically from that point on. The pain in her abdomen had gone on too long, and had spiraled into something too terrifying for it to be nothing. The cramping had changed from something she could have honestly mistaken for round ligament pain to something that rushed memories of early labor with Emily back to her. The bleeding could have been normal spotting, if it hadn’t kept going. There was nothing she could do, and she felt it everywhere. Not just in the nerve endings of a failing uterus, but also deep in her chest, and suddenly she knew that this is how it felt when your heart was breaking. 

The meal wasn’t finished cooking, but Meredith turned off the stove and simply left it there, half-cooked pasta still hard in lukewarm water. Instead, she microwaved a bowl of leftover macaroni and cheese, and set it on Emily’s highchair. When she called her daughter in to the kitchen, the voice that left her lips didn’t even sound like her own. It sounded more distant, tighter, like she was treading water and these were the last words she would say before her arms and legs became too tired to keep her afloat anymore. 

Emily ran in, her loose caramel-colored curls bouncing wild around her face. She could run. She was running now. Her jeans were still too long, covering the tops of her sneakers, but she had the ability to run. At least she was running to someone instead of always away, away, away. Meredith gathered her up in her arms, and slid her into her chair. She swallowed hard, and planted a half-hearted smile firmly on her face. Normal. Please be normal. Emily deserves normal. 

“Hungry, Em?” Meredith asked, with a false cheerfulness that she hoped Emily, at nearly two years old, couldn’t see through. 

“Where my sketti?” Emily asked disappointedly, looking down at her macaroni and cheese and back up at Meredith. 

“We didn’t have any,” she lied, apologizing with every word. “I’ll go to the store tomorrow and get you some more, okay?” 

“Ok,” Emily agreed, poking at her dinner tentatively with one finger. For the past several weeks, she had insisted on feeding herself, but she made no move to pick up the small pink rubber-coated spoon Meredith left on the tray for her. Instead, Meredith picked it up in an attempt to get Emily started. 

“No,” she said simply, in the defiant tone only a toddler could muster, and pushed the bowl away from her. 

“It’s yummy,” Meredith assured her, but Emily whined and batted at Meredith’s hand, trying to knock the spoon away. 

“I want sketti.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t have it, Em.”

“When my Daddy come back?” she asked. The irritation in her voice threw it into something high-pitched and on the verge of a tantrum. 

“Soon,” Meredith promised. She felt herself caught between a strange limbo of wanting her husband home as fast as the engine of his car could carry him and wanting him to stay away. The longer he stayed away, the longer this wouldn’t be happening to him. Maybe the longer he didn’t know that it was almost over, the less Derek knew it was real, the less it would have to be real at all. 

“Airplane?” she offered, scooping some noodles onto the spoon and spiraling it towards Emily’s tightly closed lips. 

Emily shook her head back and forth, vehemently refusing to open her mouth for something she didn’t want. “Sketti,” she insisted. 

“There isn’t any, but try this macaroni and cheese,” Meredith pleaded. “It’s good,” she told Emily, taking a bite of it herself. As soon as the food touched her lips, she immediately wished it hadn’t. One bite turned an already jumpy stomach into a nauseous, twisting mess. She inhaled deeply through her nostrils, and mimicked Emily, keeping her mouth tightly closed. She let a few seconds pass, and when she had calmed a bit, she opened her mouth again. “How about if I let you watch a movie?” 

Emily nodded, taking the bribe. Meredith moved Emily out of her chair and into the living room. She brought the bowl of macaroni and cheese in with her, and popped in the Cinderella DVD Emily had been obsessed with for weeks. As the animated princess danced across the screen with her mouse friends, Emily watched in awe, and Meredith used that opportunity to spoon her dinner into her mouth while she wasn’t paying attention. Emily chewed distractedly, clapping as the mice successfully escaped the menacing housecat once again. Meredith shoveled the last bite in as Emily pointed happily at the screen as Cinderella was transformed into a beautiful princess just in time for the ball, blissfully unaware that her problems had just begun. 

