Reaching Forward

15

"Son of a bitch!" The only male voice in the house exclaimed. After George's Dad had died, he and Callie had gone on vacation somewhere. The girls didn't know where all George had said in his quick phone call that he was taking sometime off. They just figured he needed some time to cope about the loss of his dad. Meanwhile, at 10:03 am on a Sunday morning, Derek Shepherd was trying to put together his unborn son's crib.

Of course, trying was the definitive word. It was one of those rare days that both Meredith and Derek had off without having to ask for it. As most people would do, Meredith took the opportunity to catch up some much needed sleep however, Derek decided he'd face the day head on. Along with some more cursing, he exclaimed yet again, "The number three bolt!? There is no number three bolt!? Agh!" Derek had become so loud that he finally awoke Meredith from her slumber.

Opening her eyes slowly, she focused in on the clock on the night stand. It was 10:13 now. Groaning, she threw the sheets off of her and went to go find what all the fuss was about. Her first instinct was to go downstairs but the sounds were too close to be coming from down there. So, she made her way through the hallway until she arrived at the room that would become the nursery. Her eyes widened at the site she beheld. The room had been cleared of all of her mother's things and Derek was now attempting to put together the crib they had bought only a week earlier.

"What the hell are you doing?" She questioned.

"I'm trying to put this damn thing together." He said while trying to screw some pieces together.

She sat down beside him and picked up the assembling instructions and glanced at them before commenting, "Oh, so now it's that damn thing when last week you were raving about how perfect it was." She teased him.

Sighing, he took the instructions from Meredith and compared them to what he had screwed together. It still didn't look right. "No, the bedding is perfect it's this that's evil." He motioned at the unassembled crib.

She looked around at the empty room, "What did you do with all of my Mom's things that were in here?"

He ran his fingers through his hair while concentrating on the instructions in front of him, "I moved them to the attic."

She looked at him curiously, "And you did all of this when?"

Throwing the instructions down on the floor, he lied down on his back, "I got up around seven and since everything was already packed up in boxes it didn't take that long."

"I'm surprised I didn't hear you before now." She said.

"Well, I'm surprised that you heard me when you did over your snoring."

Meredith glared at him, "You can't complain anymore I got you those wax earplugs."

He laughed, "True but just because you can't hear the sound doesn't mean it's not there. Sort of like the tree in the forest."

Leaning back to lie on the floor next to him, Meredith turned on her side and placed her hand on his chest, "Don't think for a minute that you're going to be able to use those earplugs to get out of waking up in the middle of the night to tend to the baby."

"You don't have to worry about that. Although you probably should be concerned that your snoring is keeping Adam awake in there." He said the name in hesitation.

Recently, Derek had been concentrating heavily on the baby name book since they found out they were having a boy. He had went through and circled some of the names he liked and Adam was the first one to pop into his head, probably because it was first on the list of his favorite names.

Propping herself up on her elbow, she raised an eyebrow, "Adam?"

Derek shrugged, "I was just trying it out. Why? You don't like it?"