Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy, its characters and plots belong to Shonda Rhimes, Mark Gordon, et. al, Touchstone Television and the ABC Network. No infringements are meant by using them in this work of pure fiction, and trust me, absolutely NO money is being made from this. This story's plot does belong to me, however.
Author Note: This is my first Grey's Anatomy story, and I have to admit, I'm a newbie to the show as well. I just got hooked on it, and until I receive my Season 1 DVD, all that I know about past relationships, plots, ect., is what I've read online. So bare with me. This bunny hit me after last night's stellar episode, "It's the End of the World"- and I'm going to try to put out my version of a continuation from that episode. Of course, we'll get Part II in a week, but the Part I ending just wouldn't leave me alone! 'Gotta hate it when that happens! Enjoy!
Time, As We Knew It
Part 1
"But that does not change the fact that she's got my McDreamy. And my McDog. She's got my McLife. And what have I got? You know, I can't remember the last time we kissed. 'Cause you never think the last time is the last time… you think there'll be more. You think you have forever but you don't..."
This was not the way she thought her day would turn out. Oh sure, she'd had a bad feeling that morning, while she lay sprawled out under the warm covers - in her warm bed, which was rather conspicuously lacking that oh-so familiar warm, male body, today. She'd wanted to stay there, pull those warm covers over her head and mull over the point at which her life began to spin down the toilet. Time could go on, as she knew it would – and she could remain, in this never ending 'funk'.
But, Dr. Meredith Grey's luck was about the only constant in her life, it seemed. And predictably - her luck sucked.
Meredith closed her eyes. Here she was - an intern at the prestigious Seattle-Grace hospital, with some of the best doctors in their fields – experiencing some of the most challenging and arguably "oddest" cases she could hope for – and yet, all that she had accomplished would culminate to one thought racing in her head.
What did I do?
What had she done? Put herself through medical school? Tried to live up to her mother's name – while trying to forge her own identity? Started a relationship with a man, who all of the signs pointed to as being a really bad idea - while at the same time, all of her gut feelings screamed that it was right? Laid her emotions and trust out for all to see, only to have them trampled on by the same man, who she was so sure felt the same way about her – only to see him choose another?
"Mere, you still doing okay?" Dr. Yang's voice plucked Dr. Grey from her self introspection.
Meredith swallowed thickly, as the bomb squad guy slipped a body armor vest around her torso.
"I have my hand inside a man's chest, where there is an unexploded, very unstable piece of ammunition that may, or may not decide to blow this entire floor to Hell…how-do-you-think-I'm-doing?" she answered in one whole, shaky breath.
Cristina Yang, always cynical and quick with a dry wit, blinked at her friend. In actuality, it had been some twenty minutes since the young EMT lost control, and yanked her hand from the bleeding man's open chest wound, and sent everybody (except Meredith) to duck and cover. But there was no explosion. When Cristina realized they weren't all blown into the next wing, she couldn't believe her eyes. Her friend and fellow intern, had some how been able to replace the pressure from the young girl's hand over the shell – with her own. Not many people would have done that.
"Um, I'm going to go with 'freaking out' a little, right now…if I had to, you know…guess," Cristina said. She kept pumping on the Ambu-bag steadily, while bomb squad personnel moved cautiously around the table.
Dr. Grey smiled faintly, giving Dr. Yang a look that stated clearly 'duh', "Yeah, I'm a little freaked out right now. Did anyone find out what happened to Hannah?"
"The chick just hauled-butt and left you to deal with a bomb, and you're worried about her?" Cristina said incredulously.
"She's just a kid, Cristina. Everyone left her in here… she couldn't cope."
"Yeah, well, I still think someone should have just tranq-ed her and tied her butt to the table." Dr. Yang muttered.
"Dr. Grey, I need you to tell me if the shell moved at all when you put your hand in the wound tract. Quite stupidly, I might add," Dr. Burke's crisp voice rose over the din of agents talking into radios.
He was standing near the wall, trying to shoo the bomb squad agents away from the operating table, and keep an eye on his intern. There was little use in trying to keep the area sterile, but he'd be damned if he was going to let something happen to one of his interns in his own OR.
Meredith glanced down at her wrist, peeking out of the bloody mess that was the patient's chest.
"I think…I think it may have slipped further toward his right scapula, doctor." She cut off his next question before he could speak, her tone much harder, "And, I don't think this was stupid, sir. If I hadn't put my hand in here, the bomb might have gone off."