Leaving the bowl on the coffee table, Meredith got up from the couch. She kissed the top of Emily’s head and whispered how much she loved her, smoothing down her hair. Then she went upstairs. 

In the bathroom, she pressed a pad into a new pair of panties. Changing into sweatpants and a t-shirt, she left the jeans and button-down she was wearing in a pile on the floor. She realized somewhat that these clothes would have to be thrown out; she’d never want to wear them again. It was over. And now all she had to do was wait. 

Her bed didn’t feel as comfortable as it usually did, but she lay down anyway. As the reality of the situation snuck up on her like a vicious predator, she felt so empty, and at the same time, so full, that it was almost unbearable. She tried to will herself to cry, to let some of it out, but she couldn’t make the tears come. 

She felt like she was holding that bomb again, like at any second it could explode in her hands and destroy her, taking with it as it detonated all the happy memories she had worked so hard to find and keep. She hadn’t had that feeling this time, the feeling of sure and imminent destruction, but maybe it was better to be caught off guard with something like this. The waiting to be gone was tough enough. Trying to remember what that all felt like, how it felt to know that something catastrophic simply had to happen before there was any type of relief, she pressed her fingertips to her cramping stomach. She wasn’t holding the bomb anymore. She was the bomb, and every cramp, every slow trickle of blood, was bringing her one step closer to the unavoidable tragedy.

* * *

When Derek got home from work at about seven o’clock, he knew immediately that something was not right. He came in through the kitchen door, expecting to find a plate of pasta covered in plastic wrap on the table for him, but instead he found a pot of spaghetti, barely cooked, sitting in cold water on the stove. Though Meredith’s car was in the driveway, the table hadn’t been set, and there were no dirty dishes in the sink or dishwasher. 

Quickly, he went to the living room, where he found his daughter safely curled up on the couch, drinking a sippy cup of apple juice and watching a movie. An empty bowl that looked like it used to contain macaroni and cheese sat on the coffee table. He glanced around the room for Meredith, but he didn’t see her, and the house was quiet except for the cheerful movie dialogue. 

“Hi, Bean,” Derek smiled as calmly as he could, dropping his briefcase and scooping Emily up. 

“Hi, Daddy,” Emily said happily, giggling as Derek kissed her hello. “That Cindewella,” she pointed at the television, nodding along to herself. 

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “Em, where’s Mommy?” 

Emily pointed to the stairs. “Her go up there.” 

“Meredith,” he called, figuring she had just gone to the bathroom or to change her clothes. “Mer,” he tried again when she didn’t answer or come downstairs. 

He let a few seconds pass before gently setting Emily back down on the couch and heading for the stairs himself. “You go up there too?” Emily asked. 

“I’m going to find Mommy,” he said. “I’ll be back. You watch your movie, ok, Bean?” 

Taking the steps two at a time, he looked in every door along the hallway like he was playing a game of hide and seek and failing miserably at it. He poked his head in room after room, Emily’s first, then the spare room which they were going to start turning into the baby’s room soon, and finally the bathroom. He saw the pile of clothes on the floor and fear rose in his throat, tasting remarkably like bile. He could barely feel his legs as he opened the last door on the left side of the hallway, the door to the bedroom he shared with Meredith. 

She was curled up in bed, her back facing him, not moving at all. He had to admit that, although slightly irrational, he felt somewhat relieved when he watched her chest rise and fall a few times. He didn’t really think she had died, but it was good to see that she was still breathing nonetheless. Going around to the other side of the room, he bent down to look into her eyes, and what he saw scared him to his very core. Her eyes looked so tired, glazed over with tears as she stared right past him and at the wall. She had the covers drawn up around her waist, and she gripped them so tightly that her knuckles whitened. She looked pale. Drained. Completely. 

He had to say her name a few times to get her to focus on him, said it like he was trying to rouse a patient after surgery when the anesthesia was still wearing off. “Meredith,” he urged quietly, but she didn’t move. “Mer,” he tried once more, the palm of his hand on her arm and then on her face. 

