"Why are you all smiley and happy?" Meredith asked when she saw Derek walk in to the OR with a huge smile on his face. He grabbed the towel from a scrub nurse and dried his hands. After putting on all the surgical wear, he approached the table and looked over his patient's vitals. "I doubt a craniotomy has got you this happy, you do like three a day. It's nothing for you now."

"Addison left." He explained after making the opening incision. "She gave me divorce papers, asked me to sign them and Fed-Ex them to her so she can give them to our attorney and she left."

"Oh." Meredith replied, her lips curling up slowly into a grin which she knew her mask would hide. "So now what?"

Derek diverted his eyes for a second. "I'm not sure." He admitted. "I never really saw this coming so I don't have a plan. I guess we'll have to take it as it goes."

Just as Meredith was about the reply, she was cut off my a nurse who was holding Derek's pager. "Dr. Shepherd, the ER is paging you. They say it can't wait and that they need you there right now."

"I'm kind of busy." Derek replied as he looked up from his patient's brain. "Meredith, can you go see what they need?" he asked.

"No, Dr. Shepherd, you don't understand. They don't need a consult." The woman explained with hesitation. She took a deep breath before saying, "It's about your wife. She uh…was mugged. A cab driver brought her in. He says she had called for a cab to take her to the airport and when he got there, he saw her lying on the floor with two guys. One was beating her and holding her down, the other was looking through her purse. When he pulled over, they took off."

Derek felt his usually steady hand start to shake. He turned to Meredith, wordless begging her to take over. Meredith eagerly agreed, promising to be careful so she wouldn't kill the patient. He took his time getting to the ER, not because he didn't think it was urgent but because he was too numb to run. Once he got there, he looked around only to find that the woman he was looking for wasn't there.

"Are you here for Dr. Montgomery-Shepherd, Dr. Shepherd?" a young nurse asked him.

He nodded his head mechanically because he was in too much shock to speak. "They took her up to the ICU. Dr. Webber was looking for you, he's in charge of her case."

Without response, Derek took off toward the ICU. He was directed to her room without even having to asked and walked in to see her blood stained body lying in a bed. She was paler than he remembered her to be, she looked the opposite of the undefeated epitome of strength he thought she was. "What's wrong with her?" he asked the nurse who was making notes in her chart.

"She was mugged." The older woman explained.

"I know that!" he exclaimed. "I mean…what's wrong with her right now? Why isn't she awake? What's going on with her?"

"She's in a coma, Derek." Richard answered from the door and relieved the nurse from having to be the one to tell him. He allowed her to make a quick escape to leave the two men to talk. "..on life support. Her heart is pumping on it's own but we've got her a respirator. She's got minimal brain activity."

"Did she say anything when they brought her in?" Derek asked.

"She hasn't been conscious at all since she came in. A cab driver brought her in. He said she was already passed out by the time he got to her. Apparently, there were two men…"

Derek stopped him before he could go on. "I've already heard the story. I don't need to hear it again." He said quietly. "She gave me divorce papers; she was on her way to the airport to go back to New York. She asked me to wait for her cab with her because she wasn't thrilled about the idea of being alone in the middle of the night in a city she doesn't know but I told her I had more important things to do and that Seattle was the safest place on Earth. I honestly didn't expect something like this to happen."

"I know you two declared your marriage is over… but legally, you're still married which means you are still her next of kin." Richard told him. "You have to decide what happens next."

"I don't know." Derek sighed as he sat down on the chair beside the bed. "This wasn't in the plan, Richard. I was just telling Meredith! Our plan was to get married, finish med school, be kick-ass surgeons, have a kid or two and live happily ever after! I have no idea when the fuck that changed! It wasn't part of the plan for me to start ignoring her, her affair was not in the picture we envisioned…neither was mine for that matter. We never planned a divorce and what we would do after. We never had a plan for what would happen if she fucking got beat in the middle of a fucking alley- or wherever she was- and end up on life support! I don't know what the next step is, I don't have a plan! We never made a plan for this!" he screamed.

"Calm down, Derek." Richard raised his voice over Derek's so he can hear him. "You just need to think about it. Usually in a case like this, I would suggest calling her parents, but I know she wasn't too close to them. She always said you know her better than she knows herself, so think for a little while. What would she want?"

Derek shrugged. "I don't really know." He mumbled. "I don't know because we never talked about this! It wasn't in the plan." He repeated again.