"And it might not have, Doctor Grey!" Burke bit back. "My point is – you doing something this rash and irresponsible could have cost a lot of lives here."
"Looks to me like she saved a few lives …here," Cristina said as she turned to Dr. Burke.
He sighed heavily, somewhat resigned to the fact that his girlfriend and underling, was right. He hated to admit it when she was right.
Agent Young of the bomb squad stepped in, "We need to clear this area and get the bomb to a secure location."
"That is not a bomb, it's my patient, Agent," Dr. Burke growled, "And he isn't going any where with Dr. Grey sticking out of him like that."
"I'm not leaving." Meredith stated again. She didn't know why she kept saying that. Why shouldn't she just trade places with one of the squad guys - their hand in here could do just as well has hers! There was no reason she should have to stay here. Meredith looked down at the man she stood over. He seemed so blissfully unaware of the chaos around him. She envied him. Maybe this was what her feeling had been about this morning, and why it would have been infinitesimally better to stay home under the sheets.
"I should be really hating you right now," she said finally to Cristina, as a squad guy pushed Yang away from the Ambu-bag and began pumping it himself.
"Wha? Hey!" Cristina protested, but Agent Young stated clearly that the fewer civilian personnel in the way, the better. His guy could take over the ventilation. "What do you mean, hating me?" she asked as she sent a glare to her replacement.
"You kicked me out of bed this morning! I told you I had a feeling about today!" Meredith said angrily.
"Oh. Right. I just KNEW some jackass was going to shoot himself with a freakin' bazooka, and come in here with an unexploded bomb in his chest!" Dr. Yang said, exasperated. She had her hands on her hips, and for a moment, Meredith had to banish the vision of Dr. Bailey from her mind.
"I told you I had a feeling I might die today!" Meredith yelled as another agent was fastening more armor to her body. Suddenly, there seemed to be more police and bomb squad men moving about the room. And Dr. Burke was becoming more and more animated in the corner, talking to Agent Young.
"I didn't make you put your hand in there, Meredith! I didn't make you go 'hero' on us… why couldn't you have just covered your ass and hit the deck with the rest of us! What were you thinking?" Cristina berated her.
Meredith Grey paused at that. Honestly, now that she thought back through the time that seemed to be at a stand-still only an hour before – she had been perfectly calm when she replaced Hannah's hand with her own. She'd been calm, she didn't think – she just did it. Anyone who had been having such foreboding feelings of late, would have taken this as a sign that it was time to cut your losses and run like hell. It's not as if her life had been exactly smiley-faces and sunshine lately, perhaps she should have taken the hint. She'd been so hesitant about coming in today, and now, Meredith Grey couldn't bring herself to leave. If she moved, the patient would bleed out – the bomb could go off. She looked up at Dr. Yang and Dr. Burke, as they argued with the agents and officials. These were her friends, her colleagues. Suddenly, her mind shifted to the people in the OR down the hall. Derek hadn't left. Bailey's husband was clinging to life, in Derek's hands.
She couldn't leave, not now. Meredith remembered her oath, "First, do no harm". If she left, her patient could die – and trading places with anyone else might have the same result. She was a doctor, and this was her job.
"We have to move them to a more secure location. We can cover the patient with a lead cover, to minimized damage if the bomb…detonates. He's on a rolling table, we can just roll him and walk Dr. Grey down the hall – get them to a room farther away from that crazy doctor with the brain surgery over there." Agent Young he leaned toward Dr. Burke, hoping that the taller man would heed his warning. If the doctor in OR2 wouldn't leave, then they needed to isolate the bomb incase of a possible blast.
"You aren't going to be able to extract that bomb and disarm it with out killing my patient…or my intern, Agent Young," Dr. Burke said lowly.
Young fairly growled in frustration, did these doctors have such a God complex they can't see the danger until it blows up under their noses?
"Is there an OR that is more secluded, someplace near here that we could get them to quickly?" he asked.
"Yes, there a teaching auditorium at the end of the hall and around the corner, but…" Burke started.
"Great, that's where we are moving them," Young motioned to his crew, as they started toward Dr. Grey.
"You aren't going anywhere with out me there." Burke said. "Someone has to get that shell out of this chest cavity without killing him." Or all of us…
---------------------
Time. It always seemed to be running out – or running over a person. Being a neurosurgeon, Dr. Derek Shepherd had a different understanding of time than most people. Time, as most knew it – could be measured in life experiences.
