Love gives hope

Chapter 15 "crossing lines"

Meredith's Point-of-View

I was trying to contain myself and my emotions. I was a mess; I was a train barreling down the track at a hundred miles an hour. I was a wreck waiting to happen.

I never meant to fall in love with him, with a patient, or with anyone. However, I felt powerless against my feelings. The second that I barged into his room three weeks ago, set in motion a series of events that drew me towards him unwillingly... I fell helplessly and irrevocably in love with him.

No, I wasn't giving up, at least I didn't want to. I knew better than to beat a dead horse. He wasn't dead yet. As a doctor, I knew what his prognosis was. Any other guy, I would be telling him that the best thing he can do is go home and get comfortable.

Derek wasn't any other guy.

"Can I get you another?" the man behind the bar asked, I looked up and gave him a half assed smile.

"I guess one more wouldn't hurt." I sighed

"I know that look." He smirked as he poured tequila into my shot glass "Either your boyfriend is giving you hell, or your boss is."

"I don't have a boyfriend." I sighed as I stared at the tequila, "Apparently, I won't ever. The man that I have fallen in love with is going to die in about a week. There is nothing I can do to stop it."

"So, what are you doing sitting here?" he asked after I threw the shot down my throat.

"Did you not hear me?" I raised a brow "I just got devastating news; I'm devastated."

He sighed as he pressed his hands against the bar and leaned into me.

"I can't imagine the kind of pain you're feeling right now." He mumbled, "I know that if I were handed the news that the love of my life was going to die in a week, I wouldn't waste and hour of it sitting in a bar, I'd be right there with them."

"He doesn't want me with him." I said numbly feeling my eyes filling.

"He's scared, he's afraid to hurt you." Joe shrugged, "He's trying to be brave for you."

"How would you know this?"

"I don't." he shrugged, "I just know that no one wants to die alone."

I felt that sting even through the tequila haze as if it hit me like a sharp sword through my chest.

"Well, if it isn't Florence freaking Nightingale." I heard next to me as a body dropped in the stool next to mine.

"Alex shut up." Izzie scoffed as she sat on the other side of me.

"You guys have been teasing her for weeks about spending so much time with her patient. Now that I am chiming in, you're going to give me hell about it?"

"Leave her alone." Cristina mumbled, "Her patient is going to die; it's not an easy thing to take."

"She is in the bar because of it." He scoffed, "You guys don't find that alarming?"

"You don't know that." I hummed, "He could live, he could miraculously wake up tomorrow and be fine, the cancer all gone. Miracles happen in medicine all the time."

"I saw the films." Alex muttered, "The dude is Swiss cheese; he's circling the drain and it's about damn time."

Before I even knew what I was doing, I heard a crash of glasses and a large solid thud. I was looking at Alex on his back holding his jaw, looking at me like I'd just thrown a fireball at his ass.

"You don't know what you're talking about!" I screamed and felt my fists shake in anger "You don't know anything! You know nothing. It amazes me how you even managed to write an entrance letter!"