"Okay, well, Derek, as you can tell, things don't always work according to plan!" Richard exclaimed. "You can choose to keep or on life-support, or you can pull the plug. It's up to you."

Derek paced back and forth in his wife's room. He hesitantly dialed a number into his cell phone and pressed send before holding it against his ear and waiting for an answer. After the second ring, an all too familiar voice picked up with a startled, "Derek?"

"Don't say anything." Derek warned. "I don't know why I called you, I just need someone to talk to and as it turns out, you're my only friend which makes me hate you more than I do for sleeping with my wife."

"Um…okay?" Mark replied skeptically. "What's going on? Is everything okay?"

"No." Derek replied surely. "Everything is not okay."

"What going on?" Mark asked with his voice hinting the slightest bit of concern.

"Addison he was mugged on her way to the airport to fly back to New York. She's on life support right now." He explained. "And I'm so…confused about it all. I thought I don't care about her anymore, Mark. I was so convinced that I don't love her anymore. I mean, she gave my divorce papers and I was so sure it was over between that I was gonna sign them right there and then, in front of her without a second thought. But I figured I needed time to think and she was supposed to come back there. "

"She was mugged? In Seattle? Really? She's lived in New York for all these years, where the crime rate is much higher and she gets mugged there? That's weird." Mark said, using that as the thought to distract him so he could stay strong to support his best friend.

"Exactly! She got mugged and now I'm looking at her and I feel like my whole life is turned upside down. That's not how I would feel if I didn't care about her anymore, right? I obviously feel this way because I still have feelings for her. I mean…she's in a coma and I feel like a part of me is dead."

"Yeah, I think that would suggest that you still have feelings for her." Mark replied distractedly while he tried to keep his mind focused on something that wouldn't cause him to break down into hysterical tears while a gorgeous drunk woman was waiting in his bedroom. "Do you um…want me to come over there? I mean, I would, you know? I'd do that for you and Addison iF you wanted me too."

"I know you would, Mark. And I'm really grateful for that. But I need to be alone. I need to figure this out for myself. I just needed someone to talk to." He answered. "I've got to go, I need to do some thinking." He said quickly.

"Okay, well…keep me posted." Mark replied before Derek managed to hang up.

He sat down on the chair beside her bed and stared at her for a while before losing what little sanity he had left. "What happen to the plan, Addison?" he screamed at his very unconscious wife. "Our story was not supposed to end like this! I don't know what the hell to do! I'm screaming at you and you're like…as close to dead a person can be with a heart that's still beating."

He took a deep breath to calm himself down and cracked his knuckles. "If I decide to end life support, you'll probably die, unless you come out of this coma by some miracle. But my luck sucks so I doubt that would happen. So I have a temptation to just keep you like this, just so I can see you, so I can hold your hand. Would that be too selfish?" he paused. "And I'm talking to you as if have the ability to answer me." He groaned.

Izzie curiously raised her brow as she dropped off a chart at the nurse's station in the ICU. She stood in front of Meredith to block her view through the window and right into the Shepherd room. She crossed her arms and cleared her throat.

"Didn't we talked about this?" She said. "You have to move on Meredith. I know you're not in love with him anymore but you can't stand here and watch them."

"It's been two weeks." Meredith mumbled. "He hasn't left her side. He just sits there and talks to her as if she can answer him. He talks about their past and he rambles about a 'plan' and how this isn't how it was supposed to be. He still loves her, he thought he didn't but he does."

"They're married, Mer." Izzie pointed out. "We won't understand what that means until we've been married for as long as they have. There is just this…bond or connection or something."

"If the accident never happened, would he have realized that he still had feelings for her or would they fade away and we'd end up together?" Meredith asked, although it was more like she was thinking out loud.

"He loved you too, Meredith. He was going to divorce her, if she wasn't like this, he wouldn't have realized how he felt. It takes losing someone to realize what you'll miss." Izzie replied. "Stop watching it and torturing yourself. Please? It's getting hard to watch."

"Do you think she'll ever wake up?" she asked softly.

Izzie turned her head and glanced into her room. "I don't know."

"It would be messed up if she doesn't. He would have realized it too late; he would never get to tell her. He deserves to be happy. I wouldn't want to see him like this forever."

"Derek, when was the last time you spent more than an hour outside this room?" Richard asked as he walked in. His tone sounded somewhat harsh, but Derek knew it was only because Richard was concerned about the fact that he no longer had a life.

