Chapter Two
            Or, the One Where the Heroine Does a Very Bad Thing

            “Paging Dr. Williams, paging Dr. Williams,” rings through the hospital.

It’s been exactly three minutes and thirty-one, two, three, seconds since I had Debbie page Derek. Dr. Shepherd. It’s been three minutes and thirty-something seconds since I had Debbie page Dr. Shepherd. I know. I’ve been staring at the clock in the hall ever since.

Mrs. Collins has been admitted as a patient (room 2132), and she’s in there now. She’s pretending to be asleep right now, but I know better. Right now, she is lying flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling, and trying not to cry. It isn’t working.

Some part of me (the part that is friends with Alex) wants to go in there and tell her to shut up. The accident wasn’t her freaking fault. She (probably) has a medical condition. So stop whining and get over it. At least she has a loving husband who is on his way here, and two kids who are already down in the gift shop buying Hallmark cards and balloons. That’s more than I’ll ever have. All I’ve got is a family of scary, damaged interns, a boyfriend who deserves someone much better than me, and a married ex-boyfriend who I just had dirty exam room sex with. During the prom. Nothing says “I’m a filthy whore,” better than dirty exam room sex during the prom. Unless there’s syphilis, a constant erection, or people who don’t wash their hands involved, but I’m pretty sure those were isolated cases.

The point is, I feel grumpy. I also feel worried. The thing is, for a slutty ex/current mistress who is about to face the incredibly McDreamy, married attending she’s being all mistressy with for the first time since the Dirty Exam Room Sex (yes, it does deserve capital letters now), I should feel a lot grumpier and more worried than I do. But I don’t.

Weird, huh?

It’s been four minutes now. What’s taking him so long? I can’t figure it out. I’m afraid to see him, but I can’t wait for him to show up. It’s like the tequila permanently messed up my brain, which would be bad. And not just for the obvious reasons, like paralysis and brain damage, but because that would mean I’d need Dr. Shepherd (see, I can be professional) in to examine me, which would lead to naughty thoughts. I really can’t play doctor with him (again). He’s married, and I have Finn, and Finn has plans, and I really don’t think Mrs. Collins would like it if we pulled our scrubs off and started having sex against the wall of her room.

See? Dirty thoughts. Even thinking about having dirty thoughts about him makes me have dirty thoughts. And, on top of that, just thinking about him makes me ramble. I’m rambling in my own head because of him.

“Dr. Grey?”

I gasp. I nearly fall over, but luckily the wall is behind me.

“Um,” I say intelligently. “Dr. Shepherd.”

He’s looking at me. Why is he looking at me like that? It isn’t right. This isn’t even one of his usual looks. It’s new. It’s the new look-at-me-being-really-McDreamy-while-looking-at-you-look. He looks…amused. Well, not just amused. He looks amused, confident, and downright horny. He also looks…happy. Happier than he’s been in a while. He’s smiling and everything.

It’s probably because he can put about four different emotions into a look. Or maybe it is because one look from him can have me obsessing about it for…twenty-one seconds.

Ass.

“Dr. Grey?” he repeats. “Would you like to enter the patient’s room?”

His eyes crinkle. Even when it’s not his McDreamy smile, his eyes crinkle. While I tell him Mrs. Collins’s information and medical history, the only thing I can think of is him. He isn’t giving me his most dazzling smile. That’s the one that makes me want to jump him in an elevator (or cry, usually both). It’s not his Drunk Derek smile, either. That one makes him seem boyish and adorable (and also results in crying and/or dirty thoughts). I have a whole index of his smiles, painstakingly filed away in my memory, but this one fits none of them. I still like it.

He’s grinning. His eyes are crinkled at the corner, a few teeth are showing, his hair is falling into his face, and he’s grinning. It’s an I’m-absolutely-perfect-and-you’re-insane-but-I-still-think-you’re-perfect-too grin that he really shouldn’t be giving me.

Remember the McMarriage.

I can’t be the whore. I won’t be. I don’t want to break up a marriage. Most of all, I don’t want a man who didn’t choose me.

Maybe if I keep telling myself that, it’ll be true.

Der- Dr. Shepherd tells me to run some labs, and then take Mrs. Collins down for a CT scan and an MRI. I do, but the whole way I’m still thinking of him. Why?

It isn’t fair, or right, or honorable, or any of those things I am supposed to be. So what’s wrong with me? I have Finn. Finn, who is scary and damaged, and likes me, and has plans, and is…Finn. Which isn’t McDreamy.

Suddenly I feel like crying.

I go a whole day without feeling anything. I went the whole day without caring. But the second he walks in the room, I melt. I literally freaking melt. The only thing I can think about is him. How is this fair? All it took was a look to send me from my throne as reigning Ice Queen to the land of Emotional Rollercoasters. It isn’t right. He shouldn’t be allowed to do that. He shouldn’t make me want more Dirty Exam Room Sex. But he does, and I can’t do a thing about it.

