He is one of the last to know about the shooting; catches the tail end of a conversation between two neurosurgical attendings as they vacate the scrub room of the OR he's booked for a pulmonary embolectomy.
- can't believe someone managed to get in packing heat. Doesn't bode well, does it? No one in their right mind is going to want to go to Seattle Grace-Mercy West anymore. Doctor or patient.
He pauses by the door, barely manages to return the nods they politely send his way as they hold it open for him to enter. As he does so, he presses himself to the cool metal of the door jamb and cocks his head to the side to follow the sound of their fading voices down the hospital halls.
I know. Maybe we'll be getting some transfers? I hope so. You hear about the cardio resident who performed emergency heart surgery on the Chief when he was shot? Even when the shooter held a gun to her head? That's the kind of surgeon I want on our team.
Static crackles in his ears, and he fights to retain his composure as all the air is sucked out of the room and a vaccuum takes its place; there is only one heart surgeon at Seattle Grace with enough gall to do a procedure unauthorised by and with the absence of an attending, and who is extraordinary enough to do so successfully.
(It will have been successful, he is sure. After all, she learned from him.)
Throughout the six hour surgery, he outwardly remains the epitome of calm professionalism, dictating his every suture to the gawking interns and residents alike alongside the gurney. Inwardly, his stomach is roiling; he wonders if she ran gloved fingers over the glinting bullet embedded in Shepherd's chest cavity and pictured an identical slug slicing through her brain. If it ever even crossed her mind to stop fixing him to save herself, as it surely would have his. If her hands shook, as his used to, as she held Shepherd's heart with deadly silver flashing in her peripheral.
He wishes he could have been there to steady them, as she once did for him.