She boards the plane, a tiny golden-braided, blue-eyed child clinging to her mother's hand. The steps are a little too high; she stumbles against the top one and bruises her shins against the sharp edges, but she's hauled up in an instant and she doesn't have time to cry as they're shown to their seats. Her brother stares moodily out the window; he's ten, and doesn't understand why they have to leave Germany for the States. She's five, and doesn't really understand the difference. She clambers across her brother, who thumps her angrily on the back, and stares out the window as the plane starts to taxi to the end of the runway.
Her mother pulls her back gently and buckles her seatbelt. As the plane takes off, her ears pop and the odd dichotomy of her stomach rising and the view of her mother's tears causes her to gag. The last memory of Germany she has is a clouded-over bird's eye view of the land over the edge of an air-sickness bag, and the only thought she has is that if America's supposed to be so much better, why does it make her tummy feel so sick?
"And I don't want to see any mistakes in there, do you hear me? This harvest shouldn't take more than an hour, and God help St. Mary's if that heart's damaged by the time I get there."
She stalks down the hall, made conspicuous by her red scrubs, and takes a minute to twist her thick blonde hair up in a bun to fit under her scrub cap. It might be patterned gaily, but she's all business, and her interns scrabble madly out of the way as she pulls on a coat and makes her way up to the helicopter bay at the top of Mercy West.
The flight, as always, makes her feel sick, but she slugs water and pops an all-natural ginger remedy in lieu of drowsy Dramamine. Her face is set straight ahead; the resident she takes with her fiddles with a BlackBerry while she keeps her hands totally still.
It's rumoured that she's not even human. A cardiothoracic surgeon, she knows what makes the heart tick.
She knows even better what makes it feel.
"You must learn to speak English, Erika. You'll learn that in school. Emil can help you."
Emil, who's taken a grand total of about a year's worth of ESL classes, scowls. "English is stupid."
Erika pulls on one of her braids. "I don't want to go to school." She's only been to half a year of kindergarten in Germany, and she didn't like to be so far away from her mother. "I want to stay home with you."
"You've got to go to school. It's the same as in Germany – it's the law." Her mother, looking tired and sad, kisses the top of her head. "Go with Emil."
Emil walks far ahead of Erika, who has to hurry to keep up with him and ends up falling on the sidewalk. "Emil, wait for me!"
She gets up and looks down at her pants, which are now ripped at the knee, and begins to cry. "Come back!"
He turns. "Hurry up."
"I fell." She sniffles and tries not to let him see her cry. He comes over and pulls up her pant leg roughly. "It's just a scratch. Come on. We'll be late and then you'll have to sit in the headmaster's office all day. He'll probably not let you go to the toilet, either."
"That's not true." She frowns at him and brushes her tears away with a dusty, skinned hand. "He has to let you go to the toilet."
"Not in America. It's got different rules. And they hate German kids."
Erika's blue eyes widen. "Why?"
"Because they're not good enough to stay in Germany." He grabs her hand and pulls her along, not caring that he's hurting the skinned palm.
When they get to school, Emil dumps her at the kindergarten's door. "Be right here after school or you can find your own way home." With that, he leaves.
She pokes her head in. It looks like German kindergarten, and the kids look friendly. She starts to make for the jungle gym in the corner when she's stopped by the teacher.
"What's your name?"
She doesn't really know what the teacher is asking, and blinks in confusion. "Was tat?"
The teacher suddenly looks enlightened. "You're Erika Hahn."
"Ja." Erika nods shyly and allows herself to be led to the circle. The morning goes well, until she can't figure out how to ask to go to the bathroom. Noticing that it seems to be attached to the classroom, she simply gets up and walks to the door. The teacher calls her, and she turns around.
"Where are you going?" The teacher's voice is a little sharper than she intended it, and the little girl points at the door, her face falling when the teacher shakes her head and points at the floor. "Come and sit down, please."
Erika still has to go, but she sits back down and tries to focus on the teacher. But she's new and little and scared, and she can't understand a word that's being said, and despite all of her resolve not to cry, she ends up sniffling into her skinned palms at the back of the circle.
When she gets home, she slumps against her mother's embrace and cries. Above her, her cheek against the soft blonde hair, her mother cries, too.
"Richard, you're offering me a job at Seattle Grace?"
"Burke left. We need a skilled cardiothoracic surgeon to take over. You're the best, after him."
"After him," Erica snorts, tossing her hair and smoothing down her white coat over her skirt. "Well, what are the terms?"
"Benefits, a competitive pay package, the chance to work at one of the best hospitals on the West Coast?"
Erica laughs. "Okay. I accept." She holds out her hand and Richard shakes it, surprised at its firmness. "But only if you admit that I am the best cardiothoracic surgeon on the West Coast."
Richard laughs. "You're certainly one of the most hard-headed."
Erica's face sets determinedly. "Yes, I know."
"I'm changing the spelling of my name."