But time as Dr. Shepherd knew it – was measured in breaths, in duration lengths of anesthesia, in CCs of medication. The minutes clicking by on the surgery clock correlated to the amount of damage Mr. Jone's brainwould sustain being deprived of oxygen due to a blood clot.
Derek's hands moved smoothly and confidently, doing the job they were trained to do – yet all the while, Derek counted. He'd had Bailey's husband under for 40 minutes. He'd just about finished cleaning out the clots he found, and was starting his final check for any he hadn't found. He counted the minutes, waiting for his pager to go off again. He wondered what had happened in OR 3. No explosions – a good sign.
Meredith had been in that OR. Dr. Shepherd's hands paused for a moment. Surely she left with the other personnel. He shook his head slightly, he shouldn't be thinking about Dr. Grey right now.
But, if he was to beperfectly honest with himself, Meredith Grey was rarely out of his thoughts. He saw her constantly in the halls or in the break room, around the hospital, or while they were working on a case together – and he would usually have to forcibly reign his mind back onto whatever he'd been working on before her presence assaulted his senses. Sometimes, like this morning, he'd simply find her standing in the hallway – gazing off into nothingness. Derek hadn't sought her out; he just seemed to 'be' where ever she was. He longed to know what she was thinking, in those times when the expression on her face tugged at his heartstrings. He'd ask her if she was okay, she'd give him one or two word answers – the vocal equivalent of placing her hand on his chest and pushing him away. It stung, terribly.
Mr. Jone's O2 sats beeped, and Derek was brought back to the here and now. He kicked himself mentally - you are in the middle of removing a blood clot from Dr. Bailey's husband's brain.
You can't very well tell her you missed something because you were daydreaming about Meredith Grey! The thought of what the petite Dr. Bailey would do to him, pregnant or not, steeled his hands as they worked tirelessly.
The door to Dr. Shepherd's OR opened. He glanced up over the lenses of his operating glasses, to see a very pensive and nervous looking Dr. Yang standing just inside the door.
"Bailey's husband had more extensive damage than I thought, but I believe I've cleaned out the last bleeder." He stated wearily.
Cristina Yang stood motionless. For the first time, she didn't know exactly what to say.
Dr. Shepherd looked over at the intern again, thinking that the Code Black had just rattled her a bit.
"The girl, the one with the chest-cavity bomb…how is she?" Derek asked, with more casualness than he thought possible. He was beyond tired, arm deep in the brain-matter of the husband of the most intimidating doctor at Seattle-Grace – and there was a bomb not twenty feet from his door. Maybe he should have sounded more anxious, but he was just too exhausted.
He's asking about the EMT girl? There's a bomb, in a guy's chest…it could blow any second – he's performing brain surgery on Bailey's husband…under the threat of a bomb exploding…and he's concerned about the girl? Man, I'd be nauseated by his 'heart-of-gold compassion' thing… if I wasn't nauseated about having to tell him that Mere…
"Yang?"
Cristina jumped slightly, struggling to find her tongue, which had gone dry somewhere along the line.
"Uh…the girl. She's…" she fumbled. Dr. Shepherd looked up from his work again, staring at her. "She's Meredith."
The room stilled. To Derek – time, itself quieted, until the thud of his own heart was all that was sounding in his ears. He was frozen, and he couldn't seem to pull himself out of it. What did she say?
"I – I'm sorry…what?" Derek stuttered when he could finally force air out of his windpipe.
Yang closed here eyes while she stilled her tongue from lashing some scathing remark at her superior. What didn't he understand?
"The girl with the bomb – its Meredith. She traded places with the EMT girl, and now has her hand in the chest cavity of a man with a bomb inside him." She said.
Derek Shepherd's throat tightened. His heart sped up until he was sure it would drum its way out of his ears. What the hell happened over there? What is Meredith thinking?
All questions, mundane and imperative, went racing through his mind at a fever pitch. He looked down at his fingers, curved over the probe and suction device he was using to save a friend's husband's life – they were starting to tremble.
And then, the silence was smashed like shards of glass by the piercing scream of his patient's heart monitor – flat lining.
TBC to Part 2 soon!
Please READ and REVIEW! Tell me what you think!
This will be short, just two parts. I still have a lot of "getting to know" work to do (the show and characters) with Grey's Anatomy, (and I have other fics to be worked on) so nothing long for me in this category right now. Who knows, maybe something will crop up later, after I get some more Anatomy under my belt!
I hope I did alright for this first part for this story, for being a Grey's Anatomy novice!