“I hear you,” she said, her eyes meeting his for a moment. Her voice came out soft and strained, like she hadn’t spoken in several days, or like the tube that had kept her ventilated during a long surgery had just been taken out. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you sick?” She shook her head just barely, and her focus went back to the wall behind him. “What’s wrong?” he asked again, and though she didn’t move or speak, the tears rolling down her face were indication enough. He kicked off his shoes and moved to the other side of the bed. 

Sometimes all she needed was to be held lately, comforted in just the right way. He knew that as much as he swore to her that everything would be ok, just like it had been with Emily, she still had her doubts. It was like she couldn’t believe that she, Meredith Grey, deserved to lead such a charmed life, and that it was simply a matter of time before it unraveled. She kept telling him that it was impossible to be everything, and it seemed like she was constantly worrying about Emily and how her every action was affecting her daughter. She had doubts. And Derek was ok with that. For the past several weeks, he had been helping her work through them as much as he could, but there were still days like today, when it all fell apart in her mind. 

When he pulled back the covers to get in bed with her though, his stomach lurched violently forward. The stark crimson of the blood on the white sheets wasn’t a lot, but it was enough, and it sent him reeling into an instantaneous grief of his own. As tears pricked the backs of his eyes, he fought the urge to vomit out of sheer helplessness. 

“Oh my God,” he breathed with a wavering voice. “We have to go to the hospital.” The decision in his mind was immediate, not optional in the slightest. Some vaginal bleeding during early pregnancy was normal. He did know that. Granted he hadn’t been involved in obstetrics since he was an intern, but he had retained some information from Addison over the years. He had convinced himself in that moment that this could still turn out to be normal, if they got up and went now. “Meredith, we have to go.”

“No,” she murmured steadily. “I can’t.” 

“You’re bleeding. We’re going to lose the baby if we don’t go.” 

“I lost the baby, Derek,” Meredith said, sad yet certain in the way that she spoke. 

“You don’t know that,” he said desperately.

“I wish I didn’t.” 

“We have to go,” he said firmly, but he was met with resistance again. 

“I can do this at home. We can do this at home,” she corrected herself. Her voice was thick with emotion, like someone had coated the inside of her throat with peanut butter and refused to give her something to wash it down with. “I can’t be a patient and do this in a hospital.” 

“Meredith,” he pleaded, but she stopped him abruptly. 

“I’m not going, Derek.” 

He left the room then, only because he didn’t know what else to do. She was a doctor too, and there would be no forcing Meredith Grey to do anything. He walked back and forth down the hallway, at a loss for what the appropriate course of action would now be. He couldn’t lie there with her and watch it happen, but he couldn’t make himself go back downstairs to his daughter and trust himself not to break down in front of her. 

He sank down on the bathroom floor, pulling at the tie around his neck that felt suddenly more like a chokehold than a piece of formal attire. Through the open door, he could hear Emily’s attempts to sing along with the DVD downstairs, though her words were somewhat jumbled like she was having trouble keeping up with the perky blonde princess on the screen. He didn’t hear anything coming from Meredith’s room, though he didn’t expect to, and he made a note to check on her as soon as he could get himself together. 

Taking a deep, gasping breath, he pushed his hair back and clenched his fists. It seemed remarkably unnerving that he was sitting on the floor of his bathroom, choking back tears, rather than doing something. He found himself torn between Meredith’s quiet, sure devastation and the lingering thought that was already starting to burn him like a match that this could all be stopped. 

The bottom line was that Derek Shepherd trusted medicine. He had devoted his life to the belief that letting nature take its course was one of the least desirable options when faced with something dire. When it came to his patients, Derek Shepherd rarely decided against taking them into the operating room to do whatever he could for them. Caught off guard, thrown for a loop - it was ok, because he had been trained to be ready for these situations. To not trust in a doctor’s capable hands was unnatural, and to not even give a doctor the chance to help was so maddeningly unheard of. 

This could not be over. Just because Meredith had a feeling, just because Meredith knew somehow. He refused to believe it until he saw it for himself, until someone with an M.D. at the end of their name sat him down and made him believe it. 