The tests are done, and I page Dr. Shepherd again after escorting Mrs. Collins back to her room.  I hold the results out to him, and he gestures to me to follow him to another room. Generally, a doctor wants a chance to look over the results in private so they can figure out the best way to break the news. We find an empty room and he flips open the results.

He reads them silently first, but I can see the lines in his forehead appear as he frowns. Eventually, I gather up all of my courage and ask,

“What is it?”

He looks up.

“Syphilis,” he replies. “She has third-stage syphilis and what looks to be an aortic aneurysm.”

“But that doesn’t explain her loss of muscle-control on the highway,” I object.

He looks thoughtful.

“It could,” he corrects me. “An aortic aneurysm can compress the nerves and numb the leg.”

“But,” I prompt.

He looks at me so long that I have to turn away. There is something unsettling about him right now. He’s too…everything. He’s too McDreamy. He makes me feel like he could swallow me whole. And if I let him, I think I would like it.

Like I said, fear. 

“I don’t think that’s the case here. She said she couldn’t stop. Not that her leg was numb, not that she couldn’t feel her leg, but that she couldn’t stop.” he tells me.

“Don’t you think that’s stretching it a little?” I feel compelled to ask. “She could easily have meant that she couldn’t feel her leg.”

“I know, but,” and now he’s looking at me, and I’m drowning, hoping to never stop. “I can’t help but feel there’s something more.”

You are the only thing I want to feel, I want to say.

Instead, I drag my eyes away from his and mutter, “Yeah.”

He puts the CT scans up to the light and examines them. Nothing is out of the ordinary.

“Look for any other possible causes for her loss of muscle control,” he tells me.

I nod, grab the results, and head for the door. My hand is on the handle when his voice stops me.

“How is Dr. Stevens?” he asks.

I freeze. Izzie. Prom. Dirty Exam Room Sex.

When I finally reply, my voice is low and cold. I can’t let him ask any more questions about her. Izzie and Denny has too much to do with us.

“She’s fine. She’s busy baking things,” I say.

He nods, not seeming all that perturbed at my low and cold tone. Then again, my version of “low and cold” with him isn’t measuring up to what it should be today.

His voice grows softer. There’s something different now. Something that makes me instinctively identify it as “Derek” instead of “Dr. Shepherd”.

“And you? How are you doing?”

“I,” I say, and this time I know that I’ve finally managed to make myself sound as icy and distant as possible, “am perfectly alright.”

He gets up from the hospital bed he was perched on and walks over to me. I should move, I know I should. The door is right in front of me. One flimsy inch of wood is the only thing separating me from safety. I could be outside right now, instead of watching Dr. Shepherd get closer to me, with that same unsettling look in his eye.

“Meredith, about last night – ,” he begins, but I cut him off.

“No, Dr. Shepherd, there wasn’t any “last night”,” I tell him. “Nothing happened between us. We are two professionals who are going to maintain an appropriate relationship. That’s all.”

He doesn’t move away from me. In fact, he actually moves closer. I’m getting goosebumps. He’s so close that I feel like trembling, but I stop myself just in time. I can’t let him know the affect he has on me. It would only encourage him.

His hand is on my arm now, stopping me from leaving. The other one quickly cups the side of my face. I can feel his thumb stroking small circles on my cheek, and have to fight to keep my eyes from closing. Even so, I feel a smile threatening to work its way across my face, and quickly suppress it.

Apparently, I’m not quick enough, because I see something that looks suspiciously like triumph flash in his eyes, and his lips curl into another grin. This one is devastating. It makes my knees buckle (just a bit) and I have to lean back against the door to stop from sliding to the ground.

“You don’t believe that,” he says.

“I don’t believe that,” I agree in a whisper.

“So why are you fighting this?” he asks.

He’s so close that I couldn’t move if I wanted to. He is just completely here. All sinful indigo eyes and gently curving lips and smooth, taut skin and perfect, long-fingered hands that can make me wild without ever removing a piece of clothing.

I don’t know who kisses who first, but the next thing I know, my hands are in his hair and his lips are on mine. The doorknob is pressing into my thigh, but I don’t care, because I’m kissing him again. His hand moves from my arm to my waist, and I am pulling him closer to me, as close as possible. It doesn’t feel like enough. I don’t want this to end. It feels too good. His eyes are even darker than before, and they practically bore holes in me as we continue.

My leg shifts on the handle and the door starts to open. The spell is broken.

He backs away slightly, and so do I, effectively shutting the door again. I look at him, and for the second time since I’ve seen him today, I find tears are in my eyes.

“Because,” I answer, “I won’t be your dirty mistress. And because we aren’t professionals when we’re together – but we should be.”

I grab the folder from the floor and hurry out of the room before he can say anything that will make me turn around and kiss him again. The door is still open, and when I look back, I see him standing there.

He looks McDreamier than ever, and my heart breaks into another piece.

Derek.