"Why?" Emil, fifteen years old, is sprawled on the couch, a book in his hand. "There's nothing wrong with the spelling of your name."
"Except that everyone spells it wrong." Erika's annoyed and she tugs at her braids, a nervous habit. "I just want to be normal."
"You are normal." Emil's voice is totally bored, and Erika throws a pillow at him. "Emil!"
"What do you want me to say?" His voice is cracking, in the midst of puberty, and he's looking more and more like their father every day. Erika sighs.
"I wonder what it would have been like if we'd stayed."
Emil's face hardens. "We couldn't have stayed. Mama couldn't have stood it."
They're speaking German, but it's American-accented, and neither can really remember the "old country". However, Erika can remember the funeral vaguely, although she can't remember the death. She's been told several times that it was a cardiac arrest that killed her father, but what that is, she doesn't know.
She vows to find out. It's got to be something awful, to make them move away from the home that they were all comfortable in.
"Damn it! Will you hand me the paddles?" Her hand clenches around the paddles as she shocks the heart once, twice. It stays still, cold and pale pink under the harsh surgical lights, and her eyes harden as she shakes her head. "Time of death, 15:47. Shit."
She pulls off her gloves and stalks out of the OR, leaving Izzie Stevens to fill out the charts, and runs smack into Mark Sloan. "What do you want?"
They've been flirting on and off; she sort of likes his smile and he really likes her figure. His eyes, even now, are tracing over her face and her curves. She almost smacks him. "Listen, bozo, I don't have time for your bullshit right now. I just lost a patient."
His face immediately changes. "I'm sorry, Dr. Hahn."
"Yeah, well." She pushes past him. "It happens."
He puts a hand on her shoulder and she looks him directly in the eyes. "Can I help you?"
"No, but maybe I can help you."
"I highly doubt it," she replies, pushing his hand away. "Just because you're the hospital's resident manwhore doesn't mean that I have to give into your misplaced charms. Kindly turn your attentions to someone else. Maybe your pretty boy friend?" She smirks at him and he smirks back.
"You can still be a feminist and like men, you know."
"What?" Her mouth opens in astonishment and he gives her a sexy grin. "Just saying."
She laughs, feeling the pressure of the day behind her eyes. "Okay, point for you, Dr. Sloan."
"I don't understand why you want to be a doctor, Erika."
To tell the truth, Erica doesn't know, either. She's got college applications spread out in front of her on the kitchen table and she knows she has the marks to get into any of them. "I just think I should."
"It's a good idea, but you're a woman. You'd never be able to balance that kind of career with a child."
Erica sighs in exasperation. "Maybe I don't want to get married and have children, Mama."
"You'd be missing out on one of the best experiences of your life." Her mother sighs. "I somehow think this is my fault. You and Emil never had a good family life."
"You did your best, Mama." Erica snakes her hand across the table. "I just don't want that."
"I should be proud, I guess. I raised an independent woman."
"You did, and I hope you are proud." Erica's blue eyes sparkle at her mother, and they embrace.
When she crosses the stage, a full-fledged MD, her mother waves from the audience, from her wheelchair. She's got congestive heart failure and Erica finally found her reason for being a doctor during the last year of medical school.
For now, she doesn't see a sick woman that she desperately longs to save.
For now, all she sees is her mother's bright smile.
Curled in the on-call room, she curses this day where all her patients die and she has to deal with cheeky interns. She even had a patient rebuke her for being so cold. It seems that you can't be both in this profession – you can't be too soft and you can't be too hard. But it's the way she is, and she doesn't apologize for it. She does, however, feel it as deeply as she used to as a child – and sometimes, even the hardest people cry.
She's not exactly sobbing into her pillow; but she's letting the tears fall down her cheeks and soak into the rough sheets. It's days like these that she really feels her parents' deaths; she wonders if she cares too much about the heart, too much that her own has atrophied.
The door opens and Mark Sloan comes in, but he sees her on the bed and turns to leave quickly. Quickly, that is, until he sees her tears.
"Are you okay?"
"Clearly, I'm not." She tugs on her hair; no longer in braids, but it's a nervous habit she's never been able to break. "It's just been a shitty day." She tries to laugh a bit, but he sees through it and sits on the bed beside her.
"Yeah, I get that." For now, he's not a manwhore, or flirting. He's just another doctor and he gets it, and she sighs as he puts a hand on her shoulder. "Sorry it's been shitty."
"Thanks."
Without really thinking about it, she cuddles closer to him, and he puts out a hand to touch her hair. "I'm not a manwhore. Not really."
"Yes, you are." She chuckles a little, her voice hiccupy, and he grins back.
When the kiss happens, it's soft, and non-aggressive, but it's short because she pulls away and turns her head back in the pillow, ashamed of herself. Ashamed of giving in? She doesn't know.
He continues to sit on the edge of the bed and stroke her hair. She doesn't respond.
But she doesn't tell him to go, either.