He was surprised at how weak his legs felt when he stood up, like they weren’t even attached to his body. He floated down the hallway and into the fourth bedroom, which had become a catch-all room over the past few years, and pried open the cardboard flaps of a box full of textbooks. Meredith was a packrat, unable to throw things away, and though Derek found the resulting clutter irritating and cumbersome, he was thankful now that she hadn’t thrown away all her medical school textbooks. He started looking for obstetrics. Anything on obstetrics. 

When all he found were organic chemistry, cell biology, anatomy, and pharmacology textbooks, stacked high in the box, he had to settle for What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which he saw resting on top of another box elsewhere in the room. It was an admitted gag gift from Cristina, given to Meredith when she was pregnant with Emily, but Derek found himself flying through the pages as if it were published by the surgeon general, searching for anything that would give him a sliver of hope to hang on to. 

This book for the everywoman wasn’t helping him. Blanketed, comforting, and vague, it wasn’t telling him the medical facts that he needed to know. Everything here could be a problem, or it could not be. Possible causes were listed in bullet points. Rather than define itself as a source of perfect advice, it referred its readers to their doctors for definite answers. The one thing Meredith refused to do. 

He heard the door open down the hall, and heavy footsteps close the door to the bathroom, but he remained on the floor in a daze. His sorrow suffocated him and his sheer inability to do anything to remedy the situation was unbearable. He was never very good at being helpless; whenever possible, he preferred to act, to have some hand in what happened in his life. Now, he felt like even that was being taken away from him. 

A small yelp came from behind the bathroom door and immediately, Derek was on his feet, running. Opening the door without a second thought, his heart nearly beat right out of his chest. A gush of blood, and Meredith in tears, launched Derek past grief-stricken and headfirst into paralyzing fear. 

It was too much blood. Much too much. 

She sat there, shaking and tearful with her hands gripping her thighs. Hiccupping, choking back sobs, Meredith looked up at him with the same fear he felt in deep in his gut. He cursed himself for waiting this long, for letting her be because that’s what she wanted. “We’re going to the hospital.” 

“No,” she whimpered. “It’s almost over.” 

“We’re going.” 

“No,” she repeated. Her voice was firm, but verging on hysterical. “Don’t you think I’m talked about enough?” 

Deep down, he knew she was grieving just as much as he was. Deep down, he understood that she was reeling. But his blood boiled as those words left her lips. “I don’t care. I’m getting you some new clothes and we’re going right now.” She shook her head vehemently back and forth, and made no move to get up and do what he asked. 

“No,” she breathed. “No, no, no,” she repeated until it barely sounded like a word anymore, just a ping pong of desperate sound. 

“Get your clothes on,” he said, his teeth clenching as his eyes bored into her. “I’m bringing some clothes in here, and I’m calling Izzie to get the baby, and we’re going. We shouldn’t have let it go this long,” he whispered as his voice broke. “We just shouldn’t have.” Before Meredith could get a halfhearted, weary protest out of her mouth again, Derek silenced her. “We’re going even if I have to call 911 to take you in an ambulance.” 

“Not Seattle Grace,” she pleaded, finally surrendering. “Mercy West. Please, Derek.” 

Derek barely knew what he was doing as he rifled through her drawers and left her a clean pair of pants in the bathroom for her. Later, he would feel pangs of remorse for taking such a harsh tone with her, and he did vaguely remember whispering some words of reassurance and apology to her in the car on the way to the hospital as she gripped his hand, but in that moment, he was frantic. The flitty trills of the movie’s score were still playing downstairs, and somewhere in his mind, he knew he could count on Emily to still be completely enthralled with the movie. 

In the bedroom, he fumbled for the phone and dialed a number he barely knew but adrenaline allowed him to remember. When Izzie answered, it was all Derek could do to keep it together long enough to ask her what he needed from her. “Izzie, its Derek.” 

“Oh, hi, what’s up?” her cheerful voice came across the telephone line. 

“Can you watch the baby for a couple hours?” 

