Since when is it this hard to write y our own name?

Derek Shepherd was sitting in the kitchen of his Manhattan brownstone with a pen in his hand. He couldn't remember how long he'd been sitting there but he knew it had been longer than fifteen minutes. He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his raven-black hair. Sitting in front of him on the counter were the words "Declaration of Divorce." The words seemed so finite. They silently mocked him. It was bitterly ironic that the words seemed to signal the end of everything at the same time his world decided to come crashing down around him. Eleven years of marriage had come down to those words.

Before he could stop himself again he signed his name at the bottom of the page. "Derek Shepherd, M.D.", he said aloud as his pen swept across the page. The line below his signature was still blank. His wife would sign it when she got home from work. She would no longer be Dr. Addison Forbes Montgomery-Shepherd.

Derek took one last look around his empty house. His house. The words repeated themselves over and over in his mind. It had never really felt like his house. No matter where he looked he couldn't see any touches of him, only Addison. She had picked out every wall color, tile, counter surface, utensil, picture frame, fabric, and every other item in the goddamned house. He even let her pick out his toothbrush, for Christ's sake. When did he let her take over his life? He could scarcely remember life before Addison. Now he would have to struggle to find a life without her.

He slowly walked up the stairs to get his bags out of the bedroom. He looked at the photos on the wall as he made his way up the stairs. Derek and Addison on their wedding day. Derek and Addison on their honeymoon. Derek and Addison at the hospital. Derek and Addison and Mark having dinner together. Derek and Mark drinking a beer together. Photos of happier times over the past eleven years. He studied the pictures with Mark in them. He stared at the face of the man who called himself Derek's best friend. With friends like that...,Derek thought to himself. Mark's smiling face made Derek want to punch his fist through the wall.

He finished climbing the stairs and stopped short of his bedroom door. He desperately tried not to think about what he found in here the previous night. He struggled to keep the images out of his head as he turned the knob and opened the door. Once he saw the bed, it became hopeless. He sighed heavily as he recalled coming home last night. The minute he had stepped foot in the house he knew something was wrong. Nothing seemed wrong but he couldn't shake this feeling that had swept over him. The feeling was nothing new to Derek; he experienced it all the time when he was in the OR. There have been times during surgery where he just somehow knew what was going to happen next. This was the feeling he had standing in the foyer of his brownstone. And then it comes to him.

He walked up the stairs and stepped over a man's jacket. He could hear voices as he approached his bedroom door. He slowly swung open the door and was completely unsurprised by what he saw happening in his bed. His wife and best friend were lying in bed, practically mid-coitus, on his favorite sheets. The only thing that surprised Derek about the situation was his total lack of emotion. He felt no anger, no jealousy, and no pain. Suffice it to say that he just didn't care. He could see that Addison and Mark were yelling out apologies and excuses but he couldn't hear a word they were saying. He just simply walked out of the room and closed the door.

Derek blinked his eyes and found himself in the present. He was standing in his bedroom at the foot of the bed. He glanced around the room that was also decorated by Addison. It was about as warm and inviting as a den of lions. It was enough to make anyone want to run in the other direction. Except for Mark, of course. He grabbed his luggage off of the bed and walked back down to the kitchen. He looked at the clock on top of the stove. It read 3:12 am. If he left now, he would make his first scheduled stop by sunrise. He set his bags down and looked at the ring on his left hand. The ring had always felt awkward on his hand. Surgeons aren't allowed to wear jewelry in the OR so most forego wearing their wedding rings, Derek especially. He only ever wore it whenever Addison reminded him. She, on the other hand, always wore her rings. She'd pin them to her scrubs during surgery. However, she wasn't in surgery nearly as often as Derek. He was the country's most sought after neurosurgeon. This kept him in the OR for nearly 18 hours every day. It was pointless for him to wear the ring. Now that he had signed divorce papers, it was pointless for him to even have the ring. He slid the ring off his finger and set it on top of the divorce papers. He walked out to his old SUV and threw his bags in the back. He walked back up to the front door, slid the key in the lock, and turned it. He made a mental note to mail the key to Addison when he got to Seattle.