Extraordinary

Chapter 13

After the night at the trailer, Meredith and Derek had settled into an easy routine. They spent most nights together at Meredith's house and sometimes drove out to the trailer when they had time. Their relationship, even with Meredith's general denial, was obviously not purely physical anymore. They spent more and more time in each other's company, and flirted easily at the hospital.

However, all this time spent together meant that Meredith was finding it harder and harder to hide Ellis from Derek. Not long ago, she had managed to catch her at a good enough time to make her sign off her legal rights to her. Since then, she had found her schedule more and more unpredictable, and had not managed to make it to any of the events held for residents and their family members at Roseridge.

The nursing home had taken to calling her more often, as Ellis began acting up. She tried to dodge as many calls as she could, but it wasn't easy hiding the numerous calls daily. Just this morning, he had been acting suspicious when she suddenly left the room to take the call, and she wasn't sure what to do.

She had planned to go early to visit Ellis that morning, but had received an emergency page from the hospital so had to go in to work instead. On reaching the hospital, having left a sleepy Derek at home, she had found the unfortunate news there was an outbreak of syphilis in the hospital. Apparently inappropriate work sex was too common.

She had then been pulled into an emergency surgery, which had lasted hours, having entrusted the suitable protocol to follow for the STD to Patricia and HR. She had finally found a few minutes to herself and decided to head to an OR gallery to eat a bag of chips after having eaten nothing all day.

She found herself in Webber's gallery, and was happily surprised to find Derek already there. She went up and sat down next to him.

"Hey." she smiled at him. Derek, whose attention had been fixed at the surgery below, started at her voice. He turned to her and smiled back. "Hi"

"So what're you doing here?" She asked, stuffing a handful of chips in her mouth. "Because I'm having a day from hell." she muttered.

He laughed a little, still intently watching the surgery "I heard about the syphilis outbreak. Not fun."

"Nope." She sighed, looking down at the surgery herself, where Webber, Bailey and an intern were operating. "It's why I was paged early today."

"Mmhm" He muttered, distractedly, as Webber fumbled with a suture below. "Something's happening" he said gesturing at the surgeons down below.

Meredith turned carefully to look at the events taking place. Webber seemed to be struggling with a simple closure, and was trying to adjust the light. It was obvious that something was wrong. He finally gave up and told Bailey to close, leaving the OR hurriedly.

Both Meredith and Derek got up from their seats and followed him out. They caught up to him in a corridor nearby and stepped in front of him to stop him.

"Richard, are you alright?" Meredith asked worriedly.

"It's fine, it's nothing." Richard tried to say casually.

"It's not nothing," said Derek immediately. "You're having trouble with your vision." He said voicing his suspicions.

"Fine. My ophthalmologist just told me I'm getting old." Richard conceded.

"Or it could mean a tumor." said Derek simply. "You need to get a scan. Confirm it."

Meredith, who had just stood there silently, listening to the conversation, now said "We can schedule an MRI, it's better to have more information."

"You know how the gossip is at this hospital. If I get a scan, everyone will know around here." Protested Richard.

"Richard, that's really no excuse for avoiding a scan." Said Derek disapprovingly.