“Yeah, of course!” Izzie exclaimed, eager at a chance to play with Emily for even a little while. “When? Do you and Meredith want to go to dinner sometime this week? That’s so great that it seems like she’s starting to feel better. Like really great. I’ve been leaving the hospital around 7:30 every night, but I can leave early one night if you guys want. I’m sure Alex won’t mind. When?” she asked again. 

“We actually need you right now,” Derek said, taking a wavering breath that he hoped she couldn’t hear on the other end of the line. 

“I guess I could come now. Is everything ok?” 

“Meredith’s losing the baby,” he spilled out, gasping for another breath and squeezing his eyes closed. 

“Oh my God,” Izzie said, shocked and heartbroken. “I’ll be right there.” 

Twenty minutes later, an urgent knock came at the front door. Derek and Meredith had moved downstairs, and all three of them lay on the couch together. Derek’s left arm wrapped around Emily, his palm smoothing her hair down over and over as they watched Cinderella over again from the beginning. The two of them were scrunched up at one end of the couch, and Meredith lay down, sprawled over the rest of it with her head on Derek’s lap. Derek’s right hand lay across Meredith’s abdomen, sometimes rubbing back and forth and sometimes lying still. 

When Izzie knocked, Meredith tiredly lifted her head so Derek could get up and answer the door, and he gathered Emily up into his arms and carried her with him. He opened the door, and found Izzie standing there, her eyes glazed over with tears. She had a small bag slung over her shoulder, and as soon as she stepped inside, she immediately gave Derek a comforting hug. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, taking Emily from his arms. “Go; we’ll be fine. Right, Em?” she smiled at the toddler. “I have some stuff to stay overnight if you need me to. Don’t worry about us.” 

“Thanks,” Derek mustered, already exhausted though the ordeal had just begun. He moved back into the living room, and helped Meredith up. A little light-headed, she gripped his waist for support and looked blankly at Izzie. 

“Meredith,” Izzie murmured, feeling the profound loss in her heart as well as she hugged her friend. “I’m here, ok?” Meredith nodded weakly as Derek ushered her out the door. 

* * * 

Derek took her to Mercy West. By the time he had found her in the bathroom, he didn’t care who saw her, just as long as someone did. The only time she’d ever been a patient in the ER before, she had been unconscious. Now, as they moved her ahead of the stomach flu patients and those with minor cuts in need of stitches, she felt strangely thankful that she was considered either critical or prestigious enough to move to the front of the line. 

The nurse and Derek helped her change into a gown behind the closed curtains of one of their exam rooms, and got her to lie down while she took her history. Inside, Meredith was screaming to just get on with it. She was a doctor. She knew the routine, and she didn’t want any of it. 

Derek held her hand while they waited for someone from OB to come down and examine her. When the nurse left to page someone, she heard Derek pull her aside and tell her that he was the head of neurosurgery at Seattle Grace and his wife was a surgical resident. He told her that he wanted an attending, and he wanted one quickly. Normally, she would have scolded him for acting so rude; he knew as well as she did that the doctors here weren’t just having tea and cookies upstairs right now. There were other people here. She was too weary to make the words leave her lips though, and if she was being honest with herself, she would prefer an attending too if she had to be here at all. 

Soon after Derek made his request, a short, stocky woman slid the curtain back and slipped inside with them. “Hi, I’m Dr. D’Amico,” the woman smiled as gently as she could. With her chocolate mousse hair slicked back into a ponytail and warm brown eyes, she had a comforting demeanor about her. “Dr. Grey, my nurse tells me that you’re experiencing some vaginal bleeding and abdominal pain, and you’re ten weeks pregnant. Is that correct?” 

“Almost eleven,” Derek interjected hurriedly. 

“Yeah,” Meredith breathed. “Almost eleven.” 

“Ok,” Dr. D’Amico said comfortingly. “Let’s do a pelvic and an ultrasound to see what’s going on here.” 

