Chapter Text
Derek rushes through the hospital’s automatic doors and immediately feels the impact of the heated air beneath the fluorescent lights. The stagnant warmth inside clashes sharply with the biting cold outside, which still clings to his skin.
Without slowing his pace, he crosses the lobby toward reception on the first floor of the sprawling hospital complex. He moves as fast as he can, his footsteps echoing against the polished floor, his heart pounding in a frantic rhythm inside his chest.
Meredith appears from the opposite side with the same urgency etched into her body—the coat still zipped to her neck, strands of blonde hair slipping loose from a hastily made bun, her eyes too alert. When they recognize each other, there are no words. Only a firm, immediate embrace.
“They’re in operating room eleven,” she says quickly, almost out of breath, without even breaking the hug.
“Mer… it all happened so fast. I—” Derek starts, but his voice catches, betraying what his eyes are already threatening to give away.
She cuts him off at once—decisive, practical, the way she’s always been when the world feels too big. There’s no time to lose. Not today.
“Come on.”
Their hands lace together in the next motion, as if that simple gesture were the only possible point of balance. Meredith’s fingers are cold against Derek’s, and he gives them a gentle squeeze, a silent exchange of support. And they go.
The observation room is small, cold in a very specific way: the walls are too pale under the harsh white lighting, and the air-conditioning keeps the space sterile and chilled. The silence is almost absolute, broken only by the distant beep of monitors and the constant hum of the ventilation system. It’s a place meant for watching, not for touching. For being close without being inside.
Derek’s gaze goes straight to the large glass window separating the observation room from the operating suite.
And then he sees her.
First, the eyes. That hypnotic blue-green, fixed on him from the other side of the glass. The mask covers the rest of her face, but even so, the emotion is unmistakable. Derek can read her entirely through those eyes—the eyes he has been losing himself in for longer than he can recount.
Then his gaze drops to the small cart she’s pushing toward the window, settling on the bundle carefully placed atop a soft, plush blanket. The fabric wraps the tiny body with precision, in gentle shades of red and cream, crossed with small curved figures that repeat delicately, reminiscent of stylized candy canes. The colors are warm, restrained, chosen with intention, standing out against the clinical white around them.
Derek freezes, and the entire world seems to suspend its movement in that instant: the sounds fall away, footsteps in the background cease to exist, even Meredith’s voice disappears, as if it, too, had been switched off along with everything else. There is nothing but that exact point before him, demanding his complete attention.
The baby’s skin is smooth, unmarked, still carrying that fragile quality of someone who has just arrived in the world. The mouth rests in a perfect shape, calm, slightly parted, as if the act of breathing were still too new to require effort. The small nose slopes gently, and at the crown of the head, a shock of dark hair asserts itself immediately—thick, black curls, almost too much for such a tiny body.
On the placard, written in Addison’s precise cursive hand:
Catherine Grey Shepherd Collins
12/24/2036
6 lb 14 oz — 19.5 in
Only then do his eyes turn to his daughter.
Zola is still lying on the operating table as the drapes are removed around her and the room begins to shift. Her head rests against her husband’s; their hands remain intertwined, and their eyes are still closed, as if they’re both trying to process everything they’ve just lived through.
Derek understands.
He can barely manage it himself.
His gaze returns to Addison.
She stands there, steady, present, smiling behind the mask. He lifts his open hand to the cold glass in an almost unconscious gesture and shapes the words silently with his lips:
I love you.
And he knows—knows with the same certainty he always has—that she answers back.
After that, Derek can no longer hold the emotion in. The tears break free, silent and overwhelming, streaming down his face, spilling outward the joy that no longer fits inside him.
Christmas had always carried special significance in their lives.
But now…
now it would be even more special.