"Why do I need more than an hour? I can use her bathroom to shower, I moved my closet into my office so I got clothes there… I just need to go out to get food and if I stick to the cafeteria, I don't even have to go far." He explained, proving the fact that he had carefully thought out his current living situation.

"Have you contact her family? Asked them their say in the matter? I know the divorce papers were not signed or filed, which means you do have all the say but you need to tell them, you need to let them know that their daughter is…"

"Say 'dying' and I will kill you in your sleep and you'll never see it coming." Derek threatened then released a heavy sigh. "Sorry, I didn't mean to threaten you. This whole thing has just got me so…off lately. I just need her to wake up so I can go back to being regular Derek and not edgy Derek."

"It's been almost three weeks for you sitting here. You know that the chances of her coming out of this are slim." Richard told him honestly. "If you want to keep her in a permanent vegetative state, you need to have her transferred to a long term care facility, Derek. We need as much room as we can get, and this is the ICU, its critical patients we're talking about."

"So that's what this is about? You want me to pull the plug on my wife so you can have your bed back?" Derek snapped, yelling much louder than he had since the night he heard about the accident. "That's all you care about, Richard?"

"No, Derek! You know that at one point you two became a part of my family. And seeing her like thing hurts me too, Derek but transferring her would be the first step of moving on." He explained.

"I'll think about it." Derek promised half-heartedly because he knew he would never really think about it.

Another four weeks had gone by and nothing had changed. Derek would still spend close to every minute by the bed, his only release was an occasional phone call to Mark to rant about how much he hated the fact that her condition wouldn't change. He would decline Mark's every offer to visit because it really was something he wanted to deal with alone.

Addison was the first patient Richard would check on every morning, and every morning he would shake his head in a pessimistic manner and walk out. Derek looked up at him that morning and took a deep breath. "You don't have to take her vitals or anything." he started off. "I um…"

"What are you talking about, Derek? Did someone already come in this morning and do that?" Richard asked with a raised brow.

Derek shook his head. "No. I umm… I decided to end life support. Today if possible." He whispered.

"Are you sure?" Richard asked. "I'm not rushing you, Derek. She's your wife, you have a right to want more for her."

"It's been almost two months. Coma patients usually never come back past the first week." Derek replied logically. "I was trying to hold on to something that wasn't there. We…were over a long time ago. She wouldn't still want to be with me if she were awake. She would kick my ass for keeping her in this vulnerable state for all this time."

"Okay." He whispered. "I need you to sign the form and we can turn the machines off as soon as you do that."

"Her lungs may start working on their own once the tube is out…her heart might continue beating. I know it's a small chance but Addison has always defied the odds. I mean, she's under forty, she's a woman and she's the best neonatal surgeon the world has ever seen. Was…" he sighed as he corrected himself. "She broke the stereotype that a good doctor is some old man that's been practicing for decades."

"You're right, she did have a thing for proving everyone wrong." Richard agreed. "I'm not telling you not to believe that, but I'm asking you to prepare yourself if that doesn't happen."

"There is never going to be a right time to do this. And I can't keep her like this much longer." Derek explained. "I'm ready…and even if I'm not I have to be because I don't want to hurt her anymore. I've hurt her enough for one lifetime."

A matter of hours later, Derek stood there, desperately clutching Addison's hand while Richard disconnected every machine Addison was attached to. The last to be removed was the tube supplying her with oxygen. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest just at the thought that this could be the end.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Richard asked, noticing Derek's hesitance.

Derek nodded, doing his best not to cry in front of his former mentor and current boss. "Ignore me." He mumbled. "This is either going to be the best decision I could make for us." He paused, hoping that she would wake up and that would be the case. "Or it's the worst." He added, cringing at the thought of losing her forever. "Either way, there is no turning back."

Richard nodded and painfully moved his hand over the button to disable the machine. He wasn't sure if he was expecting to hear rhythmic beeping of the cardiac monitor to show her heart working on its own or if he was expecting to hear the high pitch noise indicating that her heart had given out.

Derek was holding her hand so tightly that he assumed she would scream if she could. His eyes were fixed on it heart monitor while Richard's finger was on the button. "Three…" he paused. "Two.."

"I love you, Addison." Derek blurted last second before hearing Richard call 'one' as he pressed the button.

Yes, I'm leaving it there. Sorry. But cliffhangers are always fun. You get to decide if she wakes up from her coma or if that really was the end.
I might be talked into writing part two, depends on how heavy school is this week and on what you guys think of this.