Distantly, Meredith felt Derek and the doctor ease her legs up and open. She had the vague sensation that the doctor’s fingers were between her legs, but though she knew she was being examined, she could barely feel anything. Looking around, the medical instruments she had been surrounded by for all of her professional life were strangely daunting, and she felt like the patients in other sectioned-off portions of the ER were right on top of her. Derek pushed her gown up over her abdomen, and when she felt the doctor squirt some gel onto her skin, she forced herself to dissociate as much as possible from her body. 

She tried to force her mind to go elsewhere, to think of all that she still had rather than what she was in the middle of so painfully losing, but all she could think about was her doctor’s appointment the week before. How hadn’t this been caught? How had she gone on for almost eleven weeks with no indication that something like this would happen? How had she, a doctor, a freakin’ brain surgeon no less, not seen this coming? A week ago, everything had been fine. A week ago, the doctor was pleased to inform her that, so far, it was a textbook pregnancy. She remembered exactly how it felt when he said that. Derek was sitting next to her, holding her hand, as the ultrasound doppler smeared cool gel over her stomach and picked up the rapid, thundering sound of a heartbeat. It was so fast, and she remembered the feel of Derek’s facial hair scraping against her neck as he whispered against her skin that he thought maybe it would be another girl. The heartbeat was 156. Maybe he was right. Now, she was almost certain that she didn’t want to know. 

“I’m sorry.” No two words dragged her back to the present like the ones that so reluctantly left the doctor’s lips in the following seconds. She knew the tone, and had used it herself many times before. She hated it. But it was the softest, most comforting way to ease someone into unspeakable grief. “I can’t find a heartbeat.” 

Meredith nodded, unable to speak for the tears cascading down her face. It was over. You can’t be everything. You can’t have everything. 

“Look again,” Derek pleaded gruffly. “It was there last week. Look again.” 

“I’m sorry, Dr. Shepherd,” Dr. D’Amico said with genuine sympathy. 

“Look again. It was there last week; look again.” 

“Dr. Shepherd, I’ve looked three times. I’m so sorry.” 

“I want to go,” Meredith sobbed, sucking in breath after breath like she was trying not to drown. “I don’t want to be here.” Now that she had taken in the news she was dreading with every fiber of her being, she saw no reason to be here. She gripped Derek’s hand for leverage, and tried to sit up. They had a baby at home. Emily. All she wanted right now was Emily. 

“Ok,” Derek swallowed. “Ok, ok, ok. We’ll go, Mer.” 

“Dr. Grey,” Dr. D’Amico pressed, stopping her in her tracks. “Dr. Grey, the amount of bleeding you’re experiencing concerns me. You’re presenting with an incomplete miscarriage. I think it’s important that we do a D&C as soon as possible to resolve the issue. It’s a procedure where we dilate your cervix and….” 

“I know what it is,” she snapped. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment before mumbling her consent. 

“I’ll bring the paperwork,” Dr. D’Amico said sadly, and pulled the curtain closed behind her as she left. 

While they waited for the doctor to get everything together, a nurse came and helped them move into an actual room. When Dr. D’Amico returned a little while later, Meredith scribbled her name quickly, and pushed the clipboard away like she had just signed a contract with the devil. Again, she remotely felt Derek and the doctor ease her legs up and into some stirrups, and bunch her gown around her waist. Her head lolled to the side as her eyes filled with tears for what seemed like the millionth time that day, and suddenly, she felt very, very tired. She heard Derek sit down beside her, and felt his face burrow into the pillow above her head. So he couldn’t watch either. His hand reached for hers, and when she squeezed weakly back, she felt his heartbroken, choking sobs in her very center. 

Regret, pain, desperation, and a hard stone of grief forged together in an impossible clot in her heart. The doctor administered the local anesthetic as gently as she could. When she felt the sharp metal tugging inside her, she hated that she knew that no drug in this hospital could make her numb enough for this to be bearable. 




A/N: Thank you all so much for all the reviews and for reading! They really make my day! So yes, slightly angsty, but I have a plan. So…there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope you guys like this, even though it is sad, and I have to put this disclaimer out there – I’m not a doctor. I did research, but whatever those medical websites don’t cover, I can’t make up lol. Thanks to Kay for previewing